Guild Wars 2

Kate Soulguard.7132:

Dear ArenaNet,

Thank you for making Guild Wars 2. It has been a source of enjoyment to many, many people.

I am deeply concerned with the diminished roleplay aspects that this update has brought to the game.

As suggested before, please give us a roleplay checkbox somewhere and consider it when balancing us.

It seems to fix so much:

• People who want to RP, and who want to see others doing so, get balanced to places where other people have opted for the same thing.
• People who don’t roleplay, but who enjoy reading it, also tick the checkbox to be balanced accordingly.
• People who hate it and don’t want to see it simply don’t opt in.
• People who don’t care simply don’t opt in.

Roleplay is the only reason I picked Tarnished Coast when I first started playing. Before I ever bought the game, I did research to see where the roleplayers were. I saw that my best luck was on Tarnished Coast, so that’s where I signed up.

Me picking Tarnished Coast was me clicking the Roleplay checkbox. Okay?

That was me opting in.

Please don’t take this away from me.

Please tell me you understand this complaint.

On top of that I’d add,

- keep the main city maps out of the megaserver.

For those that don’t RP , will work a bit like lobbies, for those of us who RP, will make sure we’ll surely find others that DO wish to RP.

A filter as suggested, plus giving back the city maps to their own servers would fix most of not any problem we have encountered with this change.

As was stated, I did chose a specific server, Piken Square because it was the unofficial RP server, it was a precise choice, a choice now I am left without, having no choice in what should be a fun activity, is not very good.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

Star Ace.5207:

(And “deleting” Anvil Rock by merging it is not a very humble suggestion at all. “Low population servers shouldn’t exist!” I fail to see the logic of that vs the megaserver, which at least lets old, smaller communities to continue to exist , while not really destroying your own-no, me existing along with you on your cities won’t destroy your RP experience.)

Our communities are destroyed because we exist among you, not because you exist among us. If the lower population servers were filtered into the higher population servers, this wouldn’t be an issue. But the higher population servers are broken up and scattered into a random grab bag of players.

I don’t understand why we still have to explain to you what it means to have your communities unable to interact with each other because the game has split them unwillingly across servers. This doesn’t even apply the RPers exclusively. Larger guilds can’t possibly filter themselves to a single map because each map fills up evenly. At least with the old overflow system there would always be a low population map to go to, but now that’s not the case and there’s no way to have everyone together. Hell, last night it was hard enough just getting 10 of us on the same server.

Also, “Low population servers shouldn’t exist!” IS the motto of megaservers. Your server doesn’t exist anymore. If it seems to you like more of you stuck together in this glorified overflow, it’s because there was less of you to scatter in the first place.

I understand what hurts you, but you don’t understand what hurts everybody else. Or at least won’t acknowledge it. I know what your perceived problem is. But you don’t care about other people’s problems , and replying angrily does nothing for your case.

AR exists, as lowly as they may be. It’s insulting that you chose to reply in that manner to state your case.

And larger guilds shouldn’t have been able to sequester maps all to themselves in the first place. It was something that happened out of perceived necessity as well (no offense intended to them, and as usual feel free to disagree.)

It’s a server identity crisis more than a real problem. You think they “dissoluted” TC by virtue of the megaserver existing. And thus, that they “don’t care” about RPers. Which is a lie, and insulting to them quite frankly. Then they don’t also don’t care about “hardcore guilds” either, that arrange to do the mega events, and which are not always RPers. Does ANet hate/ignore random groups of players or love GW2? Hope my point is clear.

ArenaNet being an American company, I don’t think they understand what a hell EU will be when we will get even more mixed together with different languages.

When the patch first dropped and the megaserver only existed in the PvP lobby, I contacted a dev I have RP’d with and asked them if the megaservers will be a problem for RP. They replied that they don’t believe it will: that people will still end up in servers populated primarily by people from their own server. I was very happy to hear this; it sounded like very little would change, so I went on happily with my life.

I just went into Black Citadel and asked on /m who is from Tarnished Coast. There were a number of people on my friends list from TC and in BC, but they weren’t there — in fact, no one was from Tarnished Coast. I didn’t end up plopped in a server mostly made up of anyone else, either: people were from all different North American servers, and not only were none of them RPers, but most hadn’t even heard of it.

Last night, after the megaservers dropped in the cities, we were immediately treated to difficulties finding one another. It took some of us three to five tries to get in the same server as people on our friends list and from TC. Once we did, we were surrounded by people using say and emotes (unblockable) as a chatline. We had to block literally dozens of people just so we could do our thing and not be harassed directly or indirectly.

The solution given by the devs is “join an RP guild”, because these megaservers still put you in with your guildies, but this is NOT a solution. The huge majority of RP that takes place is not between guild members, first of all. Second of all, recruiting for an RP guild is impossible if other RPers who are not guild members are not around. Thirdly, the great thing about RPing in an MMO as opposed to a forum, IM, chatline, etc. is that it is fluid: characters can walk by and join in. This is also impossible in a megaserver populated wholly by non-RPers except for your guildies.

