Guild Wars 2

I miss the old server community and the server pride we had. I felt comfortable on TC, but now when I log in map chat is full of hostility towards marginalised groups and women, much more so than was present on TC. Before, it was rare to hear “gay” being used as a slur; now I encounter it daily, with my protests being ridiculed. Jokes about [non-consensual physical acts] are common and protests against them results in them being directed against you. Before, we could roleplay without being constantly trolled. I miss that, and spontaneous roleplay out in the world. I miss doing the Frozen Maw event and being able to see anything. I miss being able to do my favourite event in the game, opening the temple of Dwayna— now it is always open when I check, and there is no way to track when it is up. I miss doing temple runs and world boss trains. I miss knowing where the gathering nodes were. I miss being able to do guild missions without trouble. I miss running into my guildmates on maps. I miss the guildies that have stopped playing due to this update. I miss being able to waypoint where I wanted, without the majority of waypoints showing as contested at all times. I miss being able to tag events. I miss seeing events— with so many people everywhere, nothing is almost ever up.

I miss being able to play the game I used to play it; with my friends, without constant fear of harassment, roleplaying and catching our favourite events.

The silence from Anet disturbs me— not just the silence in the forums, but the way more maps have been rolled into the megaserver without announcement. It feels as if though they want to keep the change hidden, and it feels very irresponsible to keep rolling it out when there are so many bugs that needs fixing.

Now the entire game is on the megaserver, but I have not seen any of our concerns being addressed, or even acknowledged. Why fully roll out a system that is unable to do what it was advertised to do? We are not being grouped with our friends, party, guild or home server. Sometimes we end up in different maps even though all four of those requirements are being met.

Edit: I dislike seeing “kitten” used in place of the name of a horrific crime, so have a vague description. Anet, if you dislike seeing the name of the act on your forums to the point of blocking it out, why not start to finally take some action against those who use it in game to trigger, intimidate and harass others?

I haven’t really posted anything on these forums before but with the recent Megaserver implementation being so game breaking, I felt I have to chime in as well.

First off, I appreciate the effort the GW crew has put into this update. However, with so many new features they tried to jam in and experiment with, some things were bound to go wrong. And one such problem was forcing the Megaserver on everyone and all the changes that such a concept brought with it.

Now, the Megaserver did help a few select areas in the game, namely leveling and map completion. However, it, as many people have commented, it has destroyed server communities, wrecked traveling and waypointing, made guild mission organization impossible, made WvW and guild recruiting not only impossible but in some cases outright hostile, and made champ and event farming utterly annoying.

I used to marvel at how much there was to do in GW2 and how I felt that I could accomplish so much in a little span of time with the dailies and the boss events. I loved coming to my server’s aid on WvW calls. Now, for the first time in a long while, I just kind of logged on and sat there doing nothing. All major events were locked on perma-completion, major boss events every 15 min were zerged out. I cut down a few trees then logged out. There is actually less incentive to do anything now.

At any rate, the solution is simple. Make the Megaserver optional. If you want to map complete or explore a new area with more people, activate your megaserver. If you are new to the game, or want to help newbies, by all means active your megaserver. If you don’t have the population to do an event you want, jump to the megaserver. But in all other cases, you should just be able to stay in your home server or guest as a default option. In other words, the megaserver should be just like a optional overflow server.

I noticed that map completion is a bit easier because I don’t have to solo content sometimes meant for groups (a champion guarding a vista or skill point). But this doesn’t outweigh the cons.

Tagging mobs are a problem when one is isn’t at max level. My level 80s are perfectly fine but my lowbie engineer is a while different story.

Events are so full of people that monsters melt away in seconds, and this is with a full zerker guardian. I am getting at least 50% less bags from the centaur event with a staff! To make things worse, there were so many ppl at Golem last night that my boyfriend who was sitting across from me and on the same map was lagging badly and I got disconnected. I got back on but on a different map. So now I am playing with a while lot of strangers and not the people I want to play with.

Please bring back the old server system. I even like seeing the same old faces at the meta events. I will gladly solo group content for map completion and if I did to many times, I will either guest to another server or get a friend to help me.

Everyday when I came home from work, I would log in and and join the World Boss Train on my server. I would be on for a minimum of 3 hours a day, every day, and I loved it. Destroying LA (a level 80 area) and replacing it with a low level area makes it so much easier to check my stats.. The new Megaserver system and Boss timers has destroyed all fun that I used to have with the World Boss Train. All the money I spent on this game, my legendaries, my 13 toons, etc. are all now a waste. Thanks Anet for destroying everything I loved about this game. Shame on you for making any major changes like this without discussing it with the players that actually play this game.

An easy solution to all of these problems: Give us a list of megaservers we can join. Something with options such as (Home Server), Megaserver 1, Megaserver 2, ETC. That way if we feel the system didn’t put us in the right server, we can easily jump to another one.

Hail and hark!

I am Snow, a warrior from the Mists, who has come bearing grave news pertaining to the stability of the world itself!

