Guild-hall and Arena.Net on PvP

an amazing solution that isnt uas is to let each quest that gives skills not give skills for your professions only, but for all the classes. that means that you only have to do the pve once, and you can unlock most of the skills through the quests. same for elites, you can capture for any proffesion. I wanted to get some ranger elites the other day, now im having to run a ra/el to do it.

Crispie - Saying that they have not added an update in almost 4 months is false on July 14 they added faction and much more to the pvp part of the game. Yes we all know that faction didnt work out. Infact on TGH thats all we hear about is how bad the PvPer has it. Thing is it was a hopefull step forward. I belive you even said so after it was implamented. Now all the sudden because they havnt had an update in so long everyone (not just you) is upset about it.

Another thing. Yes there are updates that come through a streaming feed. Yeah they arnt mass updates and more of them are just little fixs . Dont get me wrong I do see things that I dont like all the time such as the limit on farming and faction dosnt do a whole lot but it was a step forward in how things were going. I also belive they should bump the faction a bit more....actually quite a bit more. Am I gonna quit playing the game over it? No. Do I belive its gonna get fixed? Yes.

Eitherway Crispie I have allways valued your input so I know you are only worried about the game that you like to spend your free time playing. I just think we shouldn't start calling A.Net a bunch of Nazi's tell they have truelly said from their mouths that PvP is going to stay the same, because in one of the fansites fridays they mentioned that the concern will be looked into. Atleast thats what I got from it. Trying to remember which one it was. Thats all it takes for me to belive that A.Net really is going to take a look at it. They have fixed numerous things they said they were going to so I doubt that all the sudden its gonna stop with the PvP requests.

"much more?"

what much more?

they added a slow unlocking mechanic which takes years to unlock things.

Yes you can get to hawaii swimming, yes it wont be soon.

The support for pvp is amazing! especially spirit spamming !!!

Perhaps it would be helpful to summarize what exactly the PvP community is looking for. We all know about the unlocking/"grind" problems they see. What else are PvPers looking for modification on? Take all the things you would like to see changed and try to summarize them in one post. Then we can look at them and see where we can go with it.

What I mean is actual content, not exactly features. ANet promised content on a weekly bases, and unfortunately the only content is quests, unlike the promises of missions, new areas, and new items. I guess you could say that Im really disapointed with ANet because of how long they are taking, in comparison with what they advertised and boasted of durring Beta.

please give me an official link to where they promise weekly anythings let alone weekly content

i never saw anything like that mentioned by Anet

if you actually have something i want to read it myself

who knows.........i might join you in yelling

Its in one of the FFs, Ill dig it up later.


EDIT:

FF7, last question. Gaile is asked about how often events will happen, and Gaile replys with stating that content, namely events, new items, missions, etc, not just bug and exploit fixes, will be released on a frequent bases. I dont know about you, but taking 4 months just to release 2 areas is not on a frequent bases. Theres another FF Im thinking of and Ill get back to you later on that.

top guilds that quit:

Club G
NOXi
Vanguard
Blood Eagle
Fianna
Eight Versus Eight
Nuclear launch detected
Spirits of War
LE
Elitist Jerks
LLJK
DrkH
LtH (ladder to hell)
BBB
Te
PANK
We are Godzilla You are Japan
DFx
Bleeding Edge
The Grind
RRKM (rock and Roll Killing Machine)
AOU
Legion of shadow
PIE
nU
PUG
LotD (officially)

These are some of the many I know of.

How it affects pvp?

snowball effect, no matches to find, no good games in tombs.

A few guilds wouldnt matter

95%+ quiting = pvp is dead

PANK was gvging yesterday.

Compared to whom? Considering all they've released in such a short period of time, well done!

Like I said, there is another FF Im thinking of, talks about not having to wait for updates in one big patch, but constantly recieving them. Kinda grinds against this huge content patch that took 4 months to do.

Very, specially with all the negative news like alphas getting booted, the ignoring of PVP, and a high chance that the new areas are going to be like FoW/UW which means no replayability within a month just points at Anet tanking.

Why is it that the only real complaints come from the PvP want it all right now crowd?

Asnwered my own question... lack of patience. Hang in there, Sparky... give the devs a chance. As a programmer myself I can tell you that you can't code by wishing, things take time and there are processes that need to be followed. Depending on their internal structure, a simple release could take three to six months (or longer, if you're IBM...)

