Guild Wars 2

I joined a “medium” server back when I bought the game, and have been inviting friends to join me on Yak’s Bend. At this point, one of my newly joined friends cannot get his home server to Yak’s Bend anymore, because it appears to be “FULL” at all times of the day, all days of the week.

I can’t play with my friend at all. I even bought him the game for us to play together.. for nothing?

I am not willing to transfer my account to a “high” server. It might be full next week. I’ll have to convince my various friends to all transfer as well, or i wont’ be able to play with them, so that could be an even worse outcome than the current one.

I’m happy to play on overflow, so this whole situation seems absurd. I’d even be willing to roll a new character on a new server to play with my additional friend, but the game doesn’t let me.

This demands remedy. Please outline your plans to allow friends to play together in the future.

It has always been the plan to be able to “guest” over to other servers to PvE with friends. This, however, has not been implemented yet while server switching is free.

It should have been implemented when they limited server switches to once per week.

I hope they have guesting up in time for the trials so we can play with our newbie friends.

Have any of you NA’s thought about coming over the pond to an EU server? Say… Gandara maybe? We’re requiring a night team for WvW and youd pretty much have the run of the place while we’re all sleeping! 24 hour server sounds pretty tasty to me and im sure we’d rocket up the WvW rankings with a decent night team. Our day team are pretty good but everything gets taken back at night.

Yes, this is a blatant advertisement for Gandara

pantsburgh.4902:

It has always been the plan to be able to “guest” over to other servers to PvE with friends. This, however, has not been implemented yet while server switching is free.

It should have been implemented when they limited server switches to once per week.

Sadly this won’t solve my problem, as I have friends starting up that would like to join me on my server to WvW.

Just wait for the guesting feature to be implemented.

I share your pain man, i have many friends stuck in different servers all trying to get into Tarnished Coast but its constantly full, to be unable to play with your friends is one major let down

I hope a Admin could like talk about this issue like

when will guesting be implented ?
what is the different of guesting and being in the server?
Will there be a increase in server cap ?

They can’t increase server caps, there’s already population problems on full servers.
Guesting won’t be implemented until populations even out.

The problem is, there’s a few servers who are still completely empty, and nobody wants to move there.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

They can’t increase server caps, there’s already population problems on full servers.
Guesting won’t be implemented until populations even out.

The problem is, there’s a few servers who are still completely empty, and nobody wants to move there.

The server status messages don’t reflect that. As the OP said they all say either “High” or “Full”.

I do think they need to up the server cap eventually, I really wanted to be on Jade Quarry but ended up on Darkhaven. It’s fine though because Darkhaven’s community has been absolutely stellar and I’m loving every minute of it, there is always loads of people in each zone I visit who’s ready and willing to party up and take down Champions and do other things within the game.

Quite stellar, in my opinion!

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

The problem is, there’s a few servers who are still completely empty, and nobody wants to move there.

No, there are no servers that have a value below high at any point around the clock. I’ve been checking.

Mada.5319:

Just wait for the guesting feature to be implemented.

This isn’t acceptable because:

1 – Then I can’t WvW(vW) with friends
2 – All we’ve heard about guesting is that it isn’t coming soon

It’s funny reading threads like these and then hearing people talk about how the game is dying because there’s no gear progression etc =P

There are no U.S servers below “high”, I’ve checked randomly over the course of the past several days and usually 75% of all servers are “full” while the other 25% are “high”. I seriously think its time for a server cap increase…..

Minion of Vey.4398:

It’s funny reading threads like these and then hearing people talk about how the game is dying because there’s no gear progression etc =P

This game is far from dying, I laugh at those silly threads too. Seriously, anyone who thinks this game is dying is out of their minds, my server has loads of people on in every area of the world and more and more join every day.

World versus World is one features best played with friends, and sometimes i am pit against my friend’s server.. and even if we do transfer to a “high” server its not guaranteed that everyone in the guild can transfer sucessfully, its a gamble and well gambling at Mystic forge is enough for me.. lol

I was having this issue last weekend with trying to get a friend transferred to Darkhaven. I figured it would never go back down to High, but luckily, it did. Took about two days.

Have him keep trying! They go up and down.

As for this weekend, any invited friends automatically come to your home server. No worries there!

It would be great if they can actually queue for the spot, and perhaps let them know how many more before they can enter the server.

Perhaps they can give people a morale boost, at least they see that it is possible to enter, with phyiscal numbers to look at ?

Fire.4302:

I share your pain man, i have many friends stuck in different servers all trying to get into Tarnished Coast but its constantly full, to be unable to play with your friends is one major let down

I hope a Admin could like talk about this issue like

when will guesting be implented ?
what is the different of guesting and being in the server?
Will there be a increase in server cap ?

I had the exact same problem just yesterday. Was talking to a friend, he said he was looking for a new server and I told him about Tarnished Coast being the place for RP. He was excited to transfer, but it was full. And I’m already well situated within TC, and I don’t want to transfer. Not a situation I normally find myself in.

