Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

Azhure.1857:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure what you want them to say.

• What they view as issues.
• What they’re currently working on.
• Where they intend to go.

They need not defend themselves. Just make a statement. I’m not expecting them to answer everyone’s individual questions/concerns. But they’re currently doing nothing to alleviate concerns given.

It’s still the same as what I said. They may not have yet decided what to do. It really is that simple.

There are 300 people working or Anet. It may simply be that they don’t know yet, because they’re tossing the ideas around. For one thing, they might not all agree. They might be arguing. We don’t know and they’re certainly not going to tell us that.

This is a big game. It has a lot going on. The mega server is one part of it, but there’s still other stuff. So it goes in a queue like everything else. Game development really is a slow business.

Anet made a decision, rightly or wrongly, that this would be better for the game, even with the problems. I’m still convinced people who value server community are a minority, perhaps a vast minority. Anet is much more concerned with new people coming in during sales, playing for two days, seeing no one in zones and leaving. People play MMOs to see other people…at least many do. That problem had to be solved, or there might not eventually be a game. That’s my theory on why it was done as quickly as it was done.

Then the complaints start. Some like the RPers, represent another minority. All the concerns here are legitimate. It’s not that they’re not. But Anet may look at the percentage of people that RP and they might think…well, I’m sorry they’re hurt, but we had to do this. But again, what do they say. They can’t say we hear you and we’re working on your concerns if they’re not. They’re also not going to say we’re not, because there’s no way to phrase it that doesn’t make them sound like they don’t care. They may care and still not be able to do much about it. Keep in mind this is still all during the China launch, the living story season 1 launch, other stuff is going on.

And let’s say they did decide what to do. Maybe it will work maybe it won’t. If they say something and find it doesn’t work when they test it, now they’re lying to us. Any time they say anything that doesn’t come to pass people call them liars.

It’s entirely possible that things are being discussed and attempted that they can’t talk about for any or all of the reasons above, or even other reasons I don’t know about.

People who assume a two month silence is a long time in development, mostly likely haven’t been in development.

And I still think there are a ton of people who really love the megaserver. I think this is the best change they’ve made to the game since launch.

its not just RP, its guild issues, dynamic event megaserver mismatches, hard boss schedules, broken waypoint systems, language barriers, no meaning for servers any more and no vision for their identity.

the amount of problems it introduced, or highlighted is huge, and they havent said anything on any front.

like i have said before, its not that megaservers are horrible, its that they broke many systems, and what they put in place to handle it is weak at best, and defies the general design of the whole rest of the game.
I mean core issues
guilds
WvW
dynamic events

thats 3 huge things it all negatively impacted.

What is so hard to make at least one map like Lion’s Arch a non-mega server map? mega servers has destroyed my community, my guild, and wvw too. I miss saying “good morning DR!” but now I can’t even go and see familiar faces outside wvw. I still go to wvw and even that has its issues that anet hasn’t even tried to fix.

Edit: is it so freaken hard to add a district system?!

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Azhure.1857:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure what you want them to say.

• What they view as issues.
• What they’re currently working on.
• Where they intend to go.

They need not defend themselves. Just make a statement. I’m not expecting them to answer everyone’s individual questions/concerns. But they’re currently doing nothing to alleviate concerns given.

It’s still the same as what I said. They may not have yet decided what to do. It really is that simple.

There are 300 people working or Anet. It may simply be that they don’t know yet, because they’re tossing the ideas around. For one thing, they might not all agree. They might be arguing. We don’t know and they’re certainly not going to tell us that.

This is a big game. It has a lot going on. The mega server is one part of it, but there’s still other stuff. So it goes in a queue like everything else. Game development really is a slow business.

Anet made a decision, rightly or wrongly, that this would be better for the game, even with the problems. I’m still convinced people who value server community are a minority, perhaps a vast minority. Anet is much more concerned with new people coming in during sales, playing for two days, seeing no one in zones and leaving. People play MMOs to see other people…at least many do. That problem had to be solved, or there might not eventually be a game. That’s my theory on why it was done as quickly as it was done.

Then the complaints start. Some like the RPers, represent another minority. All the concerns here are legitimate. It’s not that they’re not. But Anet may look at the percentage of people that RP and they might think…well, I’m sorry they’re hurt, but we had to do this. But again, what do they say. They can’t say we hear you and we’re working on your concerns if they’re not. They’re also not going to say we’re not, because there’s no way to phrase it that doesn’t make them sound like they don’t care. They may care and still not be able to do much about it. Keep in mind this is still all during the China launch, the living story season 1 launch, other stuff is going on.

And let’s say they did decide what to do. Maybe it will work maybe it won’t. If they say something and find it doesn’t work when they test it, now they’re lying to us. Any time they say anything that doesn’t come to pass people call them liars.

It’s entirely possible that things are being discussed and attempted that they can’t talk about for any or all of the reasons above, or even other reasons I don’t know about.

People who assume a two month silence is a long time in development, mostly likely haven’t been in development.

And I still think there are a ton of people who really love the megaserver. I think this is the best change they’ve made to the game since launch.

its not just RP, its guild issues, dynamic event megaserver mismatches, hard boss schedules, broken waypoint systems, language barriers, no meaning for servers any more and no vision for their identity.

the amount of problems it introduced, or highlighted is huge, and they havent said anything on any front.

like i have said before, its not that megaservers are horrible, its that they broke many systems, and what they put in place to handle it is weak at best, and defies the general design of the whole rest of the game.
I mean core issues
guilds
WvW
dynamic events

thats 3 huge things it all negatively impacted.

Okay, it hasn’t disrupted my guild. So you can’t just say it’s disrupted guilds with a capital G. It may well have negatively impacted your guild. I don’t seem to have the problems you do. Maybe it’s not as big a guild.

WvW may be affected but not as much as people are saying. I’m in a Tier 1 server and most of the people who jump into WvW to help out when things are tight are in WvW guilds anyway. That’s how they get their info if help is needed.

Your right it has impacted dynamic events. There are 1500 event in this game and maybe 30 are affected negatively and even that is an opinion. that means 1470 aren’t affected negatively and are often affected positively.

I play this game as much as anyone and I do not have the same problems with the megaserver that some people outline. I have some. But for me at least, the game has improved vastly. I’m not alone in this.

So the question becomes how many people are disadvantaged compared to the people who are advantaged. How many people had server pride in the first place.

I’m STILL thinking far more people are advantaged by this system and disadvantaged.

I mean for every person who says the meta events are worse, I know someone who’s happy that the bosses go down fast so they can do other stuff.

And yes, Anet did change the schedule of those events based on player feedback, so even then, they show they’re listening.

Vayne.8563:

Okay, it hasn’t disrupted my guild. So you can’t just say it’s disrupted guilds with a capital G. It may well have negatively impacted your guild. I don’t seem to have the problems you do. Maybe it’s not as big a guild.

WvW may be affected but not as much as people are saying. I’m in a Tier 1 server and most of the people who jump into WvW to help out when things are tight are in WvW guilds anyway. That’s how they get their info if help is needed.

Your right it has impacted dynamic events. There are 1500 event in this game and maybe 30 are affected negatively and even that is an opinion. that means 1470 aren’t affected negatively and are often affected positively.

I play this game as much as anyone and I do not have the same problems with the megaserver that some people outline. I have some. But for me at least, the game has improved vastly. I’m not alone in this.

So the question becomes how many people are disadvantaged compared to the people who are advantaged. How many people had server pride in the first place.

I’m STILL thinking far more people are advantaged by this system and disadvantaged.

I mean for every person who says the meta events are worse, I know someone who’s happy that the bosses go down fast so they can do other stuff.

And yes, Anet did change the schedule of those events based on player feedback, so even then, they show they’re listening.

Well I don’t know how you can possibly think any of that… I find the effect almost completely negative…. almost all events are affected (not the 30 you suggest)… there are too many people doing just about everything.

