Guild Wars 2

It is really funny.Anet taked MU Threads out the forum and now they generate “MU Threads” Ingame xD Yesterday its was a horrible flamewar

Star Ace.5207:

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.

Between 2005 and 2010 me and dozends or hundreds of other Roleplayers called on Blizzard on nearly every possible occasion to finally aknowledge and adress problems of WoW-Roleplayers on their specifically provided roleplaying realms and to finally enforce the policy so carefully and – again – specifically designed for these realms. Several years of pleading, suggesting, hoping, more pleading, begging, asking nicely, demanding furiosly – all to no avail but about a handful of scarce, official CM replies along the lines of “If you think about it, everything is okay.”

So, in fact, "If you keep “ignoring” me I’ll roleplay elsewhere!" actually IS the only passable solution. Us roleplayers are a group so small and our needs so specific, any provider directing at them or aknowledging them would open up a pandoras box of fixing every little knack for every Tom, kitten or Harry out there. Not gonna happen.

I really do hope, the system is still adjusting and right now only learning, how to put us together. But if it doesn’t, if what we see now IS the system working nicely and finally…well. I am not in any circumstance pinning my hope on the devs aknowledging our problem and responding to it with actual solutions apart from “guild up, yay!”. They’d have to expend ressources clearly cut in general or needed elsewhere.

In the end, every user and his specific playstyle is equal in front of the EULA. For every provider and every MMO ever. A company telling you otherwise is luring you in for a disappointment on every possible level.

(German native here, sorry for mistakes.)

This new megaserver time synchro have ruined the game me. I am not very motivated to continue anymore.

This thread, it makes me happy!

As a role player myself, on Borlis pass, you should have seen my jaw drop when at two AM I go to Hoelbrak and see people of all races in it. This Mega server may not be such a bad idea as I initially thought.

Arrion.2185:

This thread, it makes me happy!

As a role player myself, on Borlis pass, you should have seen my jaw drop when at two AM I go to Hoelbrak and see people of all races in it. This Mega server may not be such a bad idea as I initially thought.

Was anyone actually roleplaying? Or do they just stand mindlessly around the bank like grazing cattle? Every single major city I’ve been in since this patch hit has been like this. Its not even taking anything into consideration other than dumping everyone into overflow like instances.

The current megaserver system seems to put priority on filling out shards with as many players that are available first and sorting out them later.

It seperates RP players, creates over-crowded cities and lowbie zones and kills almost any RP chances there are with huge amount of chat messages and trolling from the other players.

Give us back the original server list and put megaserver up as another shard for your megaserver is poorly planned and it is wiping out all the RP activities.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

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.

Sorry if i came through as if i was “fearmongering”, it was not my intention. I dont assume or suggest that Anet has a specific grudge against the Roleplay aspect of their game. Even though it certainly feels like it through the many collateral damage every second “new feature” deals to this aspect since release.

My point was that with no possibility for RP servers of any kind, scale or language to form their own unique world stories, the only story in the world will be the Living World, Anets ambitious pet project.

I have no serious problem with the Living World story either, i think its a great thing to keep the world’s story going to which characters can react. Through the months it felt like we were RPing with Anet! They were the GMs, putting the whole world through a series of events that radically changed the setting, and it was actually fun to adapt to that.

Seraph and mercanary guilds complimented the Pact guilds in the Tower of Nightmares, whole alliances formed to deal with that specific story. Pact guilds organized to move through the assaulted Lions Arch, and help roleplayed refugees and victims. Nobles of Divinity’s reach raised funds, and criminal guilds tried to exploit the chaos. On top of Anets Living World, roleplay provided a depth to the story Anet cannot ever reach on their own.

Roleplay is more than just random encounters with unkown RPers for one night. Spontaneous RP is good, its a great start, but thats not all RP can be. Or could be, up till now. The larger scale of RP, the almost 2 years old growing timeline and unique history, the world-wide roleplay community is in serious danger now.

It felt like we were RPing with Anet, in collaboration to create a trully Living World. Now it feels more like Anet is saying “kitten off, nobody wants you around.”
Then it steps away and smiles for the camera. Showcasing their rousing success with their community and their living world.

Mind you, half of the issue is not Anet itself, but the immature crowd of trolls that Anet has no control over. On that point, all that Anet did (this time) was taking away our defenses that we set up ourselves (since Anet didnt exactly help with that either).

