Guild Wars 2

Greetings to all who care to read,

As of late, our server is the most recent casualty of bailing WvW Guilds which is causing many of our active players to also leave. It might be somewhat hard to believe that a couple guilds leaving a world would cause much distress, but in actuality, it has. Our server has been completely crushed to the point of no return, even against the lowest tier servers.

At what point can we expect to see balance to servers? There has been a trend of servers flopping to either:

1. High Population/Tiered Servers
2. Low Population/Tiered Servers

With no ovehaul balance in WvW, it creates an engine where the Victor is determined within the first night and Worlds like ours are crushed with no expectations to place even 2nd. There has been attempts to recruit more players into WvW in lower tier servers, but there is simply not enough attraction to play. Being on the constant defensive, with lack of defense has played it big role in the decline.

In the higher population servers I have read/heard about the over abundance of zergs and defense that does not allow penetration, but on the opposite end there is siege that cannot be built do to low population, and paper thin keeps and garrisons due to expensive, timely updgrades that no one person wants to waste coin on. With the timely upgrades and efforts to build a WvW guild on a low server, there is no success in building, and thus we loose week after week.

WvW needs an overall in respects to attraction and mechanics when on Low and High tier worlds. As we venture into the future more worlds either get stronger or weaker causing unbalance.

I could sit here and ponder on various solutions but I doubt any would be taken into consideration. I just ask to please consider looking at the balance of the servers.

Thank you.

AR is indeed in a kitteny place, even after being bitterly joined at the hip to you guys for weeks on end, I’m sad to see this happen. A chronic pain train is not fun and the lack of foresight on Anet’s part is staggering. Something as arbitrary as server population should never determine the victor of a war. Hopping servers or finding other non WvWvW activities ingame is one thing but I hope Anet realizes the very real possibility of people leaving GW2 altogether(because WvWvW is all they do) and maybe even being leery of or outright avoiding their future products. There will need to be a major overhaul in WvWvW mechanics for low pop servers to be attractive and I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I’ll say that having been on the opposite side of that particular pain train, and I always feel a bit uncomfortable going up against Anvil. Many of their players are quite good, but the fact that we (Yes, GoM) just run them over with a zerg is a bit ridiculous. I never minded doing the same thing with Ferguson’s Crossing, since they at least had somewhat more similar numbers for their players.

lol server drama that only looks at the negatives…. on the other brighter side im sure ET/FC will be pumped for a third similar server!

Antara.3189:

Greetings to all who care to read,

As of late, our server is the most recent casualty of bailing WvW Guilds which is causing many of our active players to also leave. It might be somewhat hard to believe that a couple guilds leaving a world would cause much distress, but in actuality, it has. Our server has been completely crushed to the point of no return, even against the lowest tier servers.

I do believe it was a combined effort between AR and BP which started a freefalled for NSP nearly down into tier8.
We carried on and are doing well.

Stop crying and start winning.
What goes up must come down.

On a side note, quite a lot of people cheered at seeing consecutive -100 evolution on AR after it got separated from BP.
You have made a lot of people very happy, you should be proud.

I have been following some of the threads where players from Anvil Rock commented about their dire situation. I can really feel your pain.

The same thing happened to our server, Desolation, already earlier in Spring 2013. We lost pretty much all of our hard core WvWvW guilds to other servers, because people from those guilds got bored fighting against Visunah Square (EU rank #1 server). Despite our rank is 6 now, the random number generator gives us Visunah at least every second week, as if we are married to them. Every single week in year 2013 Desolation has been facing servers with better WvWvW coverage and larger hordes. In fact the outmanned buff has been so often on us that the last 2 weeks when we are no longer outmanned 90% of the time feel a bit strange.

Normally a server would have crashed and burned in such situation. Imagine rank 6 server facing rank 1 all the time. Desolation has been dropping ranks, but now we have stabilized to rank #6 and we have in fact been 2nd last week and going to be 2nd this week and our rating has been going up several weeks. We haven’t gotten any major transfers from other servers. Only some very small guilds or individual players have transferred to us due the high transfer costs. The big transfer cost is the issue, as I heard just today how one Visunah guild would want to transfer to Desolation, but cannot afford the cost.

How did we avoid this death spiral?

1. We worked really hard to rebuild our WvWvW community. After Iron Triangle left to Sanctum of Rally and deleted all the threads in the old web forums, we created new forums, which are now running at http://forums.desospeak.com/
- we have now weekly meetings with representatives different guilds
- we got a very nicely organized server wide TeamSpeak, which can have hundreds of simultaneous users at peak time.

2. Getting new WvWvW players from our own ranks
- we got huge pve player base and several new players have emerged from there. First they knew nothing and got upset of enemy steam rolling us, but showing them short moments of glory, wiping enemy blobs and making us feel strong and explaining stuff in the map chat helps a lot
- Desolation is EU’s best pvp server and some of our best tpvp have also came to play in WvWvW = really amazing guys!
- new guilds are forming
- new commanders are being trained and instructed by the old commanders

So it is possible to stop the death spiral and make a come back, but it requires hard work.