These megaservers really are the worst thing that’s happened to the game thusfar. I understand why they were done: servers are expensive, and Anet and NCSOFT want to save money. The issue is, they’re going to lose their entire RP community within the next few months if they don’t undo this mistake immediately, and I don’t think the amount of money RPers put into the game through gems, buying town clothes (which were also nerfed horribly), instruments, armour skins, and other expensive items, as well as gems to exchange for gold to buy things from the trading post since many of us don’t grind dungeons and such to make the gold in-game.

I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on GW2. I’ve purchased the game twice, and bought a crapton of gems to deck my characters out. I barely play the game at all: I have ten characters and they are all roleplay characters, and none of this is unique to me: all of my friends on the game are in the same boat, having spent much more money on the game than any of our non-RPing counterparts. I know I’ll be leaving the game even after 4000 hours or more spent on it, as will probably the majority of the RP community, if this problem isn’t solved quickly and effectively.

Please, if you can contact any developers and point them to this post it would so much. Of course do it in a polite manner. Just a way to expose openly what our fears and complications are. And the suggestion we posted.

Also if some one could copy their posts and place them in the Suggestion section of the forums it would help.

Star Ace.5207:

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

Star Ace.5207:

(And “deleting” Anvil Rock by merging it is not a very humble suggestion at all. “Low population servers shouldn’t exist!” I fail to see the logic of that vs the megaserver, which at least lets old, smaller communities to continue to exist , while not really destroying your own-no, me existing along with you on your cities won’t destroy your RP experience.)

Our communities are destroyed because we exist among you, not because you exist among us. If the lower population servers were filtered into the higher population servers, this wouldn’t be an issue. But the higher population servers are broken up and scattered into a random grab bag of players.

I don’t understand why we still have to explain to you what it means to have your communities unable to interact with each other because the game has split them unwillingly across servers. This doesn’t even apply the RPers exclusively. Larger guilds can’t possibly filter themselves to a single map because each map fills up evenly. At least with the old overflow system there would always be a low population map to go to, but now that’s not the case and there’s no way to have everyone together. Hell, last night it was hard enough just getting 10 of us on the same server.

Also, “Low population servers shouldn’t exist!” IS the motto of megaservers. Your server doesn’t exist anymore. If it seems to you like more of you stuck together in this glorified overflow, it’s because there was less of you to scatter in the first place.

I understand what hurts you, but you don’t understand what hurts everybody else. Or at least won’t acknowledge it. I know what your perceived problem is. But you don’t care about other people’s problems , and replying angrily does nothing for your case.

AR exists, as lowly as they may be. It’s insulting that you chose to reply in that manner to state your case.

And larger guilds shouldn’t have been able to sequester maps all to themselves in the first place. It was something that happened out of perceived necessity as well (no offense intended to them, and as usual feel free to disagree.)

It’s a server identity crisis more than a real problem. You think they “dissoluted” TC by virtue of the megaserver existing. And thus, that they “don’t care” about RPers. Which is a lie, and insulting to them quite frankly. Then they don’t also don’t care about “hardcore guilds” either, that arrange to do the mega events, and which are not always RPers. Does ANet hate/ignore random groups of players or love GW2? Hope my point is clear.

I never said that they “hated” anyone. They don’t care IS accurate. They’re ignoring the needs of specific communities in order to implement a system they perceive is a benefit to all. The current implementation of that system is NOT a benefit to all, because there are factors that are not being taken into account in order to accommodate different subsets of their playerbase. The fact that ArenaNet’s replies to both this thread and threads involving mega-guilds have been entirely dismissive, and that no further feedback has been given despite the concerns demonstrated in these threads have been proven to be accurate upon yesterdays release, proves that ArenaNet is in fact ignoring those concerns. The fact that they’ve released an untested system like this in public play at all is also proof that they intend to move forward with their plans regardless of player response. Other developers don’t do that. Other developers use things like beta servers and public test realms in order to test high end features before subjecting their player base to them. ArenaNet chooses not to. They have demonstrated a clear lack of concern for issues brought up by their own playerbase. And the proof of this is in their lack of response during the entire time between the announcement and release of the megaserver. The argument that they are in fact taking our concerns into account has no justifiable grounds to stand on, as ArenaNet has done nothing on their end to prove that.

And you keep referring to me insulting your server. I said AR doesn’t exist, in the sense that the megaservers have merged it in the same way that they merged our servers. You don’t exist any more than we do at this point, and if you don’t see your community being split, it was likely small enough that it didn’t get fractured multiple times like larger servers. You admitted yourself that your sever was low population, so what about that statement is insulting? A smaller population is going to get fragmented less times than a larger population. The game isn’t properly using the metrics that it’s supposed to be using to place people by server, so bigger servers are just going to get split as often as there are gaps in peak log-in times.

I already bugged them a couple times yesterday with little questions here and there about what was happening, but I’ll send them a tell if I see them online to maybe hear what’s going on, though I’m sure they are working on a solution already. If you’re already reading this, sorry in advance for bugging you so much!

I do like Anet. I love GW2. I don’t hate them for doing this, but every once in a while something happens that makes me wonder if my love of the game and the lore they’ve created for it is matched by their appreciation of me as a customer that roleplays.

We all still have a real affection for this game, else we wouldn’t even bother trying to safe what we love to do in it.

