Guild Wars 2

I would just like to say thanks for listening to the community!

This will help out WvW a little, but I still think we need to limit the number of days per WvW match up to 2-4 Days.

Anyways, +1 to Staff.

Thread Here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Free-World-Transfers-Limited-to-Once-Every-7-Days/first#post579275

Dumb without the guesting feature active.

awesome. would be even better if there was a WvW cooldown for transfers.

The “play with your friends anywhere” was such a big part of the game’s promotion.
It’s also a justifying argument for why you can only have one server (with just 5 slots), which is so restrictive compared to other games.
I know they’re still struggling to get /party functionality to work properly. It’s unfortunate it’s taking so long after launch to get this basic bit.
But… really should get guesting up before restricting server transfers.

I’m confident that everything wrong with the WvW game will still be wrong, even after server transfers are restricted.

Being able to play with friends on any server is no longer practical, then. Thanks a bunch ANet. A single transfer once a week in no way makes up for the lack of a feature you led me to believe would be working when I pre-purchased. It’s kind of important, isn’t it? Being able to play with friends? Maybe revise the manifesto instead of providing a decent workaround.

At least get your Guesting working before implementing this.

I hate WvW. I never cared about WvW. I only like to PvE and I’m being punished for it.

Stupid Idea till guesting system is working.. All the QQers are starting to get there way slowly.

This is great news, thanks for posting OP I had missed it. Maybe the bandwagoners will stop transferring every day to the winning servers and WvW will start to calm down and balance out. This will hopefully mean for closer and more fun matchups for everyone. Glad they are finally doing this, thanks ANet!

Why is the guesting system so important? I get that it’s a nice thing but totally not necessary. Other games you are on one server and you stay there. No different here except that they’re already flexible and guesting will only make it more flexible when they finally do turn on guesting.

Not all other games force you onto one server, some just split a map into separate instances like GW1 did. Games that split their populations into shards according to time zones are horrible if you live in a time zone that doesn’t have many players in it.

I play GW2 from Asia, in the late afternoons on weekdays and in the mornings on weekends. The American servers are barren on the former, and the Euro servers are barren on the latter. I’m now forced to choose between one or another.

I’d be satisfied if ANet at least admitted it, but the fact is that I’m a minority demographic and my patronage is expendable. Addressing the complaints about WvW glory hunters is more important as far as the bottom line goes. So whatever.

@Munrock, if you’re playing on Asia, I recommend trying to get into some of the (unofficial) Oceanic Server.

One of the example is NA Sea of Sorrows. Plenty of NZ/Aussie/SEA players/guilds are based on there, and the WvWvW alliance is pretty strong if you’re into it. Although I have to admit, the “dungeon” pve community here seems to be still heavy on the NA players(more of the lfg’ers in our morning/their evening).

Thanks for the helpful gesture Veldoran. I could switch to SoS if guesting were on. As it stands, I can switch to SoS and then not play with my friends, as none of them are on there. This is exactly why cutting off the ability to move between servers is a betrayal of the espoused values that I had trusted were sincere.

yes, because Anet is going to go back on this and will never implement guesting.

ever never ever.

/sarcasm

calm down guys, yes they decided the server transfers during hte WvW were that much of a bothersome that they are implementing this before they get guesting ready.
does it suck that you cant play with friends across the servers? yeah it sucks
does it suck guesting isnt implemented yet? yeah it sucks

but its not like Anet is going back on its word of not ever implementing it, just bear with it, i am pretty sure it will be coming soon, at the very least i expect it before december or with wintersday update.

just relax, the sky isnt falling

Once again… listening to the pvpers at the expense of the pvers – when will Anet learn.
In GW1 they nerfed the hell out of skills because of the incompetence of pvp players. You would go into pvp and destroy their meta… the next thing all your skills are nerfed because people were saying they were over-buffed… when in reality they were just incompetent players unable to produce a build of their own to counter your build. Originally, for each skill there was a counter skill… by the time GW2 came out, the skill system in GW was a mess.
I remember the days when ranger spike was the big thing in GvG and I brought aegis with me to counter it – I got called a noob by everyone because of the energy costs of aegis… our guild went to a top 30 rank as a direct result of being able to destroy ranger spike with one skill. Rather than come up with another build that stripped enchantments, aegis got nerfed because of all the whining pvp players.