Guild activities are horribly negatively affected… the only thing that is helped is guild members on different servers… although they still need to guest to get credit. (I have heard this is a bug but it has been like this since mega-servers were introduced)

I am on a tier 1 WvW server and it is impossible to get help from the server anymore if needed (although I don’t really do that very often). Map chat is much much worse now and I miss so much from Tarnished Coast…. I rarely see people I know… I get split from party members who are in the same: Party, Server, Friends, Guild… and we still get split up.

The Europeans seem to have it even worse with the language mash up… that is just unbelievable…. not sure what I would do if I was thrown into a map with people speaking a half a dozen different languages… but it does not sound at all fun.

I have yet to hear a person say they are happy the boss goes down faster…. mainly because they don’t. They scale up so the bosses don’t go down faster… the mobs do though and makes it increasingly hard to get credit for events when things just melt away instantly.

Not sure what event schedule changes you are talking about, but I liked things better when events were semi-random… made the world feel more realistic…. It did cause issues with overflows… but megas have their own problems…. it used to be you’d end up in an overflow and the event wasn’t happening… now you start the event… crash and when you log back in your are in a different mega and it is over. Or due to the rigid schedule you never are able to do certain events.

Please explain what the positives are that you are seeing… because everywhere I see a slight positive about mega servers I see 10x as many negatives. You are just saying you don’t see the issues we are all pointing out… which… while I don’t understand how that is possible, if that is true great… but you fail to point out what these positives are that we are benefiting from.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Please explain what the positives are that you are seeing… because everywhere I see a slight positive about mega servers I see 10x as many negatives. You are just saying you don’t see the issues we are all pointing out… which… while I don’t understand how that is possible, if that is true great… but you fail to point out what these positives are that we are benefiting from.

I’m on Tarnished Coast too. In the old days, we used to go to our server on Guild mission nights and some times some of us would end up on overflows anyway because we do guild missions prime time and sometimes big guilds were on servers we were on for missions. We’ve always had to find ways to get to the same server. What’s going on now is nothing new for us. During the Marionette fight, we couldn’t get into the home server for days at a time. People would be spamming to get in. Maybe one guildie would make it and we’d sit there and spam to get in. Maybe you don’t remember this, but I remember how frustrating it is. It’s not any different for us now.

But, in the old days I used to run around the world and in some zones there were just not enough people. I’d do events by myself. I love playing in the open world, and I felt like I was alone. NPCs are nice, but people are nicer.

So the other day, when I was at an event that people didn’t usually do in Field of Ruins and I went down, out of nowhere, someone near by picked me up. Just today I was doing a champion Wurm, and I went down and again, someone appeared to help. That didn’t always or even usually happen in the old days.

The world is alive and buzzing.

And I guess you’re not around at prime time, because the maw and the fire ele go down so amazingly fast it’s not funny. So does the wurm. The fights are pretty fast.

The redid the Shatterer so it doesnt’ go as fast, but that’s not the megaserver causing that it’s the redone fight.

People play MMOs to be with people. It doesn’t always matter what server. I like seeing people around. A lot of people do. This is an MMO. Seeing people around is your bread and butter.

So my situation with joining people on other servers hasn’t substantially changed since before the mega server, but my experience roaming the open world certainly changed.

This is particularly true if you’re not on one of the big servers, or if you play at off hours, which I often do, since I’m in Australia.

There’s a whole world of people out there who play at off hours and don’t see enough people to do stuff.

Shrugs. I was actually on the verge of taking a break from the game before the mega servers came out. The megaservers revitalized my interest in the game.

Dude just because your time zone sucks now the rest of the players are all suffering -_-

However, before long ago the megaservers, players suggested an underflow system, like the old overflow one. Instead of creating new maps when a map is full, it is suggested servers that have less than x many players in a map y should be merged into the same map at that moment. Of course suggestions were more detailed (and i didn’t remember most of them), but all of the offered ones were better than megacrap (at the worst case scenario, underflow system could be equally bad as megacrap =))

Phoenixlin.8624:

Dude just because your time zone sucks now the rest of the players are all suffering -_-

However, before long ago the megaservers, players suggested an underflow system, like the old overflow one. Instead of creating new maps when a map is full, it is suggested servers that have less than x many players in a map y should be merged into the same map at that moment. Of course suggestions were more detailed (and i didn’t remember most of them), but all of the offered ones were better than megacrap (at the worst case scenario, underflow system could be equally bad as megacrap =))

My time zone sucks. And everyone in Australia and New Zealand and Asia. And everyone in the US with a night job. Or who has insomnia. Or who plays early morning before work. And people on low pop servers, who didn’t even know about guesting.

And all the new players who buy the game on sale and play and don’t see anyone in mid level zones and leave.

Unless you think Anet made this decision for me and me alone and no one else. I’m pretty sure you don’t think that.

Asia (at least China) has its own servers now. Rest of the Asia is not my concern; however, if your country’s or continent’s time zone sucks, you could choose a server as your unofficial home (like Russians selected Blacktide at the very beginning of the release) to increase your probability to find your kind of players. And why should I think about everyone with a night job or has insomnia.

For your low pop server reference:

Hamfast.8719:

When I created my account, I specifically picked a server with a lower population because I just plain PREFER a less crowded world. I don’t do WvW, and less crowding = less lag on my less-than-stellar Internet connection.

Now I don’t have any choice. Even in towns, which have more reason to NOT be part of the MegaServer. I have had to turn off Player Names because it’s just too crowded to see the Bank NPCs behind all the text. And I rarely attend World Boss fights anymore due to excessive lag. Framerates get all choppy, and I freeze up sometimes to the point of getting disconnected.

How about adding a Micro Server for those of us who don’t care to live in New York, and would rather move out to a farm in Hooterville?

So basically, “everyone in the low populated servers want megaserver” argument falls short.

And for new player part, I already said what is needed to be. Anet alienated most of its old, loyal players to attract new players. Also, many mid level zones are still empty as long as there is no world boss alive at that time.

It was just a joke of course they didn’t implement megaservers just for you. It is originally implement for higher-ups that wanna bath in money by decreasing the server cost, alienating the old players (negative gem sales), attracting new players (box sales+gem sales).

Phoenixlin.8624:

Asia (at least China) has its own servers now. Rest of the Asia is not my concern; however, if your country’s or continent’s time zone sucks, you could choose a server as your unofficial home (like Russians selected Blacktide at the very beginning of the release) to increase your probability to find your kind of players. And why should I think about everyone with a night job or has insomnia.

For your low pop server reference:

Hamfast.8719:

When I created my account, I specifically picked a server with a lower population because I just plain PREFER a less crowded world. I don’t do WvW, and less crowding = less lag on my less-than-stellar Internet connection.

Now I don’t have any choice. Even in towns, which have more reason to NOT be part of the MegaServer. I have had to turn off Player Names because it’s just too crowded to see the Bank NPCs behind all the text. And I rarely attend World Boss fights anymore due to excessive lag. Framerates get all choppy, and I freeze up sometimes to the point of getting disconnected.

How about adding a Micro Server for those of us who don’t care to live in New York, and would rather move out to a farm in Hooterville?

So basically, “everyone in the low populated servers want megaserver” argument falls short.

And for new player part, I already said what is needed to be. Anet alienated most of its old, loyal players to attract new players. Also, many mid level zones are still empty as long as there is no world boss alive at that time.

It was just a joke of course they didn’t implement megaservers just for you. It is originally implement for higher-ups that wanna bath in money by decreasing the server cost, alienating the old players (negative gem sales), attracting new players (box sales+gem sales).

Right no one likes the mega server. Except that most of my guild likes it and most of my guild plays US time and I’m often awake and playing with them in their evening, my morning.

What you’re really saying is you’re inconvenienced, so everyone else must be. It’s not true. It’s not even close to true.

Yes, there are a percentage of people playing the game who don’t like it. There are a percentage of people playing the game who do like it. You don’t know any more than I do which percentage is higher, but I can tell you this much.

Anet didn’t do it just to do it. There are reasons to make that kind of change. Just don’t assume you’re part of some majority. You might not be.

Vayne.8563:

edited for space

Just because this isnt specifically effecting you, doesnt mean the effects are not huge, most of these problems occur at a basic design mismatch level. Which means although the daily problems may not be every day, the design problems are huge and require big solutions to fit in the rest of the game.

i ll list some.