It would be nice if someone took a moment to list a few things they're working on for future releases, but trust me, the coders are busy.

Ok, let's try this again. What exactly does the PvP community want? Forget the update frequency, forget Sorrow's Furnace. Let's get back to the point of the topic. The PvPers say ANet is ignoring them. Ok... let's catagorize what exactly they want. We already know about the "grind" issues. What else needs to be addressed to enhance PvP play? What were the complaints of all those guilds the OP said have left? Get the issues "on paper" and then we can discuss what needs to be done.

Read any balance thread. Read quotes for purpose or functionality of pvp, usually they involve ranking and matching systems. Read any post regarding the variety (lack there of) within the pvp missions and maps. Or you could just go back to page one of this tread, take a deep breath, and start over skipping over the counter posts and looking for the suggestions, instead of getting hung up on the vibe occuring here.

here is one quote from a PANK member

"when the ladder resets lets make a ton of smurf guilds and make a montage on the front page, "Arena.Net Sucks and PvP sucks""

here are others

"I hope we have 8 on, Trexton (the leader) quit and is going to Shadowbane"

"Owell I just wish a.net would fix this game"

im not a right now person

it has been 3 months

a.net CAN fix the problem in 10 minutes if they simply wished

Changing faction variables is something I could do.

Oh god not shadowbane, thats on par with horizons. ><;

With all due respect sir, I am simply attempting to get THIS thread back on topic, bring the issues back to the forefront, and stop the useless PvE vs. PvP flaming. I think it would greatly help to advance the discussion if someone from the PvP side would summarize the wants and concerns of that community here. That way we could get back on topic and discuss what needs to be done from here.

listen Arena.net has heard over and over what to do, why to do it.

The point is that arena.net does not care to change to it. If that is understandable. They do not care about PVP anymore, this is an effort to wake them up that people play and like PVP and bought the game for that reason.

They have recently kicked all pvp players from alpha for the next chapter (expansion). Also they have fallen through on every pvp promise (observer mode, tournament, state of the game). This is a thread to inform players of what arena.net really thinks of them. They think of players as easy $$$$ and people to **** over.

You are right that ANet has heard over and over what and why to do it. Why then must -we- hear all of this over and over, ad nauseum? The continuous discussions like this current "Why I Hate Arena.Net" thread is not producing anything of any value other than, perhaps, a sense of relief after venting.

This thread has been VERY productive and is filled with ideas and thoughts that are 'doable' (I have enjoyed reading it immensely):

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=37259

GH Messenger: It is not necessary to continue to copy/paste comments from other boards and sites. If you wish others to read and respond to said comments, it is best if they are read in the original context in which they were posted. Therefore, I am asking you to post links to the threads on the forums from which you are garnering your information. I think that would be much more helpful to the cause than the way information is currently being given.

I also think that Arcos's post about summarizing the wants/needs of PvP players is a good one.

Thanks and please return to a CIVIL discussion.

The fact is right now on TGH there is a huge outcry, this is a chance to get other forums views in the discussion. GWonline.net's admins are actually taking flak for a thread mirroring this alhtough Gwonline community involvement. It is just a pretty big movement atm as everyone fustration is coming to a head.

Its basically, a look A.net please fix this, last chance.

here is a link to TGH exploding:
http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=2

here is the link to rebuttal thread
http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23908

here is the gwonline.net thread
http://forums.gwonline.net/showthrea...33#post3631533

Yeah, the current situation sucks, but that didn't stop us from having a decent match =p

Irony is alot of companies use to kill to find out what people want, now they just don't care.

Perfect. Thank you very much. This will allow people to see -all- comments and, hopefully, add some of their own.

I appreciate it.

roflmao...looking for a guild?

It's called lurking. Look it up.

To use myself as example, I played this game since E34E and in every beta weekend event.
Just because I didn't bother to register on GWGuru until I actually wanted to post something, doesn't mean I'm new to the game. Doesn't mean I haven't been reading Guru since it's creation, and the Guild Hall forums before that.

Now extrapolate this example to the other people you assume to be new.

Assumptions assumptions ...

Value a person's post on what they say, not on when they decided to register an account.

This:

!= this:


Pank was out yesterday. Nuclear was playing like 2 or 3 days ago. I know because I scrimmed them twice, then ended up against them later on that night.