I am sick of incompetent pvp players whinging about this, that and the other and the pve population having to suffer as a result. I thought GW2 would bring an end to this but it started almost immediately after release.
Here is a novel idea… how about making it so that you can’t actually enter WvW or any other pvp event until you have completed 75% of the map in pve and killed all the major bosses. It might then improve the quality of the average pvp player and stop the whinging that is detrimental to the pve player.

I’ve said it before and I’d like to say it again:
If constant transfers are a problem for WvWvW, byt all means fix it… for WvWvW.

Free transfers are obviously meant as a substitute for Guesting that is not implemented, but 7week long cooldown on it does not work at all (24h hardly worked too, if you ask me).
Put the cooldown on accessing WvWvW after transfering instead and let players needing it to play with friends able to use it as such again.

I just hope they will implement guesting ASAP so they can get rid of the free transfers completely. But it’s indeed a welcome improvement.

I really don’t see “guesting” as it was described ever being a feature of this game unless it’s the selling point in an expansion that changes their server mechanics. I really think it’s an unnecessary feature anyway, but I’m sure there are folks that would use it.

That said, you can’t have a solid game if everyone moves around all the time, particularly exploiters, so they did the right thing.

…Nah. I don’t buy it. I mean, out of the hundreds of thousands of people out there I am sure there are some cases where people legitimately jump servers to play with friends.

But I would bet money 9/10 people that are QQing about guesting and the limited transfers affecting their ability to “play with friends” are just upset they cant exploit the system any more to get double the Orichalcum, Ancient wood, Mini dungeon chests, Orr Meta events, and dragon spawns.

And this is a case of the good of the many. One third of the game (WvW) was totally busted because of transfer abuse. The rankings at this point mean nothing. And as I pointed out above, PvE players and bots were taking advantage of transfers to the detriment of server populations. A massive percentage of the game was negatively impacted to provide a convenience for the minute number of people that used it like they were supposed to.

This solves a few of the issues with those things, but if you have somehow not managed to get on the same server as your friends and they have not managed to find a way on to yours…
– dungeons can still be run cross server
- sPvP can still be played cross server
- even WvW can be played cross server once a week because you can likely still transfer to a server you are matched against (which was never supposed to be allowed).

Try looking at the game as a whole for a minute and how this helps server populations, WvW, server stability and community building for a huge portion of the player-base.

these so called “friends” aren’t playing in the same server as you?…

doesn’t make any sense.

with all the free transfers people have had, you would of thought they would of settled on a server where their friends are or at least agree between them to play on a specific home server, all the QQ’ing about the guest feature not being implemented is null and void and just an excuse for certain individuals not able to jump server to the winning servers everyday.

The other reason is now they can’t farm multiple servers for T6 mats all week.

Wilhelmryan.9203:

these so called “friends” aren’t playing in the same server as you?…

doesn’t make any sense.

Back when the game was popular at the very start there were overflows on basically every map. This meant I got to meet some pretty cool people from a variety of servers. Heck, same thing happened this halloween event in the labyrinth. These people wound up on my friends list, and it goes from there.

Also if you ever look for a guild that does one specific thing you may find one that fits all your needs, but happens to be on another server, which means if you want to play with them you either need to change servers and ditch any friends you have on your current one, or vice versa.

@Cod Eye — Well that is one massive generalization if I’ve ever seen one. I would like guesting implemented, and I have no intention of farming or exploiting. It’s a pretty solid fact that player’s friends can be widely distributed over several servers.

Wilhelmryan.9203:

these so called “friends” aren’t playing in the same server as you?…

doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe some people are confusing “friend” with “acquaintance”… I’m more picky with who I call “my friend”, it’s not just some random stranger met during an event who rezzed me or talked with me nicely 2 minutes. And the people I call “friends” (with a couple of them being “real life friends”) are all playing on the same server than me

Wilhelmryan.9203:

these so called “friends” aren’t playing in the same server as you?…

doesn’t make any sense.

Really?

I was a long-time member of 2 guilds in GW1 alone: one from my native country, one international.
When GW1 went into hiatus, I moved on to other games. In LotRO, I was a member of a british guild + a member of a raiding alliance since the guild didn’t raid much. I’ve also played other games.