There is trouble in the mists, and the different shards of reality are colliding! I have travelled the breadth of the lands, and it is clear. The mist invaders, those evil mockeries of ourselves, are everywhere and claiming everything as their own! These fiends that hesitated no moment to slit the throats of good men now take the guise of warriors that seek justice in the world. But be not fooled, fellow warriors, for these demons will still murder yourself eagerly if not for what meager security our numbers and presence of the dragon minions provides!

However, there remains hope! We must use the very nature of this strange occurrence against it! Unite under one banner for but a brief moment, demons and men alike, to cast the shards apart, and restore the uniqueness of each shard of reality, so that every man knows man and every beast knows beast!
If we do not do this, the Mist War itself will spread to the world, not in its form of glorious combat, but in the form of treacherous poisons and foul play. If this were to be allowed to happen, I see no end to the madness and misery. If you, brave warrior, thought that the controlled war was terrifying, then wait until the day comes when the war spreads to every inch of the land!

We must cast this evil back into the pit from whence it came. And we must do this, together!

Do this unthinkable deed once, and we can return to blissfully murdering each other without it having morale repercussions, and no longer need fear that our fellows in arms are actually snakes from another realm!

Combination NC.9813:

I miss doing the Frozen Maw event and being able to see anything. I miss being able to do my favourite event in the game, opening the temple of Dwayna— now it is always open when I check, and there is no way to track when it is up. I miss doing temple runs and world boss trains. I miss knowing where the gathering nodes were. I miss being able to do guild missions without trouble. I miss running into my guildmates on maps. I miss the guildies that have stopped playing due to this update. I miss being able to waypoint where I wanted, without the majority of waypoints showing as contested at all times. I miss being able to tag events. I miss seeing events— with so many people everywhere, nothing is almost ever up.

I miss being able to play the game I used to play it; with my friends, without constant fear of harassment, roleplaying and catching our favourite events.

This sums up how I feel about the game right now. There’s a lot that’s missing.
I used to run Orr harvest in the morning over coffee. Something fun to casually pass time for an hour before I kicked into work-mode for the rest of the day. That’s gone now. While running ML harvest I’d hear Malchor yelling “Dwayna” from across the map and be able to catch a temple at the same time. Then the world train would arrive and I could visit Maw, Caledon wurm, Behe, Melandru & such in succession for another hour of fun. That’s gone. I’d have to arrange my working schedule around Anet’s boss timers to do so and I obviously can’t. Guild missions are a farce if you need to group, disband, and regroup with others to join on instance, on a timer, in order to complete them. The map chat is vile. I happened to load my thief into Cursed Shore today and someone shouted for wizard at Arah. There was a commander led group doing Melandru on map. I went to help at Arah, knowing I’d need the tied-in trait on this char. Upon completion all there was on map chat and whispers from others spewing words like kitten, idiot, and other stuff that’s not worth bringing up. I gave up my 2nd legendary, sent all my stockpiled mats to a guildie to help them along on the legendary path and nearly at the point of uninstalling altogether, as there’s not much to do for me anymore aside from having conversations with my guildies at this point.

I’m just here wishing and hoping they can address some of these concerns the community has, restore the game to what it was, but it is alarming that there’s little to no response to it all. While we got dozens of threads and hundreds of posts on how the current system is broken, with more cons than pros, they just went ahead and made more maps Megaservered last night, with total disregard to the feedback given.

Jdawg.4257:

#downwiththemegaservers

This needs to trend, i’ll start

Alright, I’ve only just realized how toxic the community has become with the recent Megaserver change – the situation is bad enough to force me to come here and post my feedback (I don’t hang around much on the forums). First off – I’m from TC (N.A.).

While most of the areas are seemingly more populated with people from different servers, the immediate “trade-off” / observation by me is a spike in antisocial behavior. My guess is that these players were generally isolated to servers that players migrated out of, worse yet, the lack of accountability within a ‘fixed’ community will exacerbate their disregard for others’ playing experience.

There are many issues here, they are not new and were definitely covered by previous posters – but my opinion is that this is game breaking for myself:

I chose to play on a specific server because of its community, now that choice is nullified. I left another server because I found the player base there unfriendly, lo and behold, these people are now unleashed into my playing experience. Furthermore, the community and familiar faces I know have “gone missing” because of the system.

I have even more pity for people in EU having language differences, and from what I’ve heard, no, a language filter is not a FIX.

While we’re at this, I paid a handy (1,600?) gems to get into TC, will you refund this to me? You should refund EVERYONE who has done a server change and paid for it.

Edit: Like many others, I will be watching these forums closely for an official response on this and how they intend to go forward. Until then, I will not login to GW2 as a sign of protest.

Found the experience with the new system absolutely fantastic, doing events ive not done for a long time.

Just failed Tequatl. We haven’t failed Tequatl in months. But thanks to the megaserver, people don’t understand each other and it’s impossible to organize correctly.

Good job ArenaNet…

The mega server is quite a change. On the plus side I can just follow the zerg from boss to boss and knock those out quickly. I’m even doing Karka on a regular basis. I wonder how this affects the 3 worm and tequatel, I know before this you had to have the well organized group of people. Now you have a zerg running through these events. I’m sure its more difficult now. The amount of players though is crazy. I can only imagine how this affects people with mid to low range systems they must be having a tough time, not everyone can afford a middle high to high end system to play these things now.

