Guild Wars 2

So when I started on pre release my friend said to me “lets play on henge of denravi cause that was the name of an old guild wars 1 mission”

Totally arbitrary reason. We start all our freinds there too, making sure we have all the people who would be part of our group from GW1 on there and some new faces that we had met during the decade long development of GW2.

I had fun in GW2 until the infamous blackscreen crash took over every time i tried to do any content other than quest, it was fine until some patch arbitrarily decided to break the game for me. So for a while I took a break.

Apparently all the “server hopping” for free wins crippled Henge of Denravi in WvW and caused a huge exodus from the server rather than to it, as so many hundreds had been doing previously. I logged in today and checked out lions arch, thinking i might have found a way to get past my video troubles with the black screening.

To my .. i guess you would say horror, I found that i was able to run around most of the main part of the city and find about 10 people. My friends and most of the guild all stopped playing in the chain reaction that happened from me (the GM) being unable to actually participate in any content and stop playing myself.

Now I have few options, I can transfer to another server at random, hoping there is actually a community there, but hey since my guild all quit due to a lack of being impressed with the game when out of a guild group, i dont lose any social aspect right?

Or i can wait at he world select screen for weeks trying to go somewhere like tarnished coast which apparently has RP, something that might make the game worth logging into again

Chances are I wont do either. I was potentially one who might have spent money in the gem store. Bottom Line, to the devs, You lost a customer because I have no real reason to keep playing at this point. The new patch looks only like a grind fest for tier gear for me, as a veteran of mmo’s: there are other games out there that do the tier grind much better than this one and as much as I like the combat system in GW2, it isnt irreplacebly good, I never had an issue with the standard mmo combat style in the first place.

I just want GW to be at least as fun as GW1 was for me and my friends, but this server being a complete ghost town is sortof a straw on a camels back type thing. That alone wouldnt have been crippling, Heck I played city of heroes on a server that wasnt full pop and it was a ghost town too, but it is one piece of straw too many.

Heres hoping the dev team recaptures their vision someday for GW2, I’d be happy to hear of it, but for now, I dont know what to do with the hard drive space this game occupies.

The WvW exodus definitely hurt our server’s population, but there are still some great and fun people to play alongside on this server. They are what’s keeping me – and my guild – from looking for a new home.

That said, the dead zones – especially in places like Cursed Shore and the new island- are hurting the fun of the game. I have to wonder, though, if it really is any better on most other servers. At the same time, I know there are servers that still experience overflow in Lion’s Arch (which we never do), so my guess is that most of the active playerbase is crammed into a small number of servers – which isnt good for any aspect of the game from a macro POV.

As much as it hurts, it may be time for Anet to consider some server merges. Many dynamic events simply aren’t fun without at least a mid sized group active in the zone.

If you do decide to find a different server, this page can help make the choice a bit less random.
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA
It only truly reflects the WvW community, but a server with a large/active WvW playerbase is more likely to have a larger population overall.

My guild was on HoD from beta up till a few weeks ago. We watched the server slowly die in population through every unbalance rematch, until it became clear that HoD had degraded to the point that there was no fair match possible for the tiny group willing to attempt WvW. I could level a chair from 1-80 and only see 10 people total through all the zones outside of the racial starter map. Plinx was down to a group of 5-10 people, and maybe 15-20 on a Saturday afternoon. The god shrines in Orr were always contested because there weren’t enough players in the entire map to do the events. Doing a dungeon now meant trying to pull together a large group to do the event chains to open the dungeon doors so our 5-player party could get in. The open world stopped being fun unless we (my guild) were all together in the same place.

Why it happened is a pretty sad story. HoD was the top WvW thanks to the Titan Alliance. They kept our WvW server full, to the point of having long queues to get in at most times. I had no to desire to “queue up”, then go do something else for an hour and end up having the “wvw map is ready” window pop up in the middle of an event/story quest…so I didn’t even bother trying it. Then one day TA suddenly quit. Many of them stopped playing, but those that remained made a choice that doomed HoD to its fate as a ghost town. They moved to other servers in an attempt to spread their well-organized WvW teams and create balance. In reality, they left HoD in the highest tier of WvW matchups, with no WvW community at all. TA’s dominance, and keeping the servers full most of the time, had prevented a community from forming outside of their ranks. The other players on the server that wanted to do WvW were left trying to piece together a fledgling community in midst of two well-tempered armies dominating every map. They didn’t have a chance to organized and learn.

Dropping through the WvW tier rankings is a slow process, and as each week went by, player kept leaving as they saw another week where WvW was going to be nothing but a spawn camp versus an army of experienced WvW’ers. Server moving is free, so why stay when a few clicks can get you a fun WvW battle? Eventually, HoD was to the point where there was no viable WvW community left to have a chance in any tier. Between TA leaving, and free server moves making leaving too easy, HoD’s fate was sealed in WvW and in the open world.