I hope they open one or two more servers. For about a week or two population would probably fluctuate a lot, but I think after that it would be fine, at least for a little while.

Faced this problem when playing games like DWO where ppl play faction vs faction. The same thing that is gonna happen here is people will join the top few servers that are ranked in WvWvW Tier 1 and Tier 2 . NObody wants to join bottom or less populated servers even for PVE. Unless they implement low population server players gain +10 to all stats in PVE mode. (or something similar) Maybe that will help balancing out servers.

Healthy population spread across as many servers as possible is important for the future of all aspects of the game – from PVE to WvW.

As long as there is one world that isnt full then you have a way to join up with your friends – just coordinate and move to a world that isn’t listed as full. Until every world ends up full, this is the best solution for all – both the players and the developers alike.

Blaeys.3102:

As long as there is one world that isnt full then you have a way to join up with your friends

This is wrong, because it presupposes that my friend network is a single entity that has a unified mind, and moreover that we can all be assured of reliably transferring as a unit. Neither of these things are true.

tl;dr: you didn’t read what I wrote, since this was already addressed.

LordYz.8941:

[…]people will join the top few servers that are ranked in WvWvW Tier 1 and Tier 2 . NObody wants to join bottom […]

For my own part I couldn’t give a hoot (kitten) about high population or WvWvW rank, and that’s why I picked a server with population “medium”. Which is now “full”.

This isn’t a matter of one most popular server, anyway. This is a matter of them all coming up near or full nearly all the time.

Okomi.8693:

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

The problem is, there’s a few servers who are still completely empty, and nobody wants to move there.

No, there are no servers that have a value below high at any point around the clock. I’ve been checking.

Come to vabbi. Yeah. In fact, all of you who have a problem, spread out to the empty EU servers, which are still NA servers. There is no difference, trust me.

My australian friends do not want a ping to europe.

They’re not going to get a ping to Europe. I don’t know how people don’t know this...

Or rather, their ping will be exactly the same.

It must be a number of accounts, not active players. A month ago most servers were listed as not FULL every day, and there were a lot more people in LA and the zones. Now, it seems like 1/3 the population, but the servers remain FULL. I’d bet those banned account spots don’t get freed up either.

Loxias.2375:

It must be a number of accounts, not active players. A month ago most servers were listed as not FULL every day, and there were a lot more people in LA and the zones. Now, it seems like 1/3 the population, but the servers remain FULL. I’d bet those banned account spots don’t get freed up either.

It is based on who is logged in as far as I can tell. I play on Gates of Madness and around 2-3AM CST it drops from full to high almost every night. Around 7-8CST it is back up to full. For some reason I don’t think that everyone is transferring out of the server in the middle of the night in unison. =P

Also I know when a server drops from full to high you can join because one of my friends got the game a few days ago and couldn’t hop in but right around that 2-3AM mark the server fell in population and now his Ranger and my Warrior can smash skulls all day. So yeah, I think it is based on number of logged in accounts on that server at that time. (you should also consider that the servers are “full” before they are actually full because they allow for buffer room to move players from map to map and to deal with currently based players being logged in.)

Yes, the population changes throughout the day, even on the full servers.
You may have to watch for it very late at night/very early in the morning on the full servers to catch an opening – transfer quick if you see one!

Sanctum of Rall has been full and locked for 9 days now. Outside of a few dedicated Wv3ers the server is a ghost town. I came from Jade Quarry which literally has 4x as many people.

There’s something wrong with the system.

Okomi.8693:

Blaeys.3102:

As long as there is one world that isnt full then you have a way to join up with your friends

This is wrong, because it presupposes that my friend network is a single entity that has a unified mind, and moreover that we can all be assured of reliably transferring as a unit. Neither of these things are true.

tl;dr: you didn’t read what I wrote, since this was already addressed.

The point I was trying to make was that there are significantly bigger issues and implications to world populations than wanting to play alongside friends. The long term viability of things like group dynamic events and WvW are directly tied to server populations.

It is in ArenaNet’s best interest (and ultimately in ours as well) to put mechanics in place that encourage healthy populations across all servers. I realize this makes things harder on larger groups of friends who are trying to find a place to play together.

It comes down to what is best for both the individual players and the game as a community of players. Letting people join full servers because their friends are there sounds good for the player but it most definitely is not good for the community (most notably WvW). It snowballs imbalances and creates a world of haves/have nots.

That leaves two options – guesting (which is coming) and transferring (however painful) to a server that can accommodate everyone in your group.

I do agree that transferring large groups should be easier/more reliable, but Im just not sure how they could make that happen.

If you want an empty server, you can always join us in Fergusson’s Crossing. There aren’t 100 people hordes farming the Plinx event in Orr. We actually have to work to succeed on event like Balthazar in Orr. There are no WvW que times (which means that using WvW to reach Lion’s Arch is always a free way to travel). However we’re also currently ranked last in WvW because our large WvW guilds jumped ship for servers that were already winning.

