Guild Wars 2

In the interest of keeping this short and to the point, I’ll quote an AreaNet Support Liason from a thread in the “Accounts Support” forums that was locked by said Liason for not being in the right place (e.g. here).

I understand your thoughts about a “transfer queue” system. I mentioned it to a co-worker, because I think the idea has merit. We came up with some questions about the process, basically, “How would that work?”

What if you were in the middle of a dungeon and got the message? Would queueing cause people to abandon parties? What if you were offline, would such a queue simply move you without your consent? (We don’t even do that from overflow to normal worlds right now — you must indicate you do wish to move.) If you declined to move because you were in the middle of playing, what happens — do you drop to the bottom of the queue or do you get asked again and again until you accept?

Basically, this sounds good in theory, but there seem to be a lot of questions about how it would work in a functional sense. I will see if I can ping a developer about this, but you’d do well to post this in the Suggestions Forum, because that is reviewed daily and it would catch the eye of devs over there.

The bottom line is that your home world situation isn’t really an account issue. It’s related to your account, yes, but this forum is built more to address access issues and questions about things like suspensions, policies that result in timeouts, etc. So with all due respect I’m going to lock this thread and encourage you to post in the GW2 Suggestions and/or Discussion forum.

Gaile Gray
Support Liaison
ArenaNet

Here’s a link to the thread in case anyone is interested:

Now, what do you guys think about a server transfer queue system? I’ve done programming enough to know how easy it would be to add this into the code. It doesn’t sound like devs are concerned over the amount of work involved, but rather they’re concerned with the details of how the system will work.

SINCE THAT’S THE CASE, HERE’S HOW IT SHOULD WORK!

In order to answer Gaile’s questions (since the thread was locked I wasn’t allowed to directly respond):

Very simple: if you join a transfer queue and your number is up, it automatically transfer you to that server UNLESS:

- you’re active in the server you want to transfer from, in which case you get a NOTIFICATION asking if you’d like to transfer immediately to the chosen server:

- If you answer/click “Yes”, you get an “Are you sure?” prompt, and if you then click “Yes” again, you’re automatically logged off and transferred to the chosen server.

- If you answer/click “No”, you get an “If you answer no, you will lose your spot/number in the server transfer queue. Are you sure?” prompt, and if you then click “Yes”, you stay in the server you’re in and you lose your spot/number in the server transfer queue.

Does anyone have a problem with how this would work? If so, what’s your beef? This sounds like such a direly needed system that would make it so much simpler for folks to transfer servers without having to log out/log in 150 times per day hoping that the server won’t say “Full”.

As you can only transfer once every 7 days, I don’t see ‘auto transfer’ as a major thing.

If you are in a dungeon group, it would be nice if it reconnected you to the group when you logged back in on your new server (this should now be possible, but isn’t a must).

akanibbles.6237:

As you can only transfer once every 7 days, I don’t see ‘auto transfer’ as a major thing.

If you are in a dungeon group, it would be nice if it reconnected you to the group when you logged back in on your new server (this should now be possible, but isn’t a must).

I honestly don’t think it’s a major thing either. I can see why the Devs would point to it as “something to consider” but honestly…..it’s a pretty moot point. If someone signs up for the server transfer queue they’re likely about ready to go anyway.

Would love to hear more feedback…

I think from their point of view, transfers could take 7 or 14 days and you might not be ready when it ‘pops’.

That’s why you get a prompt…..and then another prompt….

Maybe even a grace period to get your stuff ready to go? Maybe an hour after your next login? If you’re logged in the clock would start automatically after you hit “Yes” on the prompt? That would fix that “not ready yet” problem…

Here’s a slight suggestion to answer one of Gaile’s questions:

When you want to transfer to a full sever, inform the player that their transfer will not be immediate and they will be placed in a queue. When they’re in the queue the ‘transfer’ button in the WT screen becomes a “leave queue” button and to the left or right of the button (or on the button) state how many people are in front of you.

If you’re online and playing in game, have an alert pop up whenever there are 5, 4, 3, 2 then 1 person in front of you in the queue.

When it’s your turn to go, you get a 1 hour grace period to delay the transfer in order for you to be able to finish whatever you’re doing. Just simply open a prompt like the leaving the overflow server prompt with the options: “Log out and transfer”, “Leave queue for transfer” and “Minimize window to top of screen”

During the 1hr period, just have an extra icon appear at the top of the screen that glows (maybe an arrow or something) to re-open the prompt to transfer as well as a giant red or green arrow that points at the new icon for a couple seconds to let you know it’s there.

However, if you’re offline then when it’s your turn, you automatically get transferred to the new server.

To deal with the unwillingness of wanting to transfer at that moment, clearly warn the player that once they’ve entered the queue that they should be ready to transfer and that if they’re offline when it’s their turn, they will be transferred automatically.