Is there a reason the megaserver list has not been updated yet, despite every zone now being a megaserver?

My small 5 man guild is on SBI, and I have been very fortunate to be on a server with a great community. Until yesterday. I was unable to get into the same map with the people I have been gaming with since inception. I was put into a Lag infested cluster fudge with rude morons from a lot of different servers. Suffice it to say it was not fun at all. No community feeling AT ALL. What a slap in the face to the servers like SBI that was compromised of mature people having fun and working together for common goals. I had to switch maps to get on the same map with a Guild member.
At my age it is about community and interaction with others. The megaserver idea just wiped that from the game for me.
This should have been enabled for the low end servers that needed help doing the Teq and Wurm runs, or with very low populations, the established servers should have been left alone.

Yonline.8946:

At any rate, the solution is simple. Make the Megaserver optional. If you want to map complete or explore a new area with more people, activate your megaserver. If you are new to the game, or want to help newbies, by all means active your megaserver. If you don’t have the population to do an event you want, jump to the megaserver. But in all other cases, you should just be able to stay in your home server or guest as a default option. In other words, the megaserver should be just like a optional overflow server

If one person from each world chose to ‘stay on their home server’, there would be 16 (or whatever) NA maps instantly. And if the algorithm prioritizes putting people on the same map as their server-mates, we’d be right back where we were. So that can’t work.

I think the following are necessary now with the mega-server thing..

1) Temple defense should yield the same rewards as temple conquest (i.e. traits, chest, dragonite, karma, loot).

2) temple defense should happen much more frequently (like every 30 mins)

3) The world bosses should spawn more often… less down time between the bosses would help a bunch.

4) Guilds should be able to spawn a “story instance” for teq, worm, karka and guild missions. This instance should have no cost or pre-requisite and it should function like a clean overflow, i.e. groups can taxi players in. The rest of the map can be empty without resource nodes, it doesn’t matter.. Add one NPC that can spawn the event, regardless of time and as many times as the guild requires to get the kill. All chests should be daily, per character (with some per account).

With this the mega-server won’t be detrimental to the larger more coordinated aspects of the game. Personally I like the megaserver for leveling, its great. It only screwed up everything else.. my fun boss train slowed to a crawl and teq / worm is impossible to organize… and my temple runs are a disaster.

So many wall-of-text-posts o.O

Here is my short opinion: Megaserver sucks.

Can not play with my guild or my friends anymore because all the maps are full. Can not organize anything.

I hate the megaserver update, ever since it went live all I see in game is whining. I think it’s putting me in the whining server. That’s weird, because (current post aside) I don’t do a lot of whining. I think Anet needs to check its whining logarithms. I’d much rather play with people who enjoy the game.

I would suggest to Anet to not make huge sweeping changes like this that has such huge impacts without taking enough input.

I do not want to beta test whatever stupid gimmick you’re coming up with this week.

Why not make megaserver be an option? If you want to be merged with another map, change it in the settings. Otherwise you’re on your home server and can still guest from character select. No more overflows because when home server is fill you get sent to megaserver. (Megaserver is basically overflow anyway, but not having the word on your mini map might keep people from outright giving up on events. Overflows have such a negative stigma in the community.)

I miss my community. I’m tired of trolls.

HyruleanHyroe.1473:

I hate the megaserver update, ever since it went live all I see in game is whining. I think it’s putting me in the whining server. That’s weird, because (current post aside) I don’t do a lot of whining. I think Anet needs to check its whining logarithms. I’d much rather play with people who enjoy the game.

Whining : people complaining without giving the reason of their complaints nor suggestions to improve the situation.

AKA, the opposite of what we are doing here. However, you are actually whining about people complaining because a feature they loved in the game simply got completely removed, without even talking about how it is screwing half of the mechanics of the said game.

So, as I said earlier in another post, and if I may, the door is over there. If you have nothing to bring to the conversation besides “Omg bunch of whiners, me wants to be elsewhere”, please step through it and close it behind you. Thanks.

Did this boss time will change?

I’m comming back from work @ 7pm UK time and I’m missing “big” bosses like karka.

Nexxius.6017:

Step 1: Anet Announce mega servers.
Step 2: Players voice concerns that are legitimate to their style of play. RP/PVE/PVP/Commuity.
Step 3: Anet Claim this won’t be a problem and that match making is intelligent.
Step 4: Players ask for mega servers not to be in Cities and Boss areas.
Step 5: Anet decides to roll it out in quiet areas.
Step 6: Players test mega servers and voice concerns.
Step 7: Anet ignores all concern, problemss and requests up to this time and rolls it out anyway in boss areas in cities. Guilds can’t rally, RPers get trolled, Guild Bounties get griefed, community groups break down.
Possible Step 8: RPers go back to wow, aeon, FF and Rift to spend their money, PVEers move to ESO where the Mega Servers are done better.

‘’ PVEers move to ESO where the Mega Servers are done better’‘. I lol’ed, I don’t know if your post is sarcastic or not, anylonger.

nGumball.1283:

‘’ PVEers move to ESO where the Mega Servers are done better’‘. I lol’ed, I don’t know if your post is sarcastic or not, anylonger.

