devtrackers.gg
Here are my thoughts as someone who plays WvW most of any game mode currently and has for the past year. WvW has a LOT of vocal minorities, and it is hard to get one communal opinion on what it needs. You can find the major threads through the community if you look hard enough and dilute the salt.
It requires playing almost exclusively WvW for a few good months . Play it all, roam, group up with a guild group (and actually run what they ask and try to help not hurt). Go hop into a massive blob, spend time building a keep up from T0-T3, tear down a T3 keep until it is swiss cheese then spend the next hour fighting to cap it (This is by far my favorite). You will learn a lot.
There are server identities, absolutely. and every server has their own flavor, as examples I will produce the 2 polar opposites of NA. Maguuma and Yaks Bend. I spent the better part of a year on Mag and have fought YB in every single tier since moving from Mag. Mag is extremely fight heavy and believes that taking keeps is too hard, YB typically fights under siege and will not fight you unless they outnumber you or you are threatening their keep. We can argue for days which one is better and more fun, that is a good thing. Both these servers have their own ideas of what is needed balance wise and it varies a lot. They, and most WvWers agree on one thing.
It feels very much like Anet does not play their own game mode. There are countless times where Devs have removed forum threads relating directly to opinions of balance and criticizing the decisions. Most recently (that I can remember) is the thread about Epidemic (more on the skill later). This combined with a HEAVY PvE focus on Reddit has led to the creation of the Salt forums or Cancer Forums. http://www.gw2wvw.net/ definitely has its poor moments, with lack of real moderation or strict rules it goes rampant at times. It is here you will find the most hardened WvW players. They wont be watching this video, playing the new story, or even PvPing in HotM. It is from them that you will get the most honest, and yet most jaded opinions on what WvW needs the most.
But I will cut through all of that, I will stop this bullshit of PPT vs PPK (the simplest and nicest way to explain turtling (PPT) vs killing (PPK))
What WvW needs the most is open communication and a place to have real developer feedback in a timely manner. That's it. With that, every other problem can be fixed. No more sitting and waiting, hoping, is this they patch where they nerf X, buff Y, or give us the rewards we DESPERATELY need.
I could go on for hours about this, but I will keep my points short.
Epidemic and Signet of Inspiration. Both of these skills broke WvW but in entirely opposite ways. SoI allowed for every boon to be permanently on every single of your group (if you ran out of boons you needed more mesmers, not less people) the problem with this is obvious. 25 might, perma prot, resistance, vigor, regen, fury, etc. you were a walking one man army, but there were 20-30 of you. It took a group that was boonsharing to beat another group boonsharing. Epidemic arose out of that nerf. Without perma resistance condi became king as we lacked ways of clearing condis quickly decimated groups. 4-5 necros in a group were enough to obliterate any sized group. you can push 20 people into 80 and win, even if 20 of those were as organized as you were but lacked necros. Both of these were broken and should (or already have) been nerfed to be manageable.
Secondly, our rewards suck. Sure the addition of reward tracks has gone MILES to fix the lack of anything from launch to HoT and you can get nice rewards from killing people and taking towers, it is not enough. PvP the ONLY game mode where gear quality does NOT matter and builds are easy to change got access to ASCENDED quality gear, for doing essentially nothing. This is why Season 5 was so populated, people came for free stuff and left. Now I think they went too far in both season 5 and 6, just in opposite ways, but at least you can get gear in 2 out of 3 game modes now.
That being said the game mode with the MOST variety in builds cannot give you ascended gear apart from some trinkets for cheaper and the odd chest (which you can get in other game modes just as easily on top of their rewards).
Perhaps these points are just me ranting but my point about communication stands. I realize now I have written a huge wall of text and anyone who has made it this far I commend you for doing so. If anyone reads this I'll be happy. I did this to try to educate people and /u/woodenpotatoes in particular.
TL;DR: In Bold