That is the problem with these discusions; they are all full of BS and things that could have probably been true the first time it was brought up and has now just been twisted to the point of no return.

If you are going to make an argument, MAKE IT. I don't know what the procedures were for the alpha players and their suggestions on fixing content or adding whatever, but the stuff being posted here is just utter sh*t. No math, barely any quotes, and when there are quotes everything is completely taken out of context, or is just quoted completely wrong (ie Anet's promises).

I have seen lots of people say, and in currently several posts at that, that faction ended up being a broken concept. That is fine, I very much agree with you, but those are just worthless opinions that mean absolutely nothing in the long run. It doesn't matter who is making them, even if it is the most respected alpha tester in the game. There is even a link in this thread about it.

Yet, there is no math. No one proves it is broken, and gives concrete evidence of it. The premise of any argument against it is "it is too slow, good effort Anet but bad implementation." What a load of crap. A lot of good you are going to do to get me to sign a petition with that. Then the fix is always some vague thing that any person who has played the game longer then 5 minutes could come up with. Maybe start with 'insert number here' and have faction raise with every unlock in increments of 'insert number here'. Or there is the brilliant idea of just increasing it altogether. Yet no one steps back and says well if it is this now, how fast can these and these players unlock stuff. Guess what, Anet did, and they did it this way for a reason. Was it a good reason, who knows, but I am sorry, the argument of it is broken just isn't going to cut it, and I don't blame Anet for not listening. Like I said, I am sure there is math involved in the alpha forums for the possibilities of how to change certain problems, but the content on this site is just a waste of time for Anet to read.

This is the most elitist punk comment I have ever seen in my entire life. Do you honestly think you are special in any way? It takes a whopping 2 seconds to replace you, and any of the guilds that quit. There are 1000s upon 1000s of people playing the game currently who enjoy it and get better at it every day. And guess what, sorry to say, they aren't going to miss you.

You want to impress me, everyone on these and every other forum, and hopefully even Anet? Write an argumentative research paper on GW. Use the obvious topics of the supposed lies, the broken systems in place, and the broken features of the game. Hell include all of them. Prove they lied using direct quotes from Anet and the staff, using proper documentation. DO NOT take quotes out of context. Anet makes extremely broad quotes for a reason. If you think natures and faction is broken, prove it. Show the math and the skills that are affected improperly. Give a solution. Show the long term effects of the solution on the various types of player bases. If you have a better way to do faction, you better provide every single bit of math involved for fixing it, and show the long term effects of it being fixed, for every player base. Make your arguments, and do it in a very professional way.

I promise you you will get a much larger and more responsible response from the community. If you are lucky, you will probably get a response and action from Anet. If not, send the paper to every college, game forum, spread through friends, every game magazine, any anyone else you can think of to show the uncooperative policies of the company. I can promise you Anet/NCsoft will be kicking themselves in the ass from the bad rep. You may not make a lasting impact on this game, but you will make a huge impact on how the company is viewed and give every gamer a reason not to play their games.

I'm beginning to wonder what exactly will satisfy the PvP community. I've asked three times now in this thread to have their concerns summarized. I've yet to see any reasonable summary, outside of a link to a handful of threads which are as long as this one has become. All I hear is "There's too much grind!" and "No one listens to us!". Well... make yourselves clear guys. We want to help you. We want your concerns to be addressed. We want ANet to take ALL players seriously. So please... let's see what exactly you want done. And please don't say "It doesn't matter because ANet won't do it!".

Go outside then. Clearly overexaggeration means nothing to you.

No one thinks he's special, but most would think he's at least half right about his rant. Do you have to be special to make a good point?

Some guilds, sure, but now who's exaggerating now? Because if your not, that means the top guilds could be replaced by other guilds right now, so I'd like to see what your guild is, so I can figure out in a GvG if you can even replace my henchmen.

This is coming from the person who just above asked for numbers, credible statistics, and now your just spewing crap out of your mouth. You realize what a hypocrite you are?

Just like how a tiger wouldn't miss a fly which got extinct, but the food chain has a funny way of working it's way around. Like the guy said, it's a snowball effect.

You must be special, representing everyone on these forums, and wow even Anet. So listening to you guarantees a shot at the big leagues eh?

