Guild Wars 2

etrigan.4213:

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.

Everyone take a look at this classic example of someone mad that people want to go to a competing server, and not his.

And when they go to his, they don’t stay.

@etrigan.4213 (aka Nox)
I never specified WHICH server, and yet you’ve deduced exactly what server I’m talking about. I’ll leave the readers to form their own conclusions based off your defensive stance and your signature.

lol

And to anyone else suffering down in lower tiers because of “certain server” tactics, we know it’s not fun for you and my server knows buying out your population will only further ruin the game. This is exactly why we don’t go down that path. You have our sympathy and hopes that one day people will destack and return to their home servers.

As for people on the “certain server” who pay the spammed “daily tax” fund to buy others from lower tiers, you have my pity.

Dhemize.8649:

etrigan.4213:

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.

Everyone take a look at this classic example of someone mad that people want to go to a competing server, and not his.

And when they go to his, they don’t stay.

@etrigan.4213 (aka Nox)
I never specified WHICH server, and yet you’ve deduced exactly what server I’m talking about. I’ll leave the readers to form their own conclusions based off your defensive stance and your signature.

lol

And to anyone else suffering down in lower tiers because of “certain server” tactics, we know it’s not fun for you and my server knows buying out your population will only further ruin the game. This is exactly why we don’t go down that path. You have our sympathy and hopes that one day people will destack and return to their home servers.

As for people on the “certain server” who pay the spammed “daily tax” fund to buy others from lower tiers, you have my pity.

Says the guy who’s server went about buying out the guilds on SoS as part of a campaign to implode that server community and prop up another.

If you had real sympathy, you’d actively attempt to keep whole communities intact in the face of this player attrition like a “certain server” attempted instead of words and wellwishes.

LittleBlackGate.5410:

Dhemize.8649:

etrigan.4213:

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.

Everyone take a look at this classic example of someone mad that people want to go to a competing server, and not his.

And when they go to his, they don’t stay.

@etrigan.4213 (aka Nox)
I never specified WHICH server, and yet you’ve deduced exactly what server I’m talking about. I’ll leave the readers to form their own conclusions based off your defensive stance and your signature.

lol

And to anyone else suffering down in lower tiers because of “certain server” tactics, we know it’s not fun for you and my server knows buying out your population will only further ruin the game. This is exactly why we don’t go down that path. You have our sympathy and hopes that one day people will destack and return to their home servers.

As for people on the “certain server” who pay the spammed “daily tax” fund to buy others from lower tiers, you have my pity.

Says the guy who’s server went about buying out the guilds on SoS as part of a campaign to actively implode that server and prop up another.

Fixed your name.

Dhemize.8649:

LittleBlackGate.5410:

Dhemize.8649:

etrigan.4213:

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.

Everyone take a look at this classic example of someone mad that people want to go to a competing server, and not his.

And when they go to his, they don’t stay.

@etrigan.4213 (aka Nox)
I never specified WHICH server, and yet you’ve deduced exactly what server I’m talking about. I’ll leave the readers to form their own conclusions based off your defensive stance and your signature.

lol

And to anyone else suffering down in lower tiers because of “certain server” tactics, we know it’s not fun for you and my server knows buying out your population will only further ruin the game. This is exactly why we don’t go down that path. You have our sympathy and hopes that one day people will destack and return to their home servers.

As for people on the “certain server” who pay the spammed “daily tax” fund to buy others from lower tiers, you have my pity.

Says the guy who’s server went about buying out the guilds on SoS as part of a campaign to actively implode that server and prop up another.

Fixed your name.

That’s the best response you have? LOL. Mad cuz bad.

BTW, send home all those players on your server, especially the ones who started on FA. Destack your server. Put your money where your mouth is. Kthxbai.

Chaba.5410:

BTW, send home all those players on your server, especially the ones who started on FA. Destack your server. Put your money where your mouth is. Kthxbai.

We never payed them to join us. People come and go on their own without us tying a carrot to a stick.

Thanks for getting baited yet again. kthxbai

Dhemize.8649:

Chaba.5410:

BTW, send home all those players on your server, especially the ones who started on FA. Destack your server. Put your money where your mouth is. Kthxbai.

We never payed them to join us. People come and go on their own without us tying a carrot to a stick.

Thanks for getting baited yet again. kthxbai

So you won’t destack. So much for whatever sympathy players on lower tiers are supposed to have from you. Like, if you want to take the moral high ground here, why does your server actively bump their recruitment post on this forum and not tell guilds that transfer to your server to look elsewhere? Your words are hollow.

