Guild Wars 2

There’s been a lot of threads requesting the merge of servers to that PvE isn’t so… dead. This thread itself, is to discuss some of the complications that could arise and hopefully provide positive solutions to those IF servers were to ever merge.

For example, I’m in a situation where I’m a Member of Guild A on Server X. I’m also a member of Guild B, on Server Y. I joined A before release because I wanted an active experience from the get go, B is just all my friends who jumped onto the server they are on because it wasn’t full and they could all be together that way. I figured with guesting coming I shouldn’t have a problem being in A for the most part and jumping into B when my friends wanna do stuff.

As I’m the only member of Guild B, on Server X… I’ve taken it upon myself to spend a bit of influence to get the guild vault. I’ve stopped at this point so far for one reason… Guild upgrades are server specific – so what would happen if Servers X and Y merged?

I’m fairly certain that I will continue to unlock the full 250 slots for guild storage on my server, our personal banks max at 240 and it costs more to get gems than influence. I’m going ahead with this because Server X is consistently full population speaking, and Y isn’t so bad either so a merger between those two seems highly unlikely. But is it a ‘continue at your own risk’ scenario?

I would certainly like to get a heads up before a merger does take place, if I need to pull my stuff out of the vault to keep it from getting lost in cyberspace I have no problems doing so. Devs are great at communication so I’m certain they would be kind enough to do that.

But what about the investment in the upgrades? I said that getting influence was cheaper than getting gems to unlock bank tabs – I certainly am not saying it’s free. If I alone spent time earning influence to unlock the 250 slots I would be earning it for near on a year before that occurred. I’m not asking for a refund on the influence earned though – in the guild panel it clearly keeps record (though for how long I am uncertain) of who uses items to grant influence to their guild. Would there be any chance that tomes of influence would be given to those who lost upgrades due to a merger so that it wasn’t all for naught? Please note I’m not asking for coin back, as going to a guild promoter to support your guild shouldn’t be refundable imo – just the influence to be used on other upgrades since I did go out and pay for it.

What other possible problems do you all see concerning a merger? Hopefully we can help the devs with their considerations on the process, since merges are fairly staple in any MMO game anyways I figure the least we can offer are possible solutions to problems that can happen rather than complain about things after the fact…

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

They don’t need to merge servers, just make all pve zones overflow by default. Then there would always be plenty of people to do events and dungeons with. They should do this immediately.

Their guest feature sounds great on paper but in reality it will be rarely if ever used. Most peoples friends have already left the game. What we need is the abiltiy to play with anyone, even anonymous strangers, at anytime, anywhere.

marianitten.1247:

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

There are plenty of dead servers. Don’t spout nonesense.

Lion’s Arch overflow is the way they should do all pve zones. Mid tiers don’t have to be empty. There are plenty of people playing in them accross all servers but they are too spread out at the moment because ANET dropped the ball.

Make all pve zones overflow by default and the problem is solved. And they can give up on their useless guest feature that will rarely be used. What a waste of dev time.

marianitten.1247:

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

I certainly didn’t hear any such news from an official source at this point, I just can’t think of an MMO which has never once merged their servers.

There’s a lot of complaints concerning the gear in higher level ascalon zones. For release they went ahead and put the Charr tier 3 cultural skins on the karma gear and when they did finish what was originally intended for those items – people who invested karma in them kinda just got shafted (even though Karma is now cake to earn).

Avoiding any kind of troubles which upset the consumer isn’t necessarily on the list of priorities for development teams. If we discuss these things in a place they monitor my hope is it just clicks with someone that they should fix it before it happens… thus resulting in less ill will between the two groups.? Complaining about the few things that upset us seems to be what people think the forums is for… I think the devs deserve more respect for the game they have given us and even if none of our suggestions for possible problems down the line are taken into account, the least we can do is let them know what we anticipate to be problems that they can look into.