I agree with most everything on here

-logged into non/random people on my ‘rp server’
-lashed at for bringing up rp in /m
-My entire guild was thrown across shards
-Rp events are now impossible without a huge pain to get them going
-I no longer feel comfortable in a community I was eager to log to
-My community is constantly ignored but told to “please understand and be patient”
-I don’t have to be here
-Actually listen to us players like you claim to

I think a clear statement is I have quite a few ANET RPers in my friendslist. If any are online, they’re ~invisible~.

In some cases these are people I consider friends. I will be honest, I’m absolutely sure they are as miserable as I am.

The funny thing about listening is that it doesn’t mean one will or has to do anything other than …. listen.

Arrion.2185:

This thread, it makes me happy!

As a role player myself, on Borlis pass, you should have seen my jaw drop when at two AM I go to Hoelbrak and see people of all races in it. This Mega server may not be such a bad idea as I initially thought.

Oh yeah, I’ve seen such too.

A bunch of players, not RPing, standing still, sometimes trolling other people.

That’s not because there’s more people than before that they are actually RPers. Last night, I posted a /e, I got mocked by 3 people, got trolled by 2 others, and the rest simply didn’t see or notice me due to the heavy spam of the chat box.

Tell me Anet, is that what you wanted, to actually kill interactions between people in a supposed Massive Multiplayer game? Now I’m afraid to press enter each time I type an emote or a reply, fearing that someone will come to ruin the momentum of the roleplay or the ambiance of it. I no longer feel comfortable, nor are my friends, my guild and other RP guilds.

What people get wrong is that RP can still exist, but the big tight knit community we once have is being split. We CAN’T add every RPer in the world to our friendslist, nor can everyone join a RP guild, it doesn’t work that way.

You may see some RPers around, but those RPers are RPing in their own bubble, they didn’t meet randomly. It’s the random and public RP that’s being stabbed in the gut several times, and without such RP the community will diminish. When your friends leave, so do you, because you have a harder time meeting new people.

Anyone arguing against this see the point? When you can’t expand your contacts, it stays the same, and as we all know people come and go in MMOs, soon those contacts you have disappear and you’re left more and more alone.

I both love and hate the megaserver, because I PvE and sPvP just as much as I RP, I love seeing more people when I do PvE. But what I don’t understand, even from a PvE perspective, is the need to megaserver the cities too. They “feel” more alive, but that feeling is an illusion to how my server status is. There’s nothing that keeps the Piken Square community around other than WvW, which shouldn’t be.

My two cents are either form a system where people can check a list of different playstyles “Leveling, Exploring, World Boss, Roleplaying, etc” and also able to check whether you want it to do everything it can to priority your server or leave it to the megaserver, where this check list becomes #1 priority. Or, just remove megaserver in cities.

Tyragon you summed up exactly what I was about to say.

Before the megaserver was rolled out I was a little skeptical that it would have the impact a lot of the RP community feared it would have. I don’t really RP but I transferred specifically to TC because I love being around it and the community that it fosters. It’s starting to look like there was justified cause to worry.

I logged into The Grove tonight where I usually enjoy overhearing RP conversations while I craft or whatever, only to find hordes of people standing motionless at the TP and the /m and /s getting spammed so fast with nonsense that I thought I was guesting on another server. No RP of course because it’s simply not possible.

I and many others have offered a solution to this, that is actually implemented in another newly released MMO. A small set of preferences that are entered by the player that weight the likelyhood of like-minded people being grouped in the same shard.

I honestly don’t see any reason for any of the cities to be on the megaserver at all. If a further weighting by playstyle preference is not on the table then protecting the cities from the chaotic melting pot I think would be acceptable.

I miss TC.

Wasbunny.6531:

I and many others have offered a solution to this, that is actually implemented in another newly released MMO. A small set of preferences that are entered by the player that weight the likelyhood of like-minded people being grouped in the same shard.

Could you please tell me which one? I wasn’t interested in another MMO at all because GW2 and Roleplay in GW2 was perfect for me on so many levels but the way it looks now, informations about alternatives become more and more interesting… :/

Llarrian.9074:

Wasbunny.6531:

I and many others have offered a solution to this, that is actually implemented in another newly released MMO. A small set of preferences that are entered by the player that weight the likelyhood of like-minded people being grouped in the same shard.

Could you please tell me which one? I wasn’t interested in another MMO at all because GW2 and Roleplay in GW2 was perfect for me on so many levels but the way it looks now, informations about alternatives become more and more interesting… :/

I specifically left it generic since discussions can start about other games which could get this thread locked. But it’s probably not that hard to figure out.

