Guild Wars 2

I started playing in the early access weekend until a few weeks after. Then took a break.

Came back a few months back and leveled again. I did notice that the world was a lot emptier and I was playing on a full world. I was basically doing a lot of events by myself.
I do agree that changes had to be made in order to make the game feel more like a MMO again, instead of a solo player games.

I recently came back again from a break and it has been my first experience with the mega servers.

So far I have leveled an elementalist to about level 60 and a thief to 30 by completing maps, but there are WAY too many people on the map now. The amazing thing about GW2 PvE are the dynamic events, but all the events are the same. Tag with AoE abilities before everything dies. How is this healthy game play?

That being said, champions and group events in Kessex Hills were fun, but most of the other events are just AoE for gold medal and loot and it’s starting to get really dull after a while.

So should events scale better now that there are so many people around, to make it more challenging and enjoyable?

no idea , I stopped playing events when servers merged.

i remember there would be an option for guilds to activate events..
don’t know if that has been implemented though.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

no idea , I stopped playing events when servers merged.

i remember there would be an option for guilds to activate events..
don’t know if that has been implemented though.

This has been implemented for 3 main events, Tequatl, Triple Headed Wurm and Karka Queen.

I’m still a bit ambivalent towards the megaservers. I’ve recently taken to commanding Tequatl runs and the mega server has made it so there are a lot more people around to give it ago. Also with the fixes to Tequatl, even with random players filling up the mega server it’s meant that gone are the days that it really needs voice driven coordination. Also, as more and more people get to doing it, the average knowledge level and skill level with respect to these sorts of events has gone up.

In my previous server, no one had the achievements for Tequatl unless they guested regularly. Without mega servers whole servers full of people who don’t guest were left without the opportunity to try these events and enjoy them. They just looked from afar sadly at what looked to be a fun event that they couldn’t do.

In terms of mega bosses especially with the changed times, it has become a lot more fun for me and I do hope that new or revamped bosses are in the pipeline.

I’ve found myself to be doing world bosses and other events much less now due to the changes. World bosses are just too cluttered and my FPS takes a nose-dive during them. Events like Gates of Arah, CoF dungeon opener, etc. are cluttered now too that getting a hit on even one target proves to be quite a challenge. Unfortunately, I don’t see them changing anything at this point despite how many problems the April patch created. Anet seems content on its release since we have heard absolutely nothing relevant for three months.

On the other hand, less done events, not world bosses, are now often much better. There are over 1500 events in the game. The popular events are more crowded, that’s true. But killing the giant in Nageling in the middle of the night (I live in Australia) is far nicer now than it was back then.

There are tons of events I do in passing that are populated now that weren’t populated before.

Gotta take the bad with the good.

Just because you can kill a giant, we lost our server communities. Seems very legit trade-off.

And also even before megaservers, you could kill Tequatl. But since lots of players want to ezmode content, they guested to servers like Desolation and Blackgate to leech those servers’ players spot. If they had stayed in their server and wasted their effort a little bit, it wouldn’t be a problem.

Megaservers just is a server merge with a fancy name. Instead of using guesting from your login screen, game makes you guest random maps without login/logout.

Moreover, if you want to kill Tequalt or Wurm you need to camp a map spot at least 1 hour before now (it was same in the old system though). So that you can team up with a coordinated group. Try going Sparkfly or Bloodtide 10 minutes before the event and tell me your success story.

Incredible how people think you want to spend hours “organizing” an event that will most likely fail, which you might not necessarily know at all since you’re not on Deso. Because we all enjoy organizing, we all have fun doing it, there’s no disappointment when you waste hours when it fails… well even when it succeeds.

Tequatl @ release was just bad, not because it was just hard but because only a few could do it. If you guys can try and remember how it was : you needed commanders. Badly. I don’t care if you did it without once, forums were filled up with “omg thiz iz so hardz”, guilds formed to beat Teq, the event needed a lot of organization, plus it was new and what’s new needs to be beaten so the player can learn. So yeah, only a few servs could do it, since not everyone have the time to organize it, not everyone has the skills or the possibility to organize it and not everyone have fun organizing it. For the far majority guesting was the only way they would have fun. Act like a smarta..s all you want, this is the truth you don’t want to face because “they took our jobs and now they take our community, oh my god!!!”.

“Moreover, if you want to kill Tequalt or Wurm you need to camp a map spot at least 1 hour before now (it was same in the old system though). "

1 hour, that was if you were organized. Otherwise it would take much more. I can get to Teq 30 minutes early and still kill it by now (and standing there for hours is no fun).

