Guild Wars 2

Is it normal and part of the GW2 WvW culture for entire servers to solicit guilds from other servers and pay for their server transfers?

Is this mode all about coverage and that’s it?

I’m just curious because I’m new to the game and this sort of activity seems strange. When I heard that Maguuma had paid for my PvE guildmate’s entire WvW guild to move to their server and was doing that with other guilds, I thought that it didn’t seem right.

I understand that the company makes money off these transfers so maybe they just let it slide and figure it’s an acceptable practice?

Can someone fill me in? I’m finding it to be an odd gaming culture and I’d like to know what to expect and what sort of standards are acceptable before I invest more time and gear into it. I want to know if the mode is right for me.

Thanks in advance.

Yes, this is normal currently. Servers pay for guilds to come over, pay for people to sit in towers, give people legenedaries as bonuses if they bring their whole guild.. yup. Currently that is how this works, and yes it would be great if we could solve the imbalances issues so this would not be considered the " norm".

Hopefully eventually they will solve this problem one day. ( looks back over at my rants on this subject…) More Player skill less pay to win please.

O.O

Wow? Those kinds of shenanigans are that pervasive?

I guess that answers my question on whether or not the mode is worth playing.

Spooksie, there’s two sides to every deal. Ask your friend why his WvW guild wanted to move.

Spooksie.4930:

O.O

Wow? Those kinds of shenanigans are that pervasive?

I guess that answers my question on whether or not the mode is worth playing.

Servers have been buying guilds for a while, the end game is 9 servers full of players and 15 barren wastelands full of people screaming “SERVER PRIDE”.

HoT may slow or hasten the process.

At least im not for sale.

King Amadaeus.8619:

the end game is 9 servers full of players and 15 barren wastelands full of people screaming “SERVER PRIDE”.

A frighteningly accurate depiction. (Except that the 15 wastelands aren’t full)

Trick.9370:

At least im not for sale.

We couldn’t hear you because you got trampled by 40 man guilds ready to jump servers.

I’ve seen a server outright attempt to buy another server.

This has been going on since the beginning because certain people are “mad cuz bad” and buy help.

Dhemize.8649:

I’ve seen a server outright attempt to buy another server.

This has been going on since the beginning because certain people are “mad cuz bad” and buy help.

You know nothing. You were not there.

Chaba.5410:

Dhemize.8649:

I’ve seen a server outright attempt to buy another server.

This has been going on since the beginning because certain people are “mad cuz bad” and buy help.

You know nothing. You were not there.

I am everywhere. You only know what I allow you to.

Spooksie.4930:

Is this mode all about coverage and that’s it?

Yes.

They tried PPK and it did actually even out coverage differences. Then they removed it and now we’re back at Coverage Wars.

King Amadaeus.8619:

Servers have been buying guilds for a while, the end game is 9 servers full of players and 15 barren wastelands full of people screaming “SERVER PRIDE”.

And it’s people thinking like you that will make server mergers or population redistribution impossible. People will still bandwagon off a server at the first chance they get and create new “barren wastelands” only to demand servers are merged again and again without solving any of the causes to the problem.

Tom Gore.4035:

Spooksie.4930:

Is this mode all about coverage and that’s it?

Yes.

They tried PPK and it did actually even out coverage differences. Then they removed it and now we’re back at Coverage Wars.

It was a test to see what we did with it, just like it was a test to see what we did with no white swords.

Don’t worry, something that went over as well as PPK will be back. Hopefully that was the last time we’ll see no white swords, though. Unless they remove them only for the server currently in first place in the matchup.

Kungsmurfen.2861:

King Amadaeus.8619:

Servers have been buying guilds for a while, the end game is 9 servers full of players and 15 barren wastelands full of people screaming “SERVER PRIDE”.

And it’s people thinking like you that will make server mergers or population redistribution impossible. People will still bandwagon off a server at the first chance they get and create new “barren wastelands” only to demand servers are merged again and again without solving any of the causes to the problem.

while being

Fixed that for you.

Spooksie.4930:

Is it normal and part of the GW2 WvW culture for entire servers to solicit guilds from other servers and pay for their server transfers?

Is this mode all about coverage and that’s it?

I’m just curious because I’m new to the game and this sort of activity seems strange. When I heard that Maguuma had paid for my PvE guildmate’s entire WvW guild to move to their server and was doing that with other guilds, I thought that it didn’t seem right.

I understand that the company makes money off these transfers so maybe they just let it slide and figure it’s an acceptable practice?

Can someone fill me in? I’m finding it to be an odd gaming culture and I’d like to know what to expect and what sort of standards are acceptable before I invest more time and gear into it. I want to know if the mode is right for me.

Thanks in advance.