Myself and many others just got to T2 over the last few weeks, T2 feels like it did in t8 2 years ago, it’s active 24/7 (australian so perfect), you have choices of roaming, small groups, guild raids and zergs…

After being on GoM>FA>GoM>IOJ>GoM>IoJ>CD>IOJ>FA over the years I’ve played this game I feel that the crap you guys a spewing is completely wrong… It is in no way or shape the communities fault or the players, in fact it’s not even Anets fault, the game will die out eventually as will any other game when people become bored of it or they have real life stuff or just a game that’s in general more fun.

Some of us (myself personally) only came higher up in the servers because in lower tiers the game is dying, you have a choice of solo roaming, 2 man roaming, 5 man roaming, zerging with a 20 man because that’s all that will rally to tag, yes we paid for a better experience, yes it’s our game and we most likely screwed up tiers and server population issues but at the current state of WvW unless it gets fixed magically then the game will continue to die as time goes on and people will continue to pay for a higher tier transfer…

Will Anet fix population issues? probably not.. Anet knows the game is dying, they also know people will pay for a better experience which is probably why they have not made any changes to servers as that is the only thing currently generating revenue from the WvW playerbase for them…

sephiroth.4217:

Myself and many others just got to T2 over the last few weeks, T2 feels like it did in t8 2 years ago, it’s active 24/7 (australian so perfect), you have choices of roaming, small groups, guild raids and zergs…

After being on GoM>FA>GoM>IOJ>GoM>IoJ>CD>IOJ>FA over the years I’ve played this game I feel that the crap you guys a spewing is completely wrong… It is in no way or shape the communities fault or the players, in fact it’s not even Anets fault, the game will die out eventually as will any other game when people become bored of it or they have real life stuff or just a game that’s in general more fun.

Some of us (myself personally) only came higher up in the servers because in lower tiers the game is dying, you have a choice of solo roaming, 2 man roaming, 5 man roaming, zerging with a 20 man because that’s all that will rally to tag, yes we paid for a better experience, yes it’s our game and we most likely screwed up tiers and server population issues but at the current state of WvW unless it gets fixed magically then the game will continue to die as time goes on and people will continue to pay for a higher tier transfer…

Will Anet fix population issues? probably not.. Anet knows the game is dying, they also know people will pay for a better experience which is probably why they have not made any changes to servers as that is the only thing currently generating revenue from the WvW playerbase for them…

Bolded the part that confused me.

If it’s not the players, then who is it that creates such population gaps? Anet didn’t force anyone. Nobody magically popped into a new server. New players couldn’t possibly account for the massive gap (if they all went to WvW instantly when they finished installing). Old players leaving the game could dent a server, but only a select few?

It is 100% the players fault and it’s about time people hold themselves accountable.

gennyt.3428:

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.

It’s not subjective at all, because I’m speaking to the health of the game as a whole as opposed to the health of a tier (or the enjoyment of a player). Tier 2 players may have more fun (though I think we’d all prefer a system akin to EU as opposed to t2 NA, where there’s similar population levels over a great many servers), but tier 3/4/5/6/7/8 all have less fun (and make no mistake, these are not all dead servers, my server again queues 2 maps on non weekends at times, we’re not a dead server or small). I’m not saying people should do anything, do what y’all want, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s hurting the overall game. You can’t escape that.

People decide on where to transfer SOMEHOW, you don’t need everyone in TS to make a decision like that. If people made more responsible long term decisions, like not stacking overly stacked servers and instead going to high (but again not over stacked) population servers, we’d see a much healthier overall WvW experience. Servers would frequently drift in and out of tiers, there’d be lots of matchup variety, that means more guilds/tactics to come up against rather than the same old same old.

Chaba.5410:

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?

You’ll recall, I said our playerbase made stupid decisions, not just t2. The people who transferred to tier 2 made short sighted decisions regarding the overall health of the game, and so did tier 2 in trying to give incentives for said short sighted decisions.

I’m sure that other tiers do try to take from t1/2. But de stacking over stacked servers is healthy for the game, it’s a step in the right direction. It’s a smart choice—from the position of the overall health of wvw—for people to leave t1/2 lol.

Arius has my vote for GW2 President.

Arius.7031:

But de stacking over stacked servers is healthy for the game, it’s a step in the right direction. It’s a smart choice—from the position of the overall health of wvw—for people to leave t1/2 lol.

No, not really. I used to think this way a bit, but really any server with non-NA coverage is going to be rising up and causing lopsided matches on the way up. Given that glicko rating adjusts quite slowly, player attrition from lopsided matches hits. The non-NA Prime players are really a smaller total population than NA and cannot be spread out amongst all the NA servers.

