Guild Wars 2

Hoping to get a answer from A net on this one. Why exactly is every single NA server listed as very high or full? I have a hard time believing they are very high since there is a HUGE difference in the population of say Darkhaven and Tarnished Coast.

Is this just a cash grab move by you since it cost 1800 gems to transfer to a very high server. TBH is quite misleading and very annoying. I started this game a few months ago and when I was looking for a server my only thought was not getting stuck on a server that is low population and has difficulties completing content, and now I’m stuck on just that and only option is to spend money to transfer off. Yes I can guest, and in fact that has been the only way I have been able to complete the new LS, but its still irritating the server populations are so misleading.

“Is this just a cash grab move by you since it cost 1800 gems to transfer to a very high server. "

Yes.

/thread

Alukah.2063:

“Is this just a cash grab move by you since it cost 1800 gems to transfer to a very high server. "

Yes.

/thread

This is correct. Only T1 and possibly T2 actually have a “Very High” active population. Other servers have far less the more you go down the tiers.

Those population levels are NOT that of the active population. The Very High to Full is an indication of how many people have selected that world as their home world.

So even the player who bought GW2 and only played it for one day and will never play again is counted.

Well if its not counting active then that in itself is misleading. If games like WoW did that every server would be listed as full.

Granted there are no sub fees for GW2, but for a game that live on its cash shops, you would think misleading its consumer base right off the bat is a bad start. I’m finding a lot of this in the game which is driving me towards ESO or NWNext even more, which means they won’t be getting my money when I go to another ( and yes I spend real money on game, 1 hour works pay or a week in game work, easy decision)

Cash grab, nothing more.

Adhal.3187:

Well if its not counting active then that in itself is misleading. If games like WoW did that every server would be listed as full.

Granted there are no sub fees for GW2, but for a game that live on its cash shops, you would think misleading its consumer base right off the bat is a bad start. I’m finding a lot of this in the game which is driving me towards ESO or NWNext even more, which means they won’t be getting my money when I go to another ( and yes I spend real money on game, 1 hour works pay or a week in game work, easy decision)

It’s all due to WvW.

ANet doesn’t want one server to end up with too many people in the possible WvW player pool. One for the benefit of lower pop servers so that they can be competitive and higher pop servers for WvW queues.

I wish they had done it a bit different. Choose a home server for WvW purposes. Then when you log in choose which server to play on if you’re going to PvE and that lists it out by which server is the most active at the time.

But that’s just me. They didn’t do it that way and at this point, it’s not likely to change as it’s probably not a quick and easy fix.

Devonas Rest is rated as high populated. LA is empty most of the time! And by empty i mean no more than 5 people literally!

Immensus.9732:

Devonas Rest is rated as high populated. LA is empty most of the time! And by empty i mean no more than 5 people literally!

To some of us this sounds like paradise, seriously.

Seera.5916:

Those population levels are NOT that of the active population. The Very High to Full is an indication of how many people have selected that world as their home world.

So even the player who bought GW2 and only played it for one day and will never play again is counted.

This pretty much sums up how it works. I think its a little underhanded my self. I have a feeling if they showed us the true numbers there be 2-3 full servers, 1-2 high pop servers, 1 medium pop, the rest would be extremely low pop. That does not exactly paint the game in a positive light plus they cant milk people for transfer fee’s. 1800gems to transfer = roughly 35 dollars since there is no 25 dollar gem amount (according to the wiki). They end up charging you over half the cost of the game to move servers.

Adhal.3187:

Hoping to get a answer from A net on this one. Why exactly is every single NA server listed as very high or full? I have a hard time believing they are very high since there is a HUGE difference in the population of say Darkhaven and Tarnished Coast.

Is this just a cash grab move by you since it cost 1800 gems to transfer to a very high server. TBH is quite misleading and very annoying. I started this game a few months ago and when I was looking for a server my only thought was not getting stuck on a server that is low population and has difficulties completing content, and now I’m stuck on just that and only option is to spend money to transfer off. Yes I can guest, and in fact that has been the only way I have been able to complete the new LS, but its still irritating the server populations are so misleading.

Think the issue is a lack of people in areas like Orr. Especially irritating if you are trying to get map completion because certain parts of the maps are contested more often than not. Trying to venture into those areas is more or less suicide.

Constantly including all accounts is a bit silly. It doesn’t even give the residents of a particular server an idea of how many people are active. Inactive accounts for six months, just say, probably should be shuffled off to the side. When and if that player ever comes back then they can be counted again.

johnnymiller.5968:

Adhal.3187:

Hoping to get a answer from A net on this one. Why exactly is every single NA server listed as very high or full? I have a hard time believing they are very high since there is a HUGE difference in the population of say Darkhaven and Tarnished Coast.