It’s just really heartbreaking to be ignored like this. And if it keeps going, I foresee a lot of people just flat out leaving.

This is just awful. I’m trying to get together with a few people to RP in Black Citadel, and this system is failing left and right. Right clicking to join in instance isn’t working and zoning out and back in keeps dumping us in random instances, and this is with us in the same party and in the same guild. I’m also reading a discussion in map chat by a rather “upset” individual that he shouldn’t have to be subjected to the spam of RPers and that we need to all “get lives and get laid.” Wonderful. Simply wonderful. Thank you Arena Net. Top quality product you have now.

This is why you need test servers.

Just wait until Divinity Reach is devoured by the Megaserver too. I bet some people (those who spend their evenings in DR) didn’t even notice the changes that took place already. As soon as they’ll experience it too they’ll follow our begging soon enough.

Although I’m already certain that we could beg on our knees until we starve, nothing would change anyway. It’s adapt or gtfo as usual…

As for a global RP-chat: No way, no thanks. First of all, with 500+ people using that chat you can’t possibly do RP at all. Especially not being in different areas etc pp. Second, a global chat would invite even more trolls, or LFG stuff whatever just because it’s global. Plus the flames for everyone stepping in and asking “What’s the RP chat for?” And finally, we do not need that!
I’d rather love a way to assign contact groups to your friends list, and chatcolors to that specific groups to recognize them better in all the spamming going on. But that won’t happen anyway.
I mean it’s simple, the reasons for logging in are being cut shorter day by day. Dailies are now done in 15 minutes, if even, with all that acbound stuff + Crafting levels on max you have everything you need, No need ot farm anymore, dungeons get boring if you do them everyday, same goes for fractals, once the PvP traits are done and there’s no living story around there’s not much left to do for the so called endgame. Not to mention that the daily Tequatl kill will be gone as soon as Sparkfly Fen is devoured by the Megaserver too. RP is impossible so… With all the pretty skins there’s nothing left to do than standing around, and that is nothing more than wasting time, which you could, and should spend on more important things or hobbies where you are even acknowledged.

“You have to leave the map and enter it again”. Sorry but no…i don’t leave the map, i quit definitely the game if it stay like this…when we are on french server, we can’t play as we decide to play initially, then i will quit soon…

You broke community aspects of the game… you megaserver update is the bad thing you can make to your game in Europe… please revert this, or make fusion only by language, French, Deuch, Spanich, English, and European servers….
For the moment you mix all those people in a virtual brawl, with no respect, reporting players for spamming when they speaking they country specific language, offend among themselves

“We are continuously monitoring the process and will continue rolling the tech out to more maps based on that. Have fun playing!”
To have fun is not only a technical solution…we are not robots…

Wolfheart.1879:

This from the GW2 facebook……

“Greetings!

We want to give you an update on our rollout of the megaserver technology. It is progressing nicely ………….

Hehe…..Hehehe…..Hahahahaha!!!!!

Seriously Anet!? PROGRESSING NICELY????
May i remind you guys that a similar incident happened in Star Wars Galaxies, and the game shut down eventually, after a massive exodus of the population. Now i’m convinced that our voices aren’t heard. You do what you want to do, despite of what people say or think of the mashup you’re doing in the game..

It’s a fiasco written all over this, i bet you just want us to quit Guild Wars, and move to the shiny Wildstar or the upcoming Blade & Soul instead, right? Well, i won’t wait to see another City of Heroes, as once you drive all the people out of the game one way or the other, they’ll simply shut you down, without a warning..

My support for your game ends here, until you take us seriously. This will be my final post on your forums, as my voice is obviously ignored. Even parties end up in different instances and they can’t be together cause Skynet wants them apart? Seriously? Enough is enough..

It’s not too late to fix this.. Hear your customers, don’t be in denial…

I enjoy my hearth of the mist megaserver. Much love. <3

This sounds so amusingly ignorant. xD
Everything’s perfect, it works as intended! laughs

So these 10 pages do not exist? (And all the other threads, too?)
Are we all wrong?
Are the mixed up languages only an illusion, created by our evil minds that just NEED a reason to whine?
Are we only to blind to see our Guildies, Friends and Group-Members? Our homeworld people?

Seriousely… If that wasn’t that sad I could lol really hard.

kuscheldrow.6415:

This sounds so amusingly ignorant. xD
Everything’s perfect, it works as intended! laughs

So these 10 pages do not exist? (And all the other threads, too?)
Are we all wrong?
Are the mixed up languages only an illusion, created by our evil minds that just NEED a reason to whine?
Are we only to blind to see our Guildies, Friends and Group-Members? Our homeworld people?

Seriousely… If that wasn’t that sad I could lol really hard.

Actually it is only 3 pages the reset of these pages are before the patch went live. Of those three pages only a small portion of them are people actually reporting a issue.

Not at all saying the system is perfect. Not saying it does not mess up. Not saying there are not problems. I also don’t have ArenaNet’s data that shows it is working within acceptable limits. The only anecdotal evidence I have is to compare the number of posts of party issue posts in beta(when there was no join in feature) to now. I would say the system a lot of the times is actually doing it’s job and they are not putting a spin on it. There data is giving them the green light.