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

But de stacking over stacked servers is healthy for the game, it’s a step in the right direction. It’s a smart choice—from the position of the overall health of wvw—for people to leave t1/2 lol.

No, not really. I used to think this way a bit, but really any server with non-NA coverage is going to be rising up and causing lopsided matches on the way up. Given that glicko rating adjusts quite slowly, player attrition from lopsided matches hits. The non-NA Prime players are really a smaller total population than NA and cannot be spread out amongst all the NA servers.

I would agree that they can’t be spread about all servers, but they don’t need to be. There are plenty of people who prefer smaller scale stuff, and are fine with the game being relatively empty in the off hours. I’m pointing out that it need not be the case that overall (not just NA time zone) we need not stack two tiers of servers in order to enjoy a healthy, competitive environment.

It’s true, any server with off hours coverage will have a distinct advantage, but that alone will not carry you. Even though Dragonbrand always excelled in off hours, they still had enough NA to compete with other servers, that’s how they stayed high ranked. My server’s off hour coverage hasn’t improved much at all since leaving bronze, and we never went above being the top ranked server in bronze (and we were usually 2nd or 3rd in bronze, not 1st).

Again, no one denies there’s an issue with balance in WvW. ANet did not make the system as well as they could have. That doesn’t mean we should say “screw it all, since it’s messed up, let’s just stack 2 tiers and call it gud”. Whether or not people should be blamed for this or that, I do not care. The only thing I care is that WvW is incredibly messed up for a lot of servers (INCLUDING tier 1-2) because of our decisions as a playerbase.

I remember Planet Side back in the day, the community would actively try and balance the populations to make the fights more “fun”. People didn’t want to roll into bases and nuke the spawn, they wanted heroic battles hard won or defiant defenders that held their ground. Though Planet Side had an easy way to change sides, which does have some negative affects. But how times have changed, when we’d rather stack on the winning side for some internet points. You don’t even get anything in WvW for being the winner. How lazy we’ve gotten as players where overwhelming and speed matters more than enjoyable game play. Then again nuking spawns in enjoyable to some, so I guess there goes that point.

If you care about WvW, and you want a balanced matchup/don’t want to play in a wasteland, transfer to t1/2. Its the best player solution.

Do you honestly think destacking will work? People like to play on populated maps and even t1 isn’t populated enough for my tastes. Not to mention the quality of players is generally better, the higher tier you are. I’d much rather have my “stale” t1 balanced matchup facing competent people whenever I want over facing each random server’s random style of suck in only certain timezones.

Cake.4920:

If you care about WvW, and you want a balanced matchup/don’t want to play in a wasteland, transfer to t1/2. Its the best player solution.

Do you honestly think destacking will work? People like to play on populated maps and even t1 isn’t populated enough for my tastes. Not to mention the quality of players is generally better, the higher tier you are. I’d much rather have my “stale” t1 balanced matchup facing competent people whenever I want over facing each random server’s random style of suck in only certain timezones.

Huuuehuehue… It’s that mentality that created the problem we see now. I don’t know whether this is a troll post or if I should be horribly sad that people buy into this logic.

Community standards indeed.

Destacking wouldn’t fix a thing.

There has ALWAYS been population gaps and mismatches. Take a look at WvW history on MOS.

Right now you have maybe 2 or 3 servers unhappy. Out of 24.

You have 4 full servers and the rest are “Very High”. So its not really a server population issue, its a server participation issue.

Good luck on getting people to participate with megaservers though.

etrigan.4213:

Destacking wouldn’t fix a thing.

There has ALWAYS been population gaps and mismatches. Take a look at WvW history on MOS.

Right now you have maybe 2 or 3 servers unhappy. Out of 24.

You have 4 full servers and the rest are “Very High”. So its not really a server population issue, its a server participation issue.

Good luck on getting people to participate with megaservers though.

Yes, there has always been population gaps and mismatches… Again, nobody is denying that what we have is a bad situation to some degree, and that will continue to exist no matter how much we try to fix it. It’s about making the best of a bad situation, not pretending there’s a magical 100% solution and that everything can be perfect.

You say destacking won’t fix a thing. I will list things that destacking will either fix or improve (as we’re not necessarily saying it’ll fix stuff, just improve stuff):

1. Matchup variety. If t1/2 were to spread around somewhat to tier 3 and maybe even tier 4, we’d see a lot more variety in matchups. This means more guilds to fight (as many servers have native guilds that refuse to leave), and new play styles to come into contact with, without necessarily seeing a drastic decrease in overall population for any individual server.