Your asking alot from players who don't do these things for money. If Anet hired me, I would be willing, and so would other people, but this is people's free time. If Anet won't give cash or give respect, the players will just find a company that will. Players have nothing to lose. Anet is a experimental business model. Their gambling alot on this, and I'd hate to see NCSoft realize what a failure Anet is just for not listening to people who apparently are smarter then them when it comes to their own games.

Promises are worthless. Back it up. Put your house on the line, after all that's the attitude your giving out right now. Your posting like you know all the answers, and even Ensign wouldn't claim that.

No one individual needs to make a lasting impact, the fact that it's called a snowball effect should tell you how it works. Even a month ago people were already posting this, and even now it's still continueing. Guess what also happens with every rant? People leaving the game.

You seem to hold high regards about specifics and concrete proof. Why don't you do some work, because clearly your Anet's lobbyist. No one needs proof, the fact that people do leave, the fact that alot of the top guilds are not inactive or not very active anymore shows it. How many times has sB played in 2 weeks gvg? Once. How many times has the #1 guild played in the past month? 0. How many times has n0, blah blah blah, you should get the point. The people who climb up the ladders are currently just going past dead monuments. You can continue to demand for whatever you want, and players will continue to get more negative until they quit. Believe it or not, even the internet general consensus doesn't think Guild Wars was a hit. Penny Arcade? VG Cats? Ctrl Alt Delete? GU? Cmon, these guys are the nerds of gaming, the all-stars. And they rarely acknowledge the game even. When was the last time you could see some kid in a high school talk about guild wars like back with starcraft? Hah, even WoW had more success then that.

Sorry I fell asleep halfway through this thread and forgot what it was about. I'll do some Random Rants instead....

PvP peeps can do what they want, UAS whatever, just dont make the new areas favour dependant, please..

Yes, they are going to miss them, at least for several months, to be fair.

Why?

These people are the people who watched the game since creation, and they know all about it (most of the top guilds arre alphas). This means, they kick ass. Remember the korean tournament before release? someone on the forum posted a vid of one of the players using a paladin premade and wiping the floor with about 4 guys, solo. Thats skill. Same with this lot, although i dont know exactly how good they are.

Ever played wcIII: tft? most people here have. ever heard of rival.showtime? the guy is amazing. ever played cs? a lot of people here have.... ever heard of ne0lithic? goddam amazing. The top tier of players forge primative communities. over at guild hall there are a few threads about lack of community. With players worthy of talking about, you make events that lead to pvp community.

another example, ever played css? i do, and there really isnt much of a community. one of the reasons, methinks, is that there are no 'star' players, nothing to talk about, so noone cares enough to do more than the occasional pcw.

I dont want the top guilds here to leave, because at some point i want to play them, (and hopefully beat them). a lot of people think the same, they are pvp players. GW needs theses top players to encourage competition.

Lit: whose the best? them, ok.... lets get them, then were the best.

thats a basic pvp attitude, and with no top guilds, it will be months against before the pvp community gets back into the rhythm.

Quoted for humor

Takes years???? Lets see, 200-500 faction per GvG battle = 2 to 5 battles to unlock a minor rune, a weapon upgrade, and basic skill. At an average of oh say 15 min / GvG battle, thats roughly 1 hour. For 1500 faction (3 to 8 wins at GvG) you can unlock a major rune. For 2000 faction (4 to 10 wins at GvG) you can unlock a superior rune and for 3000 faction you can unlock an elite skill. How is this taking you years? The Arenas aren't the main focus of PvP, GvG is, hence the name GUILDwars. The Arenas are simply places to practice strategy, team work, see how well a particular build functions, etc. Furthermore, if you don't want to spend the time to earn 3000 faction, you can always equip an SoC, go find the mob with the skill you want, and prove yourself worthy of having that skill by defeating him and his minons (or just him if you don't mind dieing after you capture) and take the skill.

How long do you think someone would have to farm Riverside to to find the specific rune/upgrade they want? Probably a lot longer than it would take to get 3 - 10 wins at GvG. For the record, over the past 1.5 weeks, I have earned 4000 faction in the random team arenas. This is not me grinding for it, this is me playing in the arenas for 1 - 3 hours each night, testing builds and having a blast.