I hope the community learns that RP players exist and ignore them if they don’t want to participate and let them have their fun. Treat them as just part of the environment.

Right now I’m not seeing a whole lot of “prioritizing” happening with the algorithm that’s being used to do the megaservers. I’m seeing mostly people who aren’t from my server and I haven’t seen a guildmate on the same megaserver map yet. Friends are reporting difficulties joining each other’s megaserver version of a map.

What we really need is some way to select the megaserver district that we’re in, a la Guild Wars 1. That would fix a lot of the problem.

Most of those three pages are people experiencing problems, actually. And they’re quite consistent problems, and all of my friends are experiencing the exact same problems even if they’re not posting here about them. Also keep in mind this doesn’t even include DR yet, which contains the majority of the game’s RP.

I don’t think a ton of swearing and raging and negativity is warranted, but I really do find this update extremely depressing.

As I’m writing this Metrica Provice has been added to the Megaserver list. I’ll see how the RP goes there but I expect too many people passing around without a cloue on what is going on. Or down right trolling.

Metrica province in Piken Square was just assimilated, one of our guild members that was even in party with us, could not join us , we are tyring to do several jumps around to end up in the same map…

Synesh.1094:

As I’m writing this Metrica Provice has been added to the Megaserver list. I’ll see how the RP goes there but I expect too many people passing around without a cloue on what is going on. Or down right trolling.

Yep. Sure sign that ANet is not listening at all.

Rousing Success guys!

So we’re almost universally confirming that Megaservers are functioning as glorified overflows right now. People aren’t getting matched together by the supposed metrics the system is using, or more likely: the VERY FIRST server being made with the system is using those metrics, but subsequent servers are basically just dumping grounds. And yet they’re just pushing forward to make the whole game like this when it’s not even working properly on one map yet.

Even if the Megaserver idea is fully implemented as it is planned, the worst damage on RP continuity will remain. Piken and TC both had their own worlds and those worlds had their own story and continuity. History unique to the servers with relevant guilds and plots that came and went, and their after-effect still rippling through the whole server.

With little to no space that RPers can truly take for themselves in the game world without fear of being locked down (see Salma’s invisible walls), nor an official server, and now not even the unofficial player-driven RP servers existing for much longer, just what do RPers have to look forward to?

Random encounters with the other 90% playerbase of the game, most of them hostile. Random enounters with new RPers. Every day, every occurance, random new people, with no continuity whatsoever, because there is no solid World that which you are forming the story of with your RP. The only World Story will be the Living World story.

And i have a dreadful feeling that that is their goal.

Fearmongering of that nature just gives supporters to this system more traction. Their “goal” has nothing to do with actively hurting RPers. It simply has nothing to do with RPers at all. Which is part of the problem, that we’re being ignored among other subsets of players. The whole point of this thread was to bring light to the fact that we’re not being accounted for with this system. Please don’t turn it in to more fear mongering, lest I have to reply to another person attempting to make their case off of the most extreme posters here.

I’ll be happy when a Dev speaks in this thread and shares his/her opinion about our concerns.
That’s all that matters, a sign of good will from them.

Synesh.1094:

I’ll be happy when a Dev speaks in this thread and shares his/her opinion about our concerns.
That’s all that matters, a sign of good will from them.

Honestly, I’d rather no response than empty words and promises of lies. Ten months ago, ANet said they were looking into making the home instances accessable to RPers without having to go into the instance. This never occurred and has been completely forgotten about.

I’m not against the idea of a megaserver, but since GW2 is using instances/overflows, the whole point of a megaserver is somewhat defeated here. I think, from a roleplaying perspective, it was a pretty bad idea. The only reasonable soluton at this point would be, to implement a roleplaying checkbox, that is taken into account by the database, when it decides who belongs where. Otherwise we will be at a serious disadvantage in GW2.

However, I have to strike a little blow for the system at the moment. Datamining always needs some time to produce solid results. Nonetheless, I don’t think it is designed with roleplayers in mind and thus should be reviewed once again.

Either they’re ignoring us or they see and don’t care. I suspect the latter. It takes a lot of ego and hubris to actively ignore the people who are buying your product and spending money in it regularly. Vote with your wallets and your time. Start rp threads on forums, chats on skype and aim or IRC where game play isn’t limited by a game world environment and is as open as your imagination. The game may belong to them but your characters and creativity belongs to you.

Normally I let forum negativity wash over and past me but all the concerns in this thread are alarmingly well-founded. However, one note of hope: When overflows were first implemented they had many of the same issues with splitting people up despite being in the same guild and party, and at first there wasn’t even a “join in X” option. So they did fix that to a mostly reliable system, and therefore might very well do the same here.

However, if this enforced diaspora continues too long (by which I mean a week, maybe two weeks, definitely a month or two), the damage will have been done to too many stories. It’s like suddenly building a wall through the middle of a city with armed guards to prevent travel between the two halves, and not removing the wall for decades. You can’t really expect all the split up friends to just pick up the pieces like nothing happened.

