Guild Wars 2

Just what I need to see when logging in to Divinity’s Reach:

“Please refrain from doing any roleplay in this server, thanks in advance.”

Along with so much hate for roleplayers. I feel like my community just exploded and I’ve landed on Mars. What happened to grouping people by their home server, guild and friend list? These aren’t my friends, and I have no wish to interact with them. My block list just got a whole lot bigger.

Can we please have the option to go to a different district, like in GW1, or at least have a RP tag so we can meet other folks we have something in common with! I have nothing in common with the people I meet in game now, except for the fact they also play the game, but not the way I do!

(Edited to add: Piken Square Roleplayer)

Yep. I made it to an instance with lots of active RP. But with that, I am also watching the trolls too.

Okay, there should really be some kinda RP checkbox we can have for our characters so every RPer can be sorted into the same instance. We need that now more than ever.

RPers shouldn’t just be forced to guild up with any other/unanimous RP guild, because that nullifies any sort of unique guilds that are dedicated to specific RP, plots, and characters.

And the fact that people are telling others not to roleplay is just ridiculous.

In the meantime, I’d just ignore anyone who tells you not to roleplay. You have just as much right to be there and roleplay as they do to do crafting or what-not. If you annoy them, they always have the option of blocking you.

I don’t think they even care. Every single thread about megaservers has reached many hundreds of posts with people voicing multiple concerns, and they are just going full steam ahead with the plan anyway.

Zaxares.5419:

In the meantime, I’d just ignore anyone who tells you not to roleplay. You have just as much right to be there and roleplay as they do to do crafting or what-not. If you annoy them, they always have the option of blocking you.

I would have actually reported the ignorant player who made that post… “on this server”, as if he/she had any ownership. The mega server makes it so it’s “no one’s” server, but an universal one. If you don’t like RP, either ignore it or ignore map chat/block “offenders” (which they aren’t.) If I catch anyone trespassing on someone else’s playstyle, I will report it because it is indeed a punishable offense (harassment.)

A major problem now : How do I find out if there’s roleplay going on in another instance of Divinity’s Reach, as I’m not in any large guilds.

I was used to just walking past and happening upon RP and being able to join in; yes, I’m a random RPer a lot of the time. Or rather, I was. I’ve no idea how to find folks now, except by pure luck!

I didn’t report the other player, I just put them on block. :/ Am I going to have to put every person who hates RP on block now?

After reading all the complains about the Megaservers these last few days, i have to admit that as a European I am quite glad I chose NA back when I started playing the game. My less successful choice at the time, was that of a server, Kaineng is definitely not the place for a RP-er to be in, though I have yet to get any grief from non-RPers and most react rather well to acting in-character.

That said, if ANet offered free transfers to an official RP server, I’d jump ship faster than Logan runs home to Jenna. Alternatively, I’m all for a RP flag that will make the megaservers work as intended, so I can actually play the game with those wonderful people over at TC without having to worry about trolls.

Here we go again. Starting up the rollout. Nothing’s changed. No response. Divinity’s Reach, the biggest RP hub, is now in a megaserver. Maybe that means we’ll get another sudden surge of responses in this and the other feedback threads. Though that clearly means kitten all, since they’re not responding to anyone.

So the megaserver got switched on in DR and I, being the kitten-disturber I am, immediately went into map and was like "There goes RP in GW2". A dev actually whispered me right after to tell me that they are trying out a system that prioritizes home shards when sorting into megaservers, and actually, it’s working. So far, it seems like nothing has changed, at least tonight. We’ll see what happens for me and my friends in future logins, but very tentatively it looks to me like they may have solved the problem for the Reach.

Whether they’re working on something or not, they need to say something. Going this long without acknowledging the feedback threads they themselves created is really harmful to their relationship with their customers.

WvW is the only place to play now that isn’t megaserver :’-(

I quit this game.

