Guild Wars 2

Logged in today just like the day before and spent about the same amount of time. 20 Minutes running around Brisband Wildlands. As I try to play through doing each heart and following event chains in this zone I find myself constantly either blocked by content that’s too difficult or too boring.

The problem is the map is practically empty and this is a game that is by design very lonely when you play an empty map.

To be honest it’s a miserable experience. This is the experience a lot of newcomers are having now. Empty maps. Empty events. It’s just good. I know because I talk to them in game. It’s also a very different experience than what I had when leveling my Human Guardian to 80 during the first month post release. I can not over stress the need for something to happen to restore that experience.

That something may be server consolidation. That something may be retooling events to make them all soloable by design. I don’t know, I just know leveling a new character though this game has been a lot different experience than it was right after release. Night and Day different. It’s all related to lack of server population being unacceptable low. This is not my problem it is a problem felt and expressed by many.

ArenaNet please do not take my word it. I asked you guys to assign a few developers, qa, whatever. Have a few people attempt to take a new level 1 toon on Yaks or Emhry, try to zone clears + events + personal story. Fuse them together, work a character up to 20 and you will understand the problem. Level 1-20 and then internally talk about what you can do to save newcomers from hating their experience.

I’m not trying to be negative. I’ve logged over 400 hours in this game. I love it, I’m also quite confident in the very negative changes I’ve observed and I’m telling you now how to reproduce. You can ignore my request, You can approach it set out trying to prove me wrong or you can create a new toon and try to find my perspective.

This is critical guys.

This is also my worry for when they plan on pumping out new content.

They have such a massive world that’s sort of going to waste. I would like for them to also improve on the old zones and add some incentive/carrots to go back to them.

Funny. At launch it was nothing but problems with every zone having overflow. Now it’s the opposite. We need a happy medium here. How about more incentives for level 80s to revisit lower zones, at least for the DEs? That would be a start.

I agree the empty zones are a problem, but I don’t think server consolidation is the answer, as that would make the crowded higher level zones even more crowded. The best fix would be something that brings people back to the lower level zones, perhaps some unique drops, or activities spanning across zones for achievements or other types of reward. Dropping the price of using waypoints and providing vendors that allow you to convert a pile of low level crafting mats to higher level maps could help too.

To be honest I haven’t met a non-group event I couldn’t solo, and I can solo most of the group events. That may not be everyone’s experience, though.

I’ve also recently levelled an alt 1-20 without help from guildies and that was a perfectly enjoyable experience too. It was over Halloween, to be fair, but I was in the Charr areas, not the areas with the Haunted Doors, so if anything there were less players around than normal.

Certainly it probably wouldn’t hurt to hand out a zone-wide buff for underpopulated zones, much like you get in WvW when your server is outnumbered. I appreciate your general point that, like any MMO, as more people hit 80 the lowbie zones get progressively more quiet, and I applaud any mechanics intended to progress that problem.

this is where I feel free server transfers (all the time) is a benefit to the game. Just lock the person on a specific server when entering WvW.

dunno must be your servers, because in mine (full/high 99 percent of the time i admit) i always find people to do events , plenty of levelers so far, a lot of people are on their 2nd toon by now so its probably that too…

however , i have to ask…why stay on a low pop server when the transfers have been free and unlimited up until now that they have a 7 day cooldown?

i realize there is guild progress and upgrades that youd lose but …

They need the UNDERFLOW servers that other fella suggested, when there is below minimum amount of people in an area you go to an underflow server or you should be able to opt in to always be in zone with the most people in it.

Blizzards new tech Cross Realm Zones is sort of a permanent underflow server as it brings 3 servers to one. Perhaps all zones could be treated as WvWvW but everyones friendly? I imagine the programmers do not sleep at night over this.

Very good point.
I once stayed on an overflow server just to farm resources until I got kicked, I presume because I was the only one left.
And after a while it became a really lonely miserable experience.

Maybe something like an “underflow server” should be introduced?
Bunching together players from servers where there really are only 5-10 people left on the whole map.

This isn’t new. I’ve posted about this several times. Other people have too. Plenty of posts are either closed, removed, or moved. That’s just how it is.

To be honest I haven’t met a non-group event I couldn’t solo, and I can solo most of the group events. That may not be everyone’s experience, though.