I agree though much of the problems that we have with the megaserver are mirrored in ESO as well, and that for better or for worse (mostly worse) was built with megaservers in mind, GW2 wasn’t.

As it stands, I’m considering quitting Guild Wars 2 over megaservers. I’m only on because I enjoy my guild, but ANet essentially destroyed 3/4 of what I enjoyed in this game in one go.

I’ll wait a few weeks just doing dailies and seeing if ANet gives us districts or fixes their kitten but right now this is just too much to deal with for me.

-Hurts guild missions
-Hurts temple zerg
-Hurts server relations (I feel like I’m in a perma-overflow, which is NOT good feeling).
-Hurts Teq/Wurm
-Hurts atmosphere in racial cities by overcrowding them and dropping my FPS to kitten in them (Rata Sum is now worse than Lion’s Arch ever was).
-Hurts WvW call for people
-Hurts ANY organized PvE event.
-Hurts WP costs, having to double WP a lot
-Hurts APIs : Can’t know when an event is going on. On map everything is blocked (WPs) so can’t know until you get there, wasting money.

The only thing that feels like “my server” at this point is WvW…woo. I don’t even feel like I’m fighting for my server anymore. I’m quoting one of the top commanders on our server saying that, that’s bad.

I came from GW1, played 8 years. I LIKED instanced content. I purposely stayed away from t1-2 servers because I hate the feeling of being in overcrowded place, even in an MMO. Now I’m forced into them. Amazing.

*EDIT : And I’d just like to point out how immensely disappointing that ANet’s “fix” for “all” of these issues is to mute people that have their clients set in a different language than me. WOW. On our server (NSP) we have a few guilds from Quebec. I’m sure quite a few people use french as their language even if they speak english. Now they are isolated from the world because they are perma-muted for no reason.

failed teq for the first time in 3 months. Tried to find another “overflow” because who are we kidding? It’s overflows just without a tag on the minimap to make you feel better. That overflow was failing equally well. Sure you can argue more people are attempting to kill teq. But does every map failing justify the old successes? For dead zones which have no need of organization of any sort I can see how this system is justified but its plain horrible. I couldn’t get into map with guild because the map was “full” and i got sent to some other overflow megaserver. Seems like game is quickly going downhill with rolling it out on all maps

Kurr.4179:

As it stands, I’m considering quitting Guild Wars 2 over megaservers.

-snip-

I’m in the same boat as you. the main thing that keeps me from quiting right now it the fact that i’m leader of a 400+ members guild and hope things can/will be fixed again.

We are lucky to be on a relative small server that does not care to much about WvW so we moved our server community events to one of the WvW maps. First time that we had a queue there since a long time, but its the only place were we can still meet up with our server community right now……

However it seems to me that something needs to be done and fast.

Revert back to the old system will probably never happen….

But at least make it so that we can do event together again without the need to taxi everyone to one map all the time.

For example have a system that when 40+ players from one server are on the same map (spread over x megaserver map copies) they all get a popup that their home server is now ready and they can move there if they want. In this way we could at least run things together again. To make teq and wurm possible an option could be added that when there are say 100 players representing the same guild on the same map, that they all get a similar popup but now that their guild map is ready, creating an empty map copy for organized guild runs of these bosses.

An other option could be to use commanders to keep moving groups together, by keeping squads together in a similar way as parties. Since squad is not used that often an other option could be to have the commander swap map first and then for 1-2 min have everyone who moves from his previous map to his new map end up on the same map copy as he is. Such a system could even try to place the commander on a map copy that has a lot of free space so all the players running with him would fit on that map.

Just some idea’s but something needs to be done….. if this keeps up pve communities will get a very hard time organizing anything fun as each and everytime its starts with TAXI!!!!

Rin of Rivvinda.4971:

Kurr.4179:

As it stands, I’m considering quitting Guild Wars 2 over megaservers.

-snip-

I’m in the same boat as you. the main thing that keeps me from quiting right now it the fact that i’m leader of a 400+ members guild and hope things can/will be fixed again.

We are lucky to be on a relative small server that does not care to much about WvW so we moved our server community events to one of the WvW maps. First time that we had a queue there since a long time, but its the only place were we can still meet up with our server community right now……

However it seems to me that something needs to be done and fast.

Revert back to the old system will probably never happen….

But at least make it so that we can do event together again without the need to taxi everyone to one map all the time.

For example have a system that when 40+ players from one server are on the same map (spread over x megaserver map copies) they all get a popup that their home server is now ready and they can move there if they want. In this way we could at least run things together again. To make teq and wurm possible an option could be added that when there are say 100 players representing the same guild on the same map, that they all get a similar popup but now that their guild map is ready, creating an empty map copy for organized guild runs of these bosses.

An other option could be to use commanders to keep moving groups together, by keeping squads together in a similar way as parties. Since squad is not used that often an other option could be to have the commander swap map first and then for 1-2 min have everyone who moves from his previous map to his new map end up on the same map copy as he is. Such a system could even try to place the commander on a map copy that has a lot of free space so all the players running with him would fit on that map.

Just some idea’s but something needs to be done….. if this keeps up pve communities will get a very hard time organizing anything fun as each and everytime its starts with TAXI!!!!