Also, one last point to deal with the gems: treat the gem wallet like a credit card account: only allow the person to queue for a server transfer if they have the required amount of gems (at the time of queuing for the transfer) required to transfer to the said server. However, don’t actually remove the gems from the account until the transfer is complete. That way if someone leaves the queue or forfeits their position they don’t lose gems and nothing has to be refunded, but if their account drops under the gems required to transfer, they drop out of the queue.

EDIT:
I think one of the main concerns with everyone is the lack of time that free transfers will be available. On a personal level I transferred to a German speaking server to practice my German speaking abilities thinking that it would still be a while before guesting came about. However, now that the announcement of guesting and the removal of free transfers came out most of the US servers are either completely full or have a very high population (at the time of writing only 3 servers have a population of “high”).

For this I have a suggestion as well: Allow one free transfer per account per year (or 6 months or some specified time period; even simply allowing all existing accounts one free transfer period would be good) after the introduction of guesting. It would calm down some of the “I MUST get to the server I want to be on by the 28th!” rush, as well as allow players to play instead of constantly opening and closing the client or world selection menu to try to transfer and enjoy their playtime.

TL;DR: Give 1 hr grace period for transfers if you’re in game. Alternative option – give all existing accounts one free server transfer after guesting is introduced to slow the server transfer rush.

Yes Ovotoxin, that’s what I’m talking about. I like all your ideas.

These suggestions are Brilliant!

ArenaNet is shooting them selves in the foot with these server caps. I mean I would pay right now to transfer but I cannot simply because accounts are home-bound there. Are all of those players even active?

I mean why should active players not have access to play with their friends because all the slots are taken by home-bound accounts.

They should create an incentive to WvW on lower pop servers that would make people Xfer to these realms.. They would make way more money from Xfers as well as keep the Full server pops lower because the server hoppers would be constanlty going to lower pop servers.

I find it very unfortunate that people who want to play with friends will have to wait for others to leave the server they desire to go to.

The guesting feature is great and all but at some point when you recruit new players, what incentive is it to play when they have to pay to be on the same server to be able to do all of the features in the game in an MMO.. It just doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me i guess.

My idea for incentives to move to lower pop is maybe, create some type of reward for moving to a lower pop server and moving the server up the teir. Then Guilds could take credit for moving servers up and down the score boards and it would increase the spirit of competition between not only servers but guilds as well.

I don’t really know of such an incentive, I have thought about it for a while and didn’t come up with anything concrete.

Maybe create WvW specific achievements that can be used to buy ascended items or something based on teir of the server X control points and total wins.

Sorry if these seem like poor suggestions, these are all ideas I think may help.

juanticimo.2640:

These suggestions are Brilliant!

ArenaNet is shooting them selves in the foot with these server caps. I mean I would pay right now to transfer but I cannot simply because accounts are home-bound there. Are all of those players even active?

If you don´t know, Internet is a network, and like all networks it has LIMITED RESOURCES. Removing the server caps will just create the most incredible lag you can imagine.

Let´s look… On an simple PvE content, I spend 25kBps (250kbps). In LA overflow it can go to peaks of 70kBps (700kbps), Imagine for just ONE instant if there is no cap on servers. A map with 10000 players at same time consuming 700kbps (and more people in the same area more packets, so 700kbps is just for illustration). 7000000kbps, 700000kBps, 700MBps… It´s more than most pratical limits for Gigabit ethernet. Now imagine the full limit of IP network connections 64000 connections at the same time. It can drive crazy most of those fiber optics networks.

With a 3million copy sold… 64000 players is easy to imagine.
http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/15/3878496/guild-wars-2-has-sold-three-million-copies-since-launch

And I´m just talking about NETWORK. Not talking about processors, memory, disk space…

So limiting population is not stupidity, is a way to lower they costs and mantain the paramaters inside HARDWARE limitations.

@Ovotoxin
You had the best idea ever for this. Thanks.

I really hope devs are reading this thread. This is a simple solution to a common problem that is hurting gameplay. I literally have not played GW2 since I posted this thread….been sitting at the World Location screen all day trying to transfer.

I doubt my experience is unique. In fact, I know it’s not. Please, please, pleeeeease put together a server transfer queue system. It’s simple.

Please.

juanticimo.2640:

ArenaNet is shooting them selves in the foot with these server caps. I mean I would pay right now to transfer but I cannot simply because accounts are home-bound there. Are all of those players even active?

The cap is based on the number of people currently logged in. When my guild transferred to SBI, we had to log in outside of our usual playing hours because those were the only times SBI wasn’t full.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

juanticimo.2640:

ArenaNet is shooting them selves in the foot with these server caps. I mean I would pay right now to transfer but I cannot simply because accounts are home-bound there. Are all of those players even active?