You don’t seem to get what he’s talking about. The way leveling oes for humans is queensdale, kessex hills, gendaran. Most people playing (on my server, can’t speak for all) skip their starting area and hit queensdale. Then they do kessex hills, go back to their area and run through story as fast as possible. Meet up in LA and do gendaran.

Why? Well it might be because there are so many humans. This was a discussion the other day in queensdale though. It was generally accepted that humans just have the best starting area. I don’t know if it’s the skill point locations, or just the enemies. I have to agree, I’ve mostly avoided it but after playing through Queensdale it does feel like the best starting area available.

Luigio.3265:

dunno must be your servers, because in mine (full/high 99 percent of the time i admit) i always find people to do events , plenty of levelers so far, a lot of people are on their 2nd toon by now so its probably that too…

however , i have to ask…why stay on a low pop server when the transfers have been free and unlimited up until now that they have a 7 day cooldown?

i realize there is guild progress and upgrades that youd lose but …

You are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Look at what happens when people do that.

You have a High pop server, and a low pop server. People do like you say and the low pop server goes further down, while the high pop server starts having a queue. People don’t want to transfer to the low pop because they would rather have a small queue than be put onto a server where there is no one.

They should have simply never allowed free transfers to anything medium or above in population.

i agree with this. played a sylvarie early september, plenty of people fighting boss. levelled a charr 2 weeks ago, very lonely, charr/norn leveling map paths had like 3 people in them, i usually need to do events by myself. human path(kessex, harachi hinterland, raisen-dragon map, to cursed shore) is better—about 10 people for major event line lines and 3 people for small events.

What i would like to see is more “quest” like what we had when getting the mad kings book. They could start in the citys and than have us complet objectives and fined things in areas people dont go all the time. At the end you get reworded with a cool looking bit of gear and some cash. DEs are awesome but theres not much point to them any more if you dont have a resone to go back to areas were there located

Or, team up with someone else in your family, friends list, or guild to run the early zones together. It makes it a much more pleasant experience being teamed up with others.

I think the waypoint costs are one of the biggest barriers to higher level characters going back to lower level places. It’s a shame really. I agree with the above poster about more quests along the lines of the scavenger hunt. I know it’s a return to NPC-hub questing, but I think it does make a more effective way of delivering smaller, perhaps more lore-rich, stories.

I agree. This will be serious problem very soon. The rewards and goodies need to be spread out among zones so, that the level 80 zones do NOT become way too lucrative to grind, farm or whatnot over the other ones. This is part of the reason that killed WoW for me. However, all of this will require some careful balancing, otherwise it can easily be screwed and cause even greater problems.

Underflow server is a great idea and should atleast get a public test run.

i think with the upcoming patch it’s going to be great having a new zone! however, i haven’t even finished 100% map completion yet and/or visited all the other zones. and there are some voicing concerns that more people are going to flock over to the new area and leave current 70-80 areas barren. this just further goes to show how much of a problem it can become for the start and / low level areas! i specifically leveled-up my character and map completion so i go up a chain, 1-15 —> 15 – 20 —> 30 – 45 --→ so on and so forth. and i’ll go back down to low level areas.. (also i appreciate the nice break it gives me combat wise, lol, and get to do some light-hearted silly quests). the change of environment is always nice but yes, i’ve noticed some areas i’ll be surprised if i see mor ethan 5 different people running around.

the halloween content was great in a sense where many people revisited queensdale, kessex and even gendarran fields. i participated in a lot of DE and other chain events and though most people were seemingly doing the halloween stuff i had friends or met randoms doing the regular content and they’d say thanks if i helped them get a SkillPoint of fend off some mobs while they were downed. perhaps more of this coule be implemented for other areas as ewll. not only during festive / holiday events. but perhaps, every month, bimonth or quarter, where some new content would be put into the lower zones? just as an incentive for high level players to revisit. and reexperience the wonderful world that you have created.

this will allow players grinding Orr non-stop to feel that there isn’t only ONE PLACE to farm. this will allow new players to feel more welcome. this will allow all players to fully experience and indulge themselves in Tyria.

i frigging love this game, and it’s hard for me to come up with anything negative to say, but just by observing what others have shared, we can foresee certain problems arising. not saying this is the only solution, but from the event, i could see there was a big influx of players going back to the low level areas, and in turn, interacting with potential new staying-for-good players as well as just fostering a stronger community.