It’s just sad because even if they fix megaservers, they messed up a lot of things with this patch.

Trait changes are a complete joke for new players. NO one likes these changes, straight up. There are level 30 traits that require 100% map completion of frostgorge. Amazing. If you want to buy traits, it’s a ridiculous cost for new players. It’s a huge huge huge mess and it makes the game a lot worse until you hit level 80 and you now have to do a bunch of stuff you probably already did in other characters to unlock traits.

The PvP reward track cap (which they give no warning for) shoved tons of terrible players in solo/team arenas and essentially destroyed the existing pvp community. When a player tells you that you are useless in team arena because you’re using a level 2 character, you know there’s something wrong… They removed a ton of 8v8 hot joins and didn’t replace them so people have no choice but to go to arenas even if they wanted to only progress the cap limit a day!

I’m just completely disheartened by this patch. I was really looking forward to it, but the more I sit here and think about it the more I just want to uninstall the game.

3,197 hours played over the past 605 days – that’s how much time I’ve played Guild Wars 2. So that comes out to about an average of 5 hours per day since game launch. During this time I’ve never felt it necessary to express my concerns on the forums until now.

My complaints about the implementation of the megaserver pretty much mirrors everyone else’s in this thread. I wanted to add a couple more things to this discussion:

1. Deindividuation. In a 1976 study by Univ. of Illinois professor Edward Diener, Diener studied the connection between antisocial behavior and anonymity. For his experiment Diener and his team set-up an experiment at several homes during Halloween. Each house had two bowls, one containing candy, the other containing money. The experimenter greeted each trick or treater at the doorway, then said they had to attend to something and left the children at the doorway while going to a hidden room to see if a child would steal money. In order to test the impact of anonymity, some children were asked their names and addresses, while other times the researcher did not. The results: children who arrived at the door alone and were asked their identity stole the least, 7.5% of them stole. When children arrived in a group and were not asked their identity, 57.7% of them stole. While this relates to onine behavior in general (Penny Arcade famously stated, normal person + anonymity + audience = total jerk), but the Megaserver further exacerbates anonymity because players no longer have to worry about alienating their own server community – they are now just one name in the large and flucuating pool of players on a megaserver map. This is why we’re seeing an uptick in complaints of griefing and bigotry.

2. Change and listening to your players. At the 1995 Austin Game Conference there was a panel discussion entitled “MMO Rant”. The panel was moderated by former Sony Online VP Gordon Walton, and the panelists were Jessica Mulligan (former executive producer of Asheron’s Call), Brian Green (creator of Meridian 59), and Jeff Hickman (former executive producer for Dark Age of Camelot). On the topic of change, Hickman stated “As a player, it’s effecting me in the game I play right now. As a developer, I’ve done this and made core changes and probably didn’t achieve the goals I wanted to achieve. As I make these games, we attract a certain type of player. It’s because of the things we put in – the gameplay – for whatever reason, we see another game that’s cool, doing something better, or we want to change the billing process. For whatever reason, we make a change and it alienates people. The people playing right now. We go out and want those 3.5 million (players) from the people over there. Instead of sticking to what we love, we change it.”

Mulligan continued, “Jeff touched another one, changing after Launch. I’m guilty of this too, and have nerfed and wasted millions of player hours and have learned since then and haven’t done it in a long while. How many people had it done to them in WoW? I almost feel ashamed to say this, but you can’t ignore the community. The forums are an indicator (a vocal one) of where your game is going. But we’re scared to death of players. Who can blame us? We’ve seen you at conferences. We don’t meet the majority though, anywhere, and those are the people playing and having a great time, You can’t ignore the community and you have to find ways to communicate because they can be resources.”

This last quote is something that ArenaNet should really keep in mind. Hickman: “You should really communicate with your players. Take polls. Tell them what you want to do. If they say it sucks. Don’t do it.”

Kurr.4179:

As it stands, I’m considering quitting Guild Wars 2 over megaservers. I’m only on because I enjoy my guild, but ANet essentially destroyed 3/4 of what I enjoyed in this game in one go.

I’m in the same boat. There’s hardly anything I can do anymore of the things I enjoyed. Even logging just for dailies feels like a drag these days. My responsibilities to my guild are pretty much the only thing keeping me from uninstalling right now. And plenty I know have already left. GW2 in its current state is failing to serve its purpose, to provide entertainment through gaming, all it does is annoy its long-time playerbase. I really cannot see them gain new players at the cost of all the vets lost, plenty with deep pockets and frequent gemstore purchases.

kodacommander.5219:

3,197 hours played over the past 605 days – that’s how much time I’ve played Guild Wars 2. So that comes out to about an average of 5 hours per day since game launch. During this time I’ve never felt it necessary to express my concerns on the forums until now.