Grim West.3194:

marianitten.1247:

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

There are plenty of dead servers. Don’t spout nonesense.

Lion’s Arch overflow is the way they should do all pve zones. Mid tiers don’t have to be empty. There are plenty of people playing in them accross all servers but they are too spread out at the moment because ANET dropped the ball.

Make all pve zones overflow by default and the problem is solved. And they can give up on their useless guest feature that will rarely be used. What a waste of dev time.

Last time i check all servers were Full/high pop. ANET said that population means People PLAYING, no registered accounts. So, There is two options:

1) People are in different zones where you are.
2) ANET lied

Besides, you are talking about Underflow zones… that is different about “merging servers”.

marianitten.1247:

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

There are dead servers in terms of the open world. The stated design of GW2 emphasizes the “open world”, and, because of the games design around DE’s, etc., a dead open world is a problem. I’ve made two server transfers since the Lost Shores event caused the open world exodus. First, to a higher pop server, then to the server I actually wanted when they opened them up around Wintersday. The difference is dramatic and the quality of life is significantly improved when you can adventure in the midst of other players. There are a variety of methods that can address the natural attrition of players from lower level areas such as instanced cross-server areas. I believe it will be important for GW2, conceptually, to retain a population in the open world.

Grim West.3194:

marianitten.1247:

Grim West.3194:

marianitten.1247:

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

There are plenty of dead servers. Don’t spout nonesense.

Lion’s Arch overflow is the way they should do all pve zones. Mid tiers don’t have to be empty. There are plenty of people playing in them accross all servers but they are too spread out at the moment because ANET dropped the ball.

Make all pve zones overflow by default and the problem is solved. And they can give up on their useless guest feature that will rarely be used. What a waste of dev time.

Last time i check all servers were Full/high pop. ANET said that population means People PLAYING, no registered accounts. So, There is two options:

1) People are in different zones where you are.
2) ANET lied

Besides, you are talking about Underflow zones… that is different about “merging servers”.

Lol.. yeah. Like those Full/High pop declarations actually mean anything. Actually play on any lower tier server and you will find yourself hard pressed to find groups for dungeons or anyne to do event chains with.

Lol.. yeah. Like those Full/High pop declarations actually mean anything. Actually play on any lower tier server and you will find yourself hard pressed to find groups for dungeons or anyne to do event chains with.The Full/High pop listing is a fiction ANET spreads to keep the clueless believing this game is still popular.

Lol.. yeah. Like those Full/High pop declarations actually mean anything. Actually play on any lower tier server and you will find yourself hard pressed to find groups for dungeons or anyne to do event chains with.The Full/High pop listing is a fiction ANET spreads to keep the clueless believing this game is still popular.And like I said they don’t need to merge servers. Underflow is a great way to solve the issues. They just are too stubborn to admit their mistakes.

i know the problems about empty zones. “Underflow” system would be great… Merging servers is a nonsense.

marianitten.1247:

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

Unless you play on every single server, there is no way to know this.

I have seen overflow in Lion’s Arch, at most, 3 times in the past two months on my server, and those three times were all associated with holiday events. The problem is, the servers that are full, are extremely full – and the servers that are empty are extremely empty. This is mainly a result of everyone server hopping for WvW.

Bottom line, there are servers that are in dire need of help when it comes to numbers right now. It is time to merge the lower population servers. As for the issues in the OP, these are challenges, but ones Im sure Anet could come up with solutions for.

If you are seeing overflow constantly in Lion’s Arch, then chances are this isnt a topic that would really apply to you.

I love how folks say “Lions Arch is in overflow” as if that proves PvE isn’t dead in this game. In actuality, it is the reason PvE is dead in this game. Every other zone is completely empty because everyone is crammed in Lions Arch spamming “LFG LFG LFG” and “LFM LFM LFM” for fractals. Or, they are in the fractals.

There really isn’t anywhere else worth being right now.

