Guild Wars 2

Really starting to lose faith in the devs in terms of RP lately. I’ve been browsing the forums a bit and RP talk, suggestions and whatnot aren’t really being looked at or considered by anybody. There’s really no downside to doing so either. You WANT your players to be immersed in the world you’ve created, right?

I would just like to add what paltry support I can to this thread, I am anticipating seriously delving into RP when I get home (in a few days) and I don’t want to see it get destroyed by something that could be fixed relatively easily…

I personally stopped RPlaying in this game for about 2 weeks now. My old guild went back to SWTOR, and i followed, as RP in our game feels “empty” and “meaningless” lately.

One part of me is happy, as the RP feeling is back on the server we play (The Progenitor – RP PvE), but another is really sad, cause we used to have that in Guild Wars 2 too, on Piken Square… And it was awesome… And i miss it… And i want it back…

I’m not getting my hopes up for a fix anymore, but i keep an eye out to see whether the RP factor is amongst the “issues” A-net’s dedicated team is working to improve.

It has come to my attention that alot of my fellow players of Piken Square left the game after the Megaservers were introduced. Now, with Piken being the unofficial European RP server it had quite the player base of which now… Has simply vanished. This is a sad thing as I myself enjoy RP aswell as the actual game, yet I am a RPer (Roleplayer) of which tends to play a game solely because of this option, and to be honest the GW2 game was ideal for this, at least for me and my friends.

Yet now I find myself thinking if I too should stay or go. I have invested alot of money into gems, being an RPer I want all the skins like most of RPers want, meaning Anet actually loses quite alot of money on simply not having RPers around. Now, the main issue is that people still love the game, yet the Megaserver kinda issues to ruin alot of the game for alot of people. Roleplayers are the most loyal of players and I myself try to endure to manage to bring people back to this game.

So why can’t Anet help me with this? Maybe make an exclusive server for Roleplayers only? Away from zergs and people who are bored and would rather annoy people doing what they enjoy than simply enjoy the game itself (That said very few does this as GW2 is known for it’s friendly faces of which I love about this game).

I am losing interest in a game of which alot of people has already left behind them, a game I hold dear and would rather not leave.

At least that explains why i don’t see any familiar face anymore while i play. Not that i was seeing them often since the downgrade, but they were still there…….occasionally….

Oh well… “The King is dead, long live the king”…

/signed, Tordi.

Guild Wars 2 was and is an absolutely fine game if you’re looking at the lore and the universe. And even if it was really RP-unfriendly, it was really really fun.

I’d love to stay but…well, since April it look’s like A-Net is doing everything to destroy the rest of our Rp-base.

Still, the saddest and baddest thing is that the Dev’s are ignoring us.
That’s the mainreason i changed to WS but i really really would love to go back to Gw2 for RP…but look at that Mega****….

Pve is absolutely dead, but that’s something you get from other games now.^^

GuildWars2 as a game is a game I made alot of people migrate to, I have spent my time on other MMORPG’s and I found a home in GW2 and so did alot of my friends, yet most of them abandoned ship with the Megaservers and I can understand that.

Piken Square and RP? Is almost all gone now sadly and those remaining is debating to go onto Tarnished Coast, yes this might be a resolve to continue playing this game but it will cost us 1800 gems to do so, which I honestly have to say, sucks.

I do hope Anet will listen to the most loyal of players and if not, change their game. It’s after all a MMO-RPG-.

Tarrnished Coast will welcome all Piken Square residents who wish to join us!

I certainly do. TC has more quantity when it comes to roleplay, but Piken Square has better quality. Let me know if there is a mass exodus, and I will bring my PS character over to TC too. Multiboxing/computering FTW!

The problem is that it doesn’t matter what server you’re homed on – you get megaserved. All the servers are scrambled together, with no sense of community.

My little guild is doing its best to keep public RP going, but it feels like a losing battle – the number of haters & trolls has dramatically increased. And so many other guilds have given up and moved on to other, more RP-friendly games.

And after 2 months without meaningful comment, ANet’s silence remains deafening.

Am not on TC, but guest and will ultimately move. Had started a little RP’ing w/former guildmates most of which were on TC and have since moved on. Is there a website with guilds who still RP and want new members, despite the Megakitten?

dkspins.4670:

Am not on TC, but guest and will ultimately move. Had started a little RP’ing w/former guildmates most of which were on TC and have since moved on. Is there a website with guilds who still RP and want new members, despite the Megakitten?

