The preversion of Favor, the errors of Worlds at War

We still haven't resolved the issue that you can't type in Korean to invite a Korean player into your guild.

no, it was originally about the WaW system. It got diverted off topic into the whole 'kidz insulting people online' debate, which is by no means unique to GW and is almost impossible to eradicate in any online game (especially one that is f2p). If you can't handle the fact that people will insult other people, play single player games. I in no way condone any of the insults, but accept that people will get frustrated and look for any excuse/advantage especially when hidden behind an avatar relatively safe from repercussions.

John has a really good point, but i wish he community was a little bit better. One game i played for a few months was called Sacred. It was a diablo clone game, but had many original things in it, so i found it fun. The thing i loved about it was the community. People rearely if ever insuletd eachother, people were always giving away free high-end unqiues and sets, adn you could actually trust about ANYONE to hold your items while you transfer them. To top this off, the game did not have divided servers so that people of languages played together. Just wish that all game communities could learn from the community of Sacred. As a side note- Guild WArs has a decent comunity compared to many games, and the racist comments are usually few and far between. Just look at the Diablo II community back in the day.... wow that one gave me nightmares.

However, i do not see a single valid argument to why it should be real world nations. Change it to fantasy realms and that would just cut a lot of racism down.

And honestly... regarding racism as some kind of joke is clearing the path for another Hitler. Racism is no god damn joke it is a disease. And having fun while discriminating others just because of the place they've been born at is a touch of pestilence.

that looks like a valid argument to me....

whatever they change the names to, it will still be europe, america and korea, there is no getting away from that unless they actually change the distribution of the servers. If 'green side' or '#1 god team' is full of Koreans then other players will treat them as Koreans - there is no getting away from the fact that certain players are abusive.

yeah, because everyone that watches Cartman on South Park is a Neo-Nazi...i'd be more worried about these people wanting UAS, they might be clearing the path for another Stalin...

Well i would suggest:

1. Keep the "regions" for the sake of language/culture.
2. In each region create fictional sub-zones/clans/categories.
3. Base Favour on the SUB-zone/category and not the region.

For example:

Korea,American and Europe will each have 2 "categories", lets jsut call them Blue and Red. You pick one , or the guild is created as part of a specific sub-category which the leader selected [when you join the guild you join one of the sub-categories].

Now it turns out that Blue and Red will exist in the exact same manner on all 3 regions.

In other words let Blue and Red be "shared" through all the regions. If a Red-based Guild win on the Korean Region then EVERYONE on ALL THE REGIONS in the Red-group will gain favor. So at any given moment someone on every region will have favor.

Your region will become only a grouping based on language/culture and will be irrelevant in competition and scores. You will get Korean-Red, American-Red and Europe-Red all sharing favor. How many sub-groups there must be is up for debate, but 3 sounds about right [i.e. Red/Blue/Unguilded/Neutral etc]

hmm...but wont we still have fights, if not between time-zones, then between the Reds and Blues of each?

yes, the favour thing needs tweeking, i think we all agree on that. how about all the areas are accessable, despite who has the favour, and instead, the Favour simply means that 'the gods reside in the place that holds their favour'
so, fort the half hour that your side has the favour, you can go to places like the hall of heroes or sardelac sanitarium, and *speak* to the gods
surely, being able to speak to, give donations to and gain special quests from the Gods, is enough of a reason to fight for their favour?

You would just get everyone attempting to join the side that wins the most, you only have to look at the europeans playing on US servers (traitors) to see how far players will go..

Well obviously, but it will not be based on your race/ethnicity but instead on your fictional alliance. I rather have people insult "The Horde" or "The Alliance" because they are a bunch of orcish idiots or knightish upstarts than listening WW2 and george bush insults.....