I hate to have been part of the problem in leaving, but the situation was ruining the game experience for my guild. I enjoyed the open world and dynamic events, and I wanted to get into WvW…both of these were becoming impossible. Leaving a server with other old friends from GW1 was a tough choice, but I did not want to play on a server where it took my entire friends list being called in to access a dungeon. We made the decision to leave, and went to Yak’s Bend looking for a better home. It’s in a fun WvW tier with good competition, and the open world PvE is active enough to get things done with the players on-hand in the map. The recent addition of Fractals has moved a lot of those players to LA, but the rest of the world is still much better than HoD was when we left.

That’s my perspective of the fall of the mighty Henge of Denravi. I would recommend trying a different server before giving up completely. Just avoid Erredon Terrace, as it’s in a situation much like HoD. I think it’s time for Anet to consider merging those two together. Even though their combined WvW communities would still likely find no balanced matchup right away, it might encourage some to come back and give them a fighting chance in the low tiers. It would at least help PvE be less of a ghost town.

Man, that has to be sad. reminds me of the tail end at SWG, when all the player cities just dried up, and there were entire cities everywhere with no one in them…sad.

Are transfers free still? I thnk its a one week cooldown, but are they free?

Arenanet needs to stop the free transfers if they are still going, and make transferring TO low pop servers more attractive…via free boosters or whatever.

cesmode.4257:

Are transfers free still? I thnk its a one week cooldown, but are they free?

Arenanet needs to stop the free transfers if they are still going, and make transferring TO low pop servers more attractive…via free boosters or whatever.

They need to make guesting work before restricting people even more for the sake of WvW.

HoD is a ghost town. Im still there due to friends, but, it IS time for a merge. Its a sad sad state over there, and I agree – I rarely log on anymore, for several reasons, but the server being so underpowered that NO ONE PLAYS ON IT is a huge reason its bad. Too many people to jump entirely still – but, Im at the point where Im close.

I can always find people to play with on the Henge, but I haven’t explored very far so far. I’ve found 2 guilds (one’s cross-server social, the other is Henge PvE), so that’s going OK so far.

I am thinking about switching to TC though, I would love to be able to do some RP. Or maybe we should start an RP guild on Henge?

WvW is slowly dying off as people learn it’s just a gimmick mini-game. When one side outnumbers the other, the losing side usually just logs off or leaves WvW. This just ends up compounding the problem and no one likes playing 50v5 or 5v50 regardless of the side you’re on.

There are other servers with good PvE communities besides TC. Quarry, Rall, Desert all have really solid PvE numbers and are usually available to transfer.

HoD still shows as in the very middle of the pack (12th of NA servers) for population. So strange.

Peetee.9406:

There are other servers with good PvE communities besides TC. Quarry, Rall, Desert all have really solid PvE numbers and are usually available to transfer.

For the most part, HoD is a PVE server now.

The problem with looking at other servers/transferring is that there is a small group of people/guilds who are working to keep the community on HoD together. The people who have stayed on the server through all of the desertions are really fun to play alongside. That dedication and commitment is why many of them stayed. None of us want to lose that by moving to other servers.

At the same time, the raw numbers don’t exist on the server to keep areas active enough.

To me, the ideal solution would be some kind of “underflow” server system (which has been proposed before on the forums), but Im not sure that’s something that’s even possible.

I (and many others) want that fun experience that comes with more active zones (without having to resort to deserting my server – making a bad problem much worse). The most logical solution seems like a server merge.

As someone who has stuck with Eredon Terrace since day 2 (followed friends who no longer play lol) I can feel this thread.

I think a server merge or underflow or something really is called for, because it’s hard to travel (so many contested waypoints!) / do things in any section of the game (save maybe sPvP but I don’t really play that so I wouldn’t know).

Just found out that server population is determined by accounts assigned to that server, not by people currently playing (see https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Server-Populations-ANet-ambigious-answer/first#post728364, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Server-Populations/first#post703192). So that’s probably why the server populations in the transfer window don’t always match up to player experience.

I’d love to stay on Henge – I really like the people I’ve played with, and I think we have a good PvE community which is what I’m mostly interested in. But I am running into issues with some group DEs, and an underflow system would be nice.

Arenanets big mistake was allowing free transfers for too long.

What I would have done:
“You will have 10 days of free server transfers, with one day cooldown. After this time, server transfers will cost X amount of gems, resulting in a one week cooldown”.

If I wnated to transfer servers in WoW, its 25 bucks(back in the day at least). A deterrant not to, but the option is there if I wanted to…

Server pops were never a huge problem there, and they have 100-200 servers.

Another part of the problem is FoTM spamming in LA. Less people are playing their alts, less mains are out in the world, whether it be some lowbie zone to gather mats for crafting, or Orr.

I knew this would happen, regardless of FoTm. A living breathing world requires living breathing players to be in it, otherwise the content becomes too difficult for the few that are around.

cesmode.4257:

Arenanets big mistake was allowing free transfers for too long.

What I would have done:
“You will have 10 days of free server transfers, with one day cooldown. After this time, server transfers will cost X amount of gems, resulting in a one week cooldown”.

If I wnated to transfer servers in WoW, its 25 bucks(back in the day at least). A deterrant not to, but the option is there if I wanted to…

Server pops were never a huge problem there, and they have 100-200 servers.