Phoenixlin.8624:

Just because you can kill a giant, we lost our server communities. Seems very legit trade-off.

And also even before megaservers, you could kill Tequatl. But since lots of players want to ezmode content, they guested to servers like Desolation and Blackgate to leech those servers’ players spot. If they had stayed in their server and wasted their effort a little bit, it wouldn’t be a problem.

Megaservers just is a server merge with a fancy name. Instead of using guesting from your login screen, game makes you guest random maps without login/logout.

Moreover, if you want to kill Tequalt or Wurm you need to camp a map spot at least 1 hour before now (it was same in the old system though). So that you can team up with a coordinated group. Try going Sparkfly or Bloodtide 10 minutes before the event and tell me your success story.

I’m sorry, what percentage of players depended on server communities in the first place. And it’s not just a giant. It’s everything in the game. Every event other than the big ones. It’s more than just a giant.

You had to lose your server community. But many people, maybe even most, depend more on a guild community and even more depend on no community at all because they’re loners or solo players.

I see people in my guild playing on my server all the time. It works great.

Megaserver didn’t ruin events just the opposite. However there will always be under populated maps, especially the mid level maps where most people are just passing through. If ANet adds more maps (as seem to be the case) you’d basically just be increasing this middle group of maps as most people are just racing through them to get to the new content.

Vayne, I really wanna waste my efforts to write wall of texts about the flaws in megaserver idea/design/implementation. However, I’ve already done that. Just check my previous posts in megaservers if 43 pages of huge megaserver topic scares you =)

You are happy because in your world, more is good. In my good, it is also good. But I’d rather familiar faces in that crowd. Not random intelligent life forms that probably I will never see again, or people that I can’t even communicate (german/french/spanish servers in EU).

Phoenixlin.8624:

Vayne, I really wanna waste my efforts to write wall of texts about the flaws in megaserver idea/design/implementation. However, I’ve already done that. Just check my previous posts in megaservers if 43 pages of huge megaserver topic scares you =)

You are happy because in your world, more is good. In my good, it is also good. But I’d rather familiar faces in that crowd. Not random intelligent life forms that probably I will never see again, or people that I can’t even communicate (german/french/spanish servers in EU).

But I see familiar faces in a crowd. I still run into people I know, so from my point of view, I don’t have anything to complain about. Of course, if you don’t, you do have something to complain about.

That’s the problem =) In the old system, there was a %100 accuracy that I could see familiar faces, as long as there is no overflow in the map I want to enter. Megaservers reduced that accuracy to %20. Yeah time to time I find myself in maps with many fellow Desolation players; however, it is really a rare situation for me. And %80 of the times, my map chat fills with german, french, spanish talks which I can’t save myself (dont tell me you can block those clients. It is not a fix. It is just ignorance of ANet).

I think megaservers are the lesser of two evils … Choose events that don’t happen or fail OR events that are crowded that diminish the experience.

I’ve played enough MMO’s to know that being unable to complete game content because of a lack of interest or feeling like you are the only one playing is one the worst things that could happen to a game.

It’s lesser of two evils only for small servers. I never had trouble completing any events on Desolation, never felt like i play alone either. Megaservers totally destroyed my servers community, there is no sense of belonging at all, events became overcrowded and unfun, many of them cant be completed anymore (temples). While it might have been great solution to small servers, it totally guted the well estabilished big servers. I wish they just aplied it to small servers and left my server alone, or maybe made it optional.

“Did megaservers ruin events?”

I guess it depends on your perspective. If I were playing the event for the very first time and wanted to see how the event chain comes to be…..then comes the challenge of how to “win” the fight….then yes, megaservers have “ruined” that particular experience.
BUT coming from the perspective of I’ve done this event a thousand times…I’m just trying to get my daily/monthly or karma farming the quickest way possible…then the megaserver has improved my experience.

Megaservers completely ruin guild missions

I wouldn’t use the word “ruin” but definitely screwed them up pretty badly. What makes me mad is if you log out and back in, you could be on a completely different mega server.

for me it actually improved events, now i don’t have events i complete on my own but actually see playing cooperate to complete the event.

What makes me mad is if you log out and back in, you could be on a completely different mega server.

Or, when TRYING to reach a completely different megaserver, you end up on the same one, even when you guest…

And to answer OP:
Megaservers have ruined the events where they were run for the server community by known commanders eg mining runs, temple runs, karka queen, boss tour etc.