This website is still very active from the looks of it, and has a subforum for guild recruitment: http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com/home

SilasLews.6790:

dkspins.4670:

Am not on TC, but guest and will ultimately move. Had started a little RP’ing w/former guildmates most of which were on TC and have since moved on. Is there a website with guilds who still RP and want new members, despite the Megakitten?

This website is still very active from the looks of it, and has a subforum for guild recruitment: http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com/home

Thank you so much!

GuzziHero.2467:

Tarrnished Coast will welcome all Piken Square residents who wish to join us!

I certainly do. TC has more quantity when it comes to roleplay, but Piken Square has better quality. Let me know if there is a mass exodus, and I will bring my PS character over to TC too. Multiboxing/computering FTW!

Heh, i would love to join up, but there’s a small issue : My ping with US servers isn’t exactly a cup of tea, so i get bad lag during normal circumstances. Even my chat messages have about 20 to 25 seconds delay to be posted. So imagine how the game will feel if i actually join up with Skynet running.

Then again, i doubt i’ll be placed on TC anyway, as Skynet thinks i’m French, and it keeps dropping me to French instances…..9 times out of 10, every time i log into the game, since last week… O.o

Asacledhae.2650:

Then again, i doubt i’ll be placed on TC anyway, as Skynet thinks i’m French, and it keeps dropping me to French instances…..9 times out of 10, every time i log into the game, since last week… O.o

You probably just forgot to Guild Up™, it’s an easy mistake to make. But don’t worry, once you do it’ll solve ALL of your issues.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

You probably just forgot to Guild Up™, it’s an easy mistake to make. But don’t worry, once you do it’ll solve ALL of your issues.

You’re absolutely right, I’ll get right on it!!!
……no wait, i’m already on a guild since i started playing the….. * Head Explodes *

Ahh, the good old A-net’s solution which obviously dug a huge hole in the water with a driller made of tissue paper(!)…

I wonder, do they even bother playing the game anymore, or are they even aware that even “guilding up” is almost impossible to do now? Even if you find willing participants, eventually Skynet will tear you apart from them. And also imagine trying to RP with people who accidentally have the language plug on and God forbid, they use a different language client than yours! Ohh, how beautiful that would feel…

Asacledhae.2650:

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

You probably just forgot to Guild Up™, it’s an easy mistake to make. But don’t worry, once you do it’ll solve ALL of your issues.

You’re absolutely right, I’ll get right on it!!!
……no wait, i’m already on a guild since i started playing the….. * Head Explodes *

Ahh, the good old A-net’s solution which obviously dug a huge hole in the water with a driller made of tissue paper(!)…

I wonder, do they even bother playing the game anymore, or are they even aware that even “guilding up” is almost impossible to do now? Even if you find willing participants, eventually Skynet will tear you apart from them. And also imagine trying to RP with people who accidentally have the language plug on and God forbid, they use a different language client than yours! Ohh, how beautiful that would feel…

Things are bad enough for US servers. I don’t even want to think about what the EU players are going through, even though I’ve got a pretty good idea based on the comments in this thread. Tarnished Coast has been mostly picked apart but it sounds like Piken Square is in much worse shape.

I suffer from too much lag to try and play on a US server myself. But from what i’ve seen in-game, things are indeed bad.. So far, 3 guilds i was involved with excluding my own, have been silenced. Nobody logs in, and if they do, it’s for a few minutes. Nobody has the right mood to RP in the game anymore.

Excluding that? The last weeks i’ve yet to see one familiar face from the old Piken Square anywhere on the game. The old RP hubs have been silenced, there’s nobody there. Even taverns involving some of the most active guilds on my server are left empty.

I feel that the RP future in this game is bleak.

To be honest, I dont think the main problem (Atleast in Piken Square) are the megaservers anymore, the main problem with RP slowly dying is the lack of roleplayers who actually tend to hold themselves to the certain type of rules. Examplus; what i’m finding on PS is mainly people who are overglorifying themselves, dont know about lore, want to be white knights, and multiple other things. Other than that I find metagamers and powerplayers who use the “weaker” characters to “Show off their own”

I’ll give an example, too, this week a saw a weak character being beaten up for no reason other than to make the other look “badkitten”. Meanwhile, i’ve been talking to a few people who I knew from launch, they all feel the same way; GW2 Roleplay denies any rules whatsoever, lore-destruction, powerplay you can all find it VERY easily on Piken. There is no room for character developement in here whatsoever.

Examples of this are both the GW2RP Forums and GW2Secrets; you can see people interact here in a certain way.

