Greetings!

We are excited to introduce you all to the new and improved Borderlands maps and the Borderlands Bloodlust buff. As part of our continuing efforts to introduce new and interesting mechanics for WvW, and as part of our ramp-up for the inaugural WvW season, we have replaced the lake in the center of the Borderlands maps with Ruins of Power.

We wanted to find a way to bring new life to the Borderlands maps while empowering smaller groups of organized players to have an impact on the overall WvW battle. By bringing back a buff that applies to every player from a given world, we wanted to further strengthen the ties between the players on different maps in WvW and give every world an incentive to fight it out on each and every map.

Capturing and holding these Ruins of Power is the key to acquiring the potent Borderlands Bloodlust buff for your world. Ruins are unique locations with great new art, and each one has its own flavor. You’ll find cannon sites at each ruin that can be built by the team that controls the ruins and used to defend against enemy invaders. The sites have been set up to force strategic gameplay and to split forces. You might be able to capture one or even two with a large group, but can you capture and hold three before someone takes one of them back?

Additionally, we’ve added a pair of sentry points that can be captured by intrepid souls. The quaggan and krait forces have been removed from the lake in favor of more intense player-on-player battles. The terrain is brand-new and is going to introduce lots of fun ways to ambush the unwary or escape from a pitched battle.

I’d like to discuss the actual mechanics we are introducing a bit.

There are five total ruins and any world that can capture and hold three of the five ruins for two minutes will earn one rank of Borderlands Bloodlust. This buff gives a 50 point increase to all stats, healing power, and condition damage. On top of that, every enemy you kill with a finisher will award your world one point per stack of Bloodlust, up to a maximum of three points – this means that you can help turn the tide of battle in your favor by finishing your enemies up close and in person! Only one finisher per kill counts towards this value and only players that are worth WXP will be award points.

Once a team has captured at least three of the five ruins, a countdown will begin. If you can continue to hold three or more ruins for the two minute span you will earn the Borderlands Bloodlust buff for everyone on your world while they are in WvW. The buff remains yours until another world is able to claim it by capturing and holding three ruins themselves. However, these capture points slowly decay if a team doesn’t leave someone guarding the area. This means that to earn the buff, you will not only have to coordinate across locations but also continue to guard the areas you hold.

The fight for Borderlands Bloodlust is going to require coordination and skill. The ruins are set up to encourage a small dedicated group of players to be able to defend their holdings and prevent other worlds from gaining the bonus. We are very excited to see the epic struggles that are sure to result from groups fighting over these new objectives.

We’ll see you on the battlefield!