We are still lacking people who can play in the morning, noon and our afternoon hours are weak as well. With a better coverage we could challenge any top server, because our prime time has always been strong.

http://mos.millenium.org/eu

The fundamental problem is Anet is unclear whether WvW is a hardcore or casual gamemode.

They are clear on sPvP: that’s hardcore, and they cater to the hardcore PvP crowd (somewhat successfully).

With WvW, on the otherhand, they seem to completely ignore the dedicated WvW guilds that make the game. These are the ones who set the pace of competition, the meta, and everything else. Yet, Anet appears to believe WvW is a casual offshoot of PvE.

If Anet catered more to the dedicated WvW guilds (not sure how), then perhaps there would be incentives for them to stay on low tier servers. As it is now, the dedicated WvW guilds have to “make their own fun” by transferring to the high tiers, or organizing GvGs.

The transferring itself is a vicious circle because it causes mega-blogging in the high tiers, furthering reducing competition. It’s a big cluster-kitten.

Deniara Devious.3948:

….
So it is possible to stop the death spiral and make a come back, but it requires hard work.
….

I’m sure new guilds are being formed(or consolidated!), new commanders are being trained, TS servers are being utilized and PvE players being persuaded on other dying servers so this advice isn’t really ground breaking, and it doesn’t really solve some of the serious problems with this game mode. And obviously, people playing through the pain in hopes of sporadic “short moments of glory” isn’t sustainable because servers wouldn’t have this mass exodus problem, and I can’t say I blame them.

Numbers will always determine the battle. The one who has the most money, the most people, and the most guns will win.

You missed most dirt cheap omega golems (although I guess you could lump that in with money)

Thrumdi.9216:

The fundamental problem is Anet is unclear whether WvW is a hardcore or casual gamemode.

They are clear on sPvP: that’s hardcore, and they cater to the hardcore PvP crowd (somewhat successfully).

With WvW, on the otherhand, they seem to completely ignore the dedicated WvW guilds that make the game. These are the ones who set the pace of competition, the meta, and everything else. Yet, Anet appears to believe WvW is a casual offshoot of PvE.

If Anet catered more to the dedicated WvW guilds (not sure how), then perhaps there would be incentives for them to stay on low tier servers. As it is now, the dedicated WvW guilds have to “make their own fun” by transferring to the high tiers, or organizing GvGs.

The transferring itself is a vicious circle because it causes mega-blogging in the high tiers, furthering reducing competition. It’s a big cluster-kitten.

Some good points, and those guilds will eventually leave the game for other games and WvW will be left in a poor state once that happens.

Anet is under the impression that people will spread to lower tiers on their own and spend gems to do so. So naive.

One of the easiest things that Anet could do is reduce #s of max players allowed on each map in WvW. This will increase queue times in stacked tier1 servers causing guilds to spread out to T2/T3. It will also fix the skill lag issue since anet hasn’t resolved it yet. Once population settles they can increase cap if they want. Just a little push is needed for the stacked servers to take matter into their hands.

The upside is that in 2-3 months it really won’t matter much. Most T2- servers are constantly gaining/losing population. If AR gets saddled in the bottom bracket and that isn’t your cup of tea, you can always transfer to another server. It really is part of the game.

As an SBI’er who has seen this crap happen before, I am indeed very sad to see fairweathers deserting in droves. It can be quite painful, and very unfortunate, since your server had many fine players on it last time we encountered you.

IMO, there should be heavy discounts on transferring to low pop OR low rank wvw servers. The lowest few could be free, and then the rest would receive discounts depending on size and rank as well.

There was a thread earlier where the higher ranked servers were begging people to stop transferring to them. Apparently the ques are getting out of hand.

gennyt.3428:

I’m sure new guilds are being formed(or consolidated!), new commanders are being trained, TS servers are being utilized and PvE players being persuaded on other dying servers so this advice isn’t really ground breaking, and it doesn’t really solve some of the serious problems with this game mode. And obviously, people playing through the pain in hopes of sporadic “short moments of glory” isn’t sustainable because servers wouldn’t have this mass exodus problem, and I can’t say I blame them.

I am not claiming the current system is good. The winner is determined by coverage. The server with the superior coverage wins.

Everybody knows that the outmanned “buff” is joke. Breakout event won’t help you on enemy borderlands when an enemy force which is many times larger than you spawn camps you. Trust me. I have been there. Many times I have put on my commander tag when pretty much everybody else has rage quit. When our own borderlands have just me and 2 up leveled characters. Enemy is controlling the entire map and moves in a huge blob.

Desolation probably lost 1500-2500 hard core WvWvW players in a period of 1 month and after that dreadful month several guilds probably even quit the entire game. If this is not mass exodus, then what? Almost everybody was saying Desolation is dead. But the miracle happened and we survived.

I think several things should be implemented:

1. The outmanned buff should be separated to several levels of severity, which grant defensive buffs to the weaker side (more health and thoughness to NPCs, structures and players) and also have an additional clause taking into consideration of total number of players in all 4 maps (to prevent a server from leaving 3 maps empty to enjoy outmanned buff there and total steal rolling one map). This would also partially make night capping less effective.