Personally, I think the game is actually very good, But....
The but would take far to long, has been said before. etc and I am sure they are working on it.
My most fun part of GW now is either grouping with friends, the hard and easy stuff is fun. Or when solo, going out in the early areas, ascalon, shiverpeaks and Kryta with one of my ascended, completed the game chrs and exploring without henchmen. Or in the case of my necro with a healer and mage in shiverpeaks onwards.
Its alittle irk some to not get any xp for killing critters in these areas, as they can still kill me. I do not play the uber solo build, just a build that I enjoy, currently N/R.
I hope they add more PvE content, not just High end, but mid level, stuff that I can go explore without the need of an army.
I love playing RPG's, I really enjoy teaming, but I also get a kick from going solo without a huge group and picking my targets and running for my life if need be.
I don't give two hoots about the PvP, it is fun, but not the be all and end all of the game.

1. Half right about his rant?

Quotes without names

Uh huh, then a semi colon gets left out. Or even better, a bracket. Funny how programming million dollar games is so easy to its players.

It was already shown that he was wrong with his guild list. But I guess he was right once or twice though so we should take everything he says as the truth.

2. My old guild was EA, and my current one is LoG, since everyone in EA decided that this game sucked. If you would like to set up a henchy battle against us though msg me ingame tonight.

3. I don't need to provide numbers, you can log in to the game and see it. I can't log in to the game and see faction is broken, because I have almost everything in the game unlocked, and since I was never a farmer the faction allowed me to unlock those allusive weapon upgrades. But lets keep ripping apart posts and only use the content that you need to prove your argument instead of the rest.

4. I am not asking anything of anyone actually. I made a suggestion that in my eyes is a hell of a lot better then just crying on the forums. You are right, they don't get paid to do it. But how many hours and countless days/nights testing the game and giving feedback to Anet on forums did they do? It takes me one night to write a 10 page research paper.

5. People leave, good for them. No one has said a remote word of all of the new players Anet gets. If all of iQ quits, so be it. It is a loss to the community and a loss to Anet. But to a big business that loss is nothing and gets replaced in 2 seconds by someone more willing and motivated to do it anyways. You really have to realize that losing the current alpha community means absolutely nothing to Anet as a busniess, and is easily replaceable. It is not even a remotely good argument to make.

We can sit here all day and pick apart each others posts. That is fine, I am watching Alexander anyways. Nothing will ever come out of it though, like always, and life will go on.

Btw, this movie rules.

I couldn't agree more Blackace. What we need is information. That's why I've asked repeatedly in this thread for someone in the PvP community to summarize for us their needs and concerns. Yes I know I can find these elsewhere, but I think it would really benefit the discussion to have them consolidated where we as a whole community can look them over and discuss them. What better ally could the PvPers have (besides ANet itself :P) than to appeal to others outside their group? I know I speak only for myself, but I KNOW there are people in the casual and PvE communities that want to help. We all want this game to succeed, and succeed for everyone.

So how about it guys? Put your heads together, come up with a list of problems and solutions... and let's hash it out in a productive, civil manner.

[BULLETIN]

blackace might like this

Gaile Gray community rep for anet replyed to a post by Dac the Hork.

She accidently misread the post and responded quite... well you can read for yourself, but please keep the activity on gwguru (i dont wanna step on toes).

http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23908

Why not bring back the skill charms??

Back in the early early Beta they had these things called skill charms. They were basically rings you could put a skill into and trade with other players. It was a brilliant idea and the only complaint I ever heard was how low the drop rate on the charms themselves were. There was also a place where you could gamble money to get access to potentially new skills (aka. awesome money sink). It was basically like being able to trade your magic cards or pokemon cards.

Skill Charms were great for both PvE and PvP. They fostered interaction between PvP players looking to trade/purchase new skills and they gave PvEers something that PvP players wanted. Right now there is NOTHING that PvP players want in the game. I have over 400k sitting in the bank and not a single thing to do with it. Skill Charms provided a huge incentive to be in a guild that would share and trade charms among themselves.

Sometime through the Beta they got rid of Skill Charms and just added a UAS option to PvP characters. Most of the people I talked to in Beta figured they were overhauling the skill charms or they had an even better system in the works. By the last beta (right before retail) there was still no system in place other than the UAS.

Then retail came out and they had this entirely new system of skill points which seemingly came out of the blue. Even the alpha testers I knew seemed suprised by it. The whole idea of elite capturing just came out of nowhere and right off the bat everyone thought it was the stupidest idea ever. It's hard to imagine the point of having a 6 month beta and then not using any of the systems from that beta in the retail game but that's Anet for you.