Guilds:

• now the system makes people with different servers as likely or more likely to interact with other servers, and yet, server chapters have a host of hidden effects, like seperate influence tracks, guild banks, claim credit. The mismatch is, if we play together, how come we cant be in a guild together without a bunch of weird rules
• megaservers make it harder to gather your guild on the same maps, the difficulty increases greatly the more people you have. The very design of current implementation of megaservers means you will have more difficulty on average getting 15 people or more in the same place, unless you were on a crowded server that was often in overflow before the change (this was rare for most servers, outside of special events)

dynamic events

• Megaservers have a huge impact on the present and future of dynamic events,
• megaserver essentially makes it difficult to know when event is going on, or have shared experiences with anyone outside your current map. This effects every event, it means that it is harder to help/get help. Your friend can no longer tell you whats going on in a map. etc.
  • megaserver limits the scope of any dynamic event based changes, to only one map. This is huge for the possible futures of dynamic events, it means you will never see any mechanics where what happens on one map can effect another map.
  • megaserver limits the design principle of large events, making it so boss schedules (the opposite of dynamic) are the simplest solution to getting people do events together, this is because it is improbable with the new system, that players could organize to take on events since they would often end up in different instances, and would have no idea what is going on on any map until they get there.
  • megaserver means the world is no longer a dynamic place based on what players have done, every instance is different, and you can end up in any instance at any time.

• megaserver design goes against the dynamic event chain to large super event dynamic. This effects the smaller chains that are supposed to lead up to the big events, and makes it so design wise its generally best to place these events as their own thing. This detracts from the specific map narratives, and detracts from the large events themselves.

Server Identity

• megaservers kill the idenity of a server, servers now mean nothing of import.
  • the people on your server, you may see or you may not see
  • server specific events are virtually impossible to organize
  • any new player now, has no connection to his server at all in pve.
  • what is the point of a server now? i really cant think of any

WvW

• the biggest effect on WvW is the destruction of server identity, this cannot be understated, Now in PVE you see people who would normally be your enemies, your friends you leveled with are sometimes your foes, The very concept of my server, means so little, how can they make it seem to matter in WvW? Without server identity, it becomes very hard to have a war versus some other server that you feel invested in.
• recruiting and communciation

languages
all of these flaws are compounded by language differences, megaserver in general adds a layer of complexity, and unpredictability as to who you are grouped with, and what is happening in any particular map instance, as well as putting more players in every map, this makes communication even MORE necessary to solve these issues, and yet, communication is a lot more difficult with the systems in place.

I get you like having people around, and i see the strength, but the fact is megaservers essentially work against many core systems, and while im not saying you cant come up with solutions, we have no idea, anything really, they essentially blew the core of the game up, and they havent told us what was intentional, what was not, what will change what will not.

The very future of the game at a core level is in a state of flux with no known direction. Yeah you see more people on the map but
how will you play with your friends?
How will the world ever have any shared permanence again?
How will WvW be effected by death of server identity?
What type of large scale dynamic events can you expect in the future?
How will this effect map narratives?
What does a “guild” mean now?
What is the purpose of a server?

We have no idea how they will answer these questions, and thus no idea if the game is still one that will appeal to the type of gamer that we are. To further this, they have told us nothing, so you dont even know if you are wasting your time playing a game that will no longer appeal to you.

right now, we essentially have no idea what type of game GW2 is anymore, or what their primary goals are. Thats probably why a lot of people left, not necessarily that everything was horrible, but they really have no idea if the game will be something that works for them, and anet isnt saying much about these major effects.

To Vayne (while I was typing phys’ posts came =)):

Can you just stop counting the kitten kittening players who like or not? Can you just stop relying on your own environment for once?

Obviously, you can’t come up with better arguments to what we said as broken. Your only argument is “me and my social circle likes it. I can count x many players that like it too. So it is good”.

Stop counting the thumbs up and downs. Megaservers broke every little thing I like about this game. We discussed it in 45 pages in this kitten topic. And your small environment that you are relying does not make problems disappear.

Cheezus! I asked to lordkrall to stop white knighting and let others to get experience. I wish I had wanted world peace instead!

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

edited for space

Just because this isnt specifically effecting you, doesnt mean the effects are not huge, most of these problems occur at a basic design mismatch level. Which means although the daily problems may not be every day, the design problems are huge and require big solutions to fit in the rest of the game.

i ll list some.

Guilds:

• now the system makes people with different servers as likely or more likely to interact with other servers, and yet, server chapters have a host of hidden effects, like seperate influence tracks, guild banks, claim credit. The mismatch is, if we play together, how come we cant be in a guild together without a bunch of weird rules
• megaservers make it harder to gather your guild on the same maps, the difficulty increases greatly the more people you have. The very design of current implementation of megaservers means you will have more difficulty on average getting 15 people or more in the same place, unless you were on a crowded server that was often in overflow before the change (this was rare for most servers, outside of special events)
  dynamic events
• Megaservers have a huge impact on the present and future of dynamic events,
• megaserver essentially makes it difficult to know when event is going on, or have shared experiences with anyone outside your current map. This effects every event, it means that it is harder to help/get help. Your friend can no longer tell you whats going on in a map. etc.
  • megaserver limits the scope of any dynamic event based changes, to only one map. This is huge for the possible futures of dynamic events, it means you will never see any mechanics where what happens on one map can effect another map.
  • megaserver limits the design principle of large events, making it so boss schedules (the opposite of dynamic) are the simplest solution to getting people do events together, this is because it is improbable with the new system, that players could organize to take on events since they would often end up in different instances, and would have no idea what is going on on any map until they get there.
  • megaserver means the world is no longer a dynamic place based on what players have done, every instance is different, and you can end up in any instance at any time.

• megaserver design goes against the dynamic event chain to large super event dynamic. This effects the smaller chains that are supposed to lead up to the big events, and makes it so design wise its generally best to place these events as their own thing. This detracts from the specific map narratives, and detracts from the large events themselves.

Server Identity

• megaservers kill the idenity of a server, servers now mean nothing of import.
  • the people on your server, you may see or you may not see
  • server specific events are virtually impossible to organize
  • any new player now, has no connection to his server at all in pve.
  • what is the point of a server now? i really cant think of any

WvW

• the biggest effect on WvW is the destruction of server identity, this cannot be understated, Now in PVE you see people who would normally be your enemies, your friends you leveled with are sometimes your foes, The very concept of my server, means so little, how can they make it seem to matter in WvW? Without server identity, it becomes very hard to have a war versus some other server that you feel invested in.
• recruiting and communciation

languages
all of these flaws are compounded by language differences, megaserver in general adds a layer of complexity, and unpredictability as to who you are grouped with, and what is happening in any particular map instance, as well as putting more players in every map, this makes communication even MORE necessary to solve these issues, and yet, communication is a lot more difficult with the systems in place.

Just about everything you’ve said can be seen from a different angle. For example, as someone on TC, I’m on a server people guested to all the time, so I was always running into people from other servers even before the mega server.

Some of the people expressed annoyance at feeling they had to guest. Like they couldn’t stay on their server. Like their server somehow wasn’t good enough.

I’m not going to sit and argue with you point by point, because it’s 1:18 am and even I sleep sometimes.

But I will say this. Virtually everything you said is from a specific point of view and changing that point of view changes the truth of it, as I just illustrated above.

and i dont consider myself a majority, i merely say there are a signifigant number of people effected. I base more of what i say on things i can logically, or reasonably discern. The inconsistencies in how well the megaserver design fits/limits other systems.

as for majority? i dont know, but i do know a signifigant number of communities, and people will feel the effects, and even if a group is not a majority on its own, you dont help yourself out by alienating large groups of people when you dont have to. The best solutions dont just cater to the top 51% and alienate 20% here, 10% here, 5% here. The best solutions try not to be divisive, you make descions that some like, and some feel neutral about, and a few may actively dislike. You dont want to make solutions that alienate people if you can avoid it.

Vayne.8563:

Just about everything you’ve said can be seen from a different angle. For example, as someone on TC, I’m on a server people guested to all the time, so I was always running into people from other servers even before the mega server.