I’m somewhat insulated because most of my RP is in one guild, and we’ve been doing more and more text-RP outside the game simply because it’s so hard to make things work in game. But I have to get in game, experience the world, and advance my characters, or I’m not invested in the world. I RP’d strongly for 7 years in WoW. I’d still be there if GW2 hadn’t become a vastly superior game for me. And I raided, got BiS gear, ground out dailies, the works. Here I’ve RPd since before beta, made 12 or 13 80’s (I’ve lost count), done all the LS, all the dungeons, bought most every RP item from the gem store along with dye packs.

RP is what fuels me for the long term, though. Even the stories I’m not part of but hear going on around me — those make the world live and breathe. With this scattering, the world can’t breathe.

I’ve felt this to be a mature game full of nice people. Apparently, that’s because the trolls and griefers couldn’t get a purchase when everyone around them laughs derisively and blocks them without getting upset. Now it seems they are going to outnumber the storytellers and vandalize us with impunity, and they are far more legion than I realized.

Sorry, ANet. I’ve defended you a long time. Yet I have to agree with others in this thread. This was poorly done and might be the death knell of this game for me. You always seemed to want the game to be fun for everyone. Where’s the fun in losing our clothing and being tossed to the trolls?

At the end of the day, the RP community really just wants to do the same thing that a lot of other regular players do: play and socialize with our friends and guildmates. Our socialization might look a little strange to some, but essentially it’s the same thing.

Right now, the system is not working very well for that, which is a problem. It’s now becoming more difficult to get into the same version of a map as one’s friends, servermates, and guildmates. Sometimes, that’s not an issue – most people solo at some point, some more than others, and it’s great to have people to play with. I’m not knocking the idea of a megaserver; I think it’s great for the long-term health of the game if a new player is always able to find people around him/her to play with. But it does become a serious issue for the established player, who wants to see a lot of the same folks day after day, because those are the people that they come to play with.

Breaking communities is a quick way to lose players. When folks don’t feel like they can play with their friends, they tend not to stick around. That’s really what’s being talked about here – this isn’t some RP-specific problem, it’s a problem for any established community in the game.

Snow.2048:

When I read their vague wording in the quotes I posted earlier on this thread, I was worried. But what they did to you guys was even worse than I feared. I’m still rooting for you guys though, whats an mmorpg without RPers!

So glad to see that some people feel actually concerned for us. Thank you very much for your support, friend.

I really have to say that i’m deeply dissapointed that there is not a single Dev-comment in this thread since the patch went online.

You post in the “Wow, great Patch”-Threads and suggest in small threads, that the comments about the patches belong to another thread.
But no word in a thread with 10 sites full of comments an nearly 27.300 views about the MASSIVE critics here.

bibakilla.4903:

I really have to say that i’m deeply dissapointed that there is not a single Dev-comment in this thread since the patch went online.

You post in the “Wow, great Patch”-Threads and suggest in small threads, that the comments about the patches belong to another thread.
But no word in a thread with 10 sites full of comments an nearly 27.300 views about the MASSIVE critics here.

Oddly enough, I am totally not surprised by such, I did not expect any less from the devs. Answering on threads congratuling them, but once it comes to receive critics, they poof to nothingness like our town clothes.

Can we get some feedback please? This is the biggest thread in the sub-forum right now.

Star Ace.5207:

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

And for the record, solo RPers from various non-RP servers: Whether by guesting or through this new megaserver system, you are benefiting from the pre-existence of RP communities. These communities were built up because there were centralized areas for RPers to gather. While anyone can just randomly one-off RP, in order to have a real constant flow of overarching stories and multi-guild events, a strong thriving community is required. These communities were built on those RP servers. You all can RP alone without that stuff, you’ve made that point very clear. These communities however, can’t. They can’t exist if they’re unable to even keep themselves together. You all would benefit greatly from the continuation of these communities, as they would create many more opportunities for even solo RPers to participate in grander events. The implementation of these megaservers is a severe block to any attempt to create such events, which means it’s a detriment to our way of life, so to speak. It’s odd that you keep telling us to think of your needs when you seem to be dismissively waving off our own.

Well, you are dismissing the needs of the game, and my own as a RPer as well. It does feel horribly selfish that you are only thing about how it’s affecting your community. And worse I am being singled out above by others for “not choosing to be” part of the community, as if that was an RP crime. I didn’t even know about RP servers, and my Guild had already chosen a server at headstart. How am I evil (or not “tr00 RPer”) for not being part of your servers, and for wanting more populated city maps? Is it really selfish of me or the other way around? I even guest there not just to “farm” events but hoping to see RPers around. All the RPing I see was most of the time on Divinity Reach, and found too many overflows for RP to matter at all. It just seems as you don’t want “lowly outsiders” who “don’t roleplay” unless they guest there and acknowledge your all superior RP position in the community (sorry, it does feel arrogant for an outsider, even if you may not see it as such.)

Improve filtering. The megaservers are wonderful and perfect for the game, like it or not. The inconveniences to some players don’t overshadow the way it improves the gaming experience for many. Taking it away from cities without trying some more worthy alternative would be a crime.

Ascended also inconvenienced me, and in my view wasn’t needed. The players that claim there’s nothing to do will always complain anyway. I still love and play the game nonetheless, regardless that addition, understanding the reason it has a place in the game, even if I not fully agree with it.

