Guild Wars 2

Its going to be time to take a definitive stand on servers in the near future regarding time slot population.

Right now we have NA & European servers with not a whole lot of difference between the two as in you can play anywhere you like regarding region. Why even have the two designations? Why not just merge NA & Euro together, keeping the same amount of total servers that are listed as NA? Why not simply designate NA, Euro & Asian to their own respective regional servers?

Advantages for server merges

As far as merging all regions into the same server clusters you would help alleviate some of the glaring mistakes made in regards to WvWvW. It would cut down on severe time slot disadvantages, & keep every region going with more epic battles rather than the PvDoor that is seen on some of the servers currently.

Also with a merger the worlds would feel more full. Let’s say you have a day off from work/school, log on to run some zones, you wouldn’t be running in a veritable ghost world if your server had players from all over the world on it. It would be bustling nearly 24 hours a day.

Advantages for strict regional servers

More specific primetime WvWvW action & less coming back the next day to find a different server steamrolled in absentia.

In other games similar to GW2 I have noticed players from specific countries grouping together on specific server to create a feeling pride for whatever country you might represent. With the current system this is not really possible.

Having live events reach more people. Nothing says awesome more than reading about and looking forward to a live event only to find out its scheduled for a time your unavailable due to work or school. Having a strict regional server policy would help get the live events to more of your player base rather than just about half.

Closing

I’m sure more cases can be provided either for or against either scenario, but I feel its time for ArenaNet to pick their poison. Just make a stand one way or another. And of course I realize that not a whole lot of the above matters unless ArenaNet does something about the free transfer system. Make it a paid service, put a cap on amount of transfers a month, institue the long awaited guesting feature, whatever it is just do something.

I’m neither for or against either of those, I’d just rather have it one way or another.

I prefer it the way it is. I like that the player can choose based on their own criteria. Want better ping time (I haven’t seen anything that says there are significant differences, but the servers are in different geographic locations, I believe)? Pick a server in you region. Want to play with a friend or relative half-way around the world? Pick one together, anywhere. Want a server with lots of players on at the same time as you? Pick a server in your region. Want to speak a different language in-game than most of your region speaks? Pick a server where the language is spoken more.

Bottom line: I’m against strict regional servers, and I think there are advantages to naming the servers by region because it still helps you find the server you’ll have the most fun on.

Short answer: NO.

Slightly longer answer: Because of latency we NEED separate servers.

On the topic of server mergers and empty worlds, I don’t think the problem is that there isn’t any people I think the problem is there isn’t a lot of reason for a lot of people to leave LA.

This can be fixed if ANet manages to fix some main issues that cuased alot of people to go away.

And also the HUGE Guild migration to other servers because WvW Rankings.

It’s ANet fault only the fact of some servers can be with low-pop and others full, WvW unbalance was and is the main cause. I remember Guilds of thousands of members and aliances transfer to the best ranked servers just because WvW.

(it was something discussed alot in the forums but ANet did nothing and now we got the result in server pops).