Has WvW improved since launch? Meaningful progression/rewards?

[Ickz]

Huge DAoC fan here and was very interested in GW2's take on RvR, but at launch it wasn't really fun and there seemed to be very little point to it as there was no meaningful progression or rewards. Has this changed at all since launch? Is WvW active/populated? Iirc, there was some sort of level/gear scaling before -
has that changed? Does gear/stats matter or are there preset templates or something that are forced on everyone - can you customize your stats/build? Is there any sort of ranking/ladder system to compare yourself to others?

[Zephyr Storm]

Haven't don't it in a long time, but I do know they've added reward tracks to it, as well as ranks and skills specific to it. You can also earn legendary gear from there now as well.

[PACOX]

The words have greatly improved, espcially if you played at launch. Its still active, at least in T3-T1.

The only scaling is that players under lvl 80 get boosted to lvl 80 in WvW. They still get steamrolled. GW2 has tier endgame equipment tiers, exotic and ascended. This difference between the two is only about 5% but 5% can mean a lot in pvp/wvw. You're not crippling yourself if you don't have ascended gear but its something to aim for.

Stat configurations definitely matter. My playstyle completly changes on my ele depending on which one of my gear sets that I'm using. Most builds have a luxury and budget variant. What you run is up to you. Theres a meta but theres tons of room for customization.

Theres no personal ranking system. The only offical ranking system is your worlds score.

Rewards have been largely overhauled. Theres a ton of WvW exclusive skins. Pretty much everything you need for WvW can be bought with tokens that you get from WvW or gold/mats that you accumulate.

Scoring has also been overhauled. Matches are broken down into smaller skirmishes. Your servers standing in a skirmish is added to a larger score. Kills also have a large impact on the score so even if you're just a roamer your kills add to your worlds score. I'm really not going to get into it it but your better your world does during a skirmish the more rewards you get. You also more rewards if your server is outnumbered.

[Gray_Matter]

It's now more rewarding to run around in a small group compared to the zerg. They have also added gliding to WvW on a trial basis. I really like the implementation. You can only glide in areas that your team controls.

[DrMcNinja]

I still remember launch... boy that was terrible. WvW has certainly improved a lot more compared to the cesspool that was launch.

I can hear the voices echo on my head of people quitting because of it.

[PACOX]

I forgot about the ghost zergs at launch. Culling.

Large zergs wouldn't render, not due to your hardware but becaus of the game. You could literally see one a few people and run into them thinking its a fair fight but actually run into a massive invisible zerg only do see your hp annihilated for no reason.

I remember my commander know how to game the system so he would have us sit in spots and swing at the "air". In reality we were attacking and wiping zergs that couldn't see us and we couldn't see them, all you could see were the bags landing on your feet.

[Deleted]

There are legendaries obtainable through wvwvw, legendary back and armor.
The activity is good at peak hours at least, quite fun zergs and also small battles
However, if you plan on making money in game, wvwvw is probably the worst, or well I don't know about spvp

[PACOX]

There are legendaries obtainable through wvwvw, legendary back and armor.
The activity is good at peak hours at least, quite fun zergs and also small battles
However, if you plan on making money in game, wvwvw is probably the worst, or well I don't know about spvp

People who only play WvW cant actually make a good amount of gold. I remember when I only played WvW that we made a decent amount of gold for gold -> gems conversions that anything on the gem store really wasnt a problem to get. That was before they upgraded the loot and added all the harvest nodes.

[Deleted]

People who only play WvW cant actually make a good amount of gold. I remember when I only played WvW that we made a decent amount of gold for gold -> gems conversions that anything on the gem store really wasnt a problem to get. That was before they upgraded the loot and added all the harvest nodes.

Perhaps, but if you want a 3k legendary, going wvwvw even if they have harvesting nodes isn't providing much gold really compared to other sources in game, like doing octovine events, silverwastes event, fractals, world exploring...