It’s pretty sad how they’re ignoring this post. I personally play on Tarnished Coast for the fact that the community is amazing at least imo compared to other servers. Always able to find a friendly face around, which is good for the new players too. Now with this change and people being separated everywhere, it’s really disheartening to see that people can’t do what they enjoy without a huge hassle. Hopefully ArenaNet listens, even though it doesn’t look like they are.

Llarrian.9074:

Wasbunny.6531:

I and many others have offered a solution to this, that is actually implemented in another newly released MMO. A small set of preferences that are entered by the player that weight the likelyhood of like-minded people being grouped in the same shard.

Could you please tell me which one? I wasn’t interested in another MMO at all because GW2 and Roleplay in GW2 was perfect for me on so many levels but the way it looks now, informations about alternatives become more and more interesting… :/

I’ll put it this way. Most other games have some system in place to prevent this kind of thing. I won’t name what I’m certain this is referring to but tagging/shard/server selections with specific tags are pretty common. From older titles to newer ones.

As for me, I know something went seriously wrong because I JUST DOWNLOADED AND INSTALLED FURCADIA. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

So let’s recap:

1. Anet announce a future feature.
2. People voice their concern how/what the future feature might obliterate their favourite playstyle. They provide a very simple solution to the problem which costs Anet nothing but a day or two of programming. (RP-Flag)
3. Anet, rather than do anything about the problem, tells them to wait whether the thing they are concerned about actually happens.
4. It happens.
5. DUH.

I begin to feel more and more that the magnitude of neglect the company shows towards the RP community is one step short of them actually going out of their way to harm the RPers.

Wasbunny.6531:

I specifically left it generic since discussions can start about other games which could get this thread locked. But it’s probably not that hard to figure out.

Thank you. I’ll keep my eyes open.

As a resident of the Tarnished Coast, my heart goes out to the RPers of my community who are adversely affected by these changes. Since 2005, Beetletun was my “home town” in GW1. Divinity Reach has become my “home town” since the start of GW2. The RP community made that town alive and vibrant with it’s own unique feel.

I thought the conflict was finally over with the demise of Scarlett, little did I know of the even greater threat of “Megaserver Invasion”.

Ps., an anecdote:

Yesterday, while sitting in my bar in Piken Square, the bar my guild runs since motherkittening BETA, I met a guy from Slovakia. He had spend 35€ ($48 US) on gems to transfer his account onto Piken Square for the sole and single reason that he wanted to find RP.

And you know those people exist, Arenanet. In Germany there is a saying “Der Kunde ist König” (The Costumer is King). Stop acting like the kittening French Revolution towards us.

Forst.5863:

Stop acting like the kittening French Revolution towards us.

I’m french and I find this offensive.

Joke aside, being also a resident of Piken Square, I see so many players having the same feedback as us here. It’s just overwhelming. It’s actually funny that we still have no official answer from a dev with all those negative feedbacks from a rather large community (because yes, to those people thinking that RPers are only a minority, I can assure you we are representing a very good percentage of the total population of GW2).

Nothing that I could say here has not already be said, but I will add my voice to the rest so it is known that at least one more person is not happy with this mish mash.

At the very least, of the very least, remove cities from the megaserver. It will still impede the communities to form and make organized RP/PvE events hard to do, but at least we have a haven to take refuge until a solution is found (even if the sad solution is to migrate to another game, something I was not even considering up to this last patch).

Kanto.1659:

Nothing that I could say here has not already be said, but I will add my voice to the rest so it is known that at least one more person is not happy with this mish mash.

At the very least, of the very least, remove cities from the megaserver. It will still impede the communities to form and make organized RP/PvE events hard to do, but at least we have a haven to take refuge until a solution is found (even if the sad solution is to migrate to another game, something I was not even considering up to this last patch).

I have a horrible feeling this is the best we may get. Even more boring, bland bar RP forever. (Not to diss bar RP. But seriously. Do we need MORE?)

As an Piken Square Rper I’d like to add my voice too.
The idea that a player can set their preferences sounds like a good idea, no idea how viable it is. I understand they’re still testing the system and improving it, but I can only ask and plea that they keep the Rp community in consideration. Roleplaying is, besides the occasional pvp match, the reason why I play Guild wars 2 since beta.