2. Reduce the number of players who can enter a WvWvW map per side, but when a player enters a queue she/he is given choice to fight as a mercenary for the outmanned side on a completely different side. This would also reduce lag on stacked servers.

3. People are obviously moving to winning servers (aka band wagoning). Thus the transfer cost should be based on WvWvW track record and not world population:
cheapest transfer cost = those servers who haven’t won a match up in 3 months
medium transfer cost = those servers who have won a single match up in 3 months
highest transfer cost = those servers who have won several match ups in 3 months

Rob.7624:

Antara.3189:

Greetings to all who care to read,

As of late, our server is the most recent casualty of bailing WvW Guilds which is causing many of our active players to also leave. It might be somewhat hard to believe that a couple guilds leaving a world would cause much distress, but in actuality, it has. Our server has been completely crushed to the point of no return, even against the lowest tier servers.

I do believe it was a combined effort between AR and BP which started a freefalled for NSP nearly down into tier8.
We carried on and are doing well.

Stop crying and start winning.
What goes up must come down.

On a side note, quite a lot of people cheered at seeing consecutive -100 evolution on AR after it got separated from BP.
You have made a lot of people very happy, you should be proud.

I do not appreciate the personal attack about “complaining” or what have you. This post might seem to portray as much, but was posted with the intention to share to other worlds/and more importantly the WvW team that Smaller servers are feeling left behind in the fun to be had in WvW. So please refrain from attacking someone unless constructed in proper debate.

In regards to your “start winning”, If you wish to explain to me how one person can achieve “winning” in WvW I would love to hear that particular strategy. As far as I have been aware, teamwork is the key to winning in WvW, and unfortunately numbers have to be included to achieve this.

It seems you aware of our Server situation, but did you know yesterday afternoon we had approximately 20 people (if that) in our home BL and were outnumbered for a good portion.

I’m all about small groups that are organized, but when we as a server have less than half of the enemy population in our own BL (mind you GoM had every place in EB), it creates lack of interest/competition in our weekly matchups.

At certain points of time, we are able to gather enough numbers to strategically fight back (a special thanks to TDME and TWIN especially) where we can actively defend and spread our numbers to be competitive. The issue is on average there is lack of competitiveness due to one sheer factor “Server Population”. I don’t believe this should be a deciding factor in WvW. This is where I believe you disagree?

morrolan.9608:

Thrumdi.9216:

The fundamental problem is Anet is unclear whether WvW is a hardcore or casual gamemode.

They are clear on sPvP: that’s hardcore, and they cater to the hardcore PvP crowd (somewhat successfully).

With WvW, on the otherhand, they seem to completely ignore the dedicated WvW guilds that make the game. These are the ones who set the pace of competition, the meta, and everything else. Yet, Anet appears to believe WvW is a casual offshoot of PvE.

If Anet catered more to the dedicated WvW guilds (not sure how), then perhaps there would be incentives for them to stay on low tier servers. As it is now, the dedicated WvW guilds have to “make their own fun” by transferring to the high tiers, or organizing GvGs.

The transferring itself is a vicious circle because it causes mega-blogging in the high tiers, furthering reducing competition. It’s a big cluster-kitten.

Some good points, and those guilds will eventually leave the game for other games and WvW will be left in a poor state once that happens.

So far 80% or more of guilds/guys who left hardcore/dedicated WvW did it because of that – Anet stance and treatment.

A lot of good posts/suggestions, Which I largely agree with.

In regards to rebuilding our servers, and dedicating time/players personal finances to rebuild; this is being done as I speak (A Special thanks to Dovgan and KAOS). Creating a site to collaborate amongst other players and also thanks to the remaining ALS peeps who still encourage using the TS.
The issue I’ve been seeing with rebuilding is the fact of sheer numbers (hence this is why I made the post). Even though the dedicated group of us is all for using websites, VoIP, strategic squads/teams, we still have a hard time getting unfamiliar, weery players to join in as well. The issue is: Lack of interest and incentive to play. Which isn’t the case for the higher tier WvWs, I get that, they are competitive, and winning attracts more people. It’s uplifting to the player when your server is succeeding. Who wants to jump into WvW when your server is down over over 20k points and there is still 4 days left? Only the players who are truly dedicated and enjoy WvW regardless which isn’t many of us. I personally play regardless of how far I’m down and continue trying to cap until the last seconds of the matchup.

Now in regards to encouraging more players into Lower tier WvW. The suggestion about upping the ante to the outmanned/outnumbered buff I think is great. Currently you get higher loot chance and what not, but the major issue and reason you have that buff is you DONT HAVE THE PEOPLE Toughness, Vitality, boon duration would far be better than loot increases imo. Give the lower numbers a chance again the zergs, and make it more challenging for the opposing world to take our places.

Updating the smaller siege equipment to become a tactical asset to smaller servers would be great too. I know they have been working to do this but there is still much room to be filled. For example yesterday two of us were on AC’s and a group of guardians ran through Anzalias pass. We pelted them for an entire duration of them running through and they loss less than 20 percent health. Never effected them. Why am I even on an AC? Siege buffs for outmanned would also be awesome.