Some of the people expressed annoyance at feeling they had to guest. Like they couldn’t stay on their server. Like their server somehow wasn’t good enough.

I’m not going to sit and argue with you point by point, because it’s 1:18 am and even I sleep sometimes.

But I will say this. Virtually everything you said is from a specific point of view and changing that point of view changes the truth of it, as I just illustrated above.

you talk about majority, but you realize that TC experience was the exception not the rule right?
also people complained about having to guest, so the solution is to destroy the server?

that aside,

My points arent about what side you are on, they are about design mistmatches between systems. It basically means these megaserver design is currently working against a number of other elements basic design. In this case its not so much what side your on, its more like ok, are we throwing away these design idealogies? or are we going to try to meld the two different ideaologies more. As far as we have heard from anet, we have no idea which is the case on any of these issues.

phys.7689:

and i dont consider myself a majority, i merely say there are a signifigant number of people effected. I base more of what i say on things i can logically, or reasonably discern. The inconsistencies in how well the megaserver design fits/limits other systems.

as for majority? i dont know, but i do know a signifigant number of communities, and people will feel the effects, and even if a group is not a majority on its own, you dont help yourself out by alienating large groups of people when you dont have to. The best solutions dont just cater to the top 51% and alienate 20% here, 10% here, 5% here. The best solutions try not to be divisive, you make descions that some like, and some feel neutral about, and a few may actively dislike. You dont want to make solutions that alienate people if you can avoid it.

Which begs the question: How urgent was it to get the megaserver up and going? I can’t imagine the newly released S2 content being all that hindered without it. I can see someone being bummed that they “picked” a server that wasn’t all that active but that could’ve been helped by having more accurate player counts (having everything say “high” didn’t help), and the concern was mostly invalidated with guesting. Provided that the scaling systems are actually working, player count shouldn’t be an issue in the open-world ever, or rather it shouldn’t be a concern.

I still find it incredibly interesting how much both the mega server and new trait progression limit player choice.

Smith.1826:

phys.7689:

and i dont consider myself a majority, i merely say there are a signifigant number of people effected. I base more of what i say on things i can logically, or reasonably discern. The inconsistencies in how well the megaserver design fits/limits other systems.

as for majority? i dont know, but i do know a signifigant number of communities, and people will feel the effects, and even if a group is not a majority on its own, you dont help yourself out by alienating large groups of people when you dont have to. The best solutions dont just cater to the top 51% and alienate 20% here, 10% here, 5% here. The best solutions try not to be divisive, you make descions that some like, and some feel neutral about, and a few may actively dislike. You dont want to make solutions that alienate people if you can avoid it.

Which begs the question: How urgent was it to get the megaserver up and going? I can’t imagine the newly released S2 content being all that hindered without it. I can see someone being bummed that they “picked” a server that wasn’t all that active but that could’ve been helped by having more accurate player counts (having everything say “high” didn’t help), and the concern was mostly invalidated with guesting. Provided that the scaling systems are actually working, player count shouldn’t be an issue in the open-world ever, or rather it shouldn’t be a concern.

I still find it incredibly interesting how much both the mega server and new trait progression limit player choice.

to honestly answer this question?
imo, the most likely answer is that they wanted to have these systems in place before they launched in china, because although they hadnt hammered them out, they thought these type of changes would best if players never experienced the previous systems.

Therefore they rushed them because they needed them in place, and wanted to have them tested by china release.

phys.7689:

Smith.1826:

phys.7689:

and i dont consider myself a majority, i merely say there are a signifigant number of people effected. I base more of what i say on things i can logically, or reasonably discern. The inconsistencies in how well the megaserver design fits/limits other systems.

as for majority? i dont know, but i do know a signifigant number of communities, and people will feel the effects, and even if a group is not a majority on its own, you dont help yourself out by alienating large groups of people when you dont have to. The best solutions dont just cater to the top 51% and alienate 20% here, 10% here, 5% here. The best solutions try not to be divisive, you make descions that some like, and some feel neutral about, and a few may actively dislike. You dont want to make solutions that alienate people if you can avoid it.

Which begs the question: How urgent was it to get the megaserver up and going? I can’t imagine the newly released S2 content being all that hindered without it. I can see someone being bummed that they “picked” a server that wasn’t all that active but that could’ve been helped by having more accurate player counts (having everything say “high” didn’t help), and the concern was mostly invalidated with guesting. Provided that the scaling systems are actually working, player count shouldn’t be an issue in the open-world ever, or rather it shouldn’t be a concern.

I still find it incredibly interesting how much both the mega server and new trait progression limit player choice.

to honestly answer this question?
imo, the most likely answer is that they wanted to have these systems in place before they launched in china, because although they hadnt hammered them out, they thought these type of changes would best if players never experienced the previous systems.

Therefore they rushed them because they needed them in place, and wanted to have them tested by china release.

Yeah that’s pretty much how I feel. Dont get me wrong, they’re both solid concepts and I can see how the megaserver and new trait progression can provide more gameplay to some players. Its a given that most new ideas all have their pros and cons, but in these two cases I can imagine many of those cons being stamped out due to a more thorough and steady implementation.

Sure, the “majority” can be happy, but like you said it’s about making everyone happy. While it’s naive to literally expect everyone to be happy, there are a handful of things they can change to help.

Smith.1826:

phys.7689:

Smith.1826:

phys.7689:

and i dont consider myself a majority, i merely say there are a signifigant number of people effected. I base more of what i say on things i can logically, or reasonably discern. The inconsistencies in how well the megaserver design fits/limits other systems.

as for majority? i dont know, but i do know a signifigant number of communities, and people will feel the effects, and even if a group is not a majority on its own, you dont help yourself out by alienating large groups of people when you dont have to. The best solutions dont just cater to the top 51% and alienate 20% here, 10% here, 5% here. The best solutions try not to be divisive, you make descions that some like, and some feel neutral about, and a few may actively dislike. You dont want to make solutions that alienate people if you can avoid it.

Which begs the question: How urgent was it to get the megaserver up and going? I can’t imagine the newly released S2 content being all that hindered without it. I can see someone being bummed that they “picked” a server that wasn’t all that active but that could’ve been helped by having more accurate player counts (having everything say “high” didn’t help), and the concern was mostly invalidated with guesting. Provided that the scaling systems are actually working, player count shouldn’t be an issue in the open-world ever, or rather it shouldn’t be a concern.

I still find it incredibly interesting how much both the mega server and new trait progression limit player choice.

to honestly answer this question?
imo, the most likely answer is that they wanted to have these systems in place before they launched in china, because although they hadnt hammered them out, they thought these type of changes would best if players never experienced the previous systems.

Therefore they rushed them because they needed them in place, and wanted to have them tested by china release.

Yeah that’s pretty much how I feel. Dont get me wrong, they’re both solid concepts and I can see how the megaserver and new trait progression can provide more gameplay to some players. Its a given that most new ideas all have their pros and cons, but in these two cases I can imagine many of those cons being stamped out due to a more thorough and steady implementation.

Sure, the “majority” can be happy, but like you said it’s about making everyone happy. While it’s naive to literally expect everyone to be happy, there are a handful of things they can change to help.

yeah, neither change is totally bad in theory, however, the implementation, and iteration on both is far from where it needs to be in order for them to be overall positive changes.

Has anyone thought about how nice it would be if Anet actually acknowledged the megaserver problem…

…And at least gave Divinitys Reach back to us?

Instanced per server, make it the new “HQ” and add all the stuff from Lions Arch (just abandon the city already, its dead jim). Of course that would include a grand mystic toilet, fractals gate, WvW staging area, etc. Remodel some areas to be more culturally influenced (ie lots of Charr/Norn/Asura/etc come to live there, place a raisin faced asuran kid by the DR bank or something) and place the lion statue in the central plaza, to remind us of poor LA.

Guesting to another servers DR would of course still work.