I haven’t posted on the official forums in ages, and I wish that I would never have to add my voice into the sprawling mass of opinions here. The megaserver system is an inconvenience to gameplay for individuals that want to play together. When a system is put into place with no way for a user to determine the outcome, then it’s a failing system. We’ve been told that friends lists and guild representation have a large impact on what shards we get dumped on. This feature isn’t working properly. We’ve been told to wait and see what happens, and what we’ve seen is people in the same guild, and even same party being flung to differing shards. Are we supposed to play the ferry game until we can start to play and roleplay together? An added layer of complexity to play with people we know or recognize is never a good thing.

The reason why we transfer and move to servers is for some semblance of community. The reason why I guested to TC for months and months was the silent promise of random encounters with individuals of similar interests. The reason I transferred and got involved with the RP community was the creative and interesting backing that a slew of people provided on a daily basis. How are we supposed to coordinate events with five, ten, or even a hundred players now? Are there certain shards or maps that Arenanet is going to leave off of the Megaserver system? Are we going to get any method of guaranteed control over the system? Are we going to get any line of clear communication to address concerns that have been voiced through this thread?

Llarrian.9074:

Star Ace.5207:

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.

Between 2005 and 2010 me and dozends or hundreds of other Roleplayers called on Blizzard on nearly every possible occasion to finally aknowledge and adress problems of WoW-Roleplayers on their specifically provided roleplaying realms and to finally enforce the policy so carefully and – again – specifically designed for these realms. Several years of pleading, suggesting, hoping, more pleading, begging, asking nicely, demanding furiosly – all to no avail but about a handful of scarce, official CM replies along the lines of “If you think about it, everything is okay.”

So, in fact, "If you keep “ignoring” me I’ll roleplay elsewhere!" actually IS the only passable solution. Us roleplayers are a group so small and our needs so specific, any provider directing at them or aknowledging them would open up a pandoras box of fixing every little knack for every Tom, kitten or Harry out there. Not gonna happen.

I really do hope, the system is still adjusting and right now only learning, how to put us together. But if it doesn’t, if what we see now IS the system working nicely and finally…well. I am not in any circumstance pinning my hope on the devs aknowledging our problem and responding to it with actual solutions apart from “guild up, yay!”. They’d have to expend ressources clearly cut in general or needed elsewhere.

In the end, every user and his specific playstyle is equal in front of the EULA. For every provider and every MMO ever. A company telling you otherwise is luring you in for a disappointment on every possible level.

(German native here, sorry for mistakes.)

I have to say that this is about the most intelligent post I’ve seen yet in regards to this. Well played, well played.

Still no Dev to grace us with his or her presence in this thread.
Someone change the title to “WE LOVE ANET” and let’s see if Mr. “I swung a sword” deems us worthy of his attention again, maybe this time he’ll give us more pearls of wisdom like “guild up”.

Mocking and ridicule will not help or progress anything but the complete shutdown and ignoring of the thread and the serious issue it is meant to discuss. Even if i can completely understand the reaction and the borderline desperation, Please stop it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

To maximize your odds of running into other RP players more often, you’ll want to make sure you’re on the same world (generally TC and Piken are viewed as the RP worlds), and in guilds with other RP members also on that same world. For example, everyone from TC currently will be set to high priority to sort together, same thing goes with people who are all a part of the same guild (so guild up RP folks!)

We’ll continue to monitor, adapt and update the system as we go forward as well, for now I’d suggest seeing how it works once we enable the mega server system across all maps and then giving comments and feedback when you see it in action!

(edited to add Piken!)

The first thing I have to say is that you cant add a 10K+ community in 1 guild, and even if every rper would give their consent to it, it still wouldnt work as you “planned” out it would.

Let me state first that im a player who does everything ingame (no-life, LOL) and also that i’m not offended, but dissapointed by the lack of dev-reaction on this post. Secondly, let me state that I thought after everything that this would work out fine (which obviously it didnt)

Now, here comes my say in all this: I am both a rper, pver, pvper and wvwer, and I enjoy to divide my time accordingly over all game mode. I spend over 5000 hours in this game, and my solution to “afking in LA” was Roleplay.

Arena-net, seriouly, I have backed you when people started asking for more permanent content instead of living world. I have backed you on gem sales promotion, by saying that there is still the alternative of farming gems, but you have now come to a point that has gone too far.

1. RP Thread with 30k views has been ignored for quite awhile now
2 TxS/TTS post on world bosses and timers which has 10k views has also been ignored so far

On both fronts you are damaging the game here, and despite KNOWING (yes, we know you’ve watched the thread)that this is going to cause trouble on multiple fronts, you instead keep on ignoring and pretending nothing happened, by posting thing like “More megaserver maps” on facebook.