Don’t get me wrong, i’m not talking down upon GW2, this has been my experienced, and the experience of others.

If thats really happening and on a large scale, the reason is pretty much simple. There are no consequences. A consistent world that remembers what your character did and treats your character as such doesnt exist anymore. Not just the positive deeds, but the negatives either.

RP today is mostly built up of random encounters with no chance nor reason nor place for any development of a story of any scale, or strictly organized serious guild events that are a nightmare to set up. The serious RPers are probably moving on to a game more compatible with their desires. The randoms, the newcomers are sadly pushed together with nobody to guide them and nothing that nudges them to the right direction, to consistency. Because the world, the RP scene is not consistent either.

Actually it sounds like IC trolling.

Came back to check this thread again after a few weeks, still no acknowledgement from devs? Wow…

Also, am I right from what I saw in previous posts, to assume that emotes can be spammed more than 5 times without being subject to chat spam restrictions? That seems like one hell of an oversight that could so easily reduce harrassment and improve the quality of life of roleplayers.

Autumnmane.3574:

Came back to check this thread again after a few weeks, still no acknowledgement from devs? Wow…

Also, am I right from what I saw in previous posts, to assume that emotes can be spammed more than 5 times without being subject to chat spam restrictions? That seems like one hell of an oversight that could so easily reduce harrassment and improve the quality of life of roleplayers.

That’s really just more of a placebo effect, and one that could be damaging to RPers considering they also make use of emotes a lot. I could see that becoming an issue of someone was “DMing”, or if two characters were emoting combat RP.

…Is there a list of these Role-Play servers/worlds? Oh wait! I can’t switch without paying MONIES and GEMS. Wtf Anetflixkittenface.

I’m I am mistake someone tell me. I would like to move to such a land.

The list is:

Tarnished Coast (NA)
Piken Square (EU)

Both selected by the gw2roleplayers site pre-beta. They are not official RP servers. And it’s nigh impossible to get clumped with other server “natives” anyway unless and until the megaservers get smarter about how they mix people.

I don’t actually know if guesting still works. If so, you don’t need gems to hang out on the RP server, you just need to be lucky enough to land in an instance of it that has a critical mass of natives.

I share many of the sentiments of posters before me.

I have a youtube series devoted to documenting the fun you can have by unexpectedly meeting a roleplayer in the open world. Ever since the Megaservers were implemented, this has been happening significantly less frequently.

“http://youtu.be/_boaOe4HES0”

Touching video indeed, and i definitely miss this sort of thing… Something that was happening in-game since day one… You know, A-net’s attitude lately, reminds me of Amy’s Baking Company. They’re in complete denial of the damage they’ve done to their game, and instead of fixing the damage, they praise it.

There are 4000+ negative posts over 3 threads already about the damage Skynet has done, not including the deleted threads, simply stating the obvious. So either all of these people are wrong, or there’s an internal error… You do the math.

So, we’ve hit the two month mark with megaservers. Honestly, I find it quite disheartening that there’s been a total of one dev comment on the official feedback thread in that time, but I’m not chiming in to stir that particular pot. ANet used that post to mention that they have a team working on the megaserver behind the scenes, and I have heard some anecdotal accounts that the sorting has improved to some degree in sanctioned game types, so what I want to know is: have you guys seen any improvement? Are you running into any more spontaneous roleplay than, say in the first week, or first month, of the system? Are you having any easier time getting people together for organized scenes? And also, is this too little, too late? How many rpers do you know that have left the game for good? Most importantly, have you managed to salvage a way to keep your playstyle intact, or is it an impossible task now?

