This week in Guild Wars 2
I had an odd experience in WvW last Friday night: I got mugged by the culling monster. I joined one of my fellow guild leaders in the Northern Shiverpeaks borderland and we ventured just outside our own spawn point, as there was a small Dragonbrand zerg at the gates. A few minutes of combat and we killed or drove away enough DB troops to get up the road to the closest keep (which had fallen to a Northern Shiverpeaks attack just as I loaded in). A few of us stayed at the keep to set up a flame ram and work on the gate while the rest of our group headed east toward the nearest supply camp.
And then I was dead. I thought I’d been hit with a siege weapon or something because there was no sign of NSP forces anywhere outside the keep. I went back to our spawn point and retraced my steps to within long range of the gate … and I was insta-dead again. This time, after I was defeated, several NSP players faded into view around my body. I literally had walked right into a bunch of them without being able to see them at all.
It happened a third time before I decided that either my internet connection was too slow at that time or perhaps ArenaNet had made a change to the culling mechanism that makes it worse under certain circumstances (and I later found this post on the Forums which implies that it is related to a code change). If it’s the latter, I hope they back that change out: WvW would be impossible to play if you can’t see enemies until they’ve already killed you.
I’ve had this sort of thing happen in big battles, with scores of players on each side, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it happen with only a handful of players.