Yes this happens frequently. Why is it wrong, exactly? If a guild would be happier elsewhere, and is offered aid or even bribes to move, why is it wrong? The wrong choice is in transferring to the wrong server, but not in the actual action of being bought itself. Buying isn’t an issue, buying and stacking 2 tiers, however, is mind-blowingly stupid and unhealthy in the long run. NA WvW, if it is dying, is killing itself by how T2 especially has tried to create such a stacked fights tier instead of letting the fights guilds be spread out a bit more. That is what is wrong, not the fact that guilds can be aided or purchased in and of itself.

Arius.7031:

Yes this happens frequently. Why is it wrong, exactly? If a guild would be happier elsewhere, and is offered aid or even bribes to move, why is it wrong? The wrong choice is in transferring to the wrong server, but not in the actual action of being bought itself. Buying isn’t an issue, buying and stacking 2 tiers, however, is mind-blowingly stupid and unhealthy in the long run. NA WvW, if it is dying, is killing itself by how T2 especially has tried to create such a stacked fights tier instead of letting the fights guilds be spread out a bit more. That is what is wrong, not the fact that guilds can be aided or purchased in and of itself.

Sure, but since (clearly) people don’t self-police for the greater good, then artificial limits should be put in place.

Like, transfers can only be bought with cash and not converted gold, for starters.

Rimmy.9217:

Arius.7031:

Yes this happens frequently. Why is it wrong, exactly? If a guild would be happier elsewhere, and is offered aid or even bribes to move, why is it wrong? The wrong choice is in transferring to the wrong server, but not in the actual action of being bought itself. Buying isn’t an issue, buying and stacking 2 tiers, however, is mind-blowingly stupid and unhealthy in the long run. NA WvW, if it is dying, is killing itself by how T2 especially has tried to create such a stacked fights tier instead of letting the fights guilds be spread out a bit more. That is what is wrong, not the fact that guilds can be aided or purchased in and of itself.

Sure, but since (clearly) people don’t self-police for the greater good, then artificial limits should be put in place.

Like, transfers can only be bought with cash and not converted gold, for starters.

That specific example creates too many issues, imo. In any given guild, it’s likely there’s multiple people who simply won’t/can’t pay real cash. Thus, guilds would have agonizing decisions—if they truly dislike their current wvw environment—such as deciding whether or not to leave their guildies unable to pay behind. The truth is that solution harms transfers down as much as they harm transfers up, if I were in t2 I certainly wouldn’t leave any guildies behind who can’t pay with real cash, I’d just sit in t2 instead of going to the more balanced tier 4.

Perhaps some sort of artificial limits would be good. I’m certainly supportive of transfers costing more based on server rank and not some strange overall population metric that would place YB as the same pop as a server like HoD. Tier 8 free, tier 7 200 gems, tier 6 400, tier 5 800, tier 4 1200, tier 3 1600, tier 2 2400, tier 1 3200, something like that. I think these sorts of solutions are a good step, though they definitely won’t solve our current issues. Unfortunately our playerbase was so incredibly stupid, we’ve pretty much permanently damaged our own WvW scene by stacking tier 1/2 and saying “screw you” to every other tier.

People get legendaries for transferring? Huh, no wonder people jump. Someone on my server just mentioned another server buying a few of our PVE guilds. I thought it just meant paying server transfer costs, and I was wondering how they afford 252g(assuming 14g per 100 gems for simplicity) per guild member. Or do they just pay for the big dogs in the guild and let the little scrublet players fend for themselves?

Coyote.7031:

People get legendaries for transferring? Huh, no wonder people jump. Someone on my server just mentioned another server buying a few of our PVE guilds. I thought it just meant paying server transfer costs, and I was wondering how they afford 252g(assuming 14g per 100 gems for simplicity) per guild member. Or do they just pay for the big dogs in the guild and let the little scrublet players fend for themselves?

Most serious WvW servers have a fund set aside for such things. All of the big servers have active websites with forums and strong communities.

Sometimes they appeal for donations via forum and in game, and sometimes they run raffles that have in game prizes or sometimes even real life prizes.

In the end guilds and servers just want to play the game with like minded individuals, and both sides will make that happen.

Arius.7031:

Unfortunately our playerbase was so incredibly stupid, we’ve pretty much permanently damaged our own WvW scene by stacking tier 1/2 and saying “screw you” to every other tier.

+1

And a whole host of subsequent problems, both social and mechanical, have followed.

While the ideas posited may not fix the current situation, having them in place for when the problems are fixed isn’t a terrible idea.

Rimmy.9217:

Arius.7031:

Unfortunately our playerbase was so incredibly stupid, we’ve pretty much permanently damaged our own WvW scene by stacking tier 1/2 and saying “screw you” to every other tier.

+1

And a whole host of subsequent problems, both social and mechanical, have followed.

While the ideas posited may not fix the current situation, having them in place for when the problems are fixed isn’t a terrible idea.

No his post is crap, he’s basically blaming players for wanting to play with other like minded people.

Like how is it on the shoulders of the end user to fix servers they may have never been on?

