Guild Wars 2

I don’t mean to sound bitter or upset, but recently a friend of mine transferred to another server for purposes of WvW, and I can’t join him, because dang near every server is packed. I don’t see this trend ending any time soon.

Do you have plans to add more servers soon, perhaps a trio of servers to make up their own WvW block? (or at least to preserve the wvw balance, since they’ll probably slide right into the wvw ladder right quick)

You know, it was 10 servers very high yesterday morning.

At this rate, no one will be able to play GW2 by Friday.

Game completely dead, no one playing anymore. Cuz it’s Too crowded. Cryin shame, it is, crying kittie shame.

Well, it WOULD be an awful shame if on Christmas day, every server was “Full” and nobody could play the game they got for Christmas, but I seriously doubt that would happen.

I’m also not really complaining about the game being dead, as much as I am asking if new servers are on the horizon – which would be nice for just about everyone.

mulch.2586:

Game completely dead, no one playing anymore. Cuz it’s Too crowded.

Ya see the kids listen to the rap music…

It’s pathetic. The server is Full, but theres’ NOBODY PLAYING INGAME. WvW is DEAD. No Queue times, and no Overflow in the PvE world. THis is a kitten conspiracy. Anet is trying to herd new players and Transfers to the 7 low pop servers. If they wanted to encourage transfers, they could just offer some free gems. This shady kitten is kitten me off. My GF installed the game last night and can’t join me on my server, so I transferred to one of the only available servers and WvW is in ever WORSE shape over there. I’m soo kitten right now. FIX YOUR kitten ANET!

holy hell… Roargathor, calm down. It’s not a conspiracy. If there are people there, there are people there! Ehmry bay for example, is where I am at. Queensdale is still lively! And WvWvW is too! 0_0

Roargathor.2743:

It’s pathetic. The server is Full, but theres’ NOBODY PLAYING INGAME. WvW is DEAD. No Queue times, and no Overflow in the PvE world. THis is a kitten conspiracy. Anet is trying to herd new players and Transfers to the 7 low pop servers. If they wanted to encourage transfers, they could just offer some free gems. This shady kitten is kitten me off. My GF installed the game last night and can’t join me on my server, so I transferred to one of the only available servers and WvW is in ever WORSE shape over there. I’m soo kitten right now. FIX YOUR kitten ANET!

Most likely the server population depends on the number of accounts registered to that server. There are also probably a large number of people who don’t play the game anymore even though their account is registered to a server, which results in full servers that are relatively inactive. Anet just needs to adjust server populations to registered and active accounts, something like if an account doesn’t log in for 3 months then it’s no longer counted toward server population.

Henge of denravi is completely impotent in WvW… I made a terrible mistake in transfering there. I though it was supposed to be a PvP focused server. I was sooooo wrong. My fear is that I will never be able to rejoin my home server now that Anet is locking them.

HAHA, so you were the ones Gate of Madness were banging up on, man we almost had you too along with the entire map if it wasn’t for some self-appointed lunatic who wiped our group out after the more skilled commanders left.

I’m from Fort Aspen-wood. I just transferred to HOD because it was one of the only NOT FULL severs on the list, since my GF wanted to play. This situation has me very annoyed with ANet. Such short sightedness is staggering. At this rate, by Christmas, there will nothing but empty “full” servers.

Just checked.

Fort aspenwood.

Everything except Lion’s Arch is empty.

Everything that can be contested is contested. (especially dungeon entrances)

Outmanned buff in every map in WvW.

And yet, somehow, we’re “full”

But…but…… wait!
I thought the game was dying! :p

Seriously, assuming you are in North America, your best bet is to stay up into the early hours of the morning (when it’s around 1-3 am in the Central/Eastern seaboard area).

Populations are down, this is obvious wherever you go.

Artemis Noir.3804:

But…but…… wait!
I thought the game was dying! :p

Seriously, assuming you are in North America, your best bet is to stay up into the early hours of the morning (when it’s around 1-3 am in the Central/Eastern seaboard area).

Sadly this won’t help as anet confirmed awhile ago that the amount of accounts bound to a server sets the server population status and not the current amount of logged in accounts.
So basically until either anet changes how this system works or people transfer servers no one will be able to get onto a Full server regardless of the time they try.

