WvW Season In GW2

I saw an announcement recently about the start of the Guild Wars 2 World versus World “season.” I personally have never gotten into the WvW thing in GW2, so I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care about a new season. Conceptually I like the idea of jumping in there, zerging around for a while, and leaving, but it never seems to work out that way.

First of all, I’ve never been a fan of PvP in any MMO, because it’s inherently random. Two opponents of equal skill level should theoretically play to a 50/50 win/loss ratio over time. However, thanks to the random factor, you might go higher or lower than that ratio due to forces beyond your control. I just find it irritating to get killed by a random crit. Therefore I never go anywhere alone in PvP settings.

That leaves running with the zerg, which is fun for a short time, but once you realize that the zerg is not executing some devious master plan, and is in fact just running around randomly, you start to wonder why you’re wasting your time. Especially when you see that if everyone would just go over there and take that objective, your team could make a lot of points, but the zerg is more concerned with facerolling one lone guy running away over a hill.

Beyond that, the biggest problem I have with WvW is finding the zerg. Those battleground maps in GW2 are frickin’ enormous. I used to find myself zoning in and running and running and running and never finding anyone or anything. Everyone is always bunched up in one tiny little area, while the rest of the map is a wasteland.

Also, I don’t feel any compelling urgency to win WvW games. I mean, you don’t get anything, do you? You certainly don’t lose anything if you lose. And people get so worked up about it. Someone is always yelling at you in chat for not putting your entire soul into winning battles. Who cares? You get the same loot and XP whether you win objectives or not.

At least it was like that last time I played WvW, which admittedly was many, many months ago.