Originally published at: New Guild Wars – A Sneak Peek – Gems of War
Hello Adventurers, As we close out 2024, the Gems of War team is hard at work on the 8.4 update which contains our New Guild Wars feature! Today. We’d like to share a little inside info on the current plans around New Guild Wars. Thanks to so many of you, we received some great feedback…
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as an avid anti guildwars player. i like the look of these updates
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Given how much the game has changed since the last time there was Guild Wars, it was clear that things were going to change substantially.
Migrating to an ELO-based system would definitely count as substantial.
Fighting the same guilds over and over was definitely a thing. As such, I think some guilds will absolutely love some more variety while others are going to take issue with their potential exposure to a wider array of opponents.
More questions than answers right now but of all the ways GW could have gone, so far so good.
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Could be interesting how the opponent guild will be chosen. Wouldn’t be good if a (former) High Bracket guild have to be attacked by a young guild with many beginning players.
But overall: great news! Will send some Ex-Players which quit the Game because of cancelled GW the link 
Well, January should be interesting.
No Hidden Scoring is a very nice change.
Question: What’s considered a complex restriction in the eyes of the Gems team?
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Are you going to require people to play their battles on the day? Or at least a difference making bonus for people who are playing on the day?
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Quite optimistic here; the four pillars do feel like they’re considering, and addressing, a lot of concerns folks had about Guild Wars – both worries about the new, and annoyances in the old; clear scoring and faster progression would both be big improvements.
Both attack and defense being subject to (different) restrictions feels like it could be … interesting? although as before, defenders will know the color restriction that attackers are under, so book defenses will still be very much a thing.
Each guild member can pick only one location in the keep to defend: what happens if the guild doesn’t have enough participating players to cover all 10 locations? This is a concern down at the casual end of the game, and maybe also in guild-wars-optional guilds at the mid/hardcore end.
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What are you going to do with “elementalist everywhere 100% every single game” elephant in the room?
Are you going to force people to play every single day (very bad) or will the old play-at-your-leisure approach be kept?
If there is anything resembling daily win/weekly win, the reward for daily should only be for bragging rights and nothing that makes meaningful difference to the final results!
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Put the scoring IN THE ACTUAL GAME.and not hidden away on the forums somewhere.
A paid offer that advances your account ……advances your account, fail to see how that won’t impact your battles.
Far as enticing people back who were hardcore, those people have missed out on troops/monthly guaranteed mythic/immortals. Plus learned to live with the lack of FOMO, I doubt they will be back
Very fascinating and I’m looking forward to playing it!
Initial questions for consideration:
- Would there be a way for us to easily test our GW defense teams with the same AI difficulty setting that is used in the actual GW?
- How will mixed guilds with both high level players over 1800 and under level 300 players be addressed?
- Will there be a way for tiny level players (who don’t have a lot of weapons/troops) to participate without penalizing the rest of the guild?
- How will guilds with 20 members be matched vs guilds with 30 members?
- Can the rewards for GW be set up in a way that doesn’t make it a mandatory event for players to participate in? (I know some love GW and some dislike it, but it was the only way to get certain troops in the previous GW)
Thank you for sharing this before the end of the year! What a wonderful holiday surprise and present! 
Wishing you and the team a safe, wonderful and kind holiday season!
Anam Cara
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Great.
Great, in theory. You haven’t always been great at implementing this, so fingers crossed.
Brilliant. Always sucks to have hidden scoring penalties and bonuses, that make it hard to get a better score and prevent you understanding why you did well but scored badly.
Interesting. We’ll see how this works, but brackets did have a lot of problems, so a new system could be good.
OK, adding a theme to the war. Interesting.
Oh. Not sure how that’s going to go down with players. Sounds iffy. 
I get why you want this, and it MIGHT help to reduce some overpowered combos, but it’s gonna make wars more like PvP and a lot of players hate the current stupidity of the restrictions, especially combined with hero gems, and how some restrictions are way worse than others. This could be very bad, if you mess up the restrictions.
Kind of the same. Defenders always have a big disadvantage, because their team gets controlled by the computer, so restrictions on top of that could make it really difficult to build teams that can work well.
Sounds good. Giving bonuses to guilds that work together better than their opponents is a great way to make it feel more like a war, instead of a bunch of separate battles, and fits the new theme well.
So, a battle pass. Not unexpected, but not liking the sound of it. Hope it’s more like the new weekly goals, and less like the PvP season pass.
Ah. This sounds problematic. I can’t help but fear you’re introducing something like blood frenzy, where defenders get stat boosts by being in rooms closer to the keep. That kind of stat bloat isn’t strategic, especially when teams are restricted to prevent strategy, and just results in spongy enemies that take longer to beat without being more difficult. Or, worse, pushes you into RNG-based battles, instead of skill-based ones.
Hopefully this isn’t where this is going.
Merry Xmas! Enjoy your holidays. =]
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I think it’s just too much to take in for me atm (especially during the holidays). It’s been over a year without guild wars, and I honestly think that everyone needs a “practice round” and some training to get back into the guild wars mindset. Getting VP is nothing like getting points in guild wars because we need to remember how to take things slow and make careful decisions. If you drive your car at 100 miles an hour all of the time, you are eventually going to crash…
Some of my main concerns are the following:
- Will Immortals be allowed in guild wars? (This is on the edge of “pay to win”)
- Do we have to fight guild war battles everyday? (Not everyone can play everyday, and this can lead to many problems)
- How will guild wars be “fair” for less experienced guilds? (I appreciate the response, but I need to understand how weaker guilds can compete with higher level guilds, like with higher stats or something else)
From the above image, this looks like how we progressed from Soldier<Vanguard<Herald<Champion<Paragon in the old system, but I’m not sure how this will work. The pathing for more points on the new map need to be clear, so that we don’t get less points for being confused.
Thank you for the sneak peek, and I will openly offer my services for beta testing if you guys need any more help. Happy Holidays!
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I was just going to say the same thing. This is more gamified. Fitting better with recent versions of PVP, Dailies & Quests.
Not sure about the scheduling, however.
You know you had to set defences up before you knew who you were playing right?
Era odiato dai giocatori scarsi. A chi non piace la guerra delle gilde è perché non sa giocare. Giocatori di cui si farebbero volentieri a menol
Just one question. Will this be the main event of the week? Or we must play war during Journey and Tower of Doom, when people barely manage to close 16 stages.
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In old Guild Wars it was hard to get a defense win with no restrictions
From the image it looks like Color and Type restrictions for the defenders
In the top brackets the level of difficulty will be very reduced, removing the challenge/skill test of the old Guild Wars
My 2 cents: please remove the restrictions from defense teams
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The only way you would know beforehand if you were fighting a sister guild is if it was just before the last day and you hadn’t faced them yet. If you weren’t the top spot in the bracket then it was fairly random who you faced (top spot always face positions 2 thru 7) an awful lot of work I imagine. Course we never had a sister guild we just kept coming in first with like skill
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So this will essentially be a “4th world?” Because right now we have the main map, underworld, and PVP.