I hear things from all parts of the community, and am rather well known on my server for the amount of playing I do, some people, REALLY like the megaserver (And yes, im positive from a pve-perpective, and from a leveling perspective), PVPers seem to not care much, and it doens effect WvW, but Megahardcore Boss-slaying guilds, and roleplayers, dont.

The solution?: Simple! a checklist, start realising that not EVERYONE wants to play with everyone, you could have various topics which players can check and uncheck:

-Event Trains
-Leveling
-Role-playing
-Boss Slaying

Not only that, but you should also take in account that Europe has it even worse than US, we get paired with french/german/spanish people aswell, happened to me twice now that I got into a french/german speaking Gendarran Fields.

Regards, a communiy member who’d like an answer, an honest one, this time.

At this point, what needs to be said has been said. The ball, so to speak, is in ANet’s court. What they do in the coming week, if they do anything at all, will ultimately determine whether RP will thrive or dwindle and wilt away.

Kravick.4906:

At this point, what needs to be said has been said. The ball, so to speak, is in ANet’s court. What they do in the coming week, if they do anything at all, will ultimately determine whether RP will thrive or dwindle and wilt away.

Alright, agreed, but i won’t let this thread fall off front page. If i have to be denied it’s one thing, but to be ignored, that, i won’t stand for.
So keep bumping this thread my rp brothers.

You guys are pretty awesome and I love the immersion effort you guys make for the game. I’ve loved my time on Piken Square, even if I don’t roleplay much myself (or very well when I try). The flirting can get a bit annoying at times and the Vanguard gathered outside a Skritt cave powering up the stolen helms event beyond that of Zhaitan was kind of silly.

Even so, thanks to the RPing I’ve tried to use names suitable for Tyria, my Ranger wears helmets that cover his missing left eye, my Elementalist is a decendant of my gw1 Assassin and I’ll call for help at an event rather than saying it has spawned. The game is a lot more enjoyable that way.

Mistwing.3578:

Alright, agreed, but i won’t let this thread fall off front page. If i have to be denied it’s one thing, but to be ignored, that, i won’t stand for.
So keep bumping this thread my rp brothers.

I agree on this, we must keep this thread on front page, at least to show Anet that we are serious, and not complaining lightly.

I’m really frustrated by the way the megaserver system has broken up the sense of community that TC once had.

Though I find it very frustrating that ANet has refused to officially indicate any server as an RP home, I understand why… and that’s not the point here. The point is to try to find opportunity instead of frustration.

If the megamap system really does group people by certain preferences, specifically those indicated in the LFG system… why not add “RP” to that LFG list? Or in some way make it possible for that RP preference to be known to the system.

Then, regardless of server, roleplayers would tend to be grouped together, rather than being split apart as seems to be the case now.

Hi!

This is probably the third time I’ve posted on the forums as I tend to avoid it. (I can be very opinionated.) Just like to add myself to the number count of roleplayers unhappy.

Disable megaservers in cities if you can’t be bothered to do tags Anet, it’s just that simple. I could make a big post about why it doesn’t make a difference for cities but I think most people who have played for a long time know the only thing most people who don’t RP in cities do is idle or chat to there friends.

Let cities stay as community hubs, please.

Overall it remains such a waste of time. If we think about it, why did they decide to do this megaserver stuff?

They say it was to group people together. for more interactions and gameplay.
I say that the servers are getting empty, and thus they need to regroup people together to hide this fact.

It was perfectly working before, and I don’t remember seeing someone complaining about ‘OMG there’s none on this map! Laaaame!’. They did like the town clothes. They took something working perfectly fine, to kitten it up so hard.

phaneo.4597:

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.

Correct. Welcome to the new Megaserver Potemkin Village.

Actually, it was done, if I’m not wrong, for financial reasons: servers are expensive, and they can run fewer servers this way.

That having been said, I think they’re going to lose money by high-paying customers leaving. (RPers have a love affair with town clothes.)

Also, I saw my dev acquaintance on, but they didn’t respond when I asked. Either they were afk for a very long time or the staff has been instructed not to comment on the issue yet.

Hystery.8415:

Overall it remains such a waste of time. If we think about it, why did they decide to do this megaserver stuff?

They say it was to group people together. for more interactions and gameplay.
I say that the servers are getting empty, and thus they need to regroup people together to hide this fact.

It was perfectly working before, and I don’t remember seeing someone complaining about ‘OMG there’s none on this map! Laaaame!’. They did like the town clothes. They took something working perfectly fine, to kitten it up so hard.