The cap is based on the number of people currently logged in. When my guild transferred to SBI, we had to log in outside of our usual playing hours because those were the only times SBI wasn’t full.

I recall at some point a dev said the server population was based on total accounts, not total accounts logged in. If it were total accounts logged in, that would mean that at 1-5 AM and 8-10 AM and 4-12PM EST Tarnished Coast was completely full of people (which I highly doubt) because I still haven’t been able to transfer.

Yes. I really have set for 4 hours constantly logging in and out trying to get to transfer back to my original server.

krazycarl.4580:

I really hope devs are reading this thread. This is a simple solution to a common problem that is hurting gameplay. I literally have not played GW2 since I posted this thread….been sitting at the World Location screen all day trying to transfer.

I doubt my experience is unique. In fact, I know it’s not. Please, please, pleeeeease put together a server transfer queue system. It’s simple.

Please.

I doubt they would bother working on a system that will be unnecessary in a few days.

After the patch the server populations should all start to slowly decline in population, and everyone should be able to pay to transfer to whichever one they want.

Dysmetria.2873:

krazycarl.4580:

I really hope devs are reading this thread. This is a simple solution to a common problem that is hurting gameplay. I literally have not played GW2 since I posted this thread….been sitting at the World Location screen all day trying to transfer.

I doubt my experience is unique. In fact, I know it’s not. Please, please, pleeeeease put together a server transfer queue system. It’s simple.

Please.

I doubt they would bother working on a system that will be unnecessary in a few days.

After the patch the server populations should all start to slowly decline in population, and everyone should be able to pay to transfer to whichever one they want.

I doubt it will be useless. There have been 5+ US servers with a Full population since near launch. It will be used less than it would be this week, that’s for sure, but I doubt it’ll become useless. It could also be implemented for the guesting function. I’d assume there will be a cap on guesting so it’d be useful for that as well.

One thing that would be another small suggestion to help with server population: simply disassociate accounts that have been inactive for over 3 months from any server. Don’t delete their account info, just make them choose a new home world like you do when you first log in.

ovoToxin.3950:

Dysmetria.2873:

krazycarl.4580:

I really hope devs are reading this thread. This is a simple solution to a common problem that is hurting gameplay. I literally have not played GW2 since I posted this thread….been sitting at the World Location screen all day trying to transfer.

I doubt my experience is unique. In fact, I know it’s not. Please, please, pleeeeease put together a server transfer queue system. It’s simple.

Please.

I doubt they would bother working on a system that will be unnecessary in a few days.

After the patch the server populations should all start to slowly decline in population, and everyone should be able to pay to transfer to whichever one they want.

I doubt it will be useless. There have been 5+ US servers with a Full population since near launch. It will be used less than it would be this week, that’s for sure, but I doubt it’ll become useless. It could also be implemented for the guesting function. I’d assume there will be a cap on guesting so it’d be useful for that as well.

One thing that would be another small suggestion to help with server population: simply disassociate accounts that have been inactive for over 3 months from any server. Don’t delete their account info, just make them choose a new home world like you do when you first log in.

If I could just +1 all of your suggestions all at once, I would. Devs, pay attention to this guy. He knows.

Just a heads up, it seems either servers were cleaned up or the server caps were raised because all of the NA servers have spots open.

evolverzilla.2359:

juanticimo.2640:

These suggestions are Brilliant!

ArenaNet is shooting them selves in the foot with these server caps. I mean I would pay right now to transfer but I cannot simply because accounts are home-bound there. Are all of those players even active?

If you don´t know, Internet is a network, and like all networks it has LIMITED RESOURCES. Removing the server caps will just create the most incredible lag you can imagine.

Let´s look… On an simple PvE content, I spend 25kBps (250kbps). In LA overflow it can go to peaks of 70kBps (700kbps), Imagine for just ONE instant if there is no cap on servers. A map with 10000 players at same time consuming 700kbps (and more people in the same area more packets, so 700kbps is just for illustration). 7000000kbps, 700000kBps, 700MBps… It´s more than most pratical limits for Gigabit ethernet. Now imagine the full limit of IP network connections 64000 connections at the same time. It can drive crazy most of those fiber optics networks.

With a 3million copy sold… 64000 players is easy to imagine.
http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/15/3878496/guild-wars-2-has-sold-three-million-copies-since-launch

And I´m just talking about NETWORK. Not talking about processors, memory, disk space…

So limiting population is not stupidity, is a way to lower they costs and mantain the paramaters inside HARDWARE limitations.

@Ovotoxin
You had the best idea ever for this. Thanks.

Interesting how the servers are magically opened up for transfers. I guess the pedantic lecture you gracefully through out was mute.

Yeah, obviously they don’t know either how it all works. :P