As for myself, I can’t remark on any long-term trends, but in the week since I’ve gotten back I’ve seen RP happening several times in the Grove, once in Brisban, and once in Ebonhawke. To be sure, I found listening in to these scenes immensely enjoyable, and it’s something that never happened on my home server before- but once it was over, I always found myself concerned. I’m not a roleplayer, and while I often guested to TC to watch you guys in action, my presence was never any boon to you. Every time I find myself on a map with roleplayers now, I’m taking up a slot that could’ve gone to someone who would actually join the scene and be of use to the community, and that shouldn’t be happening. I know a fellow AR player chimed in much earlier here to support the new influx of rpers into our maps, but seeing how isolated these people are, and how vulnerable to trolls, I don’t think the supposed benefit of our tiny subset of your community even begins to make up for the sundering of the bulk of the community that was on TC. From an outsider’s perspective, it felt like they were adrift in foreign and sometimes hostile waters, and I suspect it must have felt even worse in their shoes, which brings me to my second concern. I’ve never seen more than 3 or 4 rpers on a map at a time, excepting that one occasion in Brisban. What’s more, at the places I used to know would reliably flood my chat on TC- DR, Queensdale, LA-I haven’t seen any rp, with the exception of the Grove. Maybe this is because the algorithm sorts me better on higher population maps, but the comments of the Ebonhawke group seemed to suggest that they, at least, had felt forced out of their hubs. Knowing you guys are dispersed now across not only servers but even maps, with no tools but the friends list to hunt for each other, and seeing the number of very outspoken people falling unaccountably silent on this thread… I’m worried for you, and wonder if I should instead be mourning. I always found the rp community to be exceptionally well-mannered and friendly, and some of the most entertaining, creative people to watch and adventure in Tyria with. The fact that what I can only call the best part of the GW2 community appears to have been all but stamped out while I was gone saddens me- and this is one of the cases where I expect the appearance is more important than the reality.

So please, chime in! Let me know what it’s like from an insider view, and let the forums know that at least a few of you are still holding on despite what this change has put you through.

It should be noted that any changes people see towards the system specifically involving getting paired with your server should be taken with a grain of salt. Like all of GW2’s update cycles, player counts seem to drop towards the end. If it looks like you’re seeing more people with your server now, I’d be very interested if you see the same results on the week of the next Living Story release.

I’m sorry I can’t answer your question though. I log on every Monday for my guild’s scheduled RP and occasionally on Sunday for our missions, which are now small enough where getting everyone involved isn’t a big issue. There have been a few cases of us getting split up into separate shards. Honestly though I don’t log on enough to give any worthwhile results.

I’m losing my hope in this game. Megaservers was the worst idea that could have been implemented.

Nothing like trying to have a small RP in Plains of Ashford, just to be surrounded by troll dancers…

I am not a fan of megaservers. But I can’t help but noticing more and more roleplaying in the open world again.

The last few nights, the plethora of emotes in Divinity’s Reach and even in non hotspots has been seemingly inescapable for me.

I know that they made the home realm shard more prioritized in the days after the initial megaserver rollout – whether it’s this effect, or some shift in the population and/or my friends/guild list that’s causing me to end up in more RP friendly shards, I can’t say.

It’s nice to see roleplay still exists though.

Halcyon.7352:

I am not a fan of megaservers. But I can’t help but noticing more and more roleplaying in the open world again.

The last few nights, the plethora of emotes in Divinity’s Reach and even in non hotspots has been seemingly inescapable for me.

I know that they made the home realm shard more prioritized in the days after the initial megaserver rollout – whether it’s this effect, or some shift in the population and/or my friends/guild list that’s causing me to end up in more RP friendly shards, I can’t say.

It’s nice to see roleplay still exists though.

That’s the intended effect. Just like its effect on non-rpers. Megaservers makes it seem like more is going on, it allows more players to see eachother, it makes events have the maximum number of participants possible by maxing out server shards. And for RP, it creates a situation where maps are full of people which means that for an average non-rper you’re more likely to see RP than before when you were not in an RP server.

Now, what this also does is make it more difficult for people who were initially set up to do these activities (before the megaservers). Organized guilds attempting to do world bosses now find it extremely difficult to get organized. People running champ trains are now constantly disrupted and often have a hard time even getting a single hit on a mob before it dies. People trying to do guild missions or organize inter-guild events can’t even get in the same map. RPers who originally joined RP servers specifically for that purpose now find themselves split among multiple shards. Cross-guild RP events are difficult to organize and many of the RPers who were originally able to enjoy themselves in peace are now swamped by additional non-rp players that very often troll and try to disrupt them. So yes, looking in from the outside, you probably see more RP than you initially did. But for players who initially joined for that purpose, and really guilds in general, the Megaservers have been incredibly disruptive to their experience. I guess the question is whether or not it’s more beneficial to ArenaNet to have these random experiences for new players coming in, or to cater towards guilds. So far it seems they’re more interested in the random/solo player.

Another non-rper concerned about how roleplayer’s gaming has been affected by the megaserver. I want you guys to have access to each other without being harassed by non-rpers or left out of your own circles.

Just wanted to pitch in my support for you guys. While I’m a role-player, I’m not a GW2 RPer. Still, it’s incredibly sucky how you guys have been left in the lurch thanks to the megaserver.

Here’s hoping that one day soon Anet listens.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

Halcyon.7352:

I am not a fan of megaservers. But I can’t help but noticing more and more roleplaying in the open world again.