Most of my past guilds has chosen different servers, for many reasons (my native guild went for the server our country inoficially chose as “main”, my LotRO guild went to an RP server, my alliance to one that was predicted to be active in WvWvW and so on).
Even if it would be possible to convince most (as all is definietly not possible) of them to join one server, none of us members bothered because the Guest feature was advertised as integral element of the game. We were supposed to be able to play together anyway, only WvWvW was to be restricted.

For all of you conspiracy theoretists: If “we” indeed were the people exploiting WvWvW, why would we propose to put the cooldown on WvWvW access instead?
If the transfer cooldown is supposed to fix something with WvWvW, limit the WvWvW access then, plain and simple.

Guesting, when its up and going, won’t have any effect on WvW….as you can’t compete on another servers WvW match as a guest.

At least that was how it was supposed to have worked in the beginning.

Wilhelmryan.9203:

these so called “friends” aren’t playing in the same server as you?…

doesn’t make any sense.

I made several new friends in the betas on now non-existent servers. Moledune server comes to mind right now. We all ended up on different servers for a variety of reasons. We still chat occasionally if not actually play together. Everyone was looking forward to the guesting option.

So the ruining of pve by moaning pvpers has started just 2 months after the games release. HOW VERY SAD

@Spike Firebrand I know it sucks when pvp issues affect pve-ers. It is a legitimate problem though. Just like some like you spend most of your time in pve, some of them spend most of their time in pvp.

Non-pvp guesting + server transfer fees would solve all this. Just waiting on it…

Spike Firebrand.8943:

So the ruining of pve by moaning pvpers has started just 2 months after the games release. HOW VERY SAD

This actually isn’t the first of it, won’t be the last…

What’s worse is it’s not actual pvp but wvw which s’posedly wasn’t going to be actively balanced…

I really don’t think the problems we’ve seen with unbalanced wvw matches will be solved by limiting transfers to 1/week.

The GW2 community has appreciated their limitation so much. It will sure do good for the game.

I agree with both sides! Something definitely needed to be done to combat the WvW-motivated transfers, but this change definitely punishes those who transfer to play with their friends due to the absence of the guesting system, which, I believe was said to be introduced a week after launch (or something).

If WVW is really the issue, then, yea! put a WvW join timer after transfering. You want to xfer to the winning server? Okay, but good luck getting into a match before the next reset! Enjoy your time in PVE land!

Is there a solution that wouldn’t have punished PVE-motivated transferers? I can’t really think of one that’s not overly harsh. So… get that guesting system up then change it to a month! I think 7 days is too little considering matches last 7 days… make them stick it out for several matches, IMO.

Once again the biggest whiners in all MMOGs, the PvPers, force changes upon the rest of the population. And when this doesn’t work they will be back with more whines.

This was much needed, MUCH. For you all saying OMG I canna play wif my friends. They’ll have guesting up for you, in the interim you still can very much play dungeons across servers and if you and you friends could show an ounce of coordination you could even all end up on the same server like me and my friends.

I kno, communication and organization hard right?

They will have guesting up for PVE players..sure but when? any announcement about that?

Dejavu.2349:

Is there a solution that wouldn’t have punished PVE-motivated transferers?

PvE motivated transfers like exploiting the system to harvest tier 6 crafting materials, or dragon spawns, or mini dungeon chests, or botters? Or PvE motivated transfers by players that want the passive world buffs for being on a winning server?

Before I kicked him, I had a guildie that was server hopping every week to get on a winning server for the xp buff for crafting and additional resource harvesting.

Thats the type of PvE motivated transferring that has been running rampant. Bloating high population servers, encouraging migration from smaller servers, negatively impacting the market and empowering botters and RMT.

The problems it caused for PvE may have been less direct and immediate than the problems it caused for WvW. But there were still issues.

Why are some of you just out-right ignoring facts and that this is the best intermediate solution for the game as a whole, in favor of thinking this is some kind of love letter to PvPers? Defies rational thought.

It would be awesome if they fix bugged DE chains ( Arah\CoF, Balthazar)
I know many people use it for WvW advantage,but at the moment imo the game isn’t stable enough to limit sever changes.
I’d like to change it everytime i need it,they could just block WvW access ( WvW bonuses seem already bugged..) for X days.

I do a lot of PVE and don’t understand how this “punishes PVErs.” I’ve never had to leave my server at all.