Well… I suppose……. we could all get together and roleplay in WvW…

Wanted to throw in some support for the RPers of the game. I don’t RP personally, and likely never will, but being on TC, I’ve gotten to where I really enjoy seeing it in map/say chat. It’s sad that a lot of RPers are getting trolled due to being mixed with communities that are unfriendly or downright hostile toward people who RP.

I’m a bit sad that I’m not going to see any more of Brother Drake’s [RPcd] raids in map chat anymore. I found it really entertaining to watch their progress while on the same map, or while doing the same event chains. It added a lot of fun for a while to an otherwise boring event grind.

I really hope they acknowledge the problems the megaserver implementation has caused, including for RP. This game has a huge RP community, and I think it’ll lose a lot of players if no solution is presented.

I really would like to see how it looks like when a bunch of RPers take over a borderland and declare this their new home. That must be awesome in the chat then

As awesome as it may look on paper, if you try to RP in WvWvW, prepare for meeting massive hate even from your own server. WvW is fast-paced, sometimes stressful, and aims for maximum efficiency. Stopping to type in some snarky IC comments in the middle of a siege will be either drowned in the ocean of tacticly actually relevent information (like “inc.west” or “dont waste supps on outergates!!”) or after the defeat it will get lots of hate. If RPers keep to the only safe parts like the keep of their servers borderland, you will also be hated for taking up slots from those who would actually contribute to the WvW.

Also if the WvW maps would turn to the last RP haven, there would be queues, reaching into the EotM, and you are back where you started, unable to meet up with RPers.

lakdav.3694:

As awesome as it may look on paper, if you try to RP in WvWvW, prepare for meeting massive hate even from your own server. WvW is fast-paced, sometimes stressful, and aims for maximum efficiency. Stopping to type in some snarky IC comments in the middle of a siege will be either drowned in the ocean of tacticly actually relevent information (like “inc.west” or “dont waste supps on outergates!!”) or after the defeat it will get lots of hate. If RPers keep to the only safe parts like the keep of their servers borderland, you will also be hated for taking up slots from those who would actually contribute to the WvW.

Also if the WvW maps would turn to the last RP haven, there would be queues, reaching into the EotM, and you are back where you started, unable to meet up with RPers.

Plus, the WvW’ers have nothing to do with Anets incapabillity of listening to any feedback. In fact, they suffer enough due to their ignorance.

My friends are also unanimously reporting that BC has gotten better too. Just an update. Again, it’s just tonight (and it’s nighttime), but either we’re very, very lucky, or they’ve changed something.

Honestly, I’m OK with Anet not jumping up and being like “WE’RE DOING THIS” in this thread. They told me privately that they’re working on it, and I thought that was pretty awesome. They need to save face and I can understand a bit not wanting to be exposed to a ton of vitriol, or risking getting involved in a debate with players publicly.

Kate Soulguard.7132:

Well… I suppose……. we could all get together and roleplay in WvW…

good luck getting through the 50+ man queues of non-rpers.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

Whether they’re working on something or not, they need to say something. Going this long without acknowledging the feedback threads they themselves created is really harmful to their relationship with their customers.

Exactly. The longer the time of no response and questions to some pretty important concerns the community has raised, the sooner will the core playerbase start to dwindle.

Kate Soulguard.7132:

Well… I suppose……. we could all get together and roleplay in WvW…

As a WvW player – oh gawd no. :p Buuut, I would join you, it would be an excellent way to demonstrate against the MegaServer.
Not to mention that there will be even more “snap out of it Anet” threads from WvWers that would help us preserve the original game with server communities.

I’ve logged into DR, and the first thing I’ve seen are people arguing and insulting, while prior to this the map chat was always calm and polite. I’m from Piken Square.

I asked in the map chat who was from there, only three people answered me ‘Piken’. What happened to the ’You’ll be merged with people of your server’ thing? I can’t recognize a single name or guild name, all those people I’m crossing the path of are people I never met, and surely don’t want to considering their animosity or trolling level. And it’s only early noon in Europe, I can’t imagine what will happen during the evening.