The last few nights, the plethora of emotes in Divinity’s Reach and even in non hotspots has been seemingly inescapable for me.

I know that they made the home realm shard more prioritized in the days after the initial megaserver rollout – whether it’s this effect, or some shift in the population and/or my friends/guild list that’s causing me to end up in more RP friendly shards, I can’t say.

It’s nice to see roleplay still exists though.

That’s the intended effect. Just like its effect on non-rpers. Megaservers makes it seem like more is going on, it allows more players to see eachother, it makes events have the maximum number of participants possible by maxing out server shards. And for RP, it creates a situation where maps are full of people which means that for an average non-rper you’re more likely to see RP than before when you were not in an RP server.

Now, what this also does is make it more difficult for people who were initially set up to do these activities (before the megaservers). Organized guilds attempting to do world bosses now find it extremely difficult to get organized. People running champ trains are now constantly disrupted and often have a hard time even getting a single hit on a mob before it dies. People trying to do guild missions or organize inter-guild events can’t even get in the same map. RPers who originally joined RP servers specifically for that purpose now find themselves split among multiple shards. Cross-guild RP events are difficult to organize and many of the RPers who were originally able to enjoy themselves in peace are now swamped by additional non-rp players that very often troll and try to disrupt them. So yes, looking in from the outside, you probably see more RP than you initially did. But for players who initially joined for that purpose, and really guilds in general, the Megaservers have been incredibly disruptive to their experience. I guess the question is whether or not it’s more beneficial to ArenaNet to have these random experiences for new players coming in, or to cater towards guilds. So far it seems they’re more interested in the random/solo player.

You misunderstand – What I mean to say is that I notice an increase on open world RP since the dip at the inception of Megaserver. Overall it’s still far less common than what I’m used to seeing – before 4/15. I’m just glad to see that some are attempting to cope.

I’m of the opinion that nearly every experience in the open world was much more fun before Megaservers. Guild and server wide community events actually meant something – doing world events was a fun engaging experience due to the wonderful concept of dynamic event scaling. Now everything is a neatly scheduled auto attack fest, where people lack initiative to do anything that breaks the norm of what’s easiest, quickest or most profitable.

No one does world bosses outside of the scheduled ones anymore, for example. (This is in no small part due to the number of meta-event stalling bugs that are now nearly inescapable with Megaserver)

But anyway, this post has become something more of a tangent that belongs in a thread aside from the RP one.

I don’t often take the time to post anything on the Forums given my reputation, but I’m confused about this thread.

I have played several MMO’s, and played games that implemented the Shard/mega server idea. Yes, it builds and creates a stronger community of players. Because you go from having two people in an uncommon zone, to having 50 people in an uncommon zone. This creates a pro and con aspect. Some people enjoy adventuring alone or with a friend and despises the large crowds. While others love the feel of dozens of people doing the same event. I enjoy both!

I am a guild leader of a Role Play guild on TC. Chains of Duty [RPcd] I have heard that people say that we are largest RP guild on TC, and I have heard people state that we do not do any kind of RP, Not sure how that works when we have Role Play Guild in our guild tag. We are an Action immersion RP style. Basically, we play the game and RP along the way. We are IC while we do everything, dungeons, WvW, crafting, etc
All of this is more or less pointless information to the thread, I am simply trying to paint a picture.

We hold an event on Saturday, called The Crusade Across Tyria. This is an OPEN RP event where any level can join. We have held this event for over a year. Home to TC, and we are still doing it with the mega servers. Thanks to the mega servers we have actually encountered MORE RPers in Gw2. Because like so many, most people don’t read the forums, or research about the game, they join, and select a home server, unaware of any community in the game. Most people don’t know there is a website of gw2rp.com that is meant to advertise RP on TC, and PK. They advertise events, and help encourage Social interactions. I don’t use this website to advertise our RP events. I Message my guild members that don’t rep, message the people that are my followers, then jump to almost every region with a simple advertisement of where we are meeting. We meet up, and RUN across the world of Tyria. We fight, do events, do champions, thanks to our numbers we stack events and what would be normally veterans become champions. All the while, we are talking IC. We stop at havens, forts, cities taking breaks so people can do more in depth RP. With emotes, paragraphs and the like.

We will come across other guilds doing RP, (And this is the problem) We run into them and they ignore us, WE say hello, try to interact, and they ignore us. I have 30 people with me, all of them an RPer in some fashion, running across the world on a crusade to Orr, and other RPers look at us, and turn their noses up at us. Because, thanks to several nice people in these guilds. Tell me, that a majority of the RPers don’t consider our version of RP, as Role play.