People were complaining about empty maps, that is a common issue among players doing events in non-champ farming zones (especially new players). The issues weren’t nearly as present in high population servers, but they were still somewhat present. This system went about fixing that in entirely the wrong way, where higher population servers are now being broken apart. Even with the metrics working properly (they’re clearly not), we would have been broken up. Just not as badly as we’re seeing now. The system, at its core, is flawed. Server Merges carry some bad undertones among players, but they work. They’ve been proven to work by all the other MMOs that came before this. The way you solve underpopulation issues is by working from the bottom up. You take the lowest population servers and have the megaserver merge them up into the next lowest, and the next lowest, etc. You don’t take already high population servers and suddenly filtering them down. That’s just unintentionally punishing players in servers that were operating perfectly fine. Those servers could have benefited from seeing some of the low pop server people brought up into their zones, but they sure as hell aren’t benefiting from being split up themselves.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

Hystery.8415:

Overall it remains such a waste of time. If we think about it, why did they decide to do this megaserver stuff?

They say it was to group people together. for more interactions and gameplay.
I say that the servers are getting empty, and thus they need to regroup people together to hide this fact.

It was perfectly working before, and I don’t remember seeing someone complaining about ‘OMG there’s none on this map! Laaaame!’. They did like the town clothes. They took something working perfectly fine, to kitten it up so hard.

People were complaining about empty maps, that is a common issue among players doing events in non-champ farming zones (especially new players). The issues weren’t nearly as present in high population servers, but they were still somewhat present. This system went about fixing that in entirely the wrong way, where higher population servers are now being broken apart. Even with the metrics working properly (they’re clearly not), we would have been broken up. Just not as badly as we’re seeing now. The system, at its core, is flawed. Server Merges carry some bad undertones among players, but they work. They’ve been proven to work by all the other MMOs that came before this. The way you solve underpopulation issues is by working from the bottom up. You take the lowest population servers and have the megaserver merge them up into the next lowest, and the next lowest, etc. You don’t take already high population servers and suddenly filtering them down. That’s just unintentionally punishing players in servers that were operating perfectly fine. Those servers could have benefited from seeing some of the low pop server people brought up into their zones, but they sure as hell aren’t benefiting from being split up themselves.

Make no mistake that the megaserver is about merging servers to cover up the dwindling player population. ANet knows “merger” is a dirty word in the MMO industry as it’s about as close as you can get to admitting that your game is struggling. This is the same reason why BioWare/EA didn’t call their server mergers actual mergers, though everyone knew that was exactly what was happening.

The megaserver was a game-wide server merger, and little effort or care was taken to ensure that communities established before launch were able to stick together. It’s clear that the roleplaying community has been hit hard by this update (outfits being another nasty change for us) and unless ANet addresses these concerns in a serious and meaningful way, I predict that the roleplaying community will dissolve and move onto other games.

You can either compete for our playtime or not, ANet. Splitting up our community and removing features we loved about this game are not smart changes when your competitors are watching…

I honestly can’t come up with a reason as to why nobody from Anet has responded to this thread, after the patch went live.

But if I had to try and find some shred of a reason, I’d have to go with this: They hope, collectivly, that this thread dies soon. The faster the better.

That way, they don’t even have to come and answer us. They won’t have to explain themselves. They can just keep pretending that everything is amazing.

I’m baffled that Dev’s these days don’t seem to understand one really important factor: The short-term costumers won’t bring you kitten. They might bump your playerbase for a few weeks, hell, maybe even 2 months. But what’s after that? The most loyal playerbase any MMORPG can have will be so kittened off that they left the sinking ship a long time ago – just to be mistreated somewhere else, eventually.

But for that – and for the effects of it, it’s only you who is to blame, Anet. But what’s a loyal customer-base when you can have short, easy cash with buzzwords and less actual service. Got dat patchmoney, eh?

We will see how long this can keep going.

UncleOris.1892:

But if I had to try and find some shred of a reason, I’d have to go with this: They hope, collectivly, that this thread dies soon. The faster the better.

That way, they don’t even have to come and answer us. They won’t have to explain themselves. They can just keep pretending that everything is amazing.

That won’t happen. I am personally resolute to keep bumping this thread on first page, only to remind them that I’m still here and still waiting answers. I do hope I am not the only one being determined doing that.

Just wait until Divinity Reach is touched as well. Then the last possible RPing spot will be gone.