There was imbalance at the launch of the game and there is imbalance now. Was it the players fault that there was imbalance and coverage problems in August 2012?

Not one mention of ANET having an unbalanced pvp game mode.

etrigan.4213:

No his post is crap, he’s basically blaming players for wanting to play with other like minded people.

Like how is it on the shoulders of the end user to fix servers they may have never been on?

There was imbalance at the launch of the game and there is imbalance now. Was it the players fault that there was imbalance and coverage problems in August 2012?

Not one mention of ANET having an unbalanced pvp game mode.

Deny one bit of reasoning used in my post. Bro, you don’t seem to realize, WvW does not have to be as messed up as it is. Look at EU, the rank 5 server is beating the rank 1 server. The top 6 servers are all within 120 glicko of each other rofl. There’s amazing matchup variety because they didn’t successfully overstack 2 groups of servers (tier 1/2 in our case were heavily over stacked, t1 especially).

I couldn’t care less if you personally prefer to play in tier 1 or tier 2, your preference is unimportant to the discussion, it’s irrelevant. Don’t assume that if you’re in a bad situation, you can just do w/e you want and it doesn’t change anything cus bad situation. Pro tip, you can in fact make bad situations worse. Tier 2 made bad situations worse for half a dozen silver servers, who have to worry about getting unluckily rolled into tier 3 to get beat up on by an over stacked blob server for a week (or in the case of IoJ, 3 months now?)

What you, or anyone else want to do does not mean that it’s a smart choice for the overall game. Sure, by all means, make the game more enjoyable for yourself! I fully support you in that decision, as games are understandably fundamentally selfish pursuits. In the end though it means absolutely nothing, because what you’re doing is STILL bad for the overall game, no matter what you want. A good desire doesn’t mean your choice won’t have bad effects. Have fun on your stacked server, to each his own, but anyone who moves to your stacked server is just making the game we all play worse in the grand scheme of things, making a bad situation worse.

The only reason for servers is to extract revanue out of the WvW population who pay for a better experience… Which T3 is currently generating a lot of.

Arius.7031:

Spooksie.4930:

Is it normal and part of the GW2 WvW culture for entire servers to solicit guilds from other servers and pay for their server transfers?

Is this mode all about coverage and that’s it?

I’m just curious because I’m new to the game and this sort of activity seems strange. When I heard that Maguuma had paid for my PvE guildmate’s entire WvW guild to move to their server and was doing that with other guilds, I thought that it didn’t seem right.

I understand that the company makes money off these transfers so maybe they just let it slide and figure it’s an acceptable practice?

Can someone fill me in? I’m finding it to be an odd gaming culture and I’d like to know what to expect and what sort of standards are acceptable before I invest more time and gear into it. I want to know if the mode is right for me.

Thanks in advance.

Yes this happens frequently. Why is it wrong, exactly? If a guild would be happier elsewhere, and is offered aid or even bribes to move, why is it wrong? The wrong choice is in transferring to the wrong server, but not in the actual action of being bought itself. Buying isn’t an issue, buying and stacking 2 tiers, however, is mind-blowingly stupid and unhealthy in the long run. NA WvW, if it is dying, is killing itself by how T2 especially has tried to create such a stacked fights tier instead of letting the fights guilds be spread out a bit more. That is what is wrong, not the fact that guilds can be aided or purchased in and of itself.

Opponents are already limited by matchups and if “Fights guilds” want to be around similar guilds so I think its rather silly to hold their server choice against them. Spread out and have less options for what exactly? For random people to not be demoralized eight months from now? Even from a PPT standpoint, servers want to lessen their coverage gaps and generally have more bodies to help prevent juggling and burning out. WvWvW’s design is whats unhealthy for WvWvW, not the players who are trying to find their fun. Some servers are bound to be cannibalized, especially as the game ages and less people play so either accept that or don’t.

Arius.7031:

etrigan.4213:

No his post is crap, he’s basically blaming players for wanting to play with other like minded people.

Like how is it on the shoulders of the end user to fix servers they may have never been on?

There was imbalance at the launch of the game and there is imbalance now. Was it the players fault that there was imbalance and coverage problems in August 2012?

Not one mention of ANET having an unbalanced pvp game mode.

Deny one bit of reasoning used in my post. Bro, you don’t seem to realize, WvW does not have to be as messed up as it is. Look at EU, the rank 5 server is beating the rank 1 server. The top 6 servers are all within 120 glicko of each other rofl. There’s amazing matchup variety because they didn’t successfully overstack 2 groups of servers (tier 1/2 in our case were heavily over stacked, t1 especially).

I couldn’t care less if you personally prefer to play in tier 1 or tier 2, your preference is unimportant to the discussion, it’s irrelevant. Don’t assume that if you’re in a bad situation, you can just do w/e you want and it doesn’t change anything cus bad situation. Pro tip, you can in fact make bad situations worse. Tier 2 made bad situations worse for half a dozen silver servers, who have to worry about getting unluckily rolled into tier 3 to get beat up on by an over stacked blob server for a week (or in the case of IoJ, 3 months now?)