Role play is dying on Gw2, because of this! Role players are ignoring Role players. Hard Core RPers will not RP with casual comical RPers. If you had to place RP in a level system of 10. The people that jump around, talk, and are being silly. (But not trolling) Are basically level 1…2 of the RP scale. Then the people of level 8…9…10. Get mad at them, for not RPing to their standards.

Role play is a wide, and open scale, comes in many shapes, styles, and sizes. The problem is the RP community is so different, we are not communicating. THAT is why, it will die off in gw2. The mega servers are not responsible for killing RP. RPers are responsible.

I have found 30+ more people that enjoy RP, that have Converted to the play style, that I never would have met if not for the mega servers, and THEY never would have started if not for the mega servers. I read your complaints, I understand, Trolling is crappy, and I wish there was more we could do. But RP is dying, because Role players look at other people and go, They are not following the same rules, standards as I am, so I am going to ignore them!

What you should do, is sit down, talk it out, adapt, change, grow, make a compromise. Or you can just sit on your island and burn any branch or bridge that is made in peace. My guilds events will continue to be public, will continue to be a different version of RP. A lot of people join, meet other people, and go off and do their of version of RP later. My guild helped two people meet, that would have otherwise never seen each other because A) We held a RP event open to the public, and Because the mega server brought a Fort Aspen Wood, and Black Gate players to a Tarnished Coast RP event.

It’s kinda hard to play if everybody is speaking a different language.

You guild and the open-rp is only working because (guess so) you’re all speaking english.

Now imagine the same situation with 3 or even more languages.

You’ve got Rp’lers who speak french, german, spanish and so on.

We can’t play together because of one simple reason.

We don’t understand each other.

And it’s honestly no answer to our problem’s if we just all start speaking english.
That’s kinda hard while rp’ing.

Same problem’s in pve but…

Still the worst fact is that A-net is giving a hello-kitty-kittened kitten about us.
And the reason for this thread isn’t growing anymore is not that the problems where solved, it’s because people are giving up on A-net.

insert random embittered comment here

@Shorok:
It sounds to me like you’re just confirming what I said. Megaservers allow for random people to experience more RP when they wouldn’t have initially, while making it harder for organized guilds and those that have established a community already. What you do works as a single detached event in which people meet, but a lot of the “Level 8-10” RPers (as you call them) prefer to work with larger story plots and inter-guild events. Telling them they have to adapt and instead RP your way isn’t much different than what you’re criticizing them for (ignoring you for not RPing their way). The game needs to be supportive of both for the community to thrive, and currently it’s not.

At Shorok: I am glad your guild has adapted your RP is thriving. it is good to see that RP can still survive and thrive. But as others have above me have said, while you have found a way to adapt, others haven’t been so lucky, for whatever reason. Perhaps there is the language barrier, perhaps an emergence of the dreaded bubble-rp.

Fact is, as you identified, roleplayer is a pretty broad term. You have the super-serious, and the light-hearted. You have those are more spontaneous RP for whatever reason and those who prefer a strict regimented structure to how they go about it. And it seems to me that the Megaserver is still a barrier for many people getting into RP, or RPing as before.

I am a resident of PS. Last week I was in DR, just doing some personal story to level up my character quickly and to experience some choices I hadn’t made previously. I saw some spontaneous, seemingly open RP going on and tried to join in. It was by far the best RP I’ve had since the Megaserver rollout. It was just a simple conversation between a few people, but it worked well, was very enjoyable just to kick back a little and I had an hour or so of just being my character. Very much like before the megaserver. I tried it again a couple of days ago, and started out well, and then some people decided to disrupt the RP just for the sake of helping some sad sad RPers to grow up and get a life.

Before the Megaserver, the good times were plentiful and the bad times were almost non-existent. I dislike the Megaserver for having damaged the established communities. My beloved Piken Square seems to have become less a real presence, and the atmosphere has changed as such. But then I’m not so naive to think things were perfect the way they were before, or to think Anet will go back on the Megaserver. The Megaserver has opened up RP to more people, exposed them and perhaps some will think “that sounds fun, lets try that”. Any people wanting to join the RP community are welcome, and expanding the community is always a plus. But for me it is hamstrung by 3 things. 1) Anet, as demonstrated by the almost mythic early advice from Colin in this thread, have very little understanding of a substantial community in their game, and thus with so little understanding can’t possibly support it well. 2) RP is very unofficial, and without official recognition in the rules, and in the game, does not have a base from which to protect ourselves from trolls or seek to really make beneficial changes to the game for our community. 3) The Megaserver was rolled out too quickly, after too short a notice, and has had little communication about it since.