Sad part is the servers are no where near capacity (unless Anet downgraded their servers since release)…its just a ploy to stop WvW abuse, but in the end it generally just hurts players =/ Just require the wait period to be 30 days and u wouldnt have issues with people bandwagoning to winning Wvw servers, but who knows maybe they had to reduce serve strength due to cost and its not a giant conspiracy XD

Tentacle Love.3412:

I don’t mean to sound bitter or upset, but recently a friend of mine transferred to another server for purposes of WvW, and I can’t join him, because dang near every server is packed. I don’t see this trend ending any time soon.

Do you have plans to add more servers soon, perhaps a trio of servers to make up their own WvW block? (or at least to preserve the wvw balance, since they’ll probably slide right into the wvw ladder right quick)

Just keep watch eventually it will change. Had a friend start play gw2 and had to choose another server because mine was full. I think it was after 3 or 4 days he finally was able to get into my server cause it had changed from full to high. So just be patient and check the server status everyday.

It used to be possible to go late at night and make a character outside of peak hours.

Tentacle Love.3412:

Well, it WOULD be an awful shame if on Christmas day, every server was “Full” and nobody could play the game they got for Christmas, but I seriously doubt that would happen.

I’m also not really complaining about the game being dead, as much as I am asking if new servers are on the horizon – which would be nice for just about everyone.

Think people try to say that they should change the way they calculate “Full” or move out inactive accounts. Because servers seem empty at times, a lot more than at start and there seems to be no need for a new server. Just don’t count accounts not played for 2 months.

It is a shame because people get inactive and if new blood can’t enter then you get empty “Full” servers.

Waffler.1257:

Anet just needs to adjust server populations to registered and active accounts, something like if an account doesn’t log in for 3 months then it’s no longer counted toward server population.

They probably already do, which would explain why some servers move down to very high or high at off-peak times.

The other problem is events, which keeps accounts active, I know a fair few people (in fact entire guilds) that have basically stopped playing GW2, but they come back for a day or two for a bit of fun at the events, then leave the game for another month…

I dont get it people just dumb I guess.

cc eva has stated that server status is directly related to the accounts on the server not to people playing or concurrency.
I am tired of getting that link for people.

Yes they have lost 40-50% of the population since launch and are looking at ways to increase this.

The game is so dead that I had to wait 45 minutes yesterday to get in WvW with my guild. On a middle ranked server, Jade Sea. It’s also been 2 weeks that I have not been able to access LA on my server, I’m always on an overflow.

Narkosys.5173:

I dont get it people just dumb I guess.

cc eva has stated that server status is directly related to the accounts on the server not to people playing or concurrency.
I am tired of getting that link for people.

Yes they have lost 40-50% of the population since launch and are looking at ways to increase this.

If that were true, servers wouldn’t fluxuate their status during the day, from Full to Very High and back depending on the time. We had people transfer to JQ recently for WvW, they had to wait until something like 2AM for it to drop to Very High so they could enter.

Arenanet response that server population is tied to accounts registered to that server:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Server-Populations/first#post703192

It fluctuates because people switch server either very late, or very early.

PowerCat.5738:

Arenanet response that server population is tied to accounts registered to that server:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Server-Populations/first#post703192

It fluctuates because people switch server either very late, or very early.

I think you’re reading that wrong.

“Connor, when you see a server FULL means that the people who’ve chosen that server as theirs, or players who have moved to that particular server, have reached the cap, independently of where did they create their accounts.”

It’s worded a little vague… players on that server (or that moved to that server) have reached the cap. It appears, to me, to be talking about a player cap, not an account cap.

Narkosys.5173:

cc eva has stated that server status is directly related to the accounts on the server not to people playing or concurrency.

This is good because it keeps players from having to deal with login queues at peak times. But there needs to be another system in place to deal with inactive accounts. I understand not wanting to have more accounts on a server than it can handle if everyone were on at the same time. But it’s impractical because MMO populations fluctuate a lot and right now inactive accounts are making servers appear full when in fact they aren’t.

I suggest keeping the server status based on accounts assigned to it, but adding an open playable slot for every ‘inactive’ account linked to the server as well. What Anet deems ‘inactive’ is up to them, but this would seriously help. So for example (and with small simple numbers): if a server capacity is 100 accounts and it has 100 accounts associated to it (listed as ‘full’), but 30 of them are inactive for 2 months, the server will now list itself as ‘high pop’ and allow 30 new accounts to move to it. Anet can’t disassociate accounts from their servers simply because they haven’t been playing lately. So this is the only solution I can see.

How do servers change from full to high and how do people get onto full servers if they check for certain times of day?