And yes, it IS even worse in the EU. I paid 25€ to change servers. (A German one, to add that) and for what? For being put on the same map with French, Spanish, Slovenian, English and Players of whatever nationality else. And that happens on EVERY Megaserver-Map I visit. So the sorting doesn’t even work at all.

(Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against these nations, just the mixup of languages makes me sick! I chose a German Server for a reason!)

I don’t feel comfortable anymore.- Especially not if the same silly discussion starts over and over again every five minutes. “This is a Megaserver, it’s INTERNATION speak English you idiots!” “French people suck…” etc pp… I can’t hear that crap anymore really. There’s no friggn’ tolerance out there. That’s not what I wanted when I paid 25€ to change my server. That’s not what I am willing to endure in the future.

I wonder if I could get my money back to migrate to a US server? At least the main language would be English over there.

That RP is impossible under these circumstances and that the crowded chat doesn’T help, that cities should be untouched etc has been named often enough.

If there’s a lack of money, Add-Ons are a good way to make a LOT. Far more than the Gemshop could do while it is still possible to farm gold to exchange it for gems.
But with a lot of upset people leaving money will leave too. And right now there ARE a lot of people who are REALLY upset.

UncleOris.1892:

I honestly can’t come up with a reason as to why nobody from Anet has responded to this thread, after the patch went live.

But if I had to try and find some shred of a reason, I’d have to go with this: They hope, collectivly, that this thread dies soon. The faster the better.

That way, they don’t even have to come and answer us. They won’t have to explain themselves. They can just keep pretending that everything is amazing.

I’m baffled that Dev’s these days don’t seem to understand one really important factor: The short-term costumers won’t bring you kitten. They might bump your playerbase for a few weeks, hell, maybe even 2 months. But what’s after that? The most loyal playerbase any MMORPG can have will be so kittened off that they left the sinking ship a long time ago – just to be mistreated somewhere else, eventually.

But for that – and for the effects of it, it’s only you who is to blame, Anet. But what’s a loyal customer-base when you can have short, easy cash with buzzwords and less actual service. Got dat patchmoney, eh?

We will see how long this can keep going.

It’s actually common practice in community management to isolate and ignore complaints until posters get tired of themselves and give up. Every major fiasco in modern gaming has been handled this way (a certain city-builder, a sci-fi high fantasy game, and an ancient history battle simulator all come to mind). And since it works, I don’t see the practice changing.

If you don’t acknowledge a problem, it doesn’t exist.

playfuldreamer.1920:

UncleOris.1892:

I honestly can’t come up with a reason as to why nobody from Anet has responded to this thread, after the patch went live.

But if I had to try and find some shred of a reason, I’d have to go with this: They hope, collectivly, that this thread dies soon. The faster the better.

That way, they don’t even have to come and answer us. They won’t have to explain themselves. They can just keep pretending that everything is amazing.

I’m baffled that Dev’s these days don’t seem to understand one really important factor: The short-term costumers won’t bring you kitten. They might bump your playerbase for a few weeks, hell, maybe even 2 months. But what’s after that? The most loyal playerbase any MMORPG can have will be so kittened off that they left the sinking ship a long time ago – just to be mistreated somewhere else, eventually.

But for that – and for the effects of it, it’s only you who is to blame, Anet. But what’s a loyal customer-base when you can have short, easy cash with buzzwords and less actual service. Got dat patchmoney, eh?

We will see how long this can keep going.

It’s actually common practice in community management to isolate and ignore complaints until posters get tired of themselves and give up. Every major fiasco in modern gaming has been handled this way (a certain city-builder, a sci-fi high fantasy game, and an ancient history battle simulator all come to mind), and since it works, I don’t see the practice changing.

If you don’t acknowledge a problem, it doesn’t exist.

It’s shocking that I know every single game you just mentioned. And it’s even more shocking that you’re absolutely correct.

Right now the best way to handle this situation is to avoid giving any money to Arenanet untill the fix this.

And I mean all people that are unhappy with this change. In WvW, PvE and RP. If you’re alienated by this situation I suggest you don’t pay them anymore, it’s really the best way to face such silence in my opinion.
Maybe then they’ll answer. I’m not happy of doing this, I loved this game since it was in Beta, but this change did the impossibile and destroyed my enjoyment of a game I loved so much.

This is angry response yes, but it’s really the best way I have to be heard. Besides keeping this thread active.

Synesh.1094:

Right now the best way to handle this situation is to avoid giving any money to Arenanet untill the fix this.