I actually can’t understand WHY cities are megaserved. The megaserver was the excuse to make the game feel more alive, for world bosses and game content. I can agree with that, I don’t mind at all crossing the path of other players when I’m leveling. But why, in the name of God, why the cities have to be megaserved? They have no world event, no world boss, no skillpoint. There’s NO REASON for them to be megaserved other than for Anet to say ‘Look, our game is full of players, come and join in!’ to lure naive customers in and rob them from the content of their wallet.

Give us back our cities at least, and stop steamrolling the whole world map into this megaserver stuff that you obviously never tried to fix.

lakdav.3694:

As awesome as it may look on paper, if you try to RP in WvWvW, prepare for meeting massive hate even from your own server. WvW is fast-paced, sometimes stressful, and aims for maximum efficiency. Stopping to type in some snarky IC comments in the middle of a siege will be either drowned in the ocean of tacticly actually relevent information (like “inc.west” or “dont waste supps on outergates!!”) or after the defeat it will get lots of hate. If RPers keep to the only safe parts like the keep of their servers borderland, you will also be hated for taking up slots from those who would actually contribute to the WvW.

Also if the WvW maps would turn to the last RP haven, there would be queues, reaching into the EotM, and you are back where you started, unable to meet up with RPers.

you’re clearly not from TC. We’ve had a TON of RP in WvW, with pirate commanders, yak parades, and even a few RP weddings in other servers’ garrison. We like RP in our WvW. It wouldn’t be the same without it.

Phantom.8130:

lakdav.3694:

As awesome as it may look on paper, if you try to RP in WvWvW, prepare for meeting massive hate even from your own server. WvW is fast-paced, sometimes stressful, and aims for maximum efficiency. Stopping to type in some snarky IC comments in the middle of a siege will be either drowned in the ocean of tacticly actually relevent information (like “inc.west” or “dont waste supps on outergates!!”) or after the defeat it will get lots of hate. If RPers keep to the only safe parts like the keep of their servers borderland, you will also be hated for taking up slots from those who would actually contribute to the WvW.

Also if the WvW maps would turn to the last RP haven, there would be queues, reaching into the EotM, and you are back where you started, unable to meet up with RPers.

you’re clearly not from TC. We’ve had a TON of RP in WvW, with pirate commanders, yak parades, and even a few RP weddings in other servers’ garrison. We like RP in our WvW. It wouldn’t be the same without it.

There are of course people yelling “rpers get off wvw” in map chat, but they tend to stop bashing, when X server zerg of 30+ attacks the garrison with 5 roleplayers and two minutes later the zerg is dispatched without much effort and roleplayers didn’t even brake characters.

We’re usually NOT the helpless sheep non roleplayers tend to think we are.

EDIT: I myself tend to make a lot of typos when fighting against zergs though, quick typing while using skills and dodging kills my grammar. shakes fist

I logged in to Divinty’s Reach this morning. I was representing my guild, and originally from Piken Square.

My friend, also representing the same guild, from the same home server, and on my friend list, also logged in, and was placed in a different instance.

How is this ‘working’ ?

Kallandra.2610:

I logged in to Divinty’s Reach this morning. I was representing my guild, and originally from Piken Square.

My friend, also representing the same guild, from the same home server, and on my friend list, also logged in, and was placed in a different instance.

How is this ‘working’ ?

It doesn’t. I feel you, I had the same a few minutes ago, on Piken as well.

Kallandra.2610:

I logged in to Divinty’s Reach this morning. I was representing my guild, and originally from Piken Square.

My friend, also representing the same guild, from the same home server, and on my friend list, also logged in, and was placed in a different instance.

How is this ‘working’ ?

Simple! It isn’t working. At all. I’ve the exact same issue.
I cannot reach my guildies in a single go when within cities anymore. We always have to group up and carefully coordinate who tries to reach who – even then, it is random at large, and the sorting function of Origin Server, Guild, Party etc. seems malfunct.