My complaints about the implementation of the megaserver pretty much mirrors everyone else’s in this thread. I wanted to add a couple more things to this discussion:

1. Deindividuation. In a 1976 study by Univ. of Illinois professor Edward Diener, Diener studied the connection between antisocial behavior and anonymity. For his experiment Diener and his team set-up an experiment at several homes during Halloween. Each house had two bowls, one containing candy, the other containing money. The experimenter greeted each trick or treater at the doorway, then said they had to attend to something and left the children at the doorway while going to a hidden room to see if a child would steal money. In order to test the impact of anonymity, some children were asked their names and addresses, while other times the researcher did not. The results: children who arrived at the door alone and were asked their identity stole the least, 7.5% of them stole. When children arrived in a group and were not asked their identity, 57.7% of them stole. While this relates to onine behavior in general (Penny Arcade famously stated, normal person + anonymity + audience = total jerk), but the Megaserver further exacerbates anonymity because players no longer have to worry about alienating their own server community – they are now just one name in the large and flucuating pool of players on a megaserver map. This is why we’re seeing an uptick in complaints of griefing and bigotry.

2. Change and listening to your players. At the 1995 Austin Game Conference there was a panel discussion entitled “MMO Rant”. The panel was moderated by former Sony Online VP Gordon Walton, and the panelists were Jessica Mulligan (former executive producer of Asheron’s Call), Brian Green (creator of Meridian 59), and Jeff Hickman (former executive producer for Dark Age of Camelot). On the topic of change, Hickman stated “As a player, it’s effecting me in the game I play right now. As a developer, I’ve done this and made core changes and probably didn’t achieve the goals I wanted to achieve. As I make these games, we attract a certain type of player. It’s because of the things we put in – the gameplay – for whatever reason, we see another game that’s cool, doing something better, or we want to change the billing process. For whatever reason, we make a change and it alienates people. The people playing right now. We go out and want those 3.5 million (players) from the people over there. Instead of sticking to what we love, we change it.”

Mulligan continued, “Jeff touched another one, changing after Launch. I’m guilty of this too, and have nerfed and wasted millions of player hours and have learned since then and haven’t done it in a long while. How many people had it done to them in WoW? I almost feel ashamed to say this, but you can’t ignore the community. The forums are an indicator (a vocal one) of where your game is going. But we’re scared to death of players. Who can blame us? We’ve seen you at conferences. We don’t meet the majority though, anywhere, and those are the people playing and having a great time, You can’t ignore the community and you have to find ways to communicate because they can be resources.”

This last quote is something that ArenaNet should really keep in mind. Hickman: “You should really communicate with your players. Take polls. Tell them what you want to do. If they say it sucks. Don’t do it.”

Honestly thank you. Thank you for posting quotes from other developers. I know it isn’t exact for what we are experiencing, but sources and quotes are always a good way to communicate. +1 for you good sir.

Kurr.4179:

As it stands, I’m considering quitting Guild Wars 2 over megaservers.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to quit GW2… I’ve been playing this since the beginning too… but I have to be honest… the megaserver change has been awful

Thanks, you destroyed this game à little more with this mega server.
Well done!

I think reverting the cities is a good compromise. No one needs help with a champ in The Grove.

Out in the world however, I’ve been enjoying every zone I’ve been to more with the mega server.

Megaserver maps, sometimes crashes when there’s a world event happening. For example Tequatl event. And just recently the dwayna event in malchors leap for me, my friends and other people on the map just crashed and our chest daily didn’t show up

Today, megaserver almost fried my PC, as it caused my GPU to overheat (106 Celcius according to my temperature monitor), due to zerg all around me… And on Wayfarer Foothills… And on LOW settings (i used to play on high)… Lately i avoid doing any world events / Champions, for that sole reason, but encountering such a serious problem on a starter zone? That’s simply absurd.

I had no problem with the Megaservers until today.

I play on Crystal Desert. I like it, I’ve been on here for over a year (Switched over from NSP), and the community has been pretty good. I like the server culture. And one thing I like is a lack of RPers. I know that Tarnished Coast was the unofficial RP server in most people’s minds, and I was more than happy to stay off the Tarnished Coast server whenever possible.

Now, with the Megaserver, there is no division. I am forced into a server with people who, in my mind, do nothing but spam the chat and make annoyances. To add insult to injury, ANet has apparently been too short sighted to consider this might be a problem. Blocking someone does nothing to stop their emotes, and you have to manually add someone to the block list via the friends panel if they are using nothing but emotes, as you can’t right click on an emoted name.

ANet, please address this. Either revert cities back to the way they were, or add the ability to block people who are using nothing but emotes.

misterducky.4876:

I had no problem with the Megaservers until today.

I play on Crystal Desert. I like it, I’ve been on here for over a year (Switched over from NSP), and the community has been pretty good. I like the server culture. And one thing I like is a lack of RPers. I know that Tarnished Coast was the unofficial RP server in most people’s minds, and I was more than happy to stay off the Tarnished Coast server whenever possible.

Now, with the Megaserver, there is no division. I am forced into a server with people who, in my mind, do nothing but spam the chat and make annoyances. To add insult to injury, ANet has apparently been too short sighted to consider this might be a problem. Blocking someone does nothing to stop their emotes, and you have to manually add someone to the block list via the friends panel if they are using nothing but emotes, as you can’t right click on an emoted name.

ANet, please address this. Either revert cities back to the way they were, or add the ability to block people who are using nothing but emotes.