Vayne.8563:

I’m on Tarnished Coast too. In the old days, we used to go to our server on Guild mission nights and some times some of us would end up on overflows anyway because we do guild missions prime time and sometimes big guilds were on servers we were on for missions. We’ve always had to find ways to get to the same server. What’s going on now is nothing new for us. During the Marionette fight, we couldn’t get into the home server for days at a time. People would be spamming to get in. Maybe one guildie would make it and we’d sit there and spam to get in. Maybe you don’t remember this, but I remember how frustrating it is. It’s not any different for us now.

But, in the old days I used to run around the world and in some zones there were just not enough people. I’d do events by myself. I love playing in the open world, and I felt like I was alone. NPCs are nice, but people are nicer.

So the other day, when I was at an event that people didn’t usually do in Field of Ruins and I went down, out of nowhere, someone near by picked me up. Just today I was doing a champion Wurm, and I went down and again, someone appeared to help. That didn’t always or even usually happen in the old days.

The world is alive and buzzing.

And I guess you’re not around at prime time, because the maw and the fire ele go down so amazingly fast it’s not funny. So does the wurm. The fights are pretty fast.

The redid the Shatterer so it doesnt’ go as fast, but that’s not the megaserver causing that it’s the redone fight.

People play MMOs to be with people. It doesn’t always matter what server. I like seeing people around. A lot of people do. This is an MMO. Seeing people around is your bread and butter.

So my situation with joining people on other servers hasn’t substantially changed since before the mega server, but my experience roaming the open world certainly changed.

This is particularly true if you’re not on one of the big servers, or if you play at off hours, which I often do, since I’m in Australia.

There’s a whole world of people out there who play at off hours and don’t see enough people to do stuff.

Shrugs. I was actually on the verge of taking a break from the game before the mega servers came out. The megaservers revitalized my interest in the game.

Regarding guild missions: You used to at least know when you were in an overflow and not with the rest of your guild back then and could try to get into main or get someone to join on… these days you have no idea if you are ending up with the rest of your guild or some random mega with a few of your guild mates or completely alone. So to me that is more negative than positive.

Regarding having enough people for events: I agree some servers and some times there were not enough people in the past…. however back then you could guest to a different server with more population at that time… call in some friends to help you etc. These days you end up with lots of people (usually more than you need) and have no choice in the matter. If you want to solo it for the challenge or just because you are feeling anti-social… there is nothing you can do. You are stuck with the mass of people. To me overall negative.

Yes the world is alive and buzzing….. like a bee hive even in areas where it shouldn’t be. Orr is supposed to be desolate and abandoned… the temples are always done pretty much … people everywhere. Doesn’t seem right to me. Overall negative.

I am on at all times… AU times…. Prime time US….. I have a very weird schedule… I once soloed Fire Ele… when everyone was doing the living story and everything was desolate… Fire Ele did not take much longer solo than it does with a huge Zerg. I also tried to solo Shatterer that same day… and got killed by the adds…. not really possible to solo it seems but I suspect if it wasn’t for the adds Shatterer would not have taken much longer than usual either.

I like seeing people around too in most places… but sometimes I like to be alone… or there are some areas that seem like they should be mostly empty due to the nature of the location… and that is just not an option anymore.

I play in the middle of the night… with Australians a lot of the time and I see things as significantly worse… and we are on the same server so we are comparing apples to apples.

And I am on the verge of taking a break now because of megaservers. Not sure how we can look at the exact same things and draw such starkly different conclusions.

Vayne.8563:

Your right it has impacted dynamic events. There are 1500 event in this game and maybe 30 are affected negatively and even that is an opinion. that means 1470 aren’t affected negatively and are often affected positively.

It is nearly all events that have been affected because each map has been Megaserved and now has too many people on it. Too many people doing each event the majority, were all you need do is press 1, or do an AOE in the hope to tag the enemy. There is no skill involved any more. No need to dodge, heal or buff/debuff. Also were did you get the figure from? My personal experience is it’s happening on every map I’ve been to, and a hell of a lot of other people, if this thread is anything to go by.

I’m STILL thinking far more people are advantaged by this system and disadvantaged.

I mean for every person who says the meta events are worse, I know someone who’s happy that the bosses go down fast so they can do other stuff.

But that wasn’t how they made the game to be played, only using 1 or 2 attacks and do nothing else other than run around trying to tag to get gold, or auto attack a boss. It seems like they wanted to get rid of the zergs, though now, it seems that nearly every map with every event is a mini zerg, or a mega megaserver zerg on boss fights.

Even the maps as a whole have changed. Take Kessex Hills for example, the enemy are always pushed back into their own bases, as soon as the next event starts, (where they try to take ground) they are sent back, you won’t see the missions that happen in other places, like in the small human town (I’ve forgotten the name of it, its in the north west) or many others. And if you’re a beginner, you wont even know that that could happen. It’s the same with the boss timers now, you (as a noobie) do an event chain get to the end where the boss fight is meant to be, and it just ends, without a satisfactory ending, you might not know there was meant to be a boss fight, so you move on, and the majority will never return to that map.

People are losing out on whole (mini) story parts, I don’t think that is an advantage. Beginners aren’t learning to play well with their toons because events now are a face roll. The only advantage I hear people mention is that there is more people in maps now, (to me, and a lot of others it’s too many) IMO the disadvantages outweigh the one advantage.

Also the megaserver mapchat cannot be ‘tweaked’ or fixed for the Euro servers. What is the solution? Turn off foreign people? That’ll help map coordination, that will help foster a sense of community. Let each country have its own server? They won’t do that because that would be how it was before the megaserver and the maps would be less populated. I really don’t see a fix for it.

Vayne.8563:

.

Just about everything you’ve said can be seen from a different angle. For example, as someone on TC, I’m on a server people guested to all the time, so I was always running into people from other servers even before the mega server.

Because then, at least people had a choice.

Some of the people expressed annoyance at feeling they had to guest. Like they couldn’t stay on their server. Like their server somehow wasn’t good enough.

Well that’s a bit of a silly attitude they had, also now, how it is, still hasn’t changed their situation because they are now in ‘No Where’ server. At least then they had a choice.

But I will say this. Virtually everything you said is from a specific point of view and changing that point of view changes the truth of it, as I just illustrated above.

And the same applies to you, but you might be a minority because of your location and timezone etc.

SNIP… because it’s 1:18 am and even I sleep sometimes.

I’ve heard Aussies don’t sleep, can you post proof of this claim please? Thanks.

:P

Two things:

• We should be able to join an active mega server map by IP.
• Where we guest should influence which mega server we go to before our home server is taken into consideration.

Ayrilana.1396:

Two things:

• We should be able to join an active mega server map by IP.
• Where we guest should influence which mega server we go to before our home server is taken into consideration.

on the second one, the devs said that your guested server is the one that is counted

Vayne.8563:

Phoenixlin.8624:

Dude just because your time zone sucks now the rest of the players are all suffering -_-

However, before long ago the megaservers, players suggested an underflow system, like the old overflow one. Instead of creating new maps when a map is full, it is suggested servers that have less than x many players in a map y should be merged into the same map at that moment. Of course suggestions were more detailed (and i didn’t remember most of them), but all of the offered ones were better than megacrap (at the worst case scenario, underflow system could be equally bad as megacrap =))

My time zone sucks. And everyone in Australia and New Zealand and Asia. And everyone in the US with a night job. Or who has insomnia. Or who plays early morning before work. And people on low pop servers, who didn’t even know about guesting.

And all the new players who buy the game on sale and play and don’t see anyone in mid level zones and leave.

Unless you think Anet made this decision for me and me alone and no one else. I’m pretty sure you don’t think that.

I’m sorry, but i really don’t think ANet did this for that purpose. I’m fully of the idea that there were technical reason with the launch of China. Those are very likely to be a synchronizing issue and the way they needed to configure the servers in China.

Regardless of the reasons or if this was some ultimate goal since release, it breaks the community apart, period. It’s made a pretty large number leave the game, people that were long term players that paid for gem store items. I’ve talked to plenty of people on our server (by plenty, i mean close to 1000), it’s introduced too many “problems” to solve one thing, more people on a map. Arguably, that’s not always a good thing either. In anyone’s scenario, how are world events becoming trivial a good thing for anyone? So the dozen or so events that actually were a challenge for lower pop servers and arguably “fun” are now spam 1 fests, which are boring. Maybe you’re right, maybe that’s what the data says and those people are in the minority, but we can’t possibly think breaking the social aspect is a positive thing. They haven’t responded since this is how it HAS to be. Not because they don’t have a solution, since there isn’t a solid one that would solve most of the issues people have with it.