For giggles, I asked in the Cursed Shore map chat what servers people were originally from. Gendarran, Seafarer’s, Desolation, Piken Square, Underworld – in varying amounts, with multiple people complaining their friends couldn’t access that particular server we were on at the time. Buggy!

The concept of the megaservers as an initiative to keep zones active isn’t all that bad. It’s the execution and the lack of control on player end that makes it unbearable to deal with.

So here we go again, as has been suggested by myself and countless others since the game’s release, and again after this concept was introduced:

• No randomised overflows.
• No “AI-controlled” megaservers.

Just reintroduce the good old Guild Wars 1 District system.

There’s absolutely no reason to try and reinvent the wheel, Arena Net. It worked before, and I’m positive you can mix and match the new megaserver system with the old concepts to be more user-friendly altogether.

Heck, just the addition of a single line of text on-screen somewhere, that states what server a player is on, could make a difference: at least then coordinating to reach one another becomes much easier.

As someone who bought and plays this game entirely for roleplay, I don’t want to be in a position where I feel my notable expenditure to play this has been wasted. What sort of message are you sending out when you have created a situation inhospitable to a large number of players? If you want to make the game feel more alive, more active, then cull dead servers to consolidate server usage, don’t try to mash them together in this… ham-fisted farce of a system. Sure, this system might be more tolerable on the NA servers, but for us on Piken Square, in the EU servers, it’s a more evident problem because there are language barriers. I’ve heard accounts of my friends being caught between the French and the Germans and being unable to pull the pieces of their guild back together.

As much as a person’s pride and determination seek to drive them forward, sometimes it’s only right to reassess your choices and turn back. This has been a very poor system from the outset, a clumsy way to avoid the inevitable – that servers need to be consolidated. It’s easier to move a community from one world to another than to have to play a puzzle game across a number of shards to have even a single roleplay. And that’s just roleplay events, as this change is tantamount to lethal to spontaneous roleplay.

So really I’d like to see a U-turn. There’s precedent for it in MMO developers to reverse a planned change, and there’s no shame in it. It’s just about doing what’s right to keep the integrity of your communities and thus maintain the quality of the game.

Atromir.6042:

As someone who bought and plays this game entirely for roleplay, I don’t want to be in a position where I feel my notable expenditure to play this has been wasted. What sort of message are you sending out when you have created a situation inhospitable to a large number of players? If you want to make the game feel more alive, more active, then cull dead servers to consolidate server usage, don’t try to mash them together in this… ham-fisted farce of a system. Sure, this system might be more tolerable on the NA servers, but for us on Piken Square, in the EU servers, it’s a more evident problem because there are language barriers. I’ve heard accounts of my friends being caught between the French and the Germans and being unable to pull the pieces of their guild back together.

As much as a person’s pride and determination seek to drive them forward, sometimes it’s only right to reassess your choices and turn back. This has been a very poor system from the outset, a clumsy way to avoid the inevitable – that servers need to be consolidated. It’s easier to move a community from one world to another than to have to play a puzzle game across a number of shards to have even a single roleplay. And that’s just roleplay events, as this change is tantamount to lethal to spontaneous roleplay.

So really I’d like to see a U-turn. There’s precedent for it in MMO developers to reverse a planned change, and there’s no shame in it. It’s just about doing what’s right to keep the integrity of your communities and thus maintain the quality of the game.

To add to what you said: “An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it” – Orlando Aloysius Battista

I should mention that I -think- this experiment with prioritizing home shards may just be in North America. I’m guessing. Sorry, EU folks; I’m sure it’ll come soon.

But yeah, just based on that it was worded to me as if they were testing the solution out, and also that today’s complainers about DR (with examples) are all from Piken and not TC.