2. Ability to move through the ranks (mobility). Currently, t3-2, and t 2-1 have such massive gaps it’s almost impossible (or in the case of t1-2, 100% impossible) to even get a matchup. What this means is, since glicko moves pretty slowly in general, it is very hard to move ranks. If Dh were to suddenly be bandwagoned into oblivion, to the point where we were bigger than all y’all, we’d have to spend weeks beating up on t2.5 servers and t3 servers draining every ounce of glicko they have available. Funnily enough, the fact that there’s a t2.5 server actually alleviates this issue. If the tier 2 fights heaven were working perfectly as everyone seems to want (3 t2 servers, not 4), it would take months and months of complete utter domination of t3 to even get a chance at rolling t2.

This is a VERY dangerous issue that we face currently, and causes quite a few people to lose interest in the game. Don’t think for a moment that IoJ’s population decrease is purely because of transfers, most of them can’t enjoy the game mode and so a lot either go to dif game modes (bad for the health of WvW), or quit (bad for the health of WvW and the game overall). It’s a dangerous system when glicko gaps become too large. People generally don’t enjoy spawn camping every week, and people REALLY don’t enjoy being spawn camped every week.

These are just 2 things that come to mind that de stacking would certainly improve.

That only works for NA. TC and BG barely if ever have any queues in OCX and even JQ probably only queues one map. There’s barely anyone as it is to split into more servers, it’d be freakin 5v5 per map if the population was any thinner.

There’ll be substantially less fights for OCX and … sure there’ll be ‘more variety’ but a lot more PvD.

To put this into perspective, there are more NA GvG/fights guilds on FA than there are OCX guilds in the top 7 NA servers.

There’s an awful lot of people quick to use the “it’s messed up anyway, so why shouldn’t people (continue to make things worse overall)?” argument. The “Very High” levels are a ridiculous argument, since that “Very High” isn’t referring to WvW population, is it?

Look, if you personally are guilty of every single thing that’s been listed in this thread as having had a detrimental effect on WvW, you don’t have to defend yourself. This isn’t a war crimes tribunal, and you’re not going to be executed. Regardless of what you thought or think, or where you want to place “blame” – the overall health of WvW isn’t as good as it could be, and a disproportionate amount of the reason for that is player’s actions.

Bringing up the causes of how we got to where we are today helps to illustrate some of the underlying problems. Whether you personally find it distasteful to destack from your currently overstacked server, or if you’re employing the Nirvana fallacy of “it won’t automatically and completely fix everything that’s wrong, so I’m rejecting any change completely”… then relax.

Nothing written in here is going to require you to do anything. Some people just want to maintain the WvW experience for as many people as possible for as long as possible, in as enjoyable a way (for everybody) as possible. We don’t have that now and, to use a partial parallel – people will tell you that hoarding money during an economic downturn is the worst thing that people can do. Individuals may personally benefit in the short term, but suffer more and for longer in the long run. Overstacking has much the same effect on WvW as a whole.

Rimmy.9217:

Bringing up the causes of how we got to where we are today helps to illustrate some of the underlying problems. Whether you personally find it distasteful to destack from your currently overstacked server, or if you’re employing the Nirvana fallacy of “it won’t automatically and completely fix everything that’s wrong, so I’m rejecting any change completely”… then relax.

Nothing written in here is going to require you to do anything. Some people just want to maintain the WvW experience for as many people as possible for as long as possible, in as enjoyable a way (for everybody) as possible. We don’t have that now and, to use a partial parallel – people will tell you that hoarding money during an economic downturn is the worst thing that people can do. Individuals may personally benefit in the short term, but suffer more and for longer in the long run. Overstacking has much the same effect on WvW as a whole.

When you ask for causes, you have to be willing to not be selective. You state that the problem is overstacking yet ignore instances of when players have destacked from a higher tier server and what effect that has on WvW as a whole. Months ago T2 and T3 were relatively balanced, but then Maguuma imploded because too few guilds were transferring there to maintain what balance there was. An imploded Maguuma caused a lot of lopsided matches which continued all through Season 3 and resulted in player attrition on both SoS and FA. Ultimately those lopsided matches reverberated down to T3 as Maguuma’s implosion sucked the highest ranked T3-sized server (YB) into T2. Ironically, players from the higher tiers have destacked and gone to Maguuma and players are still complaining about lopsided matches.

In other words, you’re underestimating the effect that destacking has too on WvW. This isn’t to say that overstacking doesn’t have an effect, just to say that trying to identify a single cause is an oversimplification of the larger system.

Chaba.5410:

Rimmy.9217:

Bringing up the causes of how we got to where we are today helps to illustrate some of the underlying problems. Whether you personally find it distasteful to destack from your currently overstacked server, or if you’re employing the Nirvana fallacy of “it won’t automatically and completely fix everything that’s wrong, so I’m rejecting any change completely”… then relax.