If it is tied to number of total accounts including those inactive for a while, then wouldn’t populations just go up and stay up and never show up as high instead of full?

I notice that in my guild list if people are not playing for days their location shows as “unknown”. Perhaps after a certain time those types of accounts are not counted in the server census.

Katz.5143:

How do servers change from full to high and how do people get onto full servers if they check for certain times of day?

If it is tied to number of total accounts including those inactive for a while, then wouldn’t populations just go up and stay up and never show up as high instead of full?

I notice that in my guild list if people are not playing for days their location shows as “unknown”. Perhaps after a certain time those types of accounts are not counted in the server census.

No one really know, I am guessing the process transfers at night. If they have servers filled with inactive accounts they ll have serious problem around christmas. Guess also that the WvW will slowly shift towards the new servers with more active numbers.

The fact that servers go from full to high at off-peak times strongly suggests there is a check for recently active accounts. Even if it’s “active” anytime in the the past 3 months, that number would still decrease at the end of peak-time when some people logged out for the last time three months ago.

However they can’t completely discount the inactive accounts, because some might come back at Christmas time, so those might be weighted at 25% of an active account, to make a guess.

maybe when all the server are marked full a new item will apear in the gem shop with guaranteed transfer .. for $10 or so ….

I’m more impressed that they haven’t had a need to even shutdown servers yet. SWTOR was already shutting down servers before this point, and they didn’t add any servers when they went Free to Play.

I think the take away from this should be that there were six servers that are not full when you looked. That means people who wish to play together have the option of moving as a group to one of those servers. It may not seem ideal – and you may have to leave a “winning” WvW server for one that is struggling (which, if you care about WvW at all, you should want to do anyway), but the option does exist.

Its really the only logical thing for ArenaNet to do. There are servers that need more people right now – for both WvW and PVE.

On my server, we haven’t had queues for Lion’s Arch since the Karka event and none for WvW in months. When I read that some servers have 30 minute or more queues for both, it tells me there is an imbalance. Upping the cap on those servers would only exacerbate the problem on servers like mine.

New players – and larger groups looking for room to play together – need to be filtered to the lower populated server. Otherwise, those servers WILL die – which would be bad for the game’s future.

If every server fills up, Im sure they will up the cap or add new servers, but until that happens, doing so would do more harm than good.

and if you will notice, the european counterpart, they only have 2 full servers at the moment, like it was all servers were FULL status several months ago

One word: Fractals
Another word: Instanced

“I always get into overflows at LA”

Amazing huh. Since nov 15 that’s been constant… must be that everyone’s constantly checking whether we can craft the new gear yet!

The good news: PvE zones now tend to have about as many other players in them, as their GW1 counterparts did.

WvW will depend on your server. A problem is how low ranked servers easily lose what WvW players they have now; this is something Anet should work at. Perhaps a change in the outmanned buff: instead, check every server’s WvW activity over time. If on average your WvW is full, you get no buff, if it’s always empty you get a 100% buff, say. Simple sum to make, and it’ll be a major incentive for players to spread out across servers. Getting twice the drops and having no wait time… gotta be some people interested in that.

eisberg.2379:

I’m more impressed that they haven’t had a need to even shutdown servers yet. SWTOR was already shutting down servers before this point, and they didn’t add any servers when they went Free to Play.

Not really a fair comparison, SW:TOR had far more servers open at launch than GW2 does currently.

Artemis Noir.3804:

But…but…… wait!
I thought the game was dying! :p

Seriously, assuming you are in North America, your best bet is to stay up into the early hours of the morning (when it’s around 1-3 am in the Central/Eastern seaboard area).

You are delusional if you think the servers are actually full of people logged in. The game has declined incredibly since launch. Only the Kool-Aid drinkers will say otherwise. I bet ToR, WoW, and Rift can all say server full and heavy server if they just went off of people who just have a character on those servers but not logged in.

And no they don’t need any more servers. They just need to start going by actually people logged in and then you would see a difference from Full server to medium or low.

Roargathor.2743:

Henge of denravi is completely impotent in WvW… I made a terrible mistake in transfering there. I though it was supposed to be a PvP focused server. I was sooooo wrong. My fear is that I will never be able to rejoin my home server now that Anet is locking them.

HoD USED to be a strong WvW server (heck, they were even in Tier 1 for awhile). But and Eredon Terrace both suffered from a mass exodus due to free server transfers and lost many of their big WvW guilds to other servers. And they’ve both sadly been plunging in the ranks ever since.