I feel bad because it seems as if I am attacking you, but what I do hate is not TC/PS at ALL, nor the RP communities (that would be stupid, seeing as I am on your side), nor you personally, but the attitude that ANet “hates” you and your RP communities because they have chosen to improve the game for the betterment of all, YOU included.

(And “deleting” Anvil Rock by merging it is not a very humble suggestion at all. “Low population servers shouldn’t exist!” I fail to see the logic of that vs the megaserver, which at least lets old, smaller communities to continue to exist , while not really destroying your own-no, me existing along with you on your cities won’t destroy your RP experience.)

What you don’t seem to be getting is that you CAN’T join us. the RP community has been scattered. There was no metric to track roleplayers, so roleplayers have been placed randomly on several different servers. Even guilds have been scattered in this manner. If you have a 20 man guild, and 4 are on serve A, 7 are on server B, 2 on server C, 3 on server D, and 4 more are on server E, you can’t do anything together. That is the problem the RP community is facing, but in a much larger scale.

They even jumbled up the different language based servers as well. So now you have French, German, and English players on the map who can’t even understand what each other are saying. Any sense of community is gone. This is NOT a change to improve the game. This is a practice in idiotic deception by Anet, to try to trick people into thinking their game is bustling while their customer base continues to shrink. It’s like the champ trains. Anet considers those to be “social situations” yet…… almost no one ever says a word to each other. Yet, the actual social settings, such as in Divinity’s Reach on TC and Piken (where it was primarily roleplayers roleplaying freely) they absolutely destroyed. The cities aren’t “more alive”, they’re just filled with more silent blobs of flesh. The cities that actually used to be alive are now dead. This is not an improvement This is yet another step closer to a lobby game like LoL.

i’m loving that this thread has over 27000 hits and dev tracker is hitting up threads with problems anywhere between 50 and 100. really makes rpers feel marginalized.

i really don’t see why they couldn’t have just used megaserver with the maps that held world bosses for timers instead of doing it to the entire game. this really doesn’t give home servers much of a use aside from wvw.

so its a day after the update. I’ve done a world boss, and my guild has been split up on different maps. Why isn’t your guild the HIGHEST priority when it comes to mapping together? As a guild leader I want the guild to be a community, and share experiences together. Why am I, and others in the guild, limited to a party of 5 ppl ( all in the same home server and the same guild) as the ones that are to be grouped together. I DON’T care about anyone else that is not in the guild. I’m glad to be killing with them, but they don’t count when it comes to my community experience.
What will happen on guild missions, when we get the Haunted Langmar’s Estate? As a guild will we show up on the same map? Our guild missions will be in different maps, and from what I understand another guild has already ran into this problem.
ANET, you need to make guildies sticking together for events and community the highest priority when it comes to the megaserver map selections. Otherwise, why don’t we just run solo?
This would also alleviate RP guilds problems, they could stick together a lot easier.

Hey, they are releasing in China.

There will be many more players than in europe or the Us, so they can ignore us and prepare the game for the eastern market.

There’s waiting much more money!

Ps:

Yes. Cynicism.

bibakilla.4903:

Hey, they are releasing in China.

There will be many more players than in europe or the Us, so they can ignore us and prepare the game for the eastern market.

There’s waiting much more money!

Ps:

Yes. Cynicism.

I thought the same thing

It’d be helpfull if they made the range of emotes to something slightly less relatable to that of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Rpers wouldn’t be stepping on the toes of those who don’t like it as much, and we wouldn’t be getting their animation emotes all the time.

I’m really sad right now.

I hoped and hoped that all our fears about what could happen with megaservers were unfounded, that Anet had thought this one through and implemented it carefully. And now here we are. Not only have every single one of my fears come to pass, this is actually worse than what I was expecting.

Please, please say this is a bug. Please say it’s not sorting as intended and you’re going to fix it. And please fix it quickly. Because the situation as it stands is going to kill the entire RP community very, very fast.

It may be that they want …

Role play to prevent us … Destroy the community of each country … to prevent us be comfortable.

Can’t believe it anet, you broke Tarnished Coast. Its horrible in the cities now, i loved walking past an area and catching glimpses of people conversations
/me leans on the bar and chuckles at leonga. leonga reaches over and flicks the ear of the nearby sylvari “ooh its hard!”
Those little glimpses made the world feel more real now its just a hellish spamfest full of trolls interrupting with “/me farts loudly and the obnoxious smell fills the room making everyone gag” “/me grinds up against the barmaid lifting her dress and reaching up her top”
fix what you broke anet..

Phantom.8130:

Well, you are dismissing the needs of the game, and my own as a RPer as well. It does feel horribly selfish that you are only thing about how it’s affecting your community. And worse I am being singled out above by others for “not choosing to be” part of the community, as if that was an RP crime. I didn’t even know about RP servers, and my Guild had already chosen a server at headstart. How am I evil (or not “tr00 RPer”) for not being part of your servers, and for wanting more populated city maps? Is it really selfish of me or the other way around? I even guest there not just to “farm” events but hoping to see RPers around. All the RPing I see was most of the time on Divinity Reach, and found too many overflows for RP to matter at all. It just seems as you don’t want “lowly outsiders” who “don’t roleplay” unless they guest there and acknowledge your all superior RP position in the community (sorry, it does feel arrogant for an outsider, even if you may not see it as such.)