I’d think if they ever did merge servers, the thing to do would be to take whichever guildbank was bigger/biggest and keep it. And surely give warning for people to pull stuff out of it.

I think instead of mergers, they should:

1) get guesting in place as it’s been too long promised, yet to be delivered
2) make transferring to the server of your choice possible and easy
3) implement shared common zones, so if you go to Lornor’s Pass, it’s not restricted to only players from your homeworld.

The world designation is only there to give teams for wvw. GW just had one set of cities, not even really a world, from which we left to our private instances. We have global, not server-based, economies. Play with your friends anywhere. There’s no reason to separate pve zones by server.

marianitten.1247:

Last time i check all servers were Full/high pop. ANET said that population means People PLAYING, no registered accounts. So, There is two options:

1) People are in different zones where you are.
2) ANET lied

Besides, you are talking about Underflow zones… that is different about “merging servers”.

For the record, ANet has come out and said the service “fullness” is based on accounts registered to a server. Theoretically, a server could be “Full” and yet, every person there quit playing the game and will never return (making it totally “dead”) and it’d still register as “Full”.

Also … I haven’t had Overflow in LA during prime time on my server more often than I have had it. I also have visited zones (again during “primetime”) and found less than 6 people in zone total.

Full/high pop. really doesn’t tell us much. I can make a sever and allow the maximum of 20 people in it. When it reaches 20 people, it’s full too. That doesn’t mean there’s a lot of people in it.

Dominae.3146:

marianitten.1247:

Last time i check all servers were Full/high pop. ANET said that population means People PLAYING, no registered accounts. So, There is two options:

1) People are in different zones where you are.
2) ANET lied

Besides, you are talking about Underflow zones… that is different about “merging servers”.

For the record, ANet has come out and said the service “fullness” is based on accounts registered to a server. Theoretically, a server could be “Full” and yet, every person there quit playing the game and will never return (making it totally “dead”) and it’d still register as “Full”.

Also … I haven’t had Overflow in LA during prime time on my server more often than I have had it. I also have visited zones (again during “primetime”) and found less than 6 people in zone total.

Eh I think they said somewhere it is actually the amount of people logged on during that time. If you try to switch server at different times during the day, you’ll notice that during non-prime times the servers are not full.

Since neither of us have solid proofs (quotes from devs), I hope someone would dig up the quote from somewhere.

Tolmos.8395:

I love how folks say “Lions Arch is in overflow” as if that proves PvE isn’t dead in this game. In actuality, it is the reason PvE is dead in this game. Every other zone is completely empty because everyone is crammed in Lions Arch spamming “LFG LFG LFG” and “LFM LFM LFM” for fractals. Or, they are in the fractals.

There really isn’t anywhere else worth being right now.

Is this the only guy who’s paying attention on the forums?

I think it would be nifty if the Explorable zones (not cities) were always ‘overflow’ ie cross-server.

I think that would be the best solution to empty zones.

This would remove the need for guesting feature too which some of us were expecting at launch and made plans around it.

Or if they removed servers entirely and added guild alliances and then made WvWvW into AvAvA (A = Alliance) since WvWvW is the only feature that actually depends on the current server setup.

Servers aren’t dead. Game is 3 months old. All the casual players finally got their level 80 toons now, so it seems that no one is in the low level areas any more. Nearly the same amount (maybe a little less or a little more) are playing still, you just don’t realize it because many people have gotten their toons to 80 now.

Kyosji.8961:

Servers aren’t dead. Game is 3 months old. All the casual players finally got their level 80 toons now, so it seems that no one is in the low level areas any more. Nearly the same amount (maybe a little less or a little more) are playing still, you just don’t realize it because many people have gotten their toons to 80 now.

Yeaaaah, that must be why every temple in Orr on every server is contested and there’s hardly anyone there at all.

igneous.8153:

Kyosji.8961:

Servers aren’t dead. Game is 3 months old. All the casual players finally got their level 80 toons now, so it seems that no one is in the low level areas any more. Nearly the same amount (maybe a little less or a little more) are playing still, you just don’t realize it because many people have gotten their toons to 80 now.