It’s really hard to get new players in WvW, since once in game, it really doesn’t matter what server you’re on. Yes, it’s tough for the oceanic crew, but this really doesn’t “fix” it, it’s a minor band-aid, that will work for a short while for people into open world event participation. Then they realize how trivial and laggy these trivial bosses are and say “not worth it”. They really obviously didn’t plan for this, otherwise the Fire Ele would be a Tequatl event or at least tougher than it is now. Not that i think that’s a good solution.

From my perspective the Mega Merge was done to proactively avoid traditional server mergers and give the illusion of a populated game to new consumers, as well as easing the new player experience with populated zones.

In that, it could be said it was very much a success. If that is indeed what the Megamerge was intended to do, Anet has really no incentive to roll it back or change it.

I think the pro and con sides were kicked around internally and measures were taken to present the merge as a game enhancement with full awareness and downplaying/silence upon the many negative aspects. I think they felt the importance of merging outweighed alienation of a substantial segment of current consumers.

Not a first. The core of SOEs NGE was exactly that, a calculated risk that new acct aquisition would outpace loss of current consumers they knew they would upset. Smaller scale, same calculated risk and acceptance of current consumer losses in favor of new acct purchase and retention.

Those of us that feel the game lost too much are simply the numbers the spreadsheets deemed acceptable loss. As such I feel nothing will change. We were written off long ago.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Two things:

• We should be able to join an active mega server map by IP.
• Where we guest should influence which mega server we go to before our home server is taken into consideration.

on the second one, the devs said that your guested server is the one that is counted

I’ve tried guesting different servers and end up in the same map so either there’s only one mega server to go to or it doesn’t have an impact.

Vayne.8563:

But, in the old days I used to run around the world and in some zones there were just not enough people. I’d do events by myself. I love playing in the open world, and I felt like I was alone.

And yet, “in the old days,” when other people would come to the forums and complain that game zones felt dead, that there were not enough people, etc you countered their perception with a claim that you did not see it the same way. You would claim that it must be the individual because the world felt alive and buzzing with players to you.

So, pre mega-server, the world had plenty of people to feel occupied to you and people complaining that Anet needed to do something and that the world felt dead were wrong.

Now, post mega-server, the pre-megaserver world seemed all but dead to you and Anet’s efforts to do something about it were the best change ever.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

But, in the old days I used to run around the world and in some zones there were just not enough people. I’d do events by myself. I love playing in the open world, and I felt like I was alone.

And yet, “in the old days,” when other people would come to the forums and complain that game zones felt dead, that there were not enough people, etc you countered their perception with a claim that you did not see it the same way. You would claim that it must be the individual because the world felt alive and buzzing with players to you.

So, pre mega-server, the world had plenty of people to feel occupied to you and people complaining that Anet needed to do something and that the world felt dead were wrong.

Now, post mega-server, the pre-megaserver world seemed all but dead to you and Anet’s efforts to do something about it were the best change ever.

Nope, I never said the world was alive and buzzing with people. Most of the time I said that the people were divided a lot because there were huge zones and you could be in around the corner from people in a cave and never know it. I also said that with people in PvP,. WvW,. dungeons, personal story and LA, and then split the rest among 25 zones, at certain times of day certain areas would feel dead.

However, most of the time, even back then, if you announced in map chat that there was a champ, someone would respond.

Saying I said all the zones were buzzing is a demonstrable falsehood.

Phoenixlin.8624:

I bet even ANet turns Guild Wars 2 to Hello Kitty Wars 2, you will find it enjoyable.

You are not proposing any good arguments or fixes or feedbacks to given problems. So, I am just begging you, stop white knighting in this kitten topic, and open yourself a “I LOVE MEGASERVERS!” topic.

I’m sorry the topic says Feedback on the Megaserver. This IS feedback. Because my feedback doesn’t agree with your feedback, you call me a white knight. I complain about the stuff I don’t like.

I don’t complain about the stuff I do like. And I love the difference the mega server has made to the game. I have just as much right to post that in a feedback thread as you do your opinion.

The difference is, I don’t go and call your opinion invalid. If one of my posts seems to be off the thread’s topic, by all means, point it out to a moderator.

Because you can’t find something to complain, it doesn’t mean there are no problems at all.

You are just dodging our problems by “I am enjoying. My environment is enjoying. So, we are all enjoying.” This is not feedback. Since I don’t wanna get infraction I won’t call its name. Your way of ignoring our problems is just disgusting.

Phoenixlin.8624:

Because you can’t find something to complain, it doesn’t mean there are no problems at all.

You are just dodging our problems by “I am enjoying. My environment is enjoying. So, we are all enjoying.” This is not feedback. Since I don’t wanna get infraction I won’t call its name. Your way of ignoring our problems is just disgusting.

I’m sorry you said in your post “get rid of the mega server”. That was a suggestion you had. My response to the suggestion is don’t get rid of it, because some people, including me, are enjoying it. And I’m still thinking at least in the states, more people like the mega server than don’t.

I’m not saying (and have never said) there are no problems with it. But I’d be awfully annoyed if Anet got rid of it. That’s feedback and a response that’s well within the purview of this thread.

Vayne.8563:

Phoenixlin.8624:

Because you can’t find something to complain, it doesn’t mean there are no problems at all.

You are just dodging our problems by “I am enjoying. My environment is enjoying. So, we are all enjoying.” This is not feedback. Since I don’t wanna get infraction I won’t call its name. Your way of ignoring our problems is just disgusting.

I’m sorry you said in your post “get rid of the mega server”. That was a suggestion you had. My response to the suggestion is don’t get rid of it, because some people, including me, are enjoying it. And I’m still thinking at least in the states, more people like the mega server than don’t.

I’m not saying (and have never said) there are no problems with it. But I’d be awfully annoyed if Anet got rid of it. That’s feedback and a response that’s well within the purview of this thread.

Well what many people have suggested is having the option of choosing megaserver or not… that would solve both problems. Yet your posts just say “I don’t see any problems… just as bad now as it was before.” .. while I don’t agree with that assessment personally, your opinion is valid.

I think “make megaservers optional” is the best of both worlds. That way both opinions are satisfied.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

Phoenixlin.8624:

Because you can’t find something to complain, it doesn’t mean there are no problems at all.

You are just dodging our problems by “I am enjoying. My environment is enjoying. So, we are all enjoying.” This is not feedback. Since I don’t wanna get infraction I won’t call its name. Your way of ignoring our problems is just disgusting.

I’m sorry you said in your post “get rid of the mega server”. That was a suggestion you had. My response to the suggestion is don’t get rid of it, because some people, including me, are enjoying it. And I’m still thinking at least in the states, more people like the mega server than don’t.

I’m not saying (and have never said) there are no problems with it. But I’d be awfully annoyed if Anet got rid of it. That’s feedback and a response that’s well within the purview of this thread.

Well what many people have suggested is having the option of choosing megaserver or not… that would solve both problems. Yet your posts just say “I don’t see any problems… just as bad now as it was before.” .. while I don’t agree with that assessment personally, your opinion is valid.

I think “make megaservers optional” is the best of both worlds. That way both opinions are satisfied.

I’ve posted in many threads about the megaserver, and even in the past responded to the suggestion you’ve given above. The problem is I can’t go back and type everything I’ve ever said in every post. It’s a conversation. I response to the person I’m responding to, not to everything ever said.

So, in earlier and older posts, I did say that I thought that cities shouldn’t be on the mega server. That was part of my solution. You could go into a city and recruit for your WvW server. You could go into a city and pick up RPers. That solves a lot of people’s problems.

But the choice of being on a mega server or not is NEVER going to happen for a couple of reasons. Anet has said repeatedly they don’t want to divide the player base. If they take people out and put them in servers that they choose to be in that way, then they divide the population and it would likely pull just enough people out of megaservers to make mega servers worth it, while keeping just enough people out of static servers to make them worth it. Keep in mind that ever operating server costs most resources. Never going to happen.