The 1-Day Transfer punished WvW players far worse than the 7-Day Transfer punished ‘PVE’ players, and let’s be honest, who really transfers more than once a week, if they even transfer at all…

Smells like a bunch of people who are butthurt at even the mention of the idea of something that could keep them from server hopping to abuse Ori nodes. I have a hard time believing that anyone jumps around as much as these guys say they do to “play with friends”.

@Khairos “I do a lot of PVE and don’t understand how this “punishes PVErs.” I’ve never had to leave my server at all.”

I too, don’t feel any drastic effects of this change at all.

Korrigan.4837:

I just hope they will implement guesting ASAP so they can get rid of the free transfers completely. But it’s indeed a welcome improvement.

Once guesting is in place i think they should keep free transfers, 1 free transfer per month (or even every 2-3 months) and any more than that would cost gems.

i’d like to server transfer, but all the ones i want to go to are FULL… i am not going to stay up all night, possibly skipping RL work just to get my only character there. i hope they just lock ’em down, already.

i only play GW2 with 2 other people, and they switch servers every night, while i am stuck in my first and so far only server.

Yes, thanks for this change.

As for the complaints: Why are PVE players switching servers every night? Why the hell would you do that?

The daily transfers were negatively impacting WvWvW. They negatively impact sever communities by the constant change of population. I don’t see how the daily transfers helped PVE players.

So because the PvPers had a list of reasons/whines of why they died in a PvP zone, the ability to WvW on your own server, or pop over for some PvE with friends, as was a game selling point, is gone.

got it.

Since I can’t quote for some reason I will have to do it like this.

Hey AcidicVision I can make up crap about people I don’t know either. Lets see now,

AcidicVision is really a gold farmer who exploited the free server tansfer to get a HUGE pile of ori ore and other rare resources and then starting moaning about it, so he could prevent other people from geting stuff. So he could could make as much gold as possable for his gold selling site. Hows that ?

To the people who can’t see a PVE problem with it Are you in a guild? Do your guild have people from more than 1 server in it ? if so does it run guild events? My guild does and we use to run guild events that everyone could come to no matter what server thier on. Now thanks to the pvp moaners this is not going to happen any more as no one will want to wait a week to go back to thier home server.

I am just mad that the pvp guilds can’t hop servers to create unfair match ups anymore.

@AcidicVision
ANet disabled WvW PVE bonuses for the current matchup a while ago when transferring, so that was not an issue.

That said, 7 days isn’t too bad – it should be for the current WvW matchup but I guess that would take too much work.

Mostly PVE people transfer to get around stuck DEs, avoid bots, meet up with friends, et al..

My prediction is you’re still gonna find that on NA servers, you’ll be getting lop-sided contests. It’s not cuz people leave a server that suddenly a server can’t get more than a dozen players on a map. It’s cuz people look at the score and give up until next week.

Watch some of the match-ups. You see a server owning nothing, with basically zero combatants. The next week comes and suddenly that same server has full maps, and is taking objectives like they always could.

One issue about this is when you have a Multi Server guild. Take the one I am in for example; because of some problems we are rebuilding the population of it from the ground up at the moment. As an RP-PvE/PvP guild we have a section of players on Tarnished Coast, and many of our PvPers are on Jade Quarry. However, once this new limit has been established we will not be able to transfer over for a large RP event on Tarnished Coast and then return back the next day, and it will also make it harder for us to help out a side if they are having trouble running a Guild inclusive dungeon. Guest passing would greatly alleviate this problem, and was one of the reasons we went with a split server (To satisfy a the RP/PvP sides of the guild, as PvE would be on both.

I realize that this doesn’t affect everyone, but to some of us the 1 week transfer limit is a big problem that we will not be able to create a solution for….it is hard enough trying to find an overflow server to run Jumping Puzzle events and scavenger hunts to include everyone fairly.

Thanks Anet, i think this has been a real problem for WvW and a 7 day transfer ban will help some but I’ve had an idea that i would like to convey to yourselves.
Free transfers once every Month,
250 gems if you would like to transfer after 3 weeks,
500 gems if you would like to transfer after 2 weeks,
1000 gems to transfer every 7 days.

I think this is a proper solution to help fix full guilds switching to Tier 1 servers every week. The amount of gems is obviously needing adjustment but you get the idea.
Please let me know what you think Oh this shouldn’t be implemented until guesting is activated either, makes no sense to before hand.