So people complained and complained about skill points, the immense grind, the fact that there is basically no incentive to play PvP and Anet came out with Faction. Faction is a band aid of a solution. Except for a few of the top guilds that can steam roll most GvG opponents in 10 minutes or less to farm faction the faction system is horrendously less efficient then farming experience for new skills.

Also, the whole point of faction from my understanding was to allow PvP players to unlock skills without PvE. Of course Anet being Anet they made it so you HAVE TO HAVE A PVE CHARACTER TO EVEN USE YOUR FACTION. I mean wtf?!?!?!?! Even worse than this ... not only do you NEED a PvE character but he has to be an advanced PvE character because you need to go to DIFFERENT priests to get access to different skills which are spread all over the place. Why in gods name would you do this?? It makes no sense at all. Why are you making a system for PvP players that still forces them to have a PvE character and still forces them to get to all the different towns and run around wasting time searching for the skill they want to unlock. Why isn't there one priest, in one location with all the god damn mother *$&@&#@! skills you need. I'm sure Anet has a lot of brilliant programmers working for them but they really need to hire someone that A) Knows how to do basic arithmetic so they can balance the skills better B) Knows how to make a fun game, not just a game with amazing streaming technology that looks pretty. The only people over at Anet that I have any respect for at this point are their level design, 3d animators and graphics design people. When my friends ask me if they should buy GW the only thing I can say to them with a straight face is "Well the game looks nice."

For people who keep saying give them more time, it's only been 3 months yadda yadda yadda .... it's been much longer than that. We (the beta players as a group) have basically been bugging them about the same exact things since the WPE and I'm sure the alpha people have been doing it even longer and nothing has changed. To be honest, if all it was was that nothing has changed I wouldn't even mind. It's that the game has actually managed to get WORSE since the beta. It's like they're moving backwards let alone standing still.

Unless the expansion pack coming out who knows when includes things like observor mode, auction house, inter guild matches, guild storage, a solution to mid game drops, and proper skill balancing etc. etc. I don't think there are going to be any PvP players left. I know that this will seem like a victory for some of you PvE fanatics but I assure you it'll be the beginning of the end for GW.

I'm not sure what you're addressing at this point, being a good player or being responsible for balancing the game.

If you're discussing being a good player, and your claim that it depends on knowledge is true, then there will constantly be better players. Since people transmit information one to another, knowledge will continue to accrue and be available to anyone who takes the time to learn it. This is how every single science has developed over time. This is why I know more than Newton did about physics.

Why not? Sports players continue to maintain the level of play or exceed the old records. We've had very fast runners only to have a new runner break the old record 10 years later. Sure skill is replaceable.

Look, I'm not trying to be a jerk here or say that I don't appreciate all the knowledge put out there by others, but I don't see this argument holding water.

-Diomedes

No, you are completely right. But you are missing my point. Anet doesn't care. Big business doesn't care.

Tyco bought Sensormatic a number of years ago. The new management moved in (Tyco's), firing the old. Then, knwoing nothing about the company they are now supposed to run, fire more people to make a good impression on the financial reports as new managers. It doesn't matter that they are some of the finest people in their fields, they saved money on the financial listings for the quarter, it made them look good, and so it must be good for the company as a whole. did it screw them down the road, it did, but they made the quick dollar for the quarter and that was all that mattered. That is the nature of big business. It sucks, it is wrong, but that is how it works.

The same applies to this instance. The older more experienced employees are fired for the younger ones who will work harder to try and do good, and will do it for less money. It is the same concept here, get rid of the older ones for those fanatical people who live GWs. I doubt Anet really has a lack of volunteers to do the job. Will it get as good as you guys did it, probably not. Unfortunately that is just how it is.

I have to disagree there. I don't think there are enough people to "fill the void" as you imply. Casual players and dedicated PvEers are not going to switch over to high level PvP simply because the "big dogs" left town. They are going to continue doing what they are doing. Are there enough dedicated PvPers in the middle echelons to step up? I don't know, but I don't think you can assume so. I think the majority of people who got this game for PvP purposes have already done so. And those who might in the future... well, their decision could ultimately be influenced by today's group of grumpy PvPers who turn them off to it.

Which is why for the long-term health of the game, the community (ALL the community) needs to work together with each other AND with ANet to make this work as best as we can.