Another thing I did suggest, at some point in some post, was that we should have zones like Guild Wars 1 did and be able to join a specific zone, rather than having to join in parties.

Those are solutions I suggested.

Not sure why that qualifies me as a white knight.

Vayne.8563:

I’ve posted in many threads about the megaserver, and even in the past responded to the suggestion you’ve given above. The problem is I can’t go back and type everything I’ve ever said in every post. It’s a conversation. I response to the person I’m responding to, not to everything ever said.

So, in earlier and older posts, I did say that I thought that cities shouldn’t be on the mega server. That was part of my solution. You could go into a city and recruit for your WvW server. You could go into a city and pick up RPers. That solves a lot of people’s problems.

But the choice of being on a mega server or not is NEVER going to happen for a couple of reasons. Anet has said repeatedly they don’t want to divide the player base. If they take people out and put them in servers that they choose to be in that way, then they divide the population and it would likely pull just enough people out of megaservers to make mega servers worth it, while keeping just enough people out of static servers to make them worth it. Keep in mind that ever operating server costs most resources. Never going to happen.

Another thing I did suggest, at some point in some post, was that we should have zones like Guild Wars 1 did and be able to join a specific zone, rather than having to join in parties.

Those are solutions I suggested.

Not sure why that qualifies me as a white knight.

Well some of those things would help… but to me megaservers are not really working. They make playing the game miserable for me… and while those changes would help some things… they would not help the pain we are having actually trying to play the game. So those (while an improvement) would not be enough for me. Having the option of megaserver or not would solve both problems. You seem to think Anet will never go for that (which may be true or may not) and that would be very bad for people like me… and most of the people in this thread. Hopefully you are wrong about that for the sake of the game.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve posted in many threads about the megaserver, and even in the past responded to the suggestion you’ve given above. The problem is I can’t go back and type everything I’ve ever said in every post. It’s a conversation. I response to the person I’m responding to, not to everything ever said.

So, in earlier and older posts, I did say that I thought that cities shouldn’t be on the mega server. That was part of my solution. You could go into a city and recruit for your WvW server. You could go into a city and pick up RPers. That solves a lot of people’s problems.

But the choice of being on a mega server or not is NEVER going to happen for a couple of reasons. Anet has said repeatedly they don’t want to divide the player base. If they take people out and put them in servers that they choose to be in that way, then they divide the population and it would likely pull just enough people out of megaservers to make mega servers worth it, while keeping just enough people out of static servers to make them worth it. Keep in mind that ever operating server costs most resources. Never going to happen.

Another thing I did suggest, at some point in some post, was that we should have zones like Guild Wars 1 did and be able to join a specific zone, rather than having to join in parties.

Those are solutions I suggested.

Not sure why that qualifies me as a white knight.

Well some of those things would help… but to me megaservers are not really working. They make playing the game miserable for me… and while those changes would help some things… they would not help the pain we are having actually trying to play the game. So those (while an improvement) would not be enough for me. Having the option of megaserver or not would solve both problems. You seem to think Anet will never go for that (which may be true or may not) and that would be very bad for people like me… and most of the people in this thread. Hopefully you are wrong about that for the sake of the game.

Actually I hope I’m right for the sake of the game. I think if the game implement it it would destroy the game for far more people than are affected now.

Long before mega servers were annouced, there were constant threads about no one on my server, game is dying. And there were many threads complaining about guesting and not being able to get into your server. We saw those threads frequently.

I haven’t polled the threads of people complaining, but the main complaints, the biggest amount, seem to be coming from Europe with language and RPers. That’s the biggest complaint.

My suggestions would solve the WvW complaints, the RP complaints, but not the language complaints. I don’t really have or see the problem so I can’t make suggestions about it.

But I can say that if enough people choose the mega server but not enough to bring back what you want, you’ll be hamstringing both courts. What if some of my friends choose mega server and some of my friends choose the current server. Then you’re making me choose.

I’m thinking if it goes your way it would be really bad for the game.

I don’t see much harm in allowing the option, provided the megaserver is what’s default. That way, players new to the game are brought into a lively and active environment and players who were upset at their ‘dead’ home server could run into other people.

And if the choice was implemented and the players actually preferred ‘dividing’ themselves to surround themselves with their own community, wouldn’t that show that the megaserver wasn’t actually the best idea?

I can only see the harm if the game was at a drastically low point of player activity and the megaserver was a desperate attempt to stitch the remaining few together, but I don’t think the game is close to that.

Smith.1826:

I don’t see much harm in allowing the option, provided the megaserver is what’s default. That way, players new to the game are brought into a lively and active environment and players who were upset at their ‘dead’ home server could run into other people.

And if the choice was implemented and the players actually preferred ‘dividing’ themselves to surround themselves with their own community, wouldn’t that show that the megaserver wasn’t actually the best idea?

I can only see the harm if the game was at a drastically low point of player activity and the megaserver was a desperate attempt to stitch the remaining few together, but I don’t think the game is close to that.

But there is harm. What if the people who opt for the main servers don’t get enough people on their main servers to make it worth it?

The harm is in the fact that Anet would have to maintain far more servers than just mega servers, which costs money. Raising expenses isn’t in any companies best interest.

What if only a minority of people use those servers and Anet decides it’s not enough and then has to shut them down. Now you’ve taken developer time to set it up. The people who are shut down feel horrible, and they don’t adapt to the system Anet has decided to go with.

When ascended gear was introduced a few months after launch a ton of people left this game and most of them said the game was over. That was it. It was done. Finished. Anet stuck to their guns. Some people DID leave. That’s a fact. I know a few. Some of those people have come back (but obviously not all, probably not even most of them). But judging from what I’ve seen it didn’t seem to be a bad choice, even though I personally don’t like how it was implemented.

Now we see the same as the mega server. People in some threads think they know the game and the playerbase better than ANet does. What they really know is what they like and their demographic. Anet has a whole lot of data that we don’t have.

I seriously believe it would be a mistake to give people a choice. Not a little mistake, but a big one. By all means fix what you can with the megaserver. Go back and analyze the algorythm for sorting people. Take the cities off the mega server (which would only make 6 cities times the number of servers that are in the game. But putting all 25 zones on mega server and having them off at the same time. Far too expensive. It’s just not going to happen.

Vayne.8563:

Smith.1826:

I don’t see much harm in allowing the option, provided the megaserver is what’s default. That way, players new to the game are brought into a lively and active environment and players who were upset at their ‘dead’ home server could run into other people.

And if the choice was implemented and the players actually preferred ‘dividing’ themselves to surround themselves with their own community, wouldn’t that show that the megaserver wasn’t actually the best idea?

I can only see the harm if the game was at a drastically low point of player activity and the megaserver was a desperate attempt to stitch the remaining few together, but I don’t think the game is close to that.

But there is harm. What if the people who opt for the main servers don’t get enough people on their main servers to make it worth it?

The harm is in the fact that Anet would have to maintain far more servers than just mega servers, which costs money. Raising expenses isn’t in any companies best interest.

That’s the best reason I can understand why ANet is doing this: Not to increase gameplay, not to increase community, but to save money. Because even if those ‘home’ servers ended up being pretty quiet, it still gives back the choices that were taken away from a lot of players, a choice I’d gladly throw money at to earn back.

Are there any sources that highlight how much money this megaserver technology is saving them, and how much it cost the previous servers to maintain?

Vayne.8563:

But there is harm. What if the people who opt for the main servers don’t get enough people on their main servers to make it worth it?

The harm is in the fact that Anet would have to maintain far more servers than just mega servers, which costs money. Raising expenses isn’t in any companies best interest.

There is also harm in them not…. as this extremely long thread clearly indicated. But you don’t seem to care about that harm?

Vayne.8563:

The harm is in the fact that Anet would have to maintain far more servers than just mega servers, which costs money. Raising expenses isn’t in any companies best interest.