What you, or anyone else want to do does not mean that it’s a smart choice for the overall game. Sure, by all means, make the game more enjoyable for yourself! I fully support you in that decision, as games are understandably fundamentally selfish pursuits. In the end though it means absolutely nothing, because what you’re doing is STILL bad for the overall game, no matter what you want. A good desire doesn’t mean your choice won’t have bad effects. Have fun on your stacked server, to each his own, but anyone who moves to your stacked server is just making the game we all play worse in the grand scheme of things, making a bad situation worse.

Dude you just compared EU with NA….

You do realize they have completely different populations right?

Also you just said that the end users preference on where they play is “irrelevant”. Actually its quite relevant.

I think you fail to understand how servers work and who plays when and where.
————————————————
Again you’re blaming end users for wanting to play the game the way they want to, and not addressing the real problem.

The real problem isn’t the stacking…the real problem is the imbalance. ANET created an unbalanced game and now every one has stacked to fight each other. They also ignored GvG, and there’s a fair amount of guilds that moved just to compete in that realm as well.

Some of that could possibly be fixed by getting more players to play the game during those low population coverage times. Look at DB…its a full server…and they are fighting for 5th place right now. If they had more WvW participation, then perhaps they would be T1 capable, they certainly have the server population for it.

But its nearly impossible to rally people to WvW due to megaservers, something ANET introduced which helped PVE tons, but hurt WvW badly.

You want to blame the players and the guilds…well good luck with that.

etrigan.4213:

Rimmy.9217:

Arius.7031:

Unfortunately our playerbase was so incredibly stupid, we’ve pretty much permanently damaged our own WvW scene by stacking tier 1/2 and saying “screw you” to every other tier.

+1

And a whole host of subsequent problems, both social and mechanical, have followed.

While the ideas posited may not fix the current situation, having them in place for when the problems are fixed isn’t a terrible idea.

No his post is crap, he’s basically blaming players for wanting to play with other like minded people.

Like how is it on the shoulders of the end user to fix servers they may have never been on?

There was imbalance at the launch of the game and there is imbalance now. Was it the players fault that there was imbalance and coverage problems in August 2012?

Not one mention of ANET having an unbalanced pvp game mode.

It’s the players’ fault that they stacked. It’s also the players’ fault that overstacking servers is unstable, as can be seen on various servers over the lifetime of the game.

It’s the player’s fault that, to maintain that particular “solution” that it practically requires a constant influx of additional people, or the merging of other servers (depending on where you are on the ladder).

It’s the players’ fault that they don’t destack, too.

People, whether singly or in huge numbers, can transfer at will – that’s built into the game. It would be dumb to pretend that the consequences of the way players have done it haven’t had an overall negative effect on the game as a whole.

gennyt.3428:

Arius.7031:

Spooksie.4930:

Is it normal and part of the GW2 WvW culture for entire servers to solicit guilds from other servers and pay for their server transfers?

Is this mode all about coverage and that’s it?

I’m just curious because I’m new to the game and this sort of activity seems strange. When I heard that Maguuma had paid for my PvE guildmate’s entire WvW guild to move to their server and was doing that with other guilds, I thought that it didn’t seem right.

I understand that the company makes money off these transfers so maybe they just let it slide and figure it’s an acceptable practice?

Can someone fill me in? I’m finding it to be an odd gaming culture and I’d like to know what to expect and what sort of standards are acceptable before I invest more time and gear into it. I want to know if the mode is right for me.

Thanks in advance.

Yes this happens frequently. Why is it wrong, exactly? If a guild would be happier elsewhere, and is offered aid or even bribes to move, why is it wrong? The wrong choice is in transferring to the wrong server, but not in the actual action of being bought itself. Buying isn’t an issue, buying and stacking 2 tiers, however, is mind-blowingly stupid and unhealthy in the long run. NA WvW, if it is dying, is killing itself by how T2 especially has tried to create such a stacked fights tier instead of letting the fights guilds be spread out a bit more. That is what is wrong, not the fact that guilds can be aided or purchased in and of itself.

Opponents are already limited by matchups and if “Fights guilds” want to be around similar guilds so I think its rather silly to hold their server choice against them. Spread out and have less options for what exactly? For random people to not be demoralized eight months from now? Even from a PPT standpoint, servers want to lessen their coverage gaps and generally have more bodies to help prevent juggling and burning out. WvWvW’s design is whats unhealthy for WvWvW, not the players who are trying to find their fun. Some servers are bound to be cannibalized, especially as the game ages and less people play so either accept that or don’t.

It’s not about holding it against them in a moral sense, I’m not making a more judgement here. Do your own thing. Just examine the effects of these decisions, and make your own judgment.