We did have a Tequatl kill on a megaserver just a few minutes ago.
Besides the usual and tiring discussion about speaking or not speaking the native language, and with some people leaving while we carried our people over via taxi groups thanks to teamspeak it did actually work (well 75 percent of the Map had been German in the end and after som effort)

But to face it, the megaserver isn’t wanted by the majority the way it currently is. It’s even harder to get anything organised. It gets frustrating, yes. As well as it gets frustrating to read the same stupid discussion in the mapchats every hour and wherever you go. Using the new option to block everything except your clients language IS NO SOLUTION! You can’t even organize anything wile using it.

The game is frustrating as it is, and with no sorting at all the RP is literally dead, other than in small groups. Well… welcome to unwanted, yet boring bubble-RP…

The average mood is very bad, people are insulting each other, not only for their language but for their playing-style, comunities and subcomunities are scattered… Everything that once was fun has been taken away from us. Right now, I rather feel like leaving, and there are a lot of others on my friendlist who are playing with the same thought. THis is not the game that I leaned to love, that I’ve been playing from beta on, the game where I put a lot of my heart’s blood into. A lot of money, too.

I have the same experience as many others have already mentioned on this thread.

I log on and to my horror I am not in the same place as my Guild or people on my friendslist. To join them, I had to group up and choose to join them in DR.

And all I read on /Mapchat is a lot of hate against the megaservers. And I wholeheartily agree with them. Megaservers are rubbish. As they are now, they do not work at all. People are scattered all over the place and the RolePlay community has been silenced.

I have not been a fan of Blizzard for a long time, but I hand it to them on one part. They promised to never use megaservers in WoW, and they kept it. For a good reason. They listened to their players who said they did not want the “new improved system of megaservers”. As far as I know, they kept a lot of players thanks to that decition. Arena Net, why do you not listen to your players who clearly do not want these servers?

Dear Arenanet,

As you must certainly be aware, your megaserver update has… ruffled some feathers, to put it lightly.

When it was first announced, the forums were littered with questions and concerns as to how it would affect roleplaying. The response to this was to compact all the different threads and topics into one giant thread, and to give two vague messages from Arenanet – one saying that “most of your questions will be answered in the later blog posts,” the other, famously glib and disinterested response being from Colin – the infamous suggestion to “just guild up.” Other than the above, our concerns were neither responded to, nor apparently taken into account.

When the update hit, the same happened again – our worries were realised, people swarmed this forum with post after post asking for a rollback, suggesting tweaks or additions to the megaserver system to cater to the roleplaying community’s needs (not to mention other niche communities). While I am sure that you have people reading the forum posts, we – the worried players – received nothing, no word, no response whatsoever.

Today, you’ve continued to roll out your changes as planned, adding the megaserver system to city hubs, something that has – if you’ll forgive the hyperbole – obliterated any roleplaying community opportunities. RP hotspots such as Minister Wi’s mansion and the Maiden’s Whisper tavern are deserted, Piken Square roleplayers are scattered to the four winds, and even those in the same guilds and friends lists – let alone those who are just familiar faces and acquaintances – are sent to other instances repeatedly.

There has been no word whatsoever (as far as I know, please correct me if I’m wrong) from you to the RP community since Colin’s “guild up” comment at the start of the month. Suggestions or requests haven’t even been dismissed – they’ve just been, as far as we can tell, ignored.

You’re already beginning to bleed players. With ESO’s emergence, WoW’s ever-present lure and countless other MMOs, the RP community that you’ve allowed to fracture is drifting in separate directions. The main “Megaservers and RP” discussion is one of the hottest and most-viewed threads in this forum subsection. You must realise that a respectable proportion of your playerbase are angry, hurt, and feel like their requests and thoughts are being utterly ignored. Even if they’re not, and you’re planning to reveal some fantastic fix in the near future that’ll redeem everything – it doesn’t seem that way. Instead, the aforementioned thread just continues to fill up with upset people bleating for something to change, and getting more and more irate as no answer is offered.