Like I noted in my op, there are plenty of ideas I can (or we) can shoot around that could become great additions to make WvW a more competitive environment. The fact is, I only see one or two WvW devs actively commenting on the forums (this might be an overstatement). WvW has a lot of potential but is currently limited to servers such as AR getting steamrolled within the first day or two with limited chance to overcome our deficits.

This is the result of the randomization process that ANet has now implemented. It was fine if you were a solid server that was matched against lower ranked guilds. IF however you were unlucky and were constantly placed against higher ranked servers, your server would take a beating again and again.

I’ve seen a few servers post similar.

I have been suffering on Anvil Rock for a long time, and can attest to this situation. I loved wvw in beta and for a couple months afterwards, in fact it is what drew me to the game. Now it is just miserable. We have permanent outmanned in Eternal Battlegrounds, and sometimes cannot even leave the waypoint area. God knows we will never get into stonemist, so I will never have 100% completion for Eternal Battlegrounds. I now try to stay in PVE.

I think the obvious fix to this problem is that ANet needs to stop being so greedy, and simply place a discount on transfers to lower tier, underhanded, and underpopulated servers. If they reduced the price for transfers based on a very simple formula factoring in the tier of the server, the population, and other factors, it would balance out quickly. There are many ways to do this, and I am sure I am not thinking of all the important factors. So just as an example, transfer prices could go as follows:

Tier 1-3 servers with very high population and less than 3 consecutive losses can stay at 1800 gems.
Being tier 4 should remove 100 from the transfer price. Making it 1700 gems base rate.
Being tier 5 should remove another 100. Making it 1600 base rate.
Being tier 6 should remove another 200. Making it 1400 base rate.
Being tier 7 should remove another 300. Making it 1100 base rate.
Being tier 8 should remove another 300. Making it 800 base rate.

A transfer to a server that has a “high” population rather than “very high” should remove yet another 100 gems from the transfer price.
There are none on the American servers, but a server with “medium” population should remove yet another 100 gems from the transfer price.

A transfer to a server that has lost 3 consecutive rounds in wvw should remove another 100 gems from the price. Another 100 should be removed by each consecutive loss after 3.

If the server that you are transferring FROM qualifies for a base transfer rate of 1800, it should remove another 100 gems from the transfer price.

So for example, based on this system, if you were to transfer from Blackgate to Anvil Rock it would go as follows:
1100 gem base transfer rate. (Anvil is tier 7 currently)
-200 gems for having 4 consecutive losses.
-100 gems for leaving a very high population, tier 1 server which qualifies for a base rate of 1800.
Final Transfer Price from Blackgate to Anvil Rock:
800 gems.

randomization isn’t the problem. the problem is, coverage wins. sure, skill is important, but coverage sweeps the map when skill goes to sleep.

there are 24 NA servers, but there aren’t nearly enough non-NA players to give every server good coverage. there are only enough of them to give good coverage to maybe a quarter of the servers (assuming they mostly play on a selected set of servers, rather than spreading themselves out, which is pretty much exactly what they’ve done).

so, if you are an NA prime-time player, and you are sick of losing due to coverage, you have to go to one of those servers that has coverage, and your choices are limited to the quarter of the servers where that coverage exists. (this is essentially what [ALS] did, they went to a server with good off-hour coverage but somewhat weak NA prime-time coverage compared to other servers with similar off-hour coverage).

“good” matchups are only possible when servers with similar strengths (and playing times) are found in exact multiples of 3. but as soon as a “tier” of servers has 4 servers, or 7, then somebody is going to end up matched outside of their tier in order to get every world into a 3-server matchup. there is no matchup system in the world that can solve this problem.

until ArenaNet figures out a way to change WvW so that coverage isn’t usually an automatic win (without punishing players for the misfortune of simply living in the ‘wrong’ time zone) this problem is going to be with us. changing the scoring system looks like the best option right now to achieve this, but it’s a lot of work and I’m not convinced that the WvW team has enough developers to make it happen (especially since WvW players aren’t really that big a source of gem sales).

-ken

Devona’s Rest was stuck in a similar situation. We lost guilds, got stuck in T5 because of the horrid rating system when we were really a T8 server, and went 25 consecutive weeks without a win. Aside from forum threads we never spammed the forums with QQ threads about our situation. You all know the saying, once you hit rock bottom… Well DR did and after months we pulled our kitten together, improved as a server and pulled in our first victory since 2012 just a couple of weeks ago.

I don’t see enough dedication on AR to pull this off, at least not yet. That’s why you spend time complaining about Arena Net as if they are the only source for your problem. I’m sure it will happen eventually though, once you start making an effort.

Constructive criticism here, but instead of putting the responsibility on ANet, are you guys doing what you can to improve as a server? Are your commanders communicating? Do you have a central communications server? I’m not talking about many different comm servers used exclusively by guild. I’m talking about a singular, server wide communications that is agreed upon on by all your big guilds. Are you educating and recruiting your roamers?