There should be some way of enforcing who goes to which (red or blue), otherwise everyone would join the winning faction, and no one would be on the losing faction.

and Reds and Blues, which have been used for decades to seperate West and East, are nothing to do with WW2 or the Bush boys?
(damn, i let myself in for that one....*rolls eyes* please, no comments on Bush and Co *winces* hehehe)

This is a community issue, not a game issue, its up to the players to fix themselves. We should just ignore those that have no preference, and play with those who care about the game itself.

--Ginko

Make it greens and reds or something or greens and yellows I dunno...

there is enough semiotic (note: not semetic) association with just about any colour/name for it to be a pretty pointless exercise. The players that are insulting now will simply start picking on the different nationalities on their and other teams rather than being in one idiotic blob as they are at the moment.

And your solution is? You can not say "going into UW is a bonus, not a right", that is BS. That's like saying "getting good skills and eq to compete equally with other is a bonus, not a right"....

This is the exact problem with the current system. As it is, what incentive do I, as an english speaking european, have to play on the European faction? None what so ever. In fact, with the current situation, I'm being punished for it.

Some will now say "Get off your ass and take HoH for Europe then!". This is an invalid argument - I get the exact same result (arguably better, as a Europe on equal footing with America and Korea would give me the favour 1/3 of the time, whereas an America that I join has posession roughly 1/2 of the time) by changing to the American faction.

It is easy to extrapolate to a "red, green, blue" system, and the problems would remain the same (though without the unsightly nationalism rearing its ugly head).

The system is unstable, and ill concieved. In fact, it is the only really bad design I have detected in the whole game, and so I hope that ArenaNet is not too proud to change it.

I remember reading somewhere(fansite friday I think) that the devs have said if the WaW ever gets too unbalanced, they will take measures to equalize it. I don't play in Europe, so I can't really say how it feels to be on their point of view. But I do know America and Korea have favor a lot more often than they do.

well, for some of us, it *is* a bonus ^^ since we never plan on actually going there in the first place
same goes for competing fairly and equaly.

i personaly, just think that colors, of any kind, will end up being abused verbaly by the people with an axe to grind..wish they would just go and grind that axe out of my way and not bother everyone, but hey, they should be alowed to speak, at least as long as they stay civil...however, were more talking about whats fair in the system, not whats going to be made into an insult by loosing teams.

another reason i say that the entrance into these places should not be limited to the favour of the gods.
all the mythical deitys i have ever read about in fiction, they allways say that they love or have dominion over *all* their subjects, so in essence, EVERYONE has the favour of the gods.
whats wrong with altering the system to fit this? then everyone will be able to go where they want, and the only place left for whinging is the
'<insert side> has the gods avatars, its soooo unfair i want them so i can get xxx quest off of xxx god!' <much cursing and whineing>

i would be much happier with that than the stuff i hear they are comming out with right now.

Or the people who spend their time complaining about not being able to access UW or FoW could spend the time waiting for them to open training themselves to help their region in PvP and winning Favor.

ANet has said UW/FoW are meant as a reward for successful tournament play, after all. You reap what you sow.

oh, great, yeah everyone tell us all to go flood the PvP.

i *Know* that i am as usefull to that lot as a chocolate fireguard, and definately not as tasty

its not abot the fact that its a reward for 'sucessfull tournamet play' if it was that, whats the point of having the Euro districst for anything other than RP PvE.
Europeans are spread out to thin and to multi languaged to fight 100% like america and korea, so why bother using the Eruo servers and just joint the Yanks...

and, if we all go flood the PvP, we will be useless and worse than useless, we will be taking up the space that a more compitent team will be able to at least try to win with.

hm, i never said it was for *everyone* (meaning the FoW and so on.) you would at least have had to have won or competed to be alowed into these places.
as a PvE who is flat out useless in PvP, i have no intention in going there, but i think its fairer to alow those that *want* to go there, and have at least fought in the nessicary places to be accepted, to be alowed to get in. i have friends that are good at PvP, but should they be forced into becoming memebers of american or korean servers to be able to get into the places? i do not think so.