So what I’m asking for is a response. A direct reply, to this thread. No, don’t click the merge button and throw this post into the melting pot with the other 700-odd replies. Talk to us directly, and at the very bloody least, let us know that our pleas are being seen and considered.

Or leave it, and continue to keep your playerbase in the dark as you heap change after change on them. But be aware that every day another fifty or so suggestions and requests go ignored in the main Megaserver and RP thread, you anger and drive your RP community further away.

Anet seems to think that the # of people who prefer megaservers (i.e. those people who would want active lowbie maps or else they quit) far outweigh all the RP’ers, all the hardcore guilds, all the guild mission running guilds and the farmers.

Trueflight.9058:

….You’re already beginning to bleed players. With ESO’s emergence, WoW’s ever-present lure and countless other MMOs, the RP community that you’ve allowed to fracture is drifting in separate directions.

I can attest to this as a guild leader of a medium sized roleplay guild. At ESO’s launch, we put up a forum topic asking how many people were going to play the new game, and we only had one person reply that they would be leaving. With the Megaserver introduction, that number has jumped up to about 35% of our guild, with more talking about giving it a try. Everyone realizes ESO has the Megaserver system as well, but people seem more open to the utilities it has in place for it, rather than the cobbled together system Anet has given us.

We’re all mature adults, most of us with families, who game under a budget. I can only imagine that the 60.00 ESO box price, plus the monthly fee, will come out of the ‘Entertainment’ budget, which will mean a loss for GW2 and its gem system. Every single person in my roleplay guild was at least a monthly purchaser of gems. My husband and I bought gems monthly, treating GW2 as if it had a subscription.

Game play is fun, but it’s essentially the community and the friendships you make that generally anchor people to a game. The Megaservers have decimated the community feel, and we’re already seeing people who had no intention to drift off beginning to do just that.

For the Piken Square roleplayers, I’ve made a new guild, Wandering Roleplayers [RP].

It’s an OOC guild for random roleplayers, wandering minstrels, people that really want to be around RPers, and anyone else really that roleplays, so that we can all try and get on the same map, in the same instance, at the same time. Also, I’m hoping it will serve as a way of finding out where the roleplayers are, so we can join them in their instance.

They said “guild up”. So, that’s what I’m doing sigh.

Hopefully this will only be a temporary measure until ArenaNet can sort out the megaserver so that we can all be sorted by home server, guild, and friend list.

Well I just did some little tests. They have INDEED changed something, even for the EU servers.

I’ve tried Divinity’s Reach and Gendarran Fields on 3 Servers.
Riverside (DE): All German mapchat, I’ve even seen familiar faces, most of the people I asked seemed to be from Riverside iriginally.
Drakkar-Lake (DE / RP) All German mapchat, didn’t get too much answers though, but RPers thend to have their mapchat off anyway. Most of them actually do. For Gendarran, a lot of people seemed to be from Drakkar.
Piken-Square (EN / RP) All English mapchat, a lot of people claimed to be from Piken, one from a WvW opponent, claiming to go bash some Piken. (Which I don’t like that much… o.o" I still vote for a map-restricted worldchat for homeservers only, that can be read across EVERY copy of the map and only be used by people who chose a certain server at character creation or are currently guesting on it, to keep the comunities together and avoid WvW rivality and spying ^^)

You seem to forget the language-filter that they added a few days back.

Of course you’re only reading german. Because the client only shows you german. And even if you disabled the filter, it doesn’t quite seem to work in showing you different languages.

So yeah, sorry, but that doesn’t show anything.

So I just spent a couple hours in Divinity’s Reach (TC) to test the waters of the megaserver there. I have to say if it is in fact part of the megaserver now and they are trying out a more accurate sorting system prioritizing home servers it seems to be working.

I recognized most of the guild names, I saw no emote spamming/trolling, and map chat was well…very TC. Only one person was spamming spells but quickly got bored, and there’s always going to be that one anyway. Asked for a show of hands in /m for people from TC and a lot responded, no one said they weren’t.

