Guild Wars 2

We’ve counted the number of players present in each WvW maps, and it turns out to be 70 persons per server per map.

This is much much lower than it was before the patch.

Question:
Has the capacity of the WvW maps been reduced on purpose, or is it due to a bug ?

Please, try to solve this issue as soon as possible, as more and more people (guildies, allies, friends, etc…) just stop playing the game just because of this problem.

About time this had a thread of it’s own and not tied in with the queue threads.

How did you come up with this?

I think some servers are lucky if they can even get that many on at once. Many servers are stuck with numbers much lower than that.

I do hope we get an answer. I’m not sure that we will though. My theory is that it’s intentional. I believe Anet is testing some things, and purposefully and manually reduced population limits on WvW maps to find out where servers are currently hitting queues now that free transfers have ended and see how much room they have to deal with the culling issue. I also believe the queue system is bugged, but I believe that is a separate issue and one that is only being noticed because of the increase in queue participation due to the cap decrease.

Based on Mike Ferguson’s previous information, the only other explanation is that the WvW servers are suddenly under increased load, and the system is dynamically reducing the caps to deal with the increased strain. I don’t see how that is possible though, as it doesn’t compute to me that we would suddenly see increased WvW participation this week. Not to mention that it didn’t seem to be an issue back in September when queues were a regular occurrence, yet there were a lot more players on each map before queues came into play.

Again this is just my theory, and as with all theories, it could be completely wrong.

Burl.9567:

I think some servers are lucky if they can even get that many on at once. Many servers are stuck with numbers much lower than that.

I dont think I have seen more than 50 on a map since the reset.

We are not going to get an answer, there are numerous threads that include this and I bet this will get merged with a queue thread.

I hope it stays like that to be honest. If 70 people per map increases performance, then good. If it also reduces the number of mindless Zergs roaming around, then that is also good.

I agree with Liquid (the above poster) that Anet is doing this on purpose to get people to move realms based on the frustration caused by long queues. They have stated that one way to fix the long queue problem is to move to a lower population server. Lets say that merely saying it wasn’t enough, so they moved on to more drastic action by decreasing population sizes to cause even longer queues. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if I had a two hour queue, I’d move.

French community is starting to get really mad with this new limitation, intentional or not. New rumor is 80 limitation cap.
Its quite incredible to see how most of the french rvr community is thinking that finally, it’s not the rvr game everybody was waiting for (TESO really thank you).
And no real communication about this…I dont see difference with others mmo company, lame as usual.

Welcome in alterac 2.0

Gator.7581:

I hope it stays like that to be honest. If 70 people per map increases performance, then good. If it also reduces the number of mindless Zergs roaming around, then that is also good.

I agree with Liquid (the above poster) that Anet is doing this on purpose to get people to move realms based on the frustration caused by long queues. They have stated that one way to fix the long queue problem is to move to a lower population server. Lets say that merely saying it wasn’t enough, so they moved on to more drastic action by decreasing population sizes to cause even longer queues. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if I had a two hour queue, I’d move.

If this is the case i will
/ragequit

Gator.7581:

I hope it stays like that to be honest. If 70 people per map increases performance, then good. If it also reduces the number of mindless Zergs roaming around, then that is also good.

I agree with Liquid (the above poster) that Anet is doing this on purpose to get people to move realms based on the frustration caused by long queues. They have stated that one way to fix the long queue problem is to move to a lower population server. Lets say that merely saying it wasn’t enough, so they moved on to more drastic action by decreasing population sizes to cause even longer queues. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if I had a two hour queue, I’d move.

If this is indeed what they are doing, it should have been done weeks ago when transfers were free. Now it would just look like a complete money grab.

If the caps were lowered. It may have been done to reduce the server side load, thus lowering the chance of skill lag during 3 ways fights. Obviously only a dev can confirm such changes.

I am sure they are testing something, or wanting to keep the WvW population low to handle the server on the online culling tests, but we as customers dont want to wait 2 hours to finally play the game.

I suggest also to implement a counting system for WvW, so we can see if we can ALT+F4 the game or just wait a little.