Is this just a cash grab move by you since it cost 1800 gems to transfer to a very high server. TBH is quite misleading and very annoying. I started this game a few months ago and when I was looking for a server my only thought was not getting stuck on a server that is low population and has difficulties completing content, and now I’m stuck on just that and only option is to spend money to transfer off. Yes I can guest, and in fact that has been the only way I have been able to complete the new LS, but its still irritating the server populations are so misleading.

Think the issue is a lack of people in areas like Orr. Especially irritating if you are trying to get map completion because certain parts of the maps are contested more often than not. Trying to venture into those areas is more or less suicide.

Have you thought about making some friends or joining a guild. Depending on random people to show up is a bit risky for my taste.

Yeah… I’m from JQ and guested to Devona’s Rest to get power cores and saw Shatterer up at full health with 0 people even attempting to kill him and thought “very high population my kitten ” lol.

ALL those people that thought that the server pop was based on active players and not just accounts must be eating serious crow these days.

Seera.5916:

Those population levels are NOT that of the active population. The Very High to Full is an indication of how many people have selected that world as their home world.

So even the player who bought GW2 and only played it for one day and will never play again is counted.

hahahahahahahahahahahahah
this made me laugh so hard because it is so kittenty for lack of a better word

come on use your brain for a bit.
server population is about currently logged on players not about who has ever created an account on a particular server.

think about it, BG and the likes have always been a very high pop server and NA had maybe 5 servers on high. now all of a sudden after the Wurm update Bg is always on full and you’d be hard pressed to find any NA server on lower than very high.

just because you do not see players in the same area you are in doesn’t mean the server is baron, have you looked at how freaking big the gw2 world map is lately ?

Server status has always been about current players NOT about how many accounts are created.

I would like to know who started this BS rumor so I can smack him around and give him some more grey matter to up his IQ a bit, maybe than he’d be up to par with average intelligent human beings.

It’s one thing to hate on the success of the game but, this rumor / misinformation is just low blow scumbaggadery.

There was no reason to be insulting to get your opinion out and yes that is all it is.

You have no more “proof” of any of this than he does. There are just as many that say the opposite and anet will not be releasing the real story. It is there business and they must feel that information like that needs to stay privileged.

I would ask that you provide some evidence that he is wrong at least or maybe lay off the insulting behavior and just speak your mind. If that is all that is in there then maybe just don’t say anything.

The low blow is your reaction to someones opinion whether they are right or wrong in your mind.

As it stands it sure looks like based on actually logging in and looking at these populations like they manually set the status at their end period. That means that we have no way of knowing anything.

It could very well be based on active accounts. My home is Anvil Rock, a notoriously low pop server. If I want to do any bosses or events through the day, I have to guest elsewhere. The population is that low. Shadow Behemoth spawned this morning and 6 people came. Have seen Maw, Shatterer, and many others go untouched. We must be the only server that doesn’t have a 24hour Queensdale train. Forget about seeing anyone in Orr.
However, the few hours right at and after server reset, you would swear we were a tier 1 server. Huge swarms of people zerging the world bosses, temples, and so on.
Our ‘very full’ could very well be based on active accounts, because for the those few hours, we have a very active and high population. But if you miss that boss train in those few hours, you’ll more than likely have to guest at any other time of day to do anything.
Of course, our population also has a huge spike with living story updates every 2 weeks, like all servers probably do. I do believe its counting active accounts, because there are lots of them. They’re just not consistently active

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-explain-the-Server-Population-system/967095

I’m sure that in some way, the accounts of people who call a server home must count for something. At the same time, the amount of people currently playing must also count.

My reasoning for home server accounts is due to the fact that all of the populations in NA are listed at Very High. I think most of us can agree that some of these servers don’t have many people active at one time, at least not enough to class a very high, whatever number that means. So, the home server accounts must have some effect.

However, at the same time, it can’t ONLY be home server accounts. My reasoning for this is the population fluctuations you see at server dead hours. If it were ONLY accounts that called somewhere home, we would likely see alot more full worlds, and fluctuation wouldn’t occur during off hours.

I don’t think its a marketing ploy, because if it was, then why aren’t the EU servers all at very high, all the time? If it was because of a marketing ploy, or an attempt to keep up an illusion that gw2 is active (which it definitely still is), then all of the EU servers right now should be listed as very high, right? However, looking at them right now, I see some mediums, highs, and very highs, but not one full.