If DR is any indication of how the megaserver will ultimately work we might not need a specific RP flag at all. The Grove on the other hand was a trollfest last night but I’ve been hearing only DR is giving server priority at the moment.

I can’t find any official word about DR being on the megaserver, so if anyone has a link it would be much appreciated.

Edit: Just logged out and back into DR and was so relieved to see the same people from TC still there, as well as three of my guildies (who weren’t there when I logged out). So this is actually very encouraging.

fingers crossed

Wasbunny.6531:

So I just spent a couple hours in Divinity’s Reach (TC) to test the waters of the megaserver there. I have to say if it is in fact part of the megaserver now and they are trying out a more accurate sorting system prioritizing home servers it seems to be working.

I recognized most of the guild names, I saw no emote spamming/trolling, and map chat was well…very TC. Only one person was spamming spells but quickly got bored, and there’s always going to be that one anyway. Asked for a show of hands in /m for people from TC and a lot responded, no one said they weren’t.

If DR is any indication of how the megaserver will ultimately work we might not need a specific RP flag at all. The Grove on the other hand was a trollfest last night but I’ve been hearing only DR is giving server priority at the moment.

I can’t find any official word about DR being on the megaserver, so if anyone has a link it would be much appreciated.

Edit: Just logged out and back into DR and was so relieved to see the same people from TC still there, as well as three of my guildies (who weren’t there when I logged out). So this is actually very encouraging.

fingers crossed

I’ve still yet to find myself paired with a guild mate when I warp into a new zone. Not even once since the system was introduced. And I was in Divinity’s Reach last night during what some could consider “prime time” hours, and it was a verbal (so to speak) clusterkitten in map chat. It’s been said before, but I think that even if the Megaserver sorting metrics are functioning, it starts to fall apart when larger populations start to gather in a map. If you JUST spent a couple of hours, as in: at the time of your posting, then you’re looking at it during off-hours. So maybe that’s an accurate look at how ArenaNet WANTS the system to work, but things get shaken up fast around evening/night times.

Why isn’t there a cap to how many people can be pulled in through mega server.
Why isn’t there a limit for how many people aren’t on a map before mega server kicks in.

Good questions.
Did you think of this Anet?

My guess would be that some things are set in stone – the megaserver system is here to stay, for one. The devs have said that they’re going to roll it out in phases over the first couple of months, assessing its success and feedback, then modify it. However, because they’re still in the assessment stage, they refuse to stop the test midway through to adjust things – which to be fair, is an intelligent approach in some ways.

The devs (and marketing / media teams) cannot possibly be unaware of the backlash this patch is causing, and I still don’t believe that all of Anet’s staff are moustache-twirling Bond villains – they probably want to a) make money, but b) have their creation enjoyed by people. They (arguably) brought out the megaserver in the first place to help fix PvE players’ dissatisfaction with empty zones on graveyard worlds.

The two big problems are that any change or tweak won’t happen until they’re done “gathering feedback” (which they claim to be doing) and, as a sales-based business, they’re not allowed to admit failure or acknowledge fault with their own product. So discussing solutions with the playerbase, admitting that the megaserver has perhaps done more harm than good, or even just saying “we’re aware of your concerns, we’re working on fixing them” are all marketing taboos, and probably won’t happen.

They -might- be listening to our concerns, they’re likely as not working on fine-tuning the megaserver system to keep as many players as possible happy, but the first we’ll hear of it will be a positive, upbeat blog update in a month or so’s time, full of exclamation marks and words like “awesome” and “amazing!”

I’m not giving up on the game yet – other games have brought out disastrous patches that’ve backfired horrifically, and managed to put out the fires before they do too much damage. That said, I might find myself RPing somewhat less until the megaserver is out of beta, and we can see clearly what direction it’s going in.

Megaserver is apparently in Divinity’s Reach now.

How did I notice this? The chat was getting spammed with emotes from like far, far away.

I don’t mind roleplayers at all, but the chat getting spammed with emotes makes it really, really annoying.