Now i waited 1 hour and borderlands was ready, i wanted to jump in and i got an error message with that the world isnt ready because they are choosing new teams or something * the thing you see on reset * and guess what? I got kicked out of WvW Queue.

And no i wont move because i am in this server since beta, i made friends here and i have alot of fun on this server.

I think its about time we get some anwsers

Trimsic.4392:

We’ve counted the number of players present in each WvW maps, and it turns out to be 70 persons per server per map.

This is much much lower than it was before the patch.

Question:
Has the capacity of the WvW maps been reduced on purpose, or is it due to a bug ?

Please, try to solve this issue as soon as possible, as more and more people (guildies, allies, friends, etc…) just stop playing the game just because of this problem.

How does a player acuratly count the amount of players on the map? There can be lots of random people running around the map.

Shamrocky.5036:

Trimsic.4392:

We’ve counted the number of players present in each WvW maps, and it turns out to be 70 persons per server per map.

This is much much lower than it was before the patch.

Question:
Has the capacity of the WvW maps been reduced on purpose, or is it due to a bug ?

Please, try to solve this issue as soon as possible, as more and more people (guildies, allies, friends, etc…) just stop playing the game just because of this problem.

How does a player acuratly count the amount of players on the map? There can be lots of random people running around the map.

What i did was call out in /m to press 1 in map chat if you are on this map. I also expalined why i was doing it. I got 22 responds. Before I did this I was in a queue for the BL. Even if only 1/3 of the ppl there responded, where are the other 100 players? i also ran to our towers/keeps, there were a few here and there but not 166. I have a feeling there were more like 30 and maybe a few in the JP but still not 166 and enough for there to be a que.

This has been repeated a few times with the same result. Long queues for empty BL’s

Maybe it is related to some calculations for the new rating system.

too many if’s, maybe’s and assumptions made to even begin to say any of this so called ‘counting’ is anywhere close to accurate.

Arkaos.4502:

New rumor is 80 limitation cap.

Wow…. 80 cap limit….

inb4 a very long queue time =_=;;;

If they really reduce the cap limit per map, then, they should have the second WvW map or overflow-server-specific WvW map. Otherwise, please remove JPs from any WvW maps.

Im in GoM server. The only time we really ever have a que for EB is right after the reset when everyone is bum rushing SM. But yesterday a few people whispered me saying they were in a que for EB. A que midweek,, IMPOSSIBLE. I thought," really,,, we have that many people".

Well now it would make since if they lowered the cap why we would have queues going for EB in GoM.

I could very much see ANet lowering the map cap to 70-80. Also to those questioning the OP’s information you do know who that is right? That’s the guy that runs this webside → http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA and is probably the most reliable and most knowledgeable person there is about all of this outside of ANet Devs themselves.

Trimsic.4392:

We’ve counted the number of players present in each WvW maps, and it turns out to be 70 persons per server per map.

This is much much lower than it was before the patch.

Question:
Has the capacity of the WvW maps been reduced on purpose, or is it due to a bug ?

Please, try to solve this issue as soon as possible, as more and more people (guildies, allies, friends, etc…) just stop playing the game just because of this problem.

before the patch it was maybe 100, now around 75…. at the start it was maybe 166 but got reduced at least 1-2 times

Kelo.4370:

I could very much see ANet lowering the map cap to 70-80. Also to those questioning the OP’s information you do know who that is right? That’s the guy that runs this webside -> http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA and is probably the most reliable and most knowledgeable person there is about all of this outside of ANet Devs themselves.

Irrelevant unless he has access to inside information. Asking how he came up with the number is valid.

Kelo.4370:

I could very much see ANet lowering the map cap to 70-80. Also to those questioning the OP’s information you do know who that is right? That’s the guy that runs this webside -> http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA and is probably the most reliable and most knowledgeable person there is about all of this outside of ANet Devs themselves.

The limit would explain allot of the que issues, and people noticing a lack of people in the zones compared to the past….

Pretty Sad Anet Pretty Sad….
Cash Grab is right….

hearsay and innuendo is still hearsay and innuendo unless backed up by tangible facts.