You don’t say anything we haven’t suggested or cried over already. You hate RP, i love RP. We are two worlds who will never collide…….at least that’s what’s been happening until the megaserver. This server mashup isn’t healthy the way it is, and like you well said, we picked up a home world for a reason.

You can’t throw everything on the same salad and expect that it’ll be edible…

The mapchat has really become worse and worse, especially since the last zones (Cursed Shore, Sparkly Fen, Bloodtide Cost) got into the megaserver.

I really hope most of the players have a really good PC or are content to play on low settings low.
Had some overheating problems during some massive zergfights in wvw, or on tequatl in the past but fixed that quickly enough. Only had to turn down the graphics during said and in that case expected occations. Now since the patch i have it always on low.
Would need to get a better cooling system for this game.
May still not be worth it.

As for the ingame language filter, since i am a very friendly and helpful person that often plays the infoboard for new players, i now have to switch my client language from english to german and vice versa so often that i am astonished that my client did not crash from that yet. Plus i can only advice new players (and some old ones) to deactivate that “feature” if they are tolerant enough to accept the new circumstances and just overlook what they can´t read so they will still be able to read tips/answers from players that write in their language but use a different client.
You would be astonished how many that are.
The intolerant trolls will get reported and hopefully banned anyway (like pulling the warning signs of a chainsaw to not stop the chain with the hands and let the problem sort it self out á la Darwin Award).
I have no idea what Anet thought when they implemented that filter.

One question since i have not tested it yet, if someone has a different client language than me, can he/she still see a whispered answer even with the filter active?
If that would be the case i would just directly advise them to deactivate that kitten thing and would not be forced to change the client language all the time.

On a sidenote, since many players in europe are at least bilingual and prefer to play the game on an english client (like me for example), everytime i answer to someone in mapchat in a different language than english (mostly in german) and forget to change the client language i will still get sometimes some “rather rude” comments for that but at least not that many anymore. In other words that thing is (like predicted) not working as intended.
Please Anet, get rid of it. EU is not NA, something like that will never work here.
You can´t force players to only stick to one language and ignore to help out others because they are playing on an different client language.
Not to mention that this would be even more toxic for the community that is left.

P.s. i would rather quit the game that being forced to play with an german client, that one is just aweful.

For the longest time, the only reason I was still logging on to GW2 everyday was my Guild and the FA community.

Forcing your stupid MegaServer on to us in city’s is the dumbest thing you could have done.

First you break our community’s with your kittening free transfer kitten, now this.
Was it you’re plan all along to make us RQ or something?

Mega servers isn’t all bad tho, i can see the befits to. But PLEASE give us the option to play in our home servers, Especially in city’s and Gendaran Fields! ASAP!

I did not have the chance to play a lot with the new megaservers, but I can share the experience I’ve had sofar.

Positive:

- I actually enjoyed leveling up my character in the Orr region, events are being done and WP’s are actually being cleared! Link an event or a champion in the map chat and people actually show up to do it with you
- I actually met some really nice players in the maps. I did have the issue that sometimes I landed in a map where everyone was german, spanish or french, but with the language filter I can ignore those messages. Now I seem to run into a lot of English people aswell.

Negative:

- Waypoints. I don’t mind that every waypoint seems contested. But this does force me to Waypoint twice if I need to go into a map. First into the map, and then to the Waypoint I actually needed to go. I think I spend more silver on this than I ever did on repair costs!
- Organizing the guild missions is a pain! We usually only do 1 target to get everyone the personal rewards, but it takes 20 minutes alone to get our 80 people in the same map let alone kill an actual bounty :/ We also had members of our guild already running a guild puzzle on another megaserver with another guild while we were gathering everyone in another megaserver. And suddenly the puzzle is done…

(Seriously put the option to activate missions on location and accepting credit as an option to the abilities in the guild, or at least add them to the ‘activating guild missions’ one. Only leaders and those who get the ability, like officers, should be able to do this, not every single guild member)

For me personally the guild missions mean a lot so that was a huge letdown. I’d rather be alone in Orr again than trying to organize my guild missions this way

Edit: Trying to better the grammar a bit, not a native english speaker

I don’t know what the exact problem with the megaserver and the guild missions is, but I see the following occur:

The people of our guild (about 50 ppl) that took part in our guild missions were put in different maps. We then had to taxi all ppl to the same map. This was the case with all 3 missions, we started with bounty, then puzzle and then rush.

Some ppl couldn’t join us, in that map instance or failed to join us, and weren’t able to take part in our guild mission. Due to the megaserver the maps fill up faster which means a lot of guildies go into another server, but that server fills up too. So we had guildies walking around in several maps and not being able to join each other.

I’ve heard more guilds that had a lot of problems due to the megaservers and playing guild missions.

An option to fix this:
Enable the guild/squad leader to make a squad and then when the leader wp’s to the desired map the whole squad can go to that map, since the map reserves places for the entire squad, or something like that.

The megaserver is positive for normal play and exploration, but a huge disaster for guild missions. This makes a fun night frustrating for guilds.

thnx Mod

Quoting Kinsmir.5623 from the thread that was pointing out issues Megaboss communities are having with the Megaserver, but was brutally censored locked by moderators.