Yeaaaah, that must be why every temple in Orr on every server is contested and there’s hardly anyone there at all.

Haha, well all 3 of my 80s are geared up and I only hated Orr as long as I could stand it when I still felt like there was a reason to farm.

It’s just not enough fun to motivate me to go out.

I keep seeing the suggestion of PvE zones being overflow by default. While it would help the population issues there are some drawbacks to this approach as well. Harvesting nodes are server specific and if loading into a zone pushed you to overflow wouldn’t someone be able to just continue re-entering Orr and Frostgorge until they got fresh Orich nodes to farm?

DE and Meta events don’t go off on every server at the same time, and usually when I have guildees talking about Dragon Champions spawning I enjoy going there to play with my friends. If Overflow instances can get full how would i be able to continue playing with my friends? Currently it’s set up so they can swap to your overflow or you can wait till there’s space on your server – I’ve never been in separate overflows so I wouldn’t know if there is a way to switch between them…

And if there is a way to swap between them so easily that would only make Orich farming more abusive yet again. It’s a great concept but there’s loads more issues that will occur if all PvE zones become overflow rather than just merging a few servers together.

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

I keep seeing the suggestion of PvE zones being overflow by default. While it would help the population issues there are some drawbacks to this approach as well. Harvesting nodes are server specific and if loading into a zone pushed you to overflow wouldn’t someone be able to just continue re-entering Orr and Frostgorge until they got fresh Orich nodes to farm?

The harvest-node issue is only an issue because they haven’t fixed it yet. They could just as well make nodes not server specific. Then it’d be fine.
This came up before, was the motivation to limit server transfers to 1 per day so people couldn’t flit from node to node.

As far as dragon timers go, I know that’s a fun part of the game and for heaven’s sake we don’t want to have to hang out in Sparkly Fen. So what can ya do? How about numbering/labeling the zone instances. So the people who want to harvest dragons but not otherwise play in a zone can use a tracker like we do currently, just instead of be Isle of Janthir’s Tequatl timer it’ll be “Sparkly Fen #5.” Should prob’ly put a cooldown on dragon chests while we’re at it.

The point I’m trying to make is don’t confuse solvable technical issues with reasons to stick with strategies other MMOs tried (incidentally, I don’t think server mergers ever worked to save a game).

I dont know is this right thread but Whiteside bridge, Vabbi and Fissure of Woe (YES 3 of em!!!) should be merged to one. Vabbi and woe has around 10% of WvW players of Whitseside that has alot less ppl now than rof for example. WvW is dead in end line servers. Vabbi n Woe has some small good groups and if they were to merged to wsr zergs the server could challenge higher ranks much better.

Vabbi ridge of woe!!!!!

The last thing I want is for PvE content to be merged across servers. No thank you. If your server is dead, move to one that isn’t. My computer already goes into spasms on Tarnished Coast due to the sheer amount of players at every single events in the open world.

Not to mention that TC is the unofficial RP server for the west and there is constant RP throughout the open world. We don’t need a bunch of people from non-RP servers harassing the playerbase.

1: you can already play with anyone on any given server for dungeons/Fractals
2: More specific information would be better, other then “merge servers thanks” which servers do u feel are even low on population? At which hours of the day? Which locations? Just because you dont see a lot of players in the newbie zone doesnt = dead servers

I currently play on Stormbluff Isle, I see people all the time but I wish there were more in general running around doing the PvE stuff but there’s not much incentive to return to zones you’ve completed unless you’re leveling an alt so that’s why you don’t really see all that many people in them anymore…They need to do something to draw people back to the zones consistently.

marianitten.1247:

Grim West.3194:

marianitten.1247:

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

There are plenty of dead servers. Don’t spout nonesense.