Now is the time to get unified since you have less guilds to get on the same page. Rebuild your foundation and start recruiting.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Devona’s Rest was stuck in a similar situation. We lost guilds, got stuck in T5 because of the horrid rating system when we were really a T8 server, and went 25 consecutive weeks without a win. Aside from forum threads we never spammed the forums with QQ threads about our situation. You all know the saying, once you hit rock bottom… Well DR did and after months we pulled our kitten together, improved as a server and pulled in our first victory since 2012 just a couple of weeks ago.

I don’t see enough dedication on AR to pull this off, at least not yet. That’s why you spend time complaining about Arena Net as if they are the only source for your problem. I’m sure it will happen eventually though, once you start making an effort.

Quoting for truth

The ranking system is fine. Both coverage and skill influences your server’s weekly score. By fighting an opponent server, you generate the data needed to rank yourself. None of us have a right to demand a fair fight. Those are the rules of this game. Improve or die.

ALS has done quite enough winning and dying (i.e.: playing WvW) on behalf of Anvil Rock to have generated the data and emotions necessary to fairly decide that we would rather do the same on behalf of Dragonbrand now. Ranking evolution from 2013 Week 25 onward shows exactly how opposite of “fair weather” our contributions were. We had many friends and very appreciated help along the way, and did our best to leave AR better than we found it. We made sure to leave your server-wide TeamSpeak server online, intact, and available to you under the ownership of ALS’ original founders whom now also have retaken ownership of ALS on AR. You don’t have the website we were going to give you, but Dovgan and others stepped up to fill that role now, knowing full well what we had nearly ready to provide you. The tools remain at your disposal. Now AR displays how effectively it cooperated with us, by showing the same of how it behaves and performs without us.

Snowreap is mostly correct in his summation of how we decided where to go. DB was chosen for social reasons after DB had already been made our top choice due to its NA coverage gaps (which it still has after our 110 additions). We chose a server that we wanted to play with, and immediately took ranks 1 – 3 off the table. We don’t care about wins on the leaderboard, and we aren’t bothered deeply by loses on the field. We’re fun-seekers.

We weren’t “sick of losing”. In fact, we intentionally chose to move to a server that for the most part (the same as AR) knows that it honestly doesn’t care for the idea of playing under Tier-1 conditions as the game and server are today. DB has its share of glory-seekers, but really we’re just a larger-than-average collection of people and guilds that play at cartoon murder, rated T for Teens.

How anyone comes away from the mechanics and realities of this game with such a deep sense of betrayal and entitlement, as shown daily in these forums, is at once amusing and baffling. Although good customer relations demands some audience be given to complaints, the product is delivered as-is without warranty toward your enjoyment of it.

Besides… you’re Anvil Rock: the home of the highest volume of fair-fights to be found in GW2. Leave the supply camps alone, and venture into The Heart of The Mists. See exactly how demolished the vast majority of GW2 players are in the truly fair circumstances you’re crying for in WvW.

There are plenty of great servers that are not in the Top 5 though. The top 5 are there because they have a ridiculously large WvW population. Not because they are somehow blessed with superior intellect and skill. There are plenty of other servers in the 6-15 bracket that are easily just as good skill wise but don’t have the huge population of the top 5.

Enjoy the ques, and being an additional and largely useless cog in the machine ALS. That is the price for all these kittened guild front loading Tiers 1 and 2. The hilarious thing is they are begging you guys to stay away and still you come. And when you arrive, they hate you for making their ques longer. Don’t deny it, you know it to be true.

You could have easily gone to say, SBI, Crystal Desert, hell, even Borlis Pass, and you would have been welcomed with open arms. Instead you go to Dragonbrand, and the response is, kitten, another guild transfer. Who are you, why are you here, and when will you be leaving?

I have been on AR since I started, through thick and thin. Yea it has been tough with all the recent free-fall we are going through. I think it will stabilize when we get away from Gates of Madness, who right now is way undermatched against both us and IOJ. They also seem to have some vendetta against us, trying to spawn-camp us continuously when they should be trying to obtain objectives in other parts of the map. They really are very dumb strategically in that regard, but they have numbers.

Anyway, I think we will fit in just fine with Eredon’s, Fergusons, and maybe Sorrow’s Furnace. Above that has a slight advantage, but its not absolutely crushing/demoralizing until you get to Gates.

Also, the complete lack of lag and more small-man that happens in the range I specified is awesome and fits our server great. If there is more roaming and small-man, we might get some more of our pvp’ers out to really have some fun.

Aeros, you’re too cute!

Beard, if there are any grudges between AR and GoM, they’re historical and should be unrelated to today: AR has fought them multiple times before, and the WvW guild transfers that a GoM player referenced earlier (from GoM to AR) was TCMM, the guild that brought your server-wide TeamSpeak (it had been theirs for 5 years prior) and came to AR with intention of forming the guilds alliance we had for months afterward.

Good luck. I hope you find your fun.

Anvil Rock fellows, do not lose your hope, there always time to build a strong WvW community, you already have the best PvP skilled players, besides every day recruits coming to experience WvW and you call them “pugs” at the beginning, but with patience you can explain to most of them how fun and exciting WvW can be at times.