TheBandit.7031:

I wouldn’t use the word “ruin” but definitely screwed them up pretty badly.

For the most part I agree.

Not being able to see an event boss through the glare of a hundred strobing effects really messes up the concept of active play in my opinion.

Did Megaservers ruin Events?

That is in the eye of the beholder.
If you want my opinion on the matter – Yes, they did.

As with many things in GW2, I find the megaserver concept to be a mixed bag. It’s nice to see players in “off-zones” and to be able to do stuff with a few others where before I’d be doing them solo. However, the larger numbers create several issues for me.

• As Ashen says, particle blur is annoying and makes it hard to see. It also gives me a headache after too much of it. I would be amazed if people find this unsightly mess to be visually appealing.
• Event scaling only takes into account player numbers, not player skill. As usual, scaling generally results in events with just a few people being fun, while moderate amounts of players generally aren’t up to the increased challenge, and outnumbering the scaling results in the aforementioned particle FX plus a dull event.
• Load times are longer in some zones.
• Finding events can be an issue. Before megaserver, I could pretty much count on events being available. Now, there are times when I run around a given zone and find very few events. I recognize that this is a matter of timing, but mine is often unlucky.

Megaservers ruined server communities.

I used to see the same people, and guilds, in /map chat or in Lion’s Arch, but that’s all gone now. Megaservers are always fluctuating, and there is no community stability anymore. Server communities exist only in WvW now.

fishball.7204:

Megaservers completely ruin guild missions

i don’t see how it ruin guild mission.

my guild has been running guild mission without any problem even with the megaserver. in fact it helps small guilds doing the missions by tagging along and accepting credit for completion.

Vayne.8563:

But many people, maybe even most, depend more on a guild community and even more depend on no community at all because they’re loners or solo players.

LoL!

azizul.8469:

fishball.7204:

Megaservers completely ruin guild missions

i don’t see how it ruin guild mission.

my guild has been running guild mission without any problem even with the megaserver. in fact it helps small guilds doing the missions by tagging along and accepting credit for completion.

Sometimes the puzzles or rushes have 10 minutes left and we have to wait for it to end or not enough time for us to complete.

Sometimes different overflow for bounty and everyone is confused by ‘we found it!!!’ but it’s on another overflow.

Sometimes big guilds stand on the side and watch without helping because their members aren’t all there yet and screws up the scaling for smaller guilds.

etc…

we need to be able to change maps at will instead of lucking into an lfg party or begging a friend to try for a different instance

Did megaserver ruin events? No. But it put an extra barrier in the way and makes it more difficult for guilds to organize anything on a large scale in the world.

You would think that would run counter to what they want to accomplish with this game.

Vayne.8563:

There are tons of events I do in passing that are populated now that weren’t populated before.

Gotta take the bad with the good.

Haha .. yeah i like it always now when i harvest iron ore in Dredgehaunt Cliffs and kill some Dredge on the way and suddenly get an event reward

On the other hand i have also done nearly no world events anymore the last months

I actually like playing with people. I think it did more good than harm but that’s my opinion.

Can you please state “more good” with a list?

I think it ruined some events and helped others. Ruined the high level stuff like Orr or world bosses but helped just about everything else.

What are those everything else? Cheezus’ sake you are just dumping vague comments about the “advantages of megaservers” but all I can see is “more people I can see so that I can do events”. When I count it, it makes 2 good things at all. And as you said, you can do some events thanks to megaservers, but also you can’t do some events, again, thanks to megaservers. In contrast, if you check huge megaserver topic, there are 44 pages of things that megaservers ruined.

Sorry. didn’t realize my posting had to meet the standards of some random stranger on the internet.

By “everything else” I mean, just about every other event out there. On my server, unless you were doing world bosses, the current Living Story, or Queensdale, every zone was pretty much a ghost town. Now, there’s people just about everywhere. That helps with the unpopulated areas but hurts the areas/events that were already populated.

Arzo.8671:

I think it ruined some events and helped others. Ruined the high level stuff like Orr or world bosses but helped just about everything else.

Personally i like it that Balthasar Temple is now mostly open, and i don’t have to look on a temple state page for days or weeks and then guest to a server where it finally was open.

played the game for almost a year without seeing anyone in the lower sections

now i play the game there are people in the game and more activity then ever

mega servers were a good thing now i can do these events rather then stand there in an empty server

its also a war were meant to be zerging so to say lol