Saying you ran around the map and couldn’t find people? With the new culling I can’t find people standing right in front of me half the time.
Saying you asked in map chat to post if you are there? Ever yelled/or seen others yell at random pugs who keep taking supply even when asked not to take supply from the tower/keep/castle? Some people will just not respond or potential have the channel turned off even.
Saying things like ‘even if only 1/3 of people responded’ is based on what? Its just the fraction someone picked to fit their argument, it has no basis in fact, it could be 9/10 responded or it could be 1/20 responded, there is just no way to know.
———————
I’m not saying there isn’t an issue, there may be, I don’t know, but let’s not waste everyone’s time with fake statistics, fake numbers just makes the entire thread easily dismissed.

It does not even seem like they just lowered it though. More and more I am seeing huge number discrepencies between servers even though we have a queue. Like we have 30-40 tops on the map and have a queue while we are running into 60-70 at times.

Arkaos.4502:

New rumor is 80 limitation cap.

Congratulations on starting that ‘rumor’

Here’s another one for you, I ‘heard’ the cap is 200 per map. Guess we’re both capable of making numbers up with nothing to back it up.

Catisa.6507:

hearsay and innuendo is still hearsay and innuendo unless backed up by tangible facts.

Saying you ran around the map and couldn’t find people? With the new culling I can’t find people standing right in front of me half the time.
Saying you asked in map chat to post if you are there? Ever yelled/or seen others yell at random pugs who keep taking supply even when asked not to take supply from the tower/keep/castle? Some people will just not respond or potential have the channel turned off even.
Saying things like ‘even if only 1/3 of people responded’ is based on what? Its just the fraction someone picked to fit their argument, it has no basis in fact, it could be 9/10 responded or it could be 1/20 responded, there is just no way to know.
———————
I’m not saying there isn’t an issue, there may be, I don’t know, but let’s not waste everyone’s time with fake statistics, fake numbers just makes the entire thread easily dismissed.

Without any response from Anet there can only be speculation and confusion.

What are we supposed to do? People are coming up with thier own theories trying to discuss this obvious problem.

As far as if only 1/3 responded, I never presented it as fact, it was on observation and I was very clear about that, key word/phrases like “if” and “I have a felling” are tells to most ppl that this is an observation, but I have been in WvW enough to guage how many there are now based on how many there were a few weeks ago.

So without any numbers

It is painfully obvious to me that there are far fewer players in a map than there was before the patch and we have a long queue to get in.

A simple acknowledgement of map numbers would bring the frustration of your players down a lot. We don’t want to be left in the dark about what’s going on just a little light on the situation please.

Ruprect.7260:

Catisa.6507:

hearsay and innuendo is still hearsay and innuendo unless backed up by tangible facts.

Saying you ran around the map and couldn’t find people? With the new culling I can’t find people standing right in front of me half the time.
Saying you asked in map chat to post if you are there? Ever yelled/or seen others yell at random pugs who keep taking supply even when asked not to take supply from the tower/keep/castle? Some people will just not respond or potential have the channel turned off even.
Saying things like ‘even if only 1/3 of people responded’ is based on what? Its just the fraction someone picked to fit their argument, it has no basis in fact, it could be 9/10 responded or it could be 1/20 responded, there is just no way to know.
———————
I’m not saying there isn’t an issue, there may be, I don’t know, but let’s not waste everyone’s time with fake statistics, fake numbers just makes the entire thread easily dismissed.

Without any response from Anet there can only be speculation and confusion.

What are we supposed to do? People are coming up with thier own theories trying to discuss this obvious problem.

As far as if only 1/3 responded, I never presented it as fact, it was on observation and I was very clear about that, key word/phrases like “if” and “I have a felling” are tells to most ppl that this is an observation, but I have been in WvW enough to guage how many there are now based on how many there were a few weeks ago.

So without any numbers

It is painfully obvious to me that there are far fewer players in a map than there was before the patch and we have a long queue to get in.