Those 3 together create a perfect storm of ignorance on the part of Anet. Their little press releases/facebook posts comment on the great success of the Megaserver, yet they have shown very little sign of actually taking on board what is being said. With careful tweaks and additional features, the Megaserver could be a powerful and overwhelmingly positive tool not only for RPers but for the game community at large. But with no meaningful dialogue between Anet and players, we feel lft out in the cold, left out of the conversation and filled with the belief that we do not matter. it is not enough for Anet to try to improve the system. They need to be seen to be doing it as well.

But then i fear Anet are getting their own way. These Megaserver feedback threads have been blanked, and are disappearing into greater inactivity, because we see the little value in flogging a dead dolyak. Thus Anet can soon declare there is very little dissent amongst the players because we do not post anymore as we have given up. Anet will claim everyone is happy. We will be resigned to believing and knowing we are ignored and do not matter (considering RPers are potentially more likely to buy vanity items and thus gems, not the smartest move)

Could I be wrong about that? I certainly hope so. I want to be wrong, I want egg on my face. I want Anet to turn around and start a real dialogue and talk us through what they are doing to Megaserver and what they hope to do with it. But at this point in time, I have no faith in Anet listening to us or taking our concerns on board. And they have only themselves to blame for that.

If they gave a kitten , then they would have done, or at least said something more by this point rather than ‘we are continuing to monitor the data’.

Hopefully someone is monitoring the drop-off in player retention rate as disgruntled RP and WvW players get fed up. Once you lose those communities, you aren’t going to get them back.

But, judging by all their actions they are more interested in giving brand new players a soft cushion to land on rather than retaining the player base they build up at launch based on the hype of the game.

Normally I don’t really post on these forums, but after reading this 21 page topic, I thought I would.

First-off I’d like to say that although the issue was horrible at first, I have only experienced a single time where I wasn’t grouped with people from my server, Piken Square. This is out of a hundred times I’ve been RPing the last month or two so the odds of being placed on another server is, at least for Piken Square, rather small. And otherwise I always got my guildies to pull me into the correct phase.

Although it would be incredible if ANet would add an RP tag/filter, I think the odds of that happening are very slim. But even then the system isn’t -that- bad. It’s light-years ahead of the similar system in ESO so I don’t think we should be that doom and gloom.

By just taking a look on guildwars2roleplayers.com you can see there’s plenty of RP going on and new guilds be formed, on Piken Square and Tarnished Coast.

Have you tried to RP in let’s say Ebonhawke, lately? Earlier today, we got a visit from a troll who kept trolling our RP in the inn for more than 30 minutes.. Eventually we left, he didn’t.. So basically he drove everyone off, as he was spamming everything he could spam.. From power-ups, powers, emotes, you name it…

One of our RP mates went dizzy from the flashes that guy was causing, simply turning the game into a health hazard. I won’t name and shame him as if i do, this post will be deleted, but i welcome a dev to PM me, to simply chat about him and trolling in general a little bit. Ignorance is not a bliss in this case, A-net.

I want to play a game to have fun and Role Play with my friends, i don’t want it to make me have an epilepsy crisis.

I’m also tired of suggesting solutions, as the issue is almost 3 months old now. So i give them a small window to fix the kitten megaserver until July the 1st. Living story grand re-opening, with a working game.

I hope you guys reported that troll. Hate players like that. >.< He deserves a good banning.

I left when I heard that Megaservers had killed the RP, and i went over to SWTOR for a while. Now that i’m back for the new LS, I actually managed to find/reconnect with my old guild. I was guildless before that, so the fact that most of them were TC players probably sorted me onto the right megaserver.

The very next day though, our guild was split across two megaservers, and since everyone who wasn’t on mine was too busy RPing to notice guild chat, I couldn’t party and switch over.

Tbh, most MMOs have megaservers these days, and i’m glad GW2 has them, but most other MMOs also have some way to switch between the servers. GW2 needs one. Desperately. There are three right? How about instead of listing all the servers on the world select menu, you list the three megaservers and tag each one as PvP PvE and RP?

That way randoms wont have to deal with our emotes, and we won’t have to deal with large guilds full of trolls ruining our immersion.

I honestly don’t care how it’s implemented, just give us players SOME way to choose where the hell we end up. This random sorting crap has got to end.