Almost universally we can agree: matchup variety is a good thing. Nobody likes seeing the same server over, and over, and over, and so on. Matchup variety literally does not exist for tier 1, that’s a problem. Why? What if a tier 2 server (FA for example) gets so stacked it mows over tier 2 servers weeks on end? Even if it were to, it would take months and months of non stop spawn camping to even got a shot at tier 1. That’s bad for the game. Having some ability to cross the gap between tiers is important for the health of the game, because IoJ couldn’t escape tier 3 when the tier 2.5 scandal started, their server lost a lot of people (not only did some move, a lot probably quit the game as well or just stopped WvWing).

This is why stacking just 2 tiers was a stupidly bad idea, that’s having terrible repercussions for completely unrelated servers. It isn’t about the fact that you’re leaving a server, draining a server, or anything like that. It’s about the fact that your tier is making our tiers unplayable no matter what style of WvW you enjoy (unless you enjoy being spawn camped).

Rimmy.9217:

It’s the players’ fault that they stacked. It’s also the players’ fault that overstacking servers is unstable, as can be seen on various servers over the lifetime of the game.

It’s the player’s fault that, to maintain that particular “solution” that it practically requires a constant influx of additional people, or the merging of other servers (depending on where you are on the ladder).

It’s the players’ fault that they don’t destack, too.

People, whether singly or in huge numbers, can transfer at will – that’s built into the game. It would be dumb to pretend that the consequences of the way players have done it haven’t had an overall negative effect on the game as a whole.

No one said that stacking didn’t have negative consequences for a lot of other servers, but blaming the players for a faulted gaming mode is ridiculous and short sighted.

You have an unbalanced game due to coverage wars, and you expect people not to try their way of balancing it…after 2 1/2 years waiting for ANET to fix it?

Now two of you want those servers to destack and spread out logically on their own??

How exactly would that happen? Who’s going to figure out who goes where to make it all balanced?

I mean screw server pride right?
———————————————————————————————————————
It was never balanced to begin with.

The smarter fix would be to introduce some sort of autobalancing mechanism to the game. There’s been tons of player solutions posted in this forum. I have no idea which would be the best, or if any would work at all…

etrigan.4213:

Rimmy.9217:

It’s the players’ fault that they stacked. It’s also the players’ fault that overstacking servers is unstable, as can be seen on various servers over the lifetime of the game.

It’s the player’s fault that, to maintain that particular “solution” that it practically requires a constant influx of additional people, or the merging of other servers (depending on where you are on the ladder).

It’s the players’ fault that they don’t destack, too.

People, whether singly or in huge numbers, can transfer at will – that’s built into the game. It would be dumb to pretend that the consequences of the way players have done it haven’t had an overall negative effect on the game as a whole.

No one said that stacking didn’t have negative consequences for a lot of other servers, but blaming the players for a faulted gaming mode is ridiculous and short sighted.

You have an unbalanced game due to coverage wars, and you expect people not to try their way of balancing it…after 2 1/2 years waiting for ANET to fix it?

Now two of you want those servers to destack and spread out logically on their own??

How exactly would that happen? Who’s going to figure out who goes where to make it all balanced?

I mean screw server pride right?
———————————————————————————————————————
It was never balanced to begin with.

The smarter fix would be to introduce some sort of autobalancing mechanism to the game. There’s been tons of player solutions posted in this forum. I have no idea which would be the best, or if any would work at all…

I think population log in was the best I saw…

“match ups are decided by the total amount of players that logged into WvW the previous week”…

etrigan.4213:

No one said that stacking didn’t have negative consequences for a lot of other servers, but blaming the players for a faulted gaming mode is ridiculous and short sighted.

You have an unbalanced game due to coverage wars, and you expect people not to try their way of balancing it…after 2 1/2 years waiting for ANET to fix it?

Now two of you want those servers to destack and spread out logically on their own??

How exactly would that happen? Who’s going to figure out who goes where to make it all balanced?

I mean screw server pride right?
———————————————————————————————————————
It was never balanced to begin with.

The smarter fix would be to introduce some sort of autobalancing mechanism to the game. There’s been tons of player solutions posted in this forum. I have no idea which would be the best, or if any would work at all…

Nobody has blamed players for the game mode, only their consequences of their actions within it. And no, I wouldn’t expect people not to try to “balance” things, but after 2.5 years they’ve done the exact opposite – some tiers are locked, and others face the kind of imbalanced matchups that players in 2012 couldn’t even dream of, thanks to player-driven “solutions”.

“Screw server pride” was the mantra when significant chunks of a given server’s WvW population left en masse and went to stack a server. How exactly would said servers destack and spread out logically on their own? Very much the way they got stacked in the first place, but in reverse.

Dropping map population caps to sixty or even forty would probably nudge that along, even if the map caps were only temporary. If player population is a fluid (which it’s not), then rather than the hydraulic despotism of hoarding it all in one place it should be left to to spread out.