Improve filtering. The megaservers are wonderful and perfect for the game, like it or not. The inconveniences to some players don’t overshadow the way it improves the gaming experience for many. Taking it away from cities without trying some more worthy alternative would be a crime.

Ascended also inconvenienced me, and in my view wasn’t needed. The players that claim there’s nothing to do will always complain anyway. I still love and play the game nonetheless, regardless that addition, understanding the reason it has a place in the game, even if I not fully agree with it.

I feel bad because it seems as if I am attacking you, but what I do hate is not TC/PS at ALL, nor the RP communities (that would be stupid, seeing as I am on your side), nor you personally, but the attitude that ANet “hates” you and your RP communities because they have chosen to improve the game for the betterment of all, YOU included.

(And “deleting” Anvil Rock by merging it is not a very humble suggestion at all. “Low population servers shouldn’t exist!” I fail to see the logic of that vs the megaserver, which at least lets old, smaller communities to continue to exist , while not really destroying your own-no, me existing along with you on your cities won’t destroy your RP experience.)

What you don’t seem to be getting is that you CAN’T join us. the RP community has been scattered. There was no metric to track roleplayers, so roleplayers have been placed randomly on several different servers. Even guilds have been scattered in this manner. If you have a 20 man guild, and 4 are on serve A, 7 are on server B, 2 on server C, 3 on server D, and 4 more are on server E, you can’t do anything together. That is the problem the RP community is facing, but in a much larger scale.

They even jumbled up the different language based servers as well. So now you have French, German, and English players on the map who can’t even understand what each other are saying. Any sense of community is gone. This is NOT a change to improve the game. This is a practice in idiotic deception by Anet, to try to trick people into thinking their game is bustling while their customer base continues to shrink. It’s like the champ trains. Anet considers those to be “social situations” yet…… almost no one ever says a word to each other. Yet, the actual social settings, such as in Divinity’s Reach on TC and Piken (where it was primarily roleplayers roleplaying freely) they absolutely destroyed. The cities aren’t “more alive”, they’re just filled with more silent blobs of flesh. The cities that actually used to be alive are now dead. This is not an improvement This is yet another step closer to a lobby game like LoL.[/quote]

It is an improvement, you are just focusing on your own side of story. I saw role players for the first time ever last evening on Southsun Cove. Never saw roleplaying there before on AR before the patch. Why is it wrong for me to experience this just because I wasn’t part of the original RP servers? And BTW, until recently TC was full.

So while you complain that you “can’t roleplay anymore” with friends, I saw plenty of opportunities ahead of me. I am not evil or anti TC/PS/RP for pointing this out. True story that made me smile, while many of you were cringing at the changes.

I suppose I don’t matter unless I am officially from your RP servers.

Star Ace.5207:

It is an improvement, you are just focusing on your own side of story. I saw role players for the first time ever last evening on Southsun Cove. Never saw roleplaying there before on AR before the patch. Why is it wrong for me to experience this just because I wasn’t part of the original RP servers? And BTW, until recently TC was full.

So while you complain that you “can’t roleplay anymore” with friends, I saw plenty of opportunities ahead of me. I am not evil or anti TC/PS/RP for pointing this out. True story that made me smile, while many of you were cringing at the changes.

I suppose I don’t matter unless I am officially from your RP servers.

Although this wasn’t addressed to me, I’d like to respond to it nonetheless.

I’m thrilled that you’ve begun to encounter roleplay where once there was none. I love that people in your position are benefiting from this change, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Even if you’re not from one of the unofficial roleplay servers, you are still a roleplayer, and I for one consider all roleplayers part of the same community.

…But.

We’ve got no reliable way of connecting with one another, now. That’s why we want Anet to put in some sort of ‘RP flag’, so that no matter which server you’re from, roleplayers who flag themselves will have a better chance of being placed together on a map instance.

Don’t you see how that would be a far better solution for all roleplayers?

Looks like the Grove in TC isn’t having megaserver problems now – they’ve probably changed something overnight, I believe, or the trolls went to sleep.

Obligatory fix post.

Star Ace.5207:

It is an improvement, you are just focusing on your own side of story. I saw role players for the first time ever last evening on Southsun Cove. Never saw roleplaying there before on AR before the patch. Why is it wrong for me to experience this just because I wasn’t part of the original RP servers? And BTW, until recently TC was full.

So while you complain that you “can’t roleplay anymore” with friends, I saw plenty of opportunities ahead of me. I am not evil or anti TC/PS/RP for pointing this out. True story that made me smile, while many of you were cringing at the changes.

I suppose I don’t matter unless I am officially from your RP servers.

You could’ve experienced the same RP’ers in the past with guesting. But now the tightly knit RP communities are scattered all over the place because guilds and friends can’t enter the same map instance together. Either it isn’t working as intended or it is, as intended by Anet.