Lion’s Arch overflow is the way they should do all pve zones. Mid tiers don’t have to be empty. There are plenty of people playing in them accross all servers but they are too spread out at the moment because ANET dropped the ball.

Make all pve zones overflow by default and the problem is solved. And they can give up on their useless guest feature that will rarely be used. What a waste of dev time.

Last time i check all servers were Full/high pop. ANET said that population means People PLAYING, no registered accounts. So, There is two options:

1) People are in different zones where you are.
2) ANET lied

Besides, you are talking about Underflow zones… that is different about “merging servers”.

servers are always gonna be full or high pop…cause its based on accounts not active players… so your getting fooled into thinking every server is full….but oh no..its not…thats just accounts not an actual real active player.

Angelus.1042:

marianitten.1247:

Grim West.3194:

marianitten.1247:

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

There are plenty of dead servers. Don’t spout nonesense.

Lion’s Arch overflow is the way they should do all pve zones. Mid tiers don’t have to be empty. There are plenty of people playing in them accross all servers but they are too spread out at the moment because ANET dropped the ball.

Make all pve zones overflow by default and the problem is solved. And they can give up on their useless guest feature that will rarely be used. What a waste of dev time.

Last time i check all servers were Full/high pop. ANET said that population means People PLAYING, no registered accounts. So, There is two options:

1) People are in different zones where you are.
2) ANET lied

Besides, you are talking about Underflow zones… that is different about “merging servers”.

servers are always gonna be full or high pop…cause its based on accounts not active players… so your getting fooled into thinking every server is full….but oh no..its not…thats just accounts not an actual real active player.

Uh, you’re actually incorrect because that would mean accounts have been all around deleted over the holidays because since people have been out of town/inactive for Christmas – New Years the population listing for the servers has decreased from full to very high and high to medium on servers that were all full or very high before.

Anet said the server population on the server list is active players, not accounts. It wouldn’t make sense for it to be based off accounts.

Shanna.4762:

Angelus.1042:

marianitten.1247:

Grim West.3194:

marianitten.1247:

there are no Dead servers. People are dispersed. Lion’s arch right now always is in overflow. It’s logical that that fewer people is playing in the middle zones…

Anyway… where do you hear that they are going to merge servers? That is absurd.

There are plenty of dead servers. Don’t spout nonesense.

Lion’s Arch overflow is the way they should do all pve zones. Mid tiers don’t have to be empty. There are plenty of people playing in them accross all servers but they are too spread out at the moment because ANET dropped the ball.

Make all pve zones overflow by default and the problem is solved. And they can give up on their useless guest feature that will rarely be used. What a waste of dev time.

Last time i check all servers were Full/high pop. ANET said that population means People PLAYING, no registered accounts. So, There is two options:

1) People are in different zones where you are.
2) ANET lied

Besides, you are talking about Underflow zones… that is different about “merging servers”.

servers are always gonna be full or high pop…cause its based on accounts not active players… so your getting fooled into thinking every server is full….but oh no..its not…thats just accounts not an actual real active player.

Uh, you’re actually incorrect because that would mean accounts have been all around deleted over the holidays because since people have been out of town/inactive for Christmas – New Years the population listing for the servers has decreased from full to very high and high to medium on servers that were all full or very high before.

Anet said the server population on the server list is active players, not accounts. It wouldn’t make sense for it to be based off accounts.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-explain-the-Server-Population-system/first#post974307

halfway down (in the above link) with the attachment picture is the best explanation ever.

MistyMountains.3751:

1: you can already play with anyone on any given server for dungeons/Fractals
2: More specific information would be better, other then “merge servers thanks” which servers do u feel are even low on population? At which hours of the day? Which locations? Just because you dont see a lot of players in the newbie zone doesnt = dead servers

As i mentioned Whiteside bridge (decent popu) Vabbi (low) Fissure of woe (low)

If servers were to merge, we’d be sitting in LA overflow for 30 minutes instead of 15. No thanks.