A large group of people have more fun in a wide seven-meter deep pool than in a single-lane pool that’s thirty meters deep.

And more matchups without population imbalances means more fun for more people – fun in a game, if you can believe it. It will also mean that players new to WvW will find an active scene regardless of which server they’re on. It will also lead to more matchup variability, which is definitely a good thing. And finally, it’ll mean that being in the top three means more than “we outblobbed the other servers”. There will have to be a hint of skill in there too.

So yeah, the player-driven “solution” has been a failure. Time to try something else and try to bandage up the damage that was done.

sephiroth.4217:

I think population log in was the best I saw…

“match ups are decided by the total amount of players that logged into WvW the previous week”…

Should be month for smoother data, although something as simple as the current “light up the fireworks found in your spawn” dailies will totally skew those numbers.

How did other games with similar playstyles handle the coverage wars?

Few offer a persistant open world like GW2. Shadowbane and DAoC did. Instead, most just have overflow servers and your total score is the sum of each server’s total.

Will Shadowbane’s approach work? In shadowbane you had siege stones and in order to attack a structure you would declare a siege. The defenders would then interact with the siege stone and be given a window of 7 hours (I think it was 7, can’t remember) to choose when their structure would become vulnerable to attack. You then had 1 hour to try and attack the tower while also needing to defend the siege stone from attack.

Will what WAR did work here where there are just overflow servers so effectively it was just a FFA 100v100 map with an objective to attack or defend something and at the end of the day a total score was derived from the sum total of all these overflows. At least with this you don’t need servers.

Or do you do what GW2 and DAoC did and just say kitten it all and let the players do whatever they want?

Is there a better alternative? What did some of the other open world games do?

Arius.7031:

…snip…

It isn’t about the fact that you’re leaving a server, draining a server, or anything like that. It’s about the fact that your tier is making our tiers unplayable no matter what style of WvW you enjoy (unless you enjoy being spawn camped).

I suspected this was the meat of the issue. It being a “stupidly bad idea” is incredibly subjective and its because of what the results mean for you, the people who transferred are having their fun. Strangers aren’t going to prioritize your fun over their own and attempt to manage the game(which is silly) for your sake. So you’re pointing your finger in the wrong direction since its Anet who created(and didn’t address) coverage wars and how that dictates who gets to fight who. What are people supposed to do? No server can even get everybody in teamspeak but magically all servers’ players will gather somewhere and decide whose going where? And do that again in several months when people quit or new players come in or some guilds transfer without the approval of their WvWvW poplulation chairman? You must see how crazy that is.

Matchup variety isn’t necessarily a universally good thing (toss SoS up against GoM and HoD and see if people generally have a blast. I doubt so). I won’t get too much into what’s universally good as server names and matches are meaningless to me, what I want are new guilds and new tactics to enjoy.

TL;DR: It’s Anet’s design flaws that brought this on.

Rimmy.9217:

etrigan.4213:

No one said that stacking didn’t have negative consequences for a lot of other servers, but blaming the players for a faulted gaming mode is ridiculous and short sighted.

You have an unbalanced game due to coverage wars, and you expect people not to try their way of balancing it…after 2 1/2 years waiting for ANET to fix it?

Now two of you want those servers to destack and spread out logically on their own??

How exactly would that happen? Who’s going to figure out who goes where to make it all balanced?

I mean screw server pride right?
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It was never balanced to begin with.

The smarter fix would be to introduce some sort of autobalancing mechanism to the game. There’s been tons of player solutions posted in this forum. I have no idea which would be the best, or if any would work at all…

Nobody has blamed players for the game mode, only their consequences of their actions within it. And no, I wouldn’t expect people not to try to “balance” things, but after 2.5 years they’ve done the exact opposite – some tiers are locked, and others face the kind of imbalanced matchups that players in 2012 couldn’t even dream of, thanks to player-driven “solutions”.

Wrong. There were certainly crazy imbalances in 2012 and early 2013. I mean you had servers beating others by 300,000 points in some cases.

The point I was making, is that the game is unbalanced and has been from the start.

Consequences you are seeing now with one extra server beating the crap out of tier 3 every week is really a small culmination of an issue that has been around since the start.

I mean people transferring has always happened. At the start of the game ET and HOD were the power houses…..now look at them.

Kaineng is one of the funnier ones to be honest, they started out at the bottom and ended up back there after gaining and losing players during these past couple years.

This migration to the top two tiers or stacking to a server isn’t a new idea. It happens due to people wanting to play with other like minded individuals and be competitive.

It seems the vast majority of large WvW guilds want to fight other large WvW guilds.

Screw them right?

edit:

One more thing about consequences – The top 7 servers are generally having a great experience(with the exception of the one cycled out into T3 for a week).