I started a thread months ago about your World, but recently I was forced to write sad words about the end of Anvil Rock world as we know from old days matchups BP/AR/NSP or EB/BP/AR.

You can check in our forums (borlis.org), without need to registry, here is the link:
http://borlis.org/forum/m/7734425/viewthread/6825056-anvil-rock-world/page/3

In the name of the ancient Brolis Rock alliance, I bring some suggestions to AR:

1… You should create a common Forum for all guilds can talk and discuss contents of the game, PvE, PvP, builds, dungeons and above all, World x World common strategy.

2… You don’t ask guild to release their own forums, or either have to invite one by one, just convince guild leaders how this common Forum will improve all your skills and knowledge about the game contents.

3… Promote moderators (few) from the major guilds, so most of them know they will be defending from the randomly trolls every forum have.

4… Now for WvW community it is CRUCIAL you get a voice channel to gather all common objectives, once again guilds don’t need to abandon their own Teamspeak, Mumble, Ventrilo, Skyp or whatever they feel confortable to communicate among them, you just start to ask in reset time or day (Friday), all commanders and guild leaders have to commit to be present in the Teamspeak (choose this, because it is what Borlis use with very success), time will make them stay more time beyond reset hours.

5… Very important: every guild must have their private “room” in this voice channel for they feel comfortable, but you will have 4 differented channel pointed to Green, Blue and Red borderland and Eternal Battle.

6… Feel free to read BP forum about how Teamspeak is organized, it’s free and you don’t need to registry or if you feel confidence, contact us in borlis.org

Farwell Anvil, you once Rock
… but you need to know you can fly again

Virtute.8251:

Aeros, you’re too cute!

I call it how I see it. I have no respect for Guilds that jump ship and run to a high powered server like Dragonbrand that does not want or need them. If you don’t like your server, that is one thing. But running to Dragonbrand, SoR, etc just screams “I want to be Number 1 without having to work for it!”. I honestly hope Borlis Pass will one day get to fight Dragonbrand, if only so I can run into ALS and wipe them like we did when you were on Anvil Rock. A change of server does not change the end result for your guild.

whenever I look at the server window, Anvil always has “very high” pop, while Ebay always has “high” pop..
if that is not a typo then maybe AR should try to form new guilds and encourage their own people that wvw is fun,.. if they have that much people then they could be a contender if people actually start to play wvw.

anyways, i don’t know how accurate that pop indicator is..
it’s just that while i guested in EB, there seem to be much more active people than in AR, weird

Snowreap.5174:

randomization isn’t the problem.

Randomisation places you against servers with better coverage.

Aeros.2046:

There was a thread earlier where the higher ranked servers were begging people to stop transferring to them. Apparently the ques are getting out of hand.

Yes but reading the recruitement thread the first people in all the time for the “please come to our server” threads are from precisely the servers which do not need more people. JQ, BG, SoR, TC, FA and DB. Always the same.

Deniara Devious.3948:

gennyt.3428:

I’m sure new guilds are being formed(or consolidated!), new commanders are being trained, TS servers are being utilized and PvE players being persuaded on other dying servers so this advice isn’t really ground breaking, and it doesn’t really solve some of the serious problems with this game mode. And obviously, people playing through the pain in hopes of sporadic “short moments of glory” isn’t sustainable because servers wouldn’t have this mass exodus problem, and I can’t say I blame them.

I am not claiming the current system is good. The winner is determined by coverage. The server with the superior coverage wins.

Everybody knows that the outmanned “buff” is joke. Breakout event won’t help you on enemy borderlands when an enemy force which is many times larger than you spawn camps you. Trust me. I have been there. Many times I have put on my commander tag when pretty much everybody else has rage quit. When our own borderlands have just me and 2 up leveled characters. Enemy is controlling the entire map and moves in a huge blob.

Desolation probably lost 1500-2500 hard core WvWvW players in a period of 1 month and after that dreadful month several guilds probably even quit the entire game. If this is not mass exodus, then what? Almost everybody was saying Desolation is dead. But the miracle happened and we survived.

I think several things should be implemented:

1. The outmanned buff should be separated to several levels of severity, which grant defensive buffs to the weaker side (more health and thoughness to NPCs, structures and players) and also have an additional clause taking into consideration of total number of players in all 4 maps (to prevent a server from leaving 3 maps empty to enjoy outmanned buff there and total steal rolling one map). This would also partially make night capping less effective.

2. Reduce the number of players who can enter a WvWvW map per side, but when a player enters a queue she/he is given choice to fight as a mercenary for the outmanned side on a completely different side. This would also reduce lag on stacked servers.

3. People are obviously moving to winning servers (aka band wagoning). Thus the transfer cost should be based on WvWvW track record and not world population:
cheapest transfer cost = those servers who haven’t won a match up in 3 months
medium transfer cost = those servers who have won a single match up in 3 months
highest transfer cost = those servers who have won several match ups in 3 months

Good suggestions, frankly any changes have to be better than the devs current ostrich mode with regard to pop imbalances.