“Well, i already said +1 but i will repeat it again.
Today with the mega servers enabled on Bloodtide Coast made it even worse.
A lot of folks from [DV] got in the same instance with [Wurms] both trying to organize it on the same megaserver.
What caused for us ( [DV] ) to move everyone to empty overflows and caused a lot of people to miss out of our entire run and a lot of problems with people being unable to join.
It also caused for a lot of people of the german population getting mixed with us because they wanted to do a run with [Wurms] and their mega server/instance was full.
We ended doing our run in multiple language (english on teamspeak and german/france in map/local).
At this rate this community is going to down really fast if it stays as it is, because some people got already hostile about it.”
____________________________________________

This incident seriously hindered our attempt at the Triple Headed Wurm. Not to mention that there were people in the map asking for help with POI and skill points who we’re not doing the Wurm event, but were taking up precious map space.
And before you say “well, can’t the two guilds work together?”. No. Not in this case. [Wurms] is a German megaboss community and they organise their runs on TS on German. Which is perfectly fine, why shouldn’t they. That is why we had SERVERS FOR DIFFERENT LANGUAGES IN THE FIRST PLACE, RIGHT? But, without a firm server or an instance to go to for the raid, we all get mixed up in this cluster of overflows. Hopping to an emptier overflow and taxiing 150 people is not an easy task.
We had a great streak of attempts going that would enable a wider range of people to do the Wurm on different servers and not just camp for 1.5 hours on Deso or their right overflow. Megaserver just destroyed our efforts.

Please make the post-apocalypse LA a non-mega zone. This really hurts WvW centric servers in particular that like to have a per-reset hangout around the mist portals. Mega makes a lot of sense for the other sparsely populated cities, but there needs to be one that is non-mega.

I imagine this whole Megaserver experiment is going allot better on American servers then it is on European Servers. Although i did main a International server it was an International-English. I now end up finding myself with Germans and Spanish people who barely speak English (if any at all). Organising larget scaled events has become nearly impossible.

We failed several Guild Bounties because members would constantly be put in a different megaserver. And sometimes this junk would even happen if you where in the same PARTY!

The Megaserver did the exact opposite of what it was trying to do, on European servers annyway.

Also perhaps a less important note, but i miss seeing people that i used to recognise, the server turned from a small little pub, with people and faces you know to a big blaring disco where you know no one, cant understand some people and just feel awkward and out of place.

EDIT: some people mentioned above, that a good compremise could be to revert cities back to non-megaserver states. I’l agree with that comprimise because i doubt Anet is going to change their mind on Megaservers at all and instead they’ll put their fingers in their ears pretending they cant hear us untill we stop complaining, or leave.

Can’t say myself or anyone in my guild are appreciative of the mega server system. I don’t like being put into a map with people I don’t know or care about while my guild is spread across multiple overflows.

I miss the community that I actually transferred for.

No longer am I surrounded by friendly Tarnished Toasties…I load into any given map at any given time, and there is nothing but belligerent remarks and bickering going on. What the hell happened to the fun community I came to love? I transferred off my old server so I wouldn’t have to see kitten like this in map chat all the time.

Why even let us transfer if you were going to take the communities we chose away from us? This game isn’t even recognizable right now. Everything has been kittened to hell by the megaserver.

Nice try, but seriously, take it back. >.>

Maybe people gonna say I’m exagerating by saying that, but here’s my feeling now : I feel robbed and disrespected by Anet:

When I started this game, I chose Underworld as server coz some friends were there. Then arrived 1st WvW leagues and the fiasco on UW : many people left and community was deteriorating. We brang this issue and our concerns to Anet, but they did nothing about it (I don’t remember seeing an official answer to our concerns…)

Fair enough, I decide to change server. My only criteria was to find a nice community. I didn’t care about WvW, I just wanted above all a place where I’ll have fun : I joined Gunnar’s Hold and a great guild there. And this time, I actually spent real money for this transfer.

My other criterias were to be in a server not too crowded and not too empty ; and as French I wanted absolutly an international server, coz I hear and see French every day, so wanted some changes !
I’ve made lots of friends, found some old friends of mine, I loved to mess around with my guild as deadly flamethrowers quaggans…

Then megaserver arrived and I don’t feel like playing now. I log online and see a swarm of people, insults, french in mchat when I wanted to avoid it, no more guildies and friends around. And when I want to join them, our maps are fulls…
I chose GW2 above all for the community, and now it doesn’t mean anything.
Even the title of this game doesn’t make any sense now, since you can barely play with your guildies now !

Worst thing is that Anet doesn’t care : they even “ninja megaserved” the last maps (I don’t see any news in this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Megaserver-Rollout-Update/first#post3911271).
If they really care, we should already have a sort of survey in our mailbox to know our opinion about megaserver.

Megaserver could be good, for a fresh new game. Not after one year and half of community building and work in the different servers and guilds…

This thread is so huge, i can’t read it all to find out if this has been asked already but, my question is: how do i know on which server I am at any given time? is there option to find out that i’m unaware of?

For eg: i was doing karka queen today, thinking i was on my JQ server, only to find out i was in fact on SoR, at least that’s what the map chat was telling me. If there’s no way to tell currently that is something i would really like an option to know.