Not sure what populations are like in the far lower tiers, but I assume they are pretty low. It could be surmised that the vast majority of WvW players are enjoying their matchups and situations….

Does that screw over the minority? Possibly. Although I’m sure some of the other lower tiers are having fun.

So right now you have maybe 2 or 3 servers who are getting truly getting screwed over….out of 24.

in resume is the WvW model and design itself that is @ flaw.

Couldn’t ANet just lock it so players on server A can’t transfer to server B if population of server B is greater than server A?

Yep… One of the (many) reasons I moved from tier 2 to the bottom. I got sick of people soliciting in TS/map chat for donations and asking for volunteers to make legendaries (to sell) to help move guilds over. I didn’t feel proud to be on a server that was buying guilds.

Deamhan.9538:

Couldn’t ANet just lock it so players on server A can’t transfer to server B if population of server B is greater than server A?

There are server population standards that determine prices, if a server is FULL a player cannot transfer to it, as well as the gem cost. Simply barring players from transfering for any other reason is utterly ridiculous and uncalled for, do remember not everyone plays wvw as often as you or I might, and might want to transfer for a variety of reasons. Its everyones choice to be able to transfer to any server that is not full as long as they have the gems whenever, and for whatever reason they want.

Server loyalty is all well and good, but the most important thing is having fun. When you and your guild are not having fun server loyalty becomes an obstacle that gradually wears down your desire to do wvw, and eventually will burn you out as well as your guild. Sometimes the best thing to do is find greener pastures and breath some new life into your guild by making things fun again. Your not doing yourself any favors staying somewhere if things are stale and people are leaving.

Of course if your just a guild that looks to get bought off, jumps ship constantly, doesnt care about helping the server, and bandwagons constantly..well your free to do so but your just part of the problem with wvw.

Deamhan.9538:

Couldn’t ANet just lock it so players on server A can’t transfer to server B if population of server B is greater than server A?

I don’t think this would work well at the moment, due to how ANet calculates the server population. Which seemingly include the entire PvE population, inactive accounts, and probably all their ranger pets and minis… (All NA servers tend to show up as “very high” or “full” in na prime time.)

With the mega server, it doesn’t matter what server you are on for PvE and PvP. It only matters to WvW.

Arius.7031:

Tier 2 made bad situations worse

Tier 2 did nothing. All those players and guilds had free choice and the choices they’ve been making for the better part of the past 2 years has been to transfer up tiers.

Arius.7031:

What if a tier 2 server (FA for example) gets so stacked it mows over tier 2 servers weeks on end? Even if it were to, it would take months and months of non stop spawn camping to even got a shot at tier 1. That’s bad for the game. Having some ability to cross the gap between tiers is important for the health of the game, because IoJ couldn’t escape tier 3 when the tier 2.5 scandal started, their server lost a lot of people (not only did some move, a lot probably quit the game as well or just stopped WvWing).

If you recall, T2 was unbalanced for weeks and weeks after Maguuma imploded and then got stuck in Gold for Season 3. Where did all those Maguuma players go? A lot of Maguuma’s PPT guilds had “spread out” into a lower tier.

Both CD and especially YB had the ability to move into rank 6 prior to Season 3 and for reasons beyond anyone in T2’s control, they didn’t want to. What is going on now between T2 and T3 could have been averted had another server from T3 pushed into T2 and balanced it out before Season 3. Maguuma getting stuck into Gold in Season 2 killed that server further.

It is what is going on at the moment yes but its far from normal. It is a form of pay to win since servers are purchasing something in game to give them an advantage over other servers. It is the definition of P2W regardless of what people will say to justify it.

Arius.7031:

Look at EU, the rank 5 server is beating the rank 1 server. The top 6 servers are all within 120 glicko of each other rofl. There’s amazing matchup variety because they didn’t successfully overstack 2 groups of servers (tier 1/2 in our case were heavily over stacked, t1 especially).

If you look at the matchup score during PPK week, you’d realize t2 was outscoring t1 and the problem is ANET’s ranking system, not player populations.

Rimmy.9217:

It’s the players’ fault that they stacked. It’s also the players’ fault that overstacking servers is unstable, as can be seen on various servers over the lifetime of the game.

It’s the player’s fault that, to maintain that particular “solution” that it practically requires a constant influx of additional people, or the merging of other servers (depending on where you are on the ladder).

It’s the players’ fault that they don’t destack, too.

Is it an oceanic players’ fault that they transfer in order to play with other oceanic players? Is it an Japanese players’ fault they transfer in order to play with someone who speaks the same language? Most servers use to have relatively even primetime populations, but you can’t just spread out all non-prime players over all the servers, and that’s where the imbalance starts.

Arius.7031:

This is why stacking just 2 tiers was a stupidly bad idea, that’s having terrible repercussions for completely unrelated servers. It isn’t about the fact that you’re leaving a server, draining a server, or anything like that. It’s about the fact that your tier is making our tiers unplayable no matter what style of WvW you enjoy (unless you enjoy being spawn camped).