Add to that, the 12yr old trolls that get a kick out of being the big bad guys on the internet by griefing RP communities. They were around even with guesting, but the majority of the community would shut them off but now its not possible because every map instance has all kinds of people half of whom don’t really care about the community. I don’t RP but I’ve been on TC since the beginning and enjoy the community as it is. RP servers have a good reputation for a reason, and they are the one’s that keep cities like DR full everyday that I end up in overflow most of the times. This update just kitten on that loyal community who play and spend more than some troll that jumps ship to the next MMO once he reaches max level and farmed to his heart’s content.
They made this change so that maps like Lornar’s pass or Dredgehaunt or Fireheart Rise etc will be more populated. But you know what? Once the map boss event is over these maps will still be empty even now because they are so dead boring that once you get map completion there’s no reason for you to go back to these places again.

Serezenith.3501:

Star Ace.5207:

It is an improvement, you are just focusing on your own side of story. I saw role players for the first time ever last evening on Southsun Cove. Never saw roleplaying there before on AR before the patch. Why is it wrong for me to experience this just because I wasn’t part of the original RP servers? And BTW, until recently TC was full.

So while you complain that you “can’t roleplay anymore” with friends, I saw plenty of opportunities ahead of me. I am not evil or anti TC/PS/RP for pointing this out. True story that made me smile, while many of you were cringing at the changes.

I suppose I don’t matter unless I am officially from your RP servers.

Although this wasn’t addressed to me, I’d like to respond to it nonetheless.

I’m thrilled that you’ve begun to encounter roleplay where once there was none. I love that people in your position are benefiting from this change, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Even if you’re not from one of the unofficial roleplay servers, you are still a roleplayer, and I for one consider all roleplayers part of the same community.

…But.

We’ve got no reliable way of connecting with one another, now. That’s why we want Anet to put in some sort of ‘RP flag’, so that no matter which server you’re from, roleplayers who flag themselves will have a better chance of being placed together on a map instance.

Don’t you see how that would be a far better solution for all roleplayers?

Surely, and thanks for your beautifully stated, open-minded, and civilized post. I certainly never want any community to be “destroyed” (though I disagree the megaserver is “destroying” anything, I understand why it could be seen as disruptive, especially with a random element of uncertainty-“will I meet my friends today?”-thrown in.)

I am not sure how doable the tag system is, however. I think I said before an invisible tag system would be better, where we qualify ourselves as RPers but no one gets to see it save the computer randomizer. I think their idea is good, but it’s hard to please everybody because what if some of our friends aren’t roleplayers, and we want to be seen by them as well as to roleplayers? In short, it’s not easy to be ANet, and that’s why I feel many are being rather unfair to them when it’s quite obvious to me they just want their game to keep doing well (and quite frankly, many people are loving this change, so that’s why I feel it’s an insult to all of those who do benefit from it, rather than just me being “the archenemy” of your concerns, as I have been unjustly portrayed.)

I think in the end presenting ideas and suggestions in a constructive manner is better than telling the devs "if you keep “ignoring” me I’ll roleplay elsewhere!" I would myself be hesitant as a developer to address the concerns of the group representing the latter, but would really pay attention to all suggestions/player concerns made in good faith.

Also, I am quite sure they read these forums, but they just can’t address us directly or promise things they feel they may not be able to deliver. I would be silent myself if I couldn’t say anything helpful at the moment, or that will in the long run may even be detrimental (players complaining “but you promised!!!”) They do have a history of listening TOO MUCH at times, so I am sure they are aware of the unofficial RP servers’ concerns.

I actually liked the server idea on GW1, but I assume from the April 15th interview they do want a more inclusive experience, rather than having players separating themselves from each other by selecting specific overflows/servers. So yes, in theory they want you to “play with your friends”, but also don’t want you to be exclusive of others in favor of theoretically more lively maps full of players. I am all for the inclusive experience, but it’s a hard task to ultimately please everybody.

No offense meant, and I hope none was taken. Thanks for the fair tone of your post.

So artificial inflation of map population take priority over communities that share similar interests? This is just a MMO now with RPG gone out the window.

I am holding most of my judgement until it gets rolled out for Divinity’s Reach.

Though, it’s not looking hopeful. I am disappointed that those of us who did the research to make sure we were with other roleplayers are now getting tossed to the side. There is a large chunk of us who spend hours upon hours Role playing rather than going out and exploring maps, WvW, and general PvE stuff. A lot of us spend a ton of money for in game gold as well as item shop items to help support our RP.

To not be able to run into a whole server of people that I share similar interests with is upsetting. The reaction given to us was told to “guild up.” I am in multiple guilds for my characters, but that doesn’t change that I like to encounter random roleplay and meet new people to spin stories off of. I don’t just want to roleplay with the same 15 people all the time. On top of it all, we are now subject to more trolls. Which for anyone who has ever RPed, we all know how highly frustrating it is. Blocking someone still can’t prevent them from standing ontop of your character etc. It’s distracting. But I am not saying that all from the non-RP community are bad. A lot are wonderful and helpful, but don’t RP.

RP is not something that is just done on the side to pass the time when we don’t want to do PvE stuff. For a good majority of us, it’s all we do and when you mess up that system, there is nothing left for us to do.