I like the people in FC and I like that we’re a lighter population server since it means that people will naturally see each other more often. While some people will always prefer the over crowded mega servers, FC always remains a viable choice for character transfers.

The real problem is that even the ghost town servers are showing up as High pop. My guild is on ET and it’s pretty dead and most people can’t run anything in Orr because of being pretty much solo running because no one is around. Something is wrong with this picture.

Mada.5319:

Just wait for the guesting feature to be implemented.

When? once they finnish adding more gear? Most likly… Once they fix bugs? na that wont happen till they ad more gear…

Yeah. We have a friend just get an account for the game. I’m on TC my two other family members on TC. My guild on TC. And my friend can’t join

please get guesting up ASAP. Though he managed Black Gate yesterday afternoon to make his first toon.

Right now perhaps due to Lost Shore, they are busy, hope after the event they can address this, its quick hard to take it when u can’t play with your friends. I am sure the admins know it too

Maybe push all those banned accounts to an empty server to free up slots?

I share this concern. My group is planning to play this game at a 4 day event next week, and these server populations are a cause for concern. I would consider playing on a “Europa” server, if there weren’t any problems with latency. Barring that, what American servers have some population to spare?

Some low ranking Worlds does have space, however having said that… u might not do very well in WvW

@Blaeys.3102: The problem with the idea that there is more to MMOs than playing with friends is that this is a cart-before-the-horse issue. Any design where players can’t play with friends is a failure.

The current state of this game is worse than all the others that have come before it in this sense, and until this is rectified, the current game design has failed.

Sure there are other issues going on for long term health, but failing to allow friends to play together is the largest error that could possibly be made in a game like this. Friend networks are how these games are sold and how they persist.

Full probably changed e.g.

Full used to mean 10,000 concurrent players.
Now it is 1,000 concurrent players.

and they probably made it so it never says anything less than High to prevent panic from setting in.

Okomi.8693:

@Blaeys.3102: The problem with the idea that there is more to MMOs than playing with friends is that this is a cart-before-the-horse issue. Any design where players can’t play with friends is a failure.

The current state of this game is worse than all the others that have come before it in this sense, and until this is rectified, the current game design has failed.

Sure there are other issues going on for long term health, but failing to allow friends to play together is the largest error that could possibly be made in a game like this. Friend networks are how these games are sold and how they persist.

Hear, hear!

Nothing to worry about now. The massive numbers of people leaving the game will surely work to correct this problem.

This post seems to be dead… but problems are still persisting

It seems like there was a increase of server cap on all servers during Lost Shore event, some of my friends did manage to get in to Tarnished Coast, but now its back to full and problems persists again…
Honestly is there a input from and Dev with regards to this ?

And a few questions ….

When will guesting be out ?
What will be the different between guesting and citizen of the server ?
How do you calculate server full ? Number of Citizen in the server ? Or how many players online at that point of time ?

Something off about the system, as there are a few servers who are borderline ghost towns and are still marked as full.

My guess is they tuned it to stop people transferring off servers to the more popular ones.

Besides, how can a server be more “full” than another one?

nofo.8469:

Something off about the system, as there are a few servers who are borderline ghost towns and are still marked as full.

My guess is they tuned it to stop people transferring off servers to the more popular ones.

Besides, how can a server be more “full” than another one?

Its off because at any given time Anet can change what those meaningless indicators of low, medium, high and full represent. If they wanted full could mean 10 players.

I’m sure as the population decreases in the game they adjust the values for each level of population to give the impression there are a lot of people playing.

And why wouldn’t they? New player buys the game logs on to pick a world and 2/3 are low and the rest full. Not a great sign for a 2 month old game. Now if they “adjust” the indicators then that same new player see a different picture.

What is funny is 3 weeks ago I saw more people activily playing through the world, in towns, in wvw when the server had a medium pop than I do now that my server is full.

Anet must have borrowed some phasing tech from blizzard and I am on a different phase of the server than the rest of them.

They also can fiddle with them to keep people from transferring to specific servers just by setting a server to full 24/7.

YB is considered a full server, yet it is pretty quiet bar LA, especially in WvW which has become a ghost town for large stretches of time which causes more guilds to at least consider moving away from it.

I really enjoyed this great game and definitely got my money’s worth but it seems its declining very quickly.

Perhaps if guesting is technically too tough we could merge servers?

FYI Anet recently said server pop classification (full/high/medium/etc) is only due to the number of accounts registered there, no the number actively playing. So a server could be listed as “high” but still be empty.

Makes sense. We have a 1600 player guild and only a fraction of them log in daily

There are currently 14 servers you can transfer to and 10 are full.

Last week it was only the top 5 WvW that were full all the rest could be transferred to if you wanted.