There’s simply not enough coverage to go to every server. Some people want to play on high pop servers, others want to play on low pop servers. If the server you are on doesn’t have the population you like, transfer.

I’ve been in my “wasteland” server for the greater part of 2 years. I have seen guilds come and go, most on their own accord. Several recently have been outright purchased by higher ranked servers.

Briefly, my server saw a brief resurgence in population and power before the mass exodus as most of the active WvW guilds departed for one reason or another (I think 2 got purchased by a higher tier server). Now my guild is basically the last real active force for WvW on my server…and as expected, it doesn’t go so well most nights and even worse during the day and late nights when there is zero coverage.

I’ve also heard every argument for every conceivable fix. The simplest fix for me is to just pack up and leave for greener pastures. Cheaper option for me would be to stop playing WvW honestly because most nights are futile efforts at staying alive, much less taking a tower. For the last remnants of us on our server however, we simply don’t want to pack up and switch “communities” that we’ve grown accustomed to and really like.

Forced transfers and server mergers will never work; no one will bother taking WvW seriously if you can just be moved to a team you have no interest in participating in. Reworking the PPT with handicaps and formulas won’t fix the problem of constantly getting steamrolled by more densely populated servers (i.e. you spend all week being a walking bag but somehow you still come ahead with some intangible benefit and a lot a grief…doesn’t seem fun).

If Anet was serious about removing the incentive of transferring to higher tier servers where mobs of skill-less players can karma farm wasteland servers, they would do what has been done in PvP: normalize the power levels (i.e. the cumulative server’s player population’s power would be normalized across all three servers irrespective of how many players each server is fielding at any given moment on a map). If server 1 has 100 people on a map, server 2 has 50, and server 3 has 10 on a given map, all three forces are equivalent in power. Wouldn’t solve the coverage issue entirely, but it would solve population imbalance issues. I think things would eventually balance themselves out over time when there is no “incentive” to stay on a server just because you have “numbers”.

And yes, I am aware the higher tier servers would loathe to be rolled by 2 guys that are functionally equivalent to their 100 man zerg. At this point however, our WvW population is so small that we recognize new players on the maps instantly, especially after the $10 sale. We chat with them and tell them not to be discouraged by what they see…even though its pretty much a very rough ride at best. Even more annoying to them is that while the game cost them $10, the server transfer will be twice as much. If this is Anet’s business model, then so be it. But they do need to level with us as to how they are going to address the original poster’s concerns as well as the “wasteland” server’s concerns.

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

Tier 2 made bad situations worse

Tier 2 did nothing. All those players and guilds had free choice and the choices they’ve been making for the better part of the past 2 years has been to transfer up tiers.

Tier 2 did nothing? Tier 2 didn’t actively pursue guilds from other servers, to the point of literal harassment, attempting to buy them off to increase their pop/fill coverage gaps? Bro, I’m in SotD (a SEA based guild, the reason why Dh’s SEA crushes anything below t3), I know about T2’s attempts to suck all the guilds out of lower tiers.

Tier 2 is the tier that is messing up WvW, more than any other tier in the game. Not only are y’all trying make hyper stacked servers, which is unhealthy in itself, you’ve done it with 4 servers instead of 3, and now that’s having terrible consequences for any server unlucky enough to roll tier 3.

T1 and t2 have a long history of guild buying, but that doesnt mean every guild that transfers to t1/2 was bought off or poached. Some guilds just prefer a more competitive server then what a lower tier might offer.

Arius.7031:

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

Tier 2 made bad situations worse

Tier 2 did nothing. All those players and guilds had free choice and the choices they’ve been making for the better part of the past 2 years has been to transfer up tiers.

Tier 2 did nothing? Tier 2 didn’t actively pursue guilds from other servers, to the point of literal harassment, attempting to buy them off to increase their pop/fill coverage gaps? Bro, I’m in SotD (a SEA based guild, the reason why Dh’s SEA crushes anything below t3), I know about T2’s attempts to suck all the guilds out of lower tiers.

Tier 2 is the tier that is messing up WvW, more than any other tier in the game. Not only are y’all trying make hyper stacked servers, which is unhealthy in itself, you’ve done it with 4 servers instead of 3, and now that’s having terrible consequences for any server unlucky enough to roll tier 3.

The issue I am taking with your statements here is that you are trying to place blame squarely on a single side when in fact there are two sides. No one in T2 forced anyone to transfer just as no guild forces anyone to join them. Guilds and players are making those decisions on their own. It’s like trying to blame all those guilds who are advertising in the “Looking for” forum for stealing players from other guilds. If a player is joining some other guild, it is because that guild is offering what they are looking for. T2 currently has what a lot of players are looking for in WvW. You don’t think that others across all the tiers actively pursue players and guilds from T1 and T2?