You can see their sad, unfortunate WvW history here: http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#history

eisberg.2379:

I’m more impressed that they haven’t had a need to even shutdown servers yet. SWTOR was already shutting down servers before this point, and they didn’t add any servers when they went Free to Play.

LOL learn your facts first please. Like someone already said, ToR had a lot more servers then GW2. Oh and ToRs population has been steady over 500k and now risen a lot since going f2p. GW2 on the other hand has declined like a landslide since launch and not getting any better. Amazing how they stopped announcing game boxes sold when they couldn’t get much higher after the first month of launch.

bojangles.6912:

GW2 on the other hand has declined like a landslide since launch and not getting any better.

Source?

@bojangles The servers and the game was never this alive and it’s still growing , having everyday ques to LA just proves this. World is filled with new players , Dungeons running all day long even the Mists have alot of players even though people are crying that pvp is dead. Stop spreading false rumours if you quit the game, this is the best MMO out there atm and new ppl arrive on a daily basis. Come to the montly events for a strong conviction, the servers almost crash because of the insane number of players.

So, hypothetically…if I purchased the game in the early betas, chose my server wayy back then…played the game a lot, but due to any number of factors I’m not playing much now. Be it family, holidays, whatever? But now I decided to sign in…

I should be denied access to my chosen server because ANet is being asked to overbook the available servers and cull players based on who get online first?

In a non-sub game, I payed my 60 bucks to play on the server I chose. My slot is guaranteed (or should be…as it seems it is right now) no matter how much or how little I play.

But for a little give and take….how about culling inactive accounts to a storage or overflow server if they are offline for 90 days without a sign in?

excuse my noobness, but how do I check this without attempting to switch servers. I did try to google it but all I found was a site that stated what servers were online (and it only had a few).

Please all go to the suggestions forum and look for my suggestion on Server Status. The way that they gate it at the moment is quite ridiculous.

Cheers.

wildcode.5403:

excuse my noobness, but how do I check this without attempting to switch servers. I did try to google it but all I found was a site that stated what servers were online (and it only had a few).

All you have to do is log into your account and select the “Word Selection” button in the lower left hand corner of the character selection screen. That will give you the list of all the servers and their current population levels. You can easily close out of that screen without having to transfer.

wildcode.5403:

excuse my noobness, but how do I check this without attempting to switch servers. I did try to google it but all I found was a site that stated what servers were online (and it only had a few).

All you need to do is login and when you get to the character select screen hit the World Selection button. That pulls up a list of the servers showing the population.

Right this moment there are 8 servers that have room in the US. I’ve seen this fluctuate from 6 to 16 servers available over the last 48 hrs.

Btw, the game is packed. I’m constantly in overflow with queues for WvW.

Just for reference, the numbers that I quoted in my first post were taken from 2 AM Central Time, which SHOULD be off-peak hours.

just see how many players are active in you guild in peak time, i had around 80-100 player month ago, now around 30-50. All my RL friends quited the game like i was, i just came back to see if it’s getting better and it isn’t, that is reality.

Roargathor.2743:

It’s pathetic. The server is Full, but theres’ NOBODY PLAYING INGAME. WvW is DEAD. No Queue times, and no Overflow in the PvE world. THis is a kitten conspiracy. Anet is trying to herd new players and Transfers to the 7 low pop servers. If they wanted to encourage transfers, they could just offer some free gems. This shady kitten is kitten me off. My GF installed the game last night and can’t join me on my server, so I transferred to one of the only available servers and WvW is in ever WORSE shape over there. I’m soo kitten right now. FIX YOUR kitten ANET!

You might have killed my toon a few weeks ago in wvw vrs Yak’s Bend so this might be what happens when you pwn an innocent little azura in eternal battleground.

Tentacle Love.3412:

Just for reference, the numbers that I quoted in my first post were taken from 2 AM Central Time, which SHOULD be off-peak hours.

As long as there is at least one (which there is), then people have options.

I know my server has not listed as full in months. We still have a healthy enough population (could be alot better) – and the people we do have are helpful and amazing to play alongside – but I do worry about the future.

The server limits are there for very important reasons. The answer to “how can I play with my friends” has to be “transfer to a server where there is room.” Anything else is detrimental to the future health of servers and WvW competitiveness.

6 servers Very High, 18 servers Full… and oceans of empty space, with no one in it.

How is this possible?