Charrlizard.8041:

Tbh, most MMOs have megaservers these days

There is no such a thing. Even a blind, deaf and mentally disabled monkey can see that megaservers are the worst development in MMO industry (As long as your understanding about good is not equal to more players).

Charrlizard.8041:

I honestly don’t care how it’s implemented

That’s why we don’t get good things. You have to CARE how they implement their stuff. But, well, Anet is Anet. There is a 43 pages of complaints about Megaservers without a single, Anet post (Nope “We have a team and they are doing something” kind of posts are not the posts that I am looking for).

Phoenixlin.8624:

There is no such a thing. Even a blind, deaf and mentally disabled monkey can see that megaservers are the worst development in MMO industry (As long as your understanding about good is not equal to more players).

Actually, a few of them DO use them. Like ESO, Planetside 1 and 2, etc. But again, there’s usually some sort of system used to move between them. GW2 needs one. It would solve most of the issues people have with them.

The only reason I said idc how it’s implemented is because, knowing Anet, if they DO implement something, it’ll look fine, and may be buggy for the first few weeks. Anything would be better than this random flow crap.

Charrlizard.8041:

Actually, a few of them DO use them. Like ESO, Planetside 1 and 2, etc. But again, there’s usually some sort of system used to move between them. GW2 needs one. It would solve most of the issues people have with them.

ESO doesnt have a way to move between them and the RP there is horrible for another reason – no speech bubbles, making it impossible to have a conversation. Didnt think PS1/2 used a megaserver, you pick a server? The only game I know of that use something similar and where you can jump between instances is STO.

That little idea has been suggested for ages though – even before GW2 megaservers was even planned we wanted to move between different overflows. Anet has done nothing about it.

Tbh, I think much of the issues can be solved by just having some server unique instances, without actually touching the megaserver tech otherwise.

Take Divinitys Reach for example. The city as a whole would be megaserver design, but several of the districts would be per server. It wont stop chumps from interfering your RP (even on PS/TC it never has) but it should considerably reduce the chances and whatever player you see is actually on your server, no other server. Call it a server “sanctuary” in the gigantic megaserver if you will. That pub you want to go to at the end of a long hard day

Dawdler.8521:

ESO doesnt have a way to move between them and the RP there is horrible for another reason – no speech bubbles, making it impossible to have a conversation. Didnt think PS1/2 used a megaserver, you pick a server? The only game I know of that use something similar and where you can jump between instances is STO.

That little idea has been suggested for ages though – even before GW2 megaservers was even planned we wanted to move between different overflows. Anet has done nothing about it.

Tbh, I think much of the issues can be solved by just having some server unique instances, without actually touching the megaserver tech otherwise.

Take Divinitys Reach for example. The city as a whole would be megaserver design, but several of the districts would be per server. It wont stop chumps from interfering your RP (even on PS/TC it never has) but it should considerably reduce the chances and whatever player you see is actually on your server, no other server. Call it a server “sanctuary” in the gigantic megaserver if you will. That pub you want to go to at the end of a long hard day

But why split up the cities when a simple menu giving you a choice between megaservers would work just as well? I mean I know the playerbase is big, and growing, but surely it’s not large enough to overflow every city. DR maybe, or even LA, but not every city. All the complaining i’ve seen on them (the semi-logical stuff anyways) could be solved in the bloody login screen. Guesting is useless now right? So why have a ‘server’ list when one for the megaservers would be FAR more effective?

They, ANet, stated that their current system cannot provide such server menus like you want.

Heck, even APB: Reloaded has the ability to choose your own district, and if a low grade Z-list title like that can do it, why can’t GW2?

Because they did not think about whole megaserver idea more than 1 week. I believe that internal conversation was like that “-Oh people are whining about empty maps. What should we do? +Why don’t we merge all servers and name it megaserver? -The best idea ever!”

Phoenixlin.8624:

Because they did not think about whole megaserver idea more than 1 week. I believe that internal conversation was like that “-Oh people are whining about empty maps. What should we do? +Why don’t we merge all servers and name it megaserver? -The best idea ever!”

While that’s clearly an exaggeration, it’s true that ArenaNet didn’t properly think the implementation of this feature through. The fact that so many of their players were able to identify glaring issues in the system before it even went online (which proved to be true once it got released) and that ArenaNet had no good answers to them is proof enough of that. The “Guild Up” comment is going to be a permanent stain on Colin Johnson’s reputation in the eyes of the RP community, simply because of how out of touch he was with how such a system would effect their players.