The population imbalances are the fault of the player base, no the development. Band wagoners looking for easy wins rather then actually having to work for them.

Aeros.2046:

The population imbalances are the fault of the player base, no the development. Band wagoners looking for easy wins rather then actually having to work for them.

And the game is designed to cater for those who want easy wins…

SoPP.7034:

Snowreap.5174:

randomization isn’t the problem.

Randomisation places you against servers with better coverage.

randomization is not the problem.

the problem is that those servers with better coverage even exist. as long as those servers exist, somebody will have to play against them. if not you, then somebody else. under the old system, it was always somebody else, under the new system sometimes it’s you.

unless the coverage bands fall into exact 3-server groupings it will be this way under any matchup system.

-ken

Anet have some serious problems with WvW. But Ill be honest the reason servers/tiers are so unbalanced is because of the dreadful wvw community, and the ‘hopping/stacking’ mentality everyone has.

Ive seen it countless times:
Desolation are losing they get influx of big US guild(RUIN) IRON get way more active same time funny enough, they start winning come 1st in EU, they start to get lot of transfers/every sunny day pvper is out now cause they are winning.
All of a sudden they have hours of Qs and the server starts to break down, RUIN leave, IRON get flakey Deso start losing. People transfer away.

Seafarers rest start to gain momentum up the tiers do well for their size against 1st/2nd place EU, they get huge influx and get massive Qs and have zergs as big as everyone else now, server implodes people transfer off.

Piken Square gets influx at same time due to med pop free transfers, from people trying to escape the top tiers Qs and blobs/lag. It starts to get big Qs, and massive zergs. Alot of its wvw guilds leave to other servers (they say to escape the Qs and to fight against PS themselves) they all flood to same server and it then gets Qs longer then the ones they escaped from and they blob more then PS ever did.

Its the same always on US and EU(blacktide in the past too, BarachBay will be next) the cycle of selfish players trying to take the easy ride. Anet cant stop people being total Dopes.

Example of why this game will never be balance due to its player-base;
Vizunah Square the literal embodiment of ‘Stacking’. It has Qs round the clock a zergball of 80+ where noone roams and everyone on it complains about the imbalance and the lag in WvW. Its mind-blowing how narrow-minded it is a server community and how it hates the problems it has made itself by pure Stacking.

Or take dragonball/Spvp matchs. 4v3, new player joins he can join either side(an example) 9 times outa 10 he will make it 5v3 for the easy win. Not 4v4 for the good & balanced fight.
Sums up this playerbase and why Anet can give everyone a free transfer to any losing server and noone will take it, cause majority of the pvpers in this game are just looking for the easy ride and to be honest are very bad players, afraid to roam to 1v1 or to fight with even numbers. They cling to the zergbus and never let go in fear of having to do some work.

The difference in server coverage and time-zone coverage makes all the difference in this game at the moment.

In my own matchup thread I had some guy from TC telling me that WvW was “designed” for 30 man groups (justifying zerging for small tasks), where that is a “large” zerg" in T3 and lower (not that they don’t get bigger, of course).

In T1, running in a group of less than 20 is asking for a quick death; a group of 20 can cap an entire BL in the lowest tiers.

Anyhow, GL to AR and hopefully you can rebuild once you settle. We in SoS didn’t get any relief til we reached bedrock.

That bad after i left eh?

twog.8106:

That bad after i left eh?

I believe TwoGallants? if so welcome back to the game

Your Anvil fellows done pretty well for 3 or 4 months, but the more they climb the tiers, more guilds and single players were seduce by other worlds and the shattered point was when [ALS] guild departure to I guess Dragonband or Maguuma, while some fixed in Ehmry Bay after fought them by 12 weeks (matchups) in a row.

Still good news to AR natives, they got a brand new Forum: http://www.anvilrockserver.com/forum

Farwell

sostronk.8167:

Aeros.2046:

The population imbalances are the fault of the player base, no the development. Band wagoners looking for easy wins rather then actually having to work for them.

And the game is designed to cater for those who want easy wins…

ALS agrees, so now we are building up a war chest so that we can afford our weekly transfer hop between Sanctum of Rall and Blackgate, depending upon who won the previous week.

Are you sure that people are leaving anvil rock server? They maybe getting ready for the $10,000 pvp tournament and not playing WvW as much because of it. Anvil Rock is #1 NA PvP server.

uberkingkong.8041:

Are you sure that people are leaving anvil rock server? They maybe getting ready for the $10,000 pvp tournament and not playing WvW as much because of it. Anvil Rock is #1 NA PvP server.

Both are the case. Anvil Rock is quite short on players that dedicate time to PvE normal events (temples and the like), and even shorter on those playing WvW as designed. It’s population rating of “Very High” is wholly due its PvP players and their marketing efforts around their video streams, tournaments, and so on.

When ALS left AR, we removed a lot of their daily commanders, their reset-night planning, their NA timezone coverage, and WvW upgrade bank roll. All of this had been propping up AR in morale and PPT. It had given many people freedom to play in ways that they can’t now, against opponents that are impossible for them now. We were weary of that weight, and had no one to hand it off to (we tried that first). When we left, so did others, to various destinations.