And I mean all people that are unhappy with this change. In WvW, PvE and RP. If you’re alienated by this situation I suggest you don’t pay them anymore, it’s really the best way to face such silence in my opinion.
Maybe then they’ll answer. I’m not happy of doing this, I loved this game since it was in Beta, but this change did the impossibile and destroyed my enjoyment of a game I loved so much.

This is angry response yes, but it’s really the best way I have to be heard. Besides keeping this thread active.

Been there, done that. I agree with you completely.
I was planning to add 6000 more gems to my account after April’s big patch, but that plan is on hold, indefinitely now. I won’t waste anymore of my money if i can’t RP or in general enjoy the game. It’s up to A-Net to get rid of (or fix) Skynet, and then and only then, my support will resume.

Yeah, I stopped buying gems completely (even though I am lazy when it comes to gold farming so I have to stop myself every now and again), and even though I have a second account I was about to “pimp up” for an rp plot I had in mind involving gearing up and outfitting three characters at least, I won’t even bother logging in on it for the first time.

Until I can see how the situation develops, I’ll keep the 0 spent money policy, and continue playing and roleplaying, though for the first time since GW1 beta, I lost faith in the game, and am looking at competition for my future gaming time.

Too bad, that all we want is a way to enjoy the game with like minded people, and are being ignored in simple request to make megaserver factor us in as a part of the playerbase…

I want to outline a few of the problems that I can see with the Megaserver system from a roleplayer’s perspective. If I can, I’ll try and offer a possible solution or workaround for them as well. I can’t promise that the solution will be ideal, or even viable, but it’d at least improve on the current situation. These are just my personal thoughts, and I don’t speak for anyone but myself.

When I talk about ‘shards’, I’ll be referring to the map instances players are placed into by the Megaserver.

Shards are poorly designed to cater to factors such as home servers.

And I’ll try to explain why I think so.

As things are, during the small hours of the morning, the quiet, unpopulated shards fill with people from all servers who would not necessarily be grouped together preferentially, but have to be because there are not enough players online from their home servers to fill a map. That’s fine. That was the point of the Megaserver system. You are placed with people who play during your active hours.

But when peak time comes, some of these people are residually left over on maps, and are occupying shard spaces that could be filled by people from the primary native server. The result is parties and guilds being divided between their preferred shard and another, which is splitting people up and making roleplay (as well as other things) difficult to coordinate.

It was fine when people from other servers logged in to sit by a crafting station and do their thing in a quiet map, but they are being clumped together in major roleplaying hubs for hours on end. Roleplayers who come and go are not be able to meet with one another because the shard they want to join kept full by other players going about their game-related business.

I’m not saying that they have any less of a legitimate right to be in cities as the roleplayers, but it would be wise to find a way to split these groups of people up according to their interests and according to what they came to the city to do. That was supposed to be another key, defining feature of Megaservers. I don’t believe it has succeeded in what it set out to do.

Solution? I’m not really sure. Maybe something like this:

If you want to craft at the stations, surrounded by dozens of other crafters, join a ‘crafting’ shard. If you want to roleplay, join a ‘roleplay’ shard. Heck, there is nothing stopping you from joining a ‘roleplaying’ shard to listen in on some roleplay if you want, like how things were before this system came in. But right now, you have no way of choosing what you want to do or who you want to be grouped with, and that’s the annoying thing.

There is no way to find out which shard you or your friends are currently in.

This problem speaks for itself.

My suggestion is to assign shards with a naming system by which they can be identified. It doesn’t have to be complex. It can even be numerical. Shard01, Shard02, etc. The point is that we need a way to find out where our friends have been placed, and we need an easier way to join their shard that doesn’t require us to be in their guild or party.

Some roleplayers don’t want to join guilds, and don’t have people they can message to taxi them to the relevant shard. They cannot easily seek random roleplay with the system as it presently is.

Something similar to the LFG tool would be infinitely useful for this. I would suggest having this tool display native servers per shard by percentage to allow players to join the shard with the most people from their home server in it. If necessary, they could queue to join the one they want.

Roleplay in other languages.

Most people can identify Tarnished Coast for NA and Piken Square for EU as the primary English-speaking roleplaying servers, but did you know Jade Sea [FR] has a large roleplaying population, too? This is not something our NA players are likely to encounter, but every night since the Megaserver was implemented, we’ve had French and German roleplayers popping up in Piken Square roleplay hubs. I like meeting new people, but we don’t understand each other.

There are a variety of other minor gripes, but I think these are the most pressing ones at hand. If anyone wants to add to the list and suggest their own potential resolutions, or contend and debate mine, I invite them to do so.