Losing customers isn’t in any company’s best interest either. Refusal to fix and/or address the harm they’ve caused to their customer base is causing many people to stop playing. You can argue against that, Vayne, because you seem to be doing a good job at disregarding everyone’s concerns over the Megaserver system (and all the other crap that came with it). Observations made by myself and many other posters tell the tale – people have left over this.

Personally I wish I’d known a long time ago that ArenaNet was going to take GW2 in this direction… If I’d known I don’t think I’d have invested so much in them and this game. Its hard to say.

Ok, I’ve given this ‘megaserver’ a good shot, but with every guild mission I hate it more. My guild is always scattered across different instances and have to try to bring everyone to the same one, occasionally to find out that we can’t because suddenly the instance hit the hard cap! And by the way our guild isn’t that big! Or that maybe we can’t activate the bounty because one person took part in killing it in another instance and we didn’t know. I’ll reiterate, if I wanted to be on a high population server then I’d transfer to a high population server, I do not nor have I ever loved there being at least 10 people wherever I decide to go, it makes completing hearts difficult at times and often times makes getting credit for events hard as well cause the monsters die too fast to hit. They have improved guild missions a -little- at least there usually aren’t lines waiting to do them now, but the major flaw in the guild missions isn’t that multiple guilds can’t do them at once, it’s the megaserver itself, it splits up guilds and friends and is in general a pain in the kitten .
Once again I’ll state, if this is to remain in effect (and of course it will) then they should at the very least make the soft cap lower cause there are too many people, it would help prevent guilds from reaching hard cap on missions even if soft cap may split them up a bit more and it would make it easier to complete hearts and get credit from events while still having enough people to do them.
I’m sure there are people who love megaserver, but I’m tired of getting headaches every time I want to do something with friends or guild over what is probably more than anything a cost cutting measure from Anet so that instead of having to run say 25+ instances of a zone they only have to run maybe 10 or so depending on zone and time of day.

" Vayne.8563:

The harm is in the fact that Anet would have to maintain far more servers than just mega servers, which costs money. Raising expenses isn’t in any companies best interest."

Vayne, Arena net has stated that server cost was not a consideration for Mega Merge, a fact you pointed out to people claiming it was a cost saving move.

And now, you claim the cost of the old server system is a block to undoing any part of Mega Merge.

You aren’t privy to any inside cost information beyond what Anet already stated, that server cost was not an issue.

Speculation is not fact, even if you are the one speculating.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

From my perspective the Mega Merge was done to proactively avoid traditional server mergers and give the illusion of a populated game to new consumers, as well as easing the new player experience with populated zones.

In that, it could be said it was very much a success. If that is indeed what the Megamerge was intended to do, Anet has really no incentive to roll it back or change it.

I think the pro and con sides were kicked around internally and measures were taken to present the merge as a game enhancement with full awareness and downplaying/silence upon the many negative aspects. I think they felt the importance of merging outweighed alienation of a substantial segment of current consumers.

Not a first. The core of SOEs NGE was exactly that, a calculated risk that new acct aquisition would outpace loss of current consumers they knew they would upset. Smaller scale, same calculated risk and acceptance of current consumer losses in favor of new acct purchase and retention.

Those of us that feel the game lost too much are simply the numbers the spreadsheets deemed acceptable loss. As such I feel nothing will change. We were written off long ago.

You hit the nail on the head. In my opinion traditional server mergers would have been way better but doesn’t look good on the quarterlies so some dink in a suit pushed this through with out a care to the consequences. Its obvious that the updates that have come in have all been for manipulating the metrics to have nice bar graphs on the quarterly stock meetings. The problem is that since its all been about the metrics.

WvW has dwindling numbers, lets create a new map and make it the best place for grinding out xp and skill points plus make the gold and karma rewards decent, now metric shows an increase in the amount of people in wvw.

Metric shows people aren’t playing in certain areas and people complain about not enough content/things to do so lets update traits to force people in to more areas and do things they do not want to as its cheaper than actually creating content. Metric now shows players in more areas of the game and we didn’t waste resources on creating new content.

Dwindling numbers are causing a loss in gem purchases, lets nerf all loot and gold income and add more gold sinks one of which we will tie to traits so if people don’t want to go to areas we are herding them to for traits they can buy them with gold but they will also need skill points so we can get them grinding skill points in EOTM. Metrics now show gem store sales are up.

Servers are going empty and some maps are deserted but if we merge servers people will say we are failing and it will hurt quarterly stock meeting. Come up with new idea of megaserver which is the exact same thing as a server merge except instead of merging 2-3 servers together you merge them all. Metric now shows all maps have players and there is no more home servers so nobody can complain about “their server” being empty.

Everything they do is to fudge the metrics for the quarterly graphs. The funny thing is that all these are symptoms of something else.

Azhure.1857:

Vayne.8563:

The harm is in the fact that Anet would have to maintain far more servers than just mega servers, which costs money. Raising expenses isn’t in any companies best interest.

Losing customers isn’t in any company’s best interest either. Refusal to fix and/or address the harm they’ve caused to their customer base is causing many people to stop playing. You can argue against that, Vayne, because you seem to be doing a good job at disregarding everyone’s concerns over the Megaserver system (and all the other crap that came with it). Observations made by myself and many other posters tell the tale – people have left over this.

Personally I wish I’d known a long time ago that ArenaNet was going to take GW2 in this direction… If I’d known I don’t think I’d have invested so much in them and this game. Its hard to say.

People keep talking about losing customers as if this is something unusual in gaming for MMOs. You always lose customers. Sometimes you gain new customers. Some customers come back. It’s an equation.

Anet lost customers over the ascended debacle a few months after launch. I know for a fact they lost customers. I saw it with my own eyes. I know some of those customers. Some of come back, some haven’t. They made a gamble that losing the amount of customers they did would somehow make the game better for future/other customers and keep them here longer. I don’t particularly like ascended gear and I don’t love the way it was implemented. I thought it could have been done better. But people left and the game remained healthy and the population grew again after.

I believe if they split the servers the way some have asked for they will lose MORE customers. That’s just an opinion. It doesn’t mean anything and I’m sure Anet won’t change anything based on my opinion. This is because Anet has metrics.

They know what’s going on with the population of the game. How many are left. How many have come back. How many are playing more hours.

Saying I’m going to leave or people are going to leave is like saying Anet didn’t think about it. Of course they thought about it. People leave over lots of things. People will always leave.

But the number of people who are going to leave over this are a lot smaller than most people believe. Again, that’s just my opinion.

Anet knows how many players they need to make ends meet and grow. We don’t.

Vayne.8563:

But there is harm. What if the people who opt for the main servers don’t get enough people on their main servers to make it worth it?

Then that would prove megaservers weren’t popular and that Anet had made a mistake.

Lostyus.4250:

Vayne.8563:

But there is harm. What if the people who opt for the main servers don’t get enough people on their main servers to make it worth it?

Then that would prove megaservers weren’t popular and that Anet had made a mistake.

And what if not enough people use those servers and they don’t end up having an enjoyable experience, but they take just enough people out of the mega servers to make them not viable?

You’re asking a company to put time and resources into doing something that might very well hurt players on both sides of the divide.

It’s a bad risk.

Vayne.8563:

Long before mega servers were annouced, there were constant threads about no one on my server, game is dying. And there were many threads complaining about guesting and not being able to get into your server. We saw those threads frequently.

If Anet hadn’t forced people to post about megaservers in this one mega thread, (so they can ignore them) then this board would have been full of complaints about megaserver, just like the “game is dead” threads. There is this megathread as testament, but also there are a hell of a lot of separate threads that have been deleted or closed because it wasn’t posted in this thread.

Vayne.8563:

Saying I said all the zones were buzzing is a demonstrable falsehood.

Then demonstrate it ? (a joke because we both, hopefully, know that you cannot demonstrate such)

For what it is worth I was paraphrasing. I chose to not put that turn of phrase in quotation marks for exactly that reason. I am not claiming that you used that exact word.

Vayne.8563:

You’re asking a company to put time and resources into doing something that might very well hurt players on both sides of the divide. It’s a bad risk.

Kind of like implementing Megaservers in the first place ? Expending time and resources on something that did hurt many players (I am not claiming a majority here).