There have been many on AR who have lusted for PvP players to enter WvW, but it’s rare for those to understand why it doesn’t happen, or to respect the differences between the two play styles and cultures. The results of it happening, and the PvP player’s reaction to having done it, are rarely what the WvW player would have ideally imagined.

Yoke.4671:

Ive seen it countless times:
Desolation are losing they get influx of big US guild(RUIN) IRON get way more active same time funny enough, they start winning come 1st in EU, they start to get lot of transfers/every sunny day pvper is out now cause they are winning.
All of a sudden they have hours of Qs and the server starts to break down, RUIN leave, IRON get flakey Deso start losing. People transfer away.

Seafarers rest start to gain momentum up the tiers do well for their size against 1st/2nd place EU, they get huge influx and get massive Qs and have zergs as big as everyone else now, server implodes people transfer off.

Piken Square gets influx at same time due to med pop free transfers, from people trying to escape the top tiers Qs and blobs/lag. It starts to get big Qs, and massive zergs. Alot of its wvw guilds leave to other servers (they say to escape the Qs and to fight against PS themselves) they all flood to same server and it then gets Qs longer then the ones they escaped from and they blob more then PS ever did.

Those things wouldn’t have been as bad if the scoring and matchmaking wasn’t such a failure but I guess at this point I am beating a dead horse.

Khisanth.2948:

Yoke.4671:

Ive seen it countless times:
Desolation are losing they get influx of big US guild(RUIN) IRON get way more active same time funny enough, they start winning come 1st in EU, they start to get lot of transfers/every sunny day pvper is out now cause they are winning.
All of a sudden they have hours of Qs and the server starts to break down, RUIN leave, IRON get flakey Deso start losing. People transfer away.

Seafarers rest start to gain momentum up the tiers do well for their size against 1st/2nd place EU, they get huge influx and get massive Qs and have zergs as big as everyone else now, server implodes people transfer off.

Piken Square gets influx at same time due to med pop free transfers, from people trying to escape the top tiers Qs and blobs/lag. It starts to get big Qs, and massive zergs. Alot of its wvw guilds leave to other servers (they say to escape the Qs and to fight against PS themselves) they all flood to same server and it then gets Qs longer then the ones they escaped from and they blob more then PS ever did.

Those things wouldn’t have been as bad if the scoring and matchmaking wasn’t such a failure but I guess at this point I am beating a dead horse.

I think you are. Scoring and matchmaking are not a failure. Many players’ perception of it is.

Sigmar.2185:

twog.8106:

That bad after i left eh?

I believe TwoGallants? if so welcome back to the game

Your Anvil fellows done pretty well for 3 or 4 months, but the more they climb the tiers, more guilds and single players were seduce by other worlds and the shattered point was when [ALS] guild departure to I guess Dragonband or Maguuma, while some fixed in Ehmry Bay after fought them by 12 weeks (matchups) in a row.

Still good news to AR natives, they got a brand new Forum: http://www.anvilrockserver.com/forum

Farwell

back as of 4 days ago, to see this thread on the forums.

I won’t be joining any of the enemy servers we played, i’ll be following most of ALS to dragonbrand seeing as ive never had an opinion on the server, and from what i’ve been told theres not much left to command on anvil rock these days.

Its been real anvil rock, i’ll miss you guys, and if any of you want to say whats up just whisper this account name.

twog.8106:

back as of 4 days ago, to see this thread on the forums.

I won’t be joining any of the enemy servers we played, i’ll be following most of ALS to dragonbrand seeing as ive never had an opinion on the server, and from what i’ve been told theres not much left to command on anvil rock these days.

Its been real anvil rock, i’ll miss you guys, and if any of you want to say whats up just whisper this account name.

When you get bored of dragonbrand let us know

Rob.7624:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Devona’s Rest was stuck in a similar situation. We lost guilds, got stuck in T5 because of the horrid rating system when we were really a T8 server, and went 25 consecutive weeks without a win. Aside from forum threads we never spammed the forums with QQ threads about our situation. You all know the saying, once you hit rock bottom… Well DR did and after months we pulled our kitten together, improved as a server and pulled in our first victory since 2012 just a couple of weeks ago.

I don’t see enough dedication on AR to pull this off, at least not yet. That’s why you spend time complaining about Arena Net as if they are the only source for your problem. I’m sure it will happen eventually though, once you start making an effort.

Quoting for truth

Well, dunno how I feel about the last paragraph. Judgin your server by one forum thread isn’t what I’m gonna sign up for. But the first paragraph is correct. Transfers happen, life goes on. Do what you can with what you got. All the servers in the bottom tiers are workin hard to improve.

The hardest part of WvW is the community aspect. It’s getting along with hundreds of people who all you have in common is a video game. It’s showing up, not getting down even when you’re losing a lot. It’s putting out drama and arguments and forgivin and moving on. At the end of the day, a community that they think they’ll get along with better is what most people transfer for.