The queue could be caused by our push to invite more players/guilds to our server. That said I had a 2 hour queue on Friday for all the borderlands, which seems strange. Following night(Saturday 7pm cst) I had a 5 min queue for TCBL, didn’t try for the others. I can honestly say that 2x I have missed the “push 1 if you’re here” calls in map chat because I was busy with my group. I noticed it in chat later, but just blew it off, I’m sure that I’m not the only one.

So, we got wall of silence there. Again.
It seems strange that ANet cannot say smth like “Ok, people, its just a bug, we are trying to fix it”, or “Nope, its not a bug, we are just milking you on transfers”.

We did not get very many prime time guilds, maybe some new players. We did however pick up a few euro/oceanic guilds.

The queue on friday is understandable, it’s reset night. Not having a seemingly full BL and having a queue is not right. This is the problem not the queue itself but the fact that there is no where near 166 in the BL and having a 2+ hour queue.

Ruprect.7260:

We did not get very many prime time guilds, maybe some new players. We did however pick up a few euro/oceanic guilds.

The queue on friday is understandable, it’s reset night. Not having a seemingly full BL and having a queue is not right. This is the problem not the queue itself but the fact that there is no where near 166 in the BL and having a 2+ hour queue.

166 was at the start of the game, before patch it was around 100

70 players?per server?I wish we had that. WE get stuck in queue the moment we got around 30 on the map per server. sometimes we are in queue with 25 people on and when we get in after 10 minutes to 1 hour, we find ourselves outmanned by the other servers that have 40 online.

Shoo.9016:

So, we got wall of silence there. Again.
It seems strange that ANet cannot say smth like “Ok, people, its just a bug, we are trying to fix it”, or “Nope, its not a bug, we are just milking you on transfers”.

The silence is a very BAD thing. I would think they would learn from Bioware’s mistakes with SWTOR about being silent on issues players wants answers on because it blows up in their face and makes people quit.

It would be great to get an answer to this. Great idea splitting this off onto it’s own thread.

(Could we keep the manchild whining to a minimum? Thanks.)

Lets keep this thread civil but bumped to the top. I think we all want to know what the current map population limits are. This greatly effects how we play the game, keeping us in the dark is not helping anyone and is aggravating the population base.

How on earth did you account for every person on each map? How do you know there weren’t some people doing jump puzzles or running around more secluded areas of a map before you started counting?

I would like to know how you came up with that number please. Otherwise this is just scaremongering.

Simonoly.4352:

How on earth did you account for every person on each map? How do you know there weren’t some people doing jump puzzles or running around more secluded areas of a map before you started counting?

I would like to know how you came up with that number please. Otherwise this is just scaremongering.

If you only own 1 supply camp and 1 tower and there is a zerg of 40 + on one side and a zerg of 25 on the other side of that map attacking u at the same time im sure u will most likely see 95 percent of the players either in A,citadel, B, the camp or C that last tower. No PVE player would even dare to leave the citadel knowing that there is massive forces everywhere. and yes, there are a few crafters there.

get 10 random people to look at a moving zerg and ask them to estimate the size … get 10 different answers.

Trimsic.4392:

We’ve counted the number of players present in each WvW maps, and it turns out to be 70 persons per server per map.

This is much much lower than it was before the patch.

Question:
Has the capacity of the WvW maps been reduced on purpose, or is it due to a bug ?

Please, try to solve this issue as soon as possible, as more and more people (guildies, allies, friends, etc…) just stop playing the game just because of this problem.

Don’t look for an answer that will not be provided through anet because they don’t respond to the community to often. sry bro you’re sol

Catisa.6507:

get 10 random people to look at a moving zerg and ask them to estimate the size … get 10 different answers.

Maybe in your groups. We are generally good at estimating the size of a zerg.

Ya, I really wish they would come out and squash this by giving us the actual figures.

Shoo.9016:

So, we got wall of silence there. Again.
It seems strange that ANet cannot say smth like “Ok, people, its just a bug, we are trying to fix it”, or “Nope, its not a bug, we are just milking you on transfers”.

The 2nd imho.

I’m not going to make any claims that i can’t back up but it is obvious something is going on behind the scenes. Maybe the big PvP/WvW patch / changes coming this month are bigger than we expected… And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I do wish Anet would say something though because a lot of people are getting very frustrated and rightfully so.

covenn.7165:

How did you come up with this?