Roleplayers really, really need their own server that they can guest onto. It doesn’t even need to be a server with world vs. world, just a big playground for roleplayers to be at with no influence of megaservers or overflows.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

Wasbunny.6531:

So I just spent a couple hours in Divinity’s Reach (TC) to test the waters of the megaserver there. I have to say if it is in fact part of the megaserver now and they are trying out a more accurate sorting system prioritizing home servers it seems to be working.

I recognized most of the guild names, I saw no emote spamming/trolling, and map chat was well…very TC. Only one person was spamming spells but quickly got bored, and there’s always going to be that one anyway. Asked for a show of hands in /m for people from TC and a lot responded, no one said they weren’t.

If DR is any indication of how the megaserver will ultimately work we might not need a specific RP flag at all. The Grove on the other hand was a trollfest last night but I’ve been hearing only DR is giving server priority at the moment.

I can’t find any official word about DR being on the megaserver, so if anyone has a link it would be much appreciated.

Edit: Just logged out and back into DR and was so relieved to see the same people from TC still there, as well as three of my guildies (who weren’t there when I logged out). So this is actually very encouraging.

fingers crossed

I’ve still yet to find myself paired with a guild mate when I warp into a new zone. Not even once since the system was introduced. And I was in Divinity’s Reach last night during what some could consider “prime time” hours, and it was a verbal (so to speak) clusterkitten in map chat. It’s been said before, but I think that even if the Megaserver sorting metrics are functioning, it starts to fall apart when larger populations start to gather in a map. If you JUST spent a couple of hours, as in: at the time of your posting, then you’re looking at it during off-hours. So maybe that’s an accurate look at how ArenaNet WANTS the system to work, but things get shaken up fast around evening/night times.

I honestly think that is the case. The good news is the people that get into “MegaServer Overflow” will be paired up with other people on the same server that get put into “MegaServer Overflow”.

Really wish ANet would say SOMETHING, anything?! …this is awful PR.

A “We’re working on a fix” or “We’ve fixed it as best we can for the time being” or even a “Here, have some chocolate and don’t kill us” would be nice

There should be Regions like GW1, for Roleplay and Different Languages.

ANet didn’t give us the choice, now if you RP people tell you to “kitten”.

anzenketh.3759:

I honestly think that is the case. The good news is the people that get into “MegaServer Overflow” will be paired up with other people on the same server that get put into “MegaServer Overflow”.

lol, is that how it works? Cause I still seem to get paired with random people no matter where I go. I WISH it at least did that, where it kept sorting by servers even in subsequent “overflows”, but it really doesn’t feel like it does that.

In any case, we should keep track of changes and “stealth” fixes to various regions in the game. Since ArenaNet has decided to keep us in the dark, that’s the best we can do to stay on top of the situation. Yeah, most of it is going to boil down to speculation, but that’s not our fault.

20 days and 15 pages since the last official comment. That’s really depressing. It’d be nice for someone to at least give a token “We’re working on the problem”.

Some very rational solutions have been proposed, many of which seem like they fit right in with the technical concepts of the megaserver.

My Charr warband guild has gained one new member entirely as a result of the megaserver (IE: from another server), which is very cool… and a great example of how it CAN work, with a little fine-tuning.

Kate Soulguard.7132:

Well… I suppose……. we could all get together and roleplay in WvW…

My server pride is the only RP i need! \,,/_

So far I see the following options:
1. take the cities out of the megaserver system (megaserver might be nice for some parts of pve and middle of the night world bosses but doesn’t seem great for cities)
2. make it sort people based on server.

As a non RPer I don’t like this any more than you RPers. RP servers should stick to themselves and non RP the same. This makes it better for both. RPers don’t have their immersion screwed and don’t get trolled and non RPers don’t have chat spammed or w.e else annoys them. I would very much like to get back to seeing the people I’m used to seeing and keeping my chat clean when I’m semi-afking talking on gchat.