Guild Wars 2

Just bought the game and I’m wondering if it’s possible to wait for JQ to turn VERY HIGH. 4AM here and it’s still FULL

The OP is remembering the old system of how world population was determined — it used to be based on who was playing at any given moment, so it could go up and down over the course of a day. Notably, it was worth waking up at weird hours to try to transfer. (It was also based on how many accounts, regardless of WvW participation.)

ANet changed that ages ago. Now ‘population’ is determined based entirely on WvW participation; PvE is ignored. It’s also weighted in two ways: how much people play and how recently. So it no longer updates hourly; it rarely even changes daily.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to check on the wiki — the wiki uses the API to see each world’s status, so you can refresh that page to see if your target world is full.

The new WvW skirmish rewards have renewed interest in WvW, so participation has gone up (plus people are transferring right & left for various reasons). Therefore, unless ANet intervenes in some fashion, I expect 9+ worlds to remain full after the 30th, perhaps more.

I’d be surprised if JQ opened anytime soon — I think your best bet is to try around the time LS3.6 goes live — that’s when a lot of WvWers take a break to do stuff in PvE, which reduces WvW participation and thus population.

Server population is determined by WvW participation. It might change with the new match-ups/links on the 30th…or not.

No need to check at odd hours; population will only change with WvW changes.

In case you’re not already aware your server only matters for WvW.

In PvE and structured PvP all maps are shared across servers, the only restriction is which region (NA or EU) you’re in. So unless you’re planning to play WvW and specifically want to play with people on JQ there is absolutely no reason to wait for space – you can pick any other server and still play with people on that one.

If you really want that server then as Inculpatus said you need to wait for the WvW reset, which happens every Friday. Server population is entirely based on participation in WvW and only updates periodically, usually when the matches are reset. Time of day has nothing to do with it.