The servers here hold a lot more people than in WoW or other games. GW2 sold over 2 million accounts, yet only has 52 servers worldwide, so about 40,000 per server.

It doesn’t seem like its feasible to do mergers here the way it is in other games. I remember it seemed like in some games (warhammer) you got a new merger everytime I logged in after a bit. But here it’d mess things up with the wvw ladder (which I recognize is a small part of the game, but it’s important to some players).

underflow, or even just finally putting “guesting” (one of the heavily advertised features of GW2) would help pvers

Its most servers having this problem ~ my Server Ehmry Bay was always a ghost town after the first month, getting groups to do dungeons was near impossible because we had no access to the overflow server ~ yes the population was that low.

Orr on our server is a mess ~ Anet really needs guesting and really needs to look at Orr and scale it down for low population servers, best yet ~ server merge the really low population ones together.

come to JQ, the iceberg which made Titanic Alliance flee from HoD

haters gonna hate

WvW based server hopping was certainly an early factor in shifting server populations. If you’ve been away awhile, the most recent patch caused an exodus from the open world to the FotM dungeons. I was one who hopped to a higher pop server after the patch just to have any population in the open world. There definitely needs to be some better management of the servers and better reality-testing of proposed content.

cesmode.4257:

Arenanets big mistake was allowing free transfers for too long.

What I would have done:
“You will have 10 days of free server transfers, with one day cooldown. After this time, server transfers will cost X amount of gems, resulting in a one week cooldown”.

If I wnated to transfer servers in WoW, its 25 bucks(back in the day at least). A deterrant not to, but the option is there if I wanted to…

Server pops were never a huge problem there, and they have 100-200 servers.

WoW is an interesting case as they implemented cross-realm zones around the time MoP was introduced. Basically, all zones except pandaland were instanced so players from several servers played together. In WoW this was a horrible idea and it was gamebreaking for me and anyone who wanted to quest, farm, collect rare pets, etc. as most know these are all competitive in WoW. They just added more rats to the cage and it wasn’t fun at all. This would work well in GW2, however, as the more the merrier. GW2 really nailed the player playing with other players aspect of the game.

Regardless of what server is WvW and what is PvE

The fact to the matter is WHY ARE THEY PUTTING HIGH POP WVW servers VS LOW POP WVW servers.

Its stupid unfair and ridiculous.

Right now its HEavy Zergy Borlis Pass vs Zergy Sorrows Furnace and DEAD Henge of Denravi..

Who the hell thought that would be a good match-up???

I think there needs to be a live person making match-ups every week instead of it doing it randomly

Put the Best vs The best

Not the best vs the hardly populated

If the low populated servers were to fight each other it would be the best drawn out war ever!

Thorasine.8659:

Who the hell thought that would be a good match-up???

The match making algorithm thought it was a good match up. Too bad no one informed the match maker that free transfers are STILL available.

And the biggest joke in all this is that this game has actually no “World servers”.
Or rather only two server farms. The US and the EU one,

Servers are purely virtual and every map is actually floating somewhere between the load-balancing server-farm.

HawkMeister.4758:

And the biggest joke in all this is that this game has actually no “World servers”.
Or rather only two server farms. The US and the EU one,

Servers are purely virtual and every map is actually floating somewhere between the load-balancing server-farm.

I think you will have to elaborate that joke, it doesn’t appear all that humourous. “Server”/“community”/“world”, does it matter all that much what the worlds are called?

One of the reasons i LOVED the first Guild Wars was because there ware no “servers”, each zone had it’s own sub-sections that you could jump between on the fly. They should find a way to integrate that system here. For wvw they can just make the servers teams which you pay to switch between or on a cooldown like it is now. Doing this will completely eliminate all grouping and empty zone issues and no one would have problems getting all their friends together.

Whoever decided to switch from the system they used for the first game is dumb. The only reason they would do this is because of wvw which like i stated could have easily been fixed by making them teams that you could join. The other reason they could have chose to do it like they did would be to eliminate people from one team telling their people on another team what their team is planning, but this can already be done very easily.

JemL.3501:

come to JQ, the iceberg which made Titanic Alliance flee from HoD

haters gonna hate

I wish our guild was back on JQ ~ Lucky Stars was originally a JQ guild back in the betas, when the servers open at launch, it was one of the first to open and very quickly become full so we couldn’t recreate the guild there T.T

Surbrus.6942:

HawkMeister.4758:

And the biggest joke in all this is that this game has actually no “World servers”.

I think you will have to elaborate that joke, it doesn’t appear all that humourous. “Server”/“community”/“world”, does it matter all that much what the worlds are called?

Yeah, rather more of a facepalm. As this thread nicely proves.

To me the only reason we have this arbitrary limitation is because of WvWvW.
Purely a design decision to create artificial teams so they can copy Dark Age of Camelot gameplay.

The obvious problems this creates for us carebears is simply ignored.
So that we have to increase our security risk by using out-of-game resources(GW2LFG.COM) and game the system via the clunky Overflow-server mechanic.

Do you think Anet would ever merge servers, the 2 lowest in population?