Derail the train: why Edge of the Mists needs to be fixed

Almost a year ago if you wanted to level your character up to 80 in Guild Wars 2 as fast as possible you had to go to Queensdale (one of the starting zones) and follow the champion train. This was very efficient way of leveling character - no argument about that. You got constant stream of exp from events and large amount of loot. There was no skill involved in doing this. Sheer number of participants guaranteed that any champion, no matter how difficult do beat with a small group, will be dead in 10 seconds or less. Unfortunately train had one nasty side effect - it unleashed upon the game large population of people, that at the level 80 didn't know how to play their class.

Devs came to conclusion, that new players instead of farming should focus on learning how to play. Queensdale train along with others located in starting zones was removed. Today if you want to powerlevel your toon Edge of the Mists (EOTM) is the place to go. Map that was supposed to be a waiting room for players queuing up for WvW is now used as a karma train.

For a pvp area there's not much actual pvp happening here. Zergs rush through map capturing everything and moving on, not caring about defending their possessions. Quite the opposite: it's more profitable to let enemy flip it so 5 minutes later it can be retaken for more karma exp and loot. This is clearly not working as intended.

So dear ArenaNet, here's couple of changes, which after implementing should make EOTM a place where you go to fight other players, not mobs:

• give people rewards for HOLDING structures, not only for capturing them (for example 1 chest for every 15 minutes that structure remains in your hands);
• limit drops from pve, only mobs in EOTM that should award any chests should be bosses in keeps and towers because those structures require besieging and can be defended by opposing faction;
• remove scouts, all they do now is stretching zergs because there is always at least few slackers who take easy 100 exp instead of following commander;
• implement structures that generate minions, which after spawning attack nearest enemy tower or keep forcing opposing faction to pay attention not only to conquering new land but also to defense.

Changes listed above are intended to make gameplay more defensive and more about fighting other players. You would probably need two groups in order to succeed: one for capturing and one for defending your territory. And that means more coordination than mindless zerging through map which is always a good thing. That will be all for today. If you have any ideas how ArenaNet can improve Edge of the Mists leave them in comments.