On the server Vizunah Square, the community is a community. Players are used to log on the same TeamSpeak server since months. On this TS we have one channel per map.

So it’s easy for us to count the number of people actually playing on the blue, red, and green maps. In addition to that, we exchange information between commanders.

I remember a time where we could have two operational squads with 40-50 people each, and many other players roaming on the map. We could lead both defensive and offensive actions at the same time. This is no more the case, as we now count one squad per map. This has a counter-productive impact on WvW game play and strategy. Indeed, it’s now almost impossible to:

• Defend two structures at the same time
• Defend one structure while attacking another one
• Attack two structures at the same time (one being a fake attack)
  In short, we don’t have fun anymore.

This is leading me to another issue: the WvW maps are too small, or more exactly there are too many structures to capture / defend per square meter. Decreasing the number of players per map as a workaround to this issue is a no-go, due to the impact on WvW strategy discussed above. The only viable solution would be to scale up these maps, while keeping the same capacity of players as before. But this is a long development process, and I’m afraid it won’t be done.

Still no answer?

You can defend and attack with groups of 20/30.. dont need to blob up.
But the maps being a bit bigger and without all the roads you NEED to take the game would improve.

Having lesser people on a map isnt a bad thing i think.. it reduces the big blob zergs
They need to spread out more.
So maybe this is a semi bug.. population caps reduced because there will be extra zones in the next patch.. with lesser population.. They probably are testing it out on a beta server.
Only when they did the last patch that should have fixed things.. they took the reduce server population also by mistake.

Thats why i think its just a small and easy to fix problem, they just didnt notice yet…

Shoo.9016:

So, we got wall of silence there. Again.
It seems strange that ANet cannot say smth like “Ok, people, its just a bug, we are trying to fix it”, or “Nope, its not a bug, we are just milking you on transfers”.

Wall of silence is what they should be doing. Until they know a problem exists and have a solution they should say nothing. Otherwise they are doing a Bioware and making idiots of themselves on their own forum.

From personal experience, you are never going to get an accurate headcount in WvW from the player side – plenty of people just don’t respond in chat for too many reasons to count. Heres a small sample:

1) They weren’t looking at their chat log.
2) They are looking at their combat log to see how much that thief backstabbed them for and yelling about it in their voip server.
3) They are too busy fighting or mining ore.
4) They are afk!
5) They just don’t care.
6) They are a Primordial Dragons recruiter who got stuck on the wrong server when free transfers ended so they probably think they “don’t count”.

People join and leave WvW all the time so even a visual headcount is never going to be accurate. It makes sense that many servers are unable to control their numbers in WvW as good as a few weeks ago because of the hysteria of paid transfers. Several servers have an influx of players and for every 1 that got the memo, theres 10 that didn’t.

Any server in a bracket with servers that experienced a mass migration of players to another server suddenly finds they are winning! What happens when your server tastes victory when their win to loss ratio is like 2 to 53? You suddenly get commanders and players you never knew you had! Tonnes of people flood into WvW from your own server to get the POI in Green Keep and then leave immediately.

Welcome to server wide WvW coordination. AKA the art of herding cats.

The only claim Anet should investigate is the one where Tarnished Coast players said they had a queue with outmanned buff. That is suspect. But until Anet can confirm that actually happens, they shouldn’t say a mumbling word and make no promises.

After a server reset you can count… especialy when you frap it.
So yes people are sure…

You know, this would explain why we had all four maps queued on reset, but didn’t have enough folks to properly defend our bay. It was weird, knowing I’d just spend twenty minutes in the queue and feeling completely outnumbered. Having less people overall would account for it.

You know, as a commander of a pretty large Guild, I could really use some hard answer to how many members I can get on a map at once. Just saying.

Loken.9724:

You know, as a commander of a pretty large Guild, I could really use some hard answer to how many members I can get on a map at once. Just saying.

This ^^^^

It is getting very frustrating to be able to get maybe half your force out there when we were easily able to get all out before the patch. This being outnumbered with a queue and seemingly 40 ppl on the map is getting old.