I don’t know what the exact mechanics of server population size are, nor does it truly matter to me, personally. I understand that some people are hurt by the fact that their servers have no one on them, or that the people there just don’t seem to care. I agree that it would be nice to know exactly how server population is calculated. However, flaming at each other over it/saying Anet sucks/Throwing Kittens at each other really solves nothing.

Well Celle’s link confirm it has nothing to do with active players but players the have account with that world as home world. Underhanded moves for the win, explains why there is so many inactive accounts that so many world’s look dead.

No where did Anet EVER say that server population measure active player base. They’ve ALWAYS said that it measures the number of accounts tied to the server.

No idea if this is correct, but what I think is that it’s a representation of how many accounts are on that server (active or not), as well as anyone currently GUESTED to that server. This would explain the fluctuation overnight on servers like blackgate (no one guesting that late).

Current population doesn’t make that much sense really since the overflow system means that it doesn’t really make sense for a server to be full (since it could just send people to overflow?).

Plus when blackgate is full, it doesn’t stop anyone who is native from that server from logging in, think WoW, if a server is full there you’ll literally be put into queue before you can log on.

If they’re using the total population as the marker for population status for servers then I think they need to raise the ceiling on their numbers. Sooner or later all servers will hit that ceiling which it probably has by now, and it’s a disservice to those lower ranked servers that they don’t look anymore attractive to new or older players to transfer to them.

Then again I don’t think they care anyways, we’ve been asking them to help balance wvw pops for a long time in various ways and they won’t do it, they only managed to screw it up more by lowering fees before season 1.

5 players in LA the main hub of the game? that’s sad.

Xenesis.6389:

If they’re using the total population as the marker for population status for servers then I think they need to raise the ceiling on their numbers. Sooner or later all servers will hit that ceiling which it probably has by now, and it’s a disservice to those lower ranked servers that they don’t look anymore attractive to new or older players to transfer to them.

Then again I don’t think they care anyways, we’ve been asking them to help balance wvw pops for a long time in various ways and they won’t do it, they only managed to screw it up more by lowering fees before season 1.

5 players in LA the main hub of the game? that’s sad.

They do raise the ceilings but they are aware that if they set them to like medium or low, there will be a mad rush to the best servers and making the active population more settled onto a few servers.

So they typically just raise the cap in small increments, probably based on recent sales.

Latinkuro.9420:

Seera.5916:

Those population levels are NOT that of the active population. The Very High to Full is an indication of how many people have selected that world as their home world.

So even the player who bought GW2 and only played it for one day and will never play again is counted.

hahahahahahahahahahahahah
this made me laugh so hard because it is so kittenty for lack of a better word

come on use your brain for a bit.
server population is about currently logged on players not about who has ever created an account on a particular server.

think about it, BG and the likes have always been a very high pop server and NA had maybe 5 servers on high. now all of a sudden after the Wurm update Bg is always on full and you’d be hard pressed to find any NA server on lower than very high.

just because you do not see players in the same area you are in doesn’t mean the server is baron, have you looked at how freaking big the gw2 world map is lately ?

Server status has always been about current players NOT about how many accounts are created.

I would like to know who started this BS rumor so I can smack him around and give him some more grey matter to up his IQ a bit, maybe than he’d be up to par with average intelligent human beings.

It’s one thing to hate on the success of the game but, this rumor / misinformation is just low blow scumbaggadery.

So that’s a personal attack on an ANet employee? No wonder this game is dying!!

CC Eva

Hello everyone.
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.
Answering to your second question: no, there is no chart that shows that kind of information at the moment, I am afraid.

GW2 is different to other mmo´s. You “register” your account to a world and the current system is the only one that make sense.

Think about it.

If a server say very high, it means there are a a huge amount of POTENTIAL players.

GW2 is not dying… players always come back because Gw2 have no sup fees. it goes up and down like always.

sorry for my bad english.

The problem is they have released so many servers instead of overflows and now they can’t merge them because it will be a sign of loosing

Ronah.2869:

The problem is they have released so many servers instead of overflows and now they can’t merge them because it will be a sign of loosing

NO, it´s the system limitation (players per map). Arenanet want balanced servers, not overpopulatet ones. If to many active players have “registered” there account to one particular server, these server would have overflows like crazy and that´s not a good thing. (LS Metaevents for example)

Strong WvW servers have the highest pop i could imagine. (for obvious reasons)
But maybe i´m wrong. (not all players are interested in WvW, but players tend to join the winning “team”)

Keep in mind that the active playerbase is always in flux. (with always i mean always)

New games coming out, vacation, holidays, winter/summer and tons of other reasons.

English is not my native language so it´s not easy for me.