Nothing written in here is going to require you to do anything. Some people just want to maintain the WvW experience for as many people as possible for as long as possible, in as enjoyable a way (for everybody) as possible. We don’t have that now and, to use a partial parallel – people will tell you that hoarding money during an economic downturn is the worst thing that people can do. Individuals may personally benefit in the short term, but suffer more and for longer in the long run. Overstacking has much the same effect on WvW as a whole.

When you ask for causes, you have to be willing to not be selective. You state that the problem is overstacking yet ignore instances of when players have destacked from a higher tier server and what effect that has on WvW as a whole. Months ago T2 and T3 were relatively balanced, but then Maguuma imploded because too few guilds were transferring there to maintain what balance there was. An imploded Maguuma caused a lot of lopsided matches which continued all through Season 3 and resulted in player attrition on both SoS and FA. Ultimately those lopsided matches reverberated down to T3 as Maguuma’s implosion sucked the highest ranked T3-sized server (YB) into T2. Ironically, players from the higher tiers have destacked and gone to Maguuma and players are still complaining about lopsided matches.

In other words, you’re underestimating the effect that destacking has too on WvW. This isn’t to say that overstacking doesn’t have an effect, just to say that trying to identify a single cause is an oversimplification of the larger system.

De-stacking when there are only three tier 2 servers AND there’s a huge gap between t2 and t3 is bad. Ofc we’re not suggesting that happen. We’re suggesting that, firstly, overstacking was bad. Secondly, I’m suggest that a balanced general de-stacking of the tiers would be healthy. If every server cept JQ destacked, we’d have a bit of an issue wouldn’t we? Tier 1 would be a sorry, sorry place (more so than it already is).

We’re not saying de-stacking is always good. But, de-stacking in a specific way should theoretically be good for overall WvW.

Arius.7031:

We’re not saying de-stacking is always good. But, de-stacking in a specific way should theoretically be good for overall WvW.

Except that its not a good solution. The underlying cause of the stacking is still an issue.

Your fix is pointless without a proper fix of the underlying causes.

You’re also suggesting that players and guilds stop playing with other guilds they want to be with. You can moan all you want about the servers that got stacked, but in the end, all of those players and guilds want to be where they are.

You’re asking for the health of one tier over 7 others.

The fact that there’s four servers that are full, and the rest a “very high” would point to the fact that there’s a lack of WvW participation more than there’s an issue of stacking.

As I stated before…that I contend that the vast majority of WvW players are happy where they are. Whether that means they are in the top two tiers(likely right?)…or not.

In short your destacking solution is pointless and addresses NONE of the problems of coverage and participation to begin with.

We have ONE broken tier out of EIGHT.

Two or three servers screwed weekly.

I’m sorry but that is pretty far from any majority.

Find a way to reward server loyalty. That should discourage transfers.

@Arius

There are less people playing (for numerous reasons and this will continue), the poplulation will shift to fewer and fewer servers and you keep labeling this as being unhealthy and irresponsible because you’re too stubburn to leave the limb thats atrophying as the number of servers is becoming less and less viable. That’s like having favorite brick and mortar book stores and saying online shops are affecting their health. If people generally find online stores more attractive, that’s whats supposed to happen. It’s not worth dwelling on, either adjust or don’t. But preaching about why shoppers messed things up for book shops and should come to your favorite stores in order to save them (and the shopping experience of the people who still like to use them) will most likely be fruitless.

And people talk among their guild and friends on where to go, that’s silly to even bring up. I mentioned getting people on ts in reference how difficult it is just for a typical public raid, I should have been clearer about that. But you want people to do this on a massive level involving many guilds and individuals spanning multiple servers. Thats nuts, not to mention many would outright reject being told where they should go if they even give the idea the time of day to begin with (and rightfully so). And I wish people will stop making NA/EU comparisons when the situation is different for several reasons (for starters, NA does not have language specific servers).

FYI I was on BP when they faced DB for weeks and when a server is ticking upwards of 400 before midnight server time every night, their NA can breeze through the week. Unless BP suddenly had 60+ bodies in organized groups regularly, then nobody was going to stick around or trickle in to deal with that. In the end, most people don’t care they just want to log in and have fun.

• Transfer
• Quit
• Enjoy a small server community

or the third choice is to whine about why you’re right and everybody moving to have fun did something bad.

Dhemize.8649:

sephiroth.4217:

Myself and many others just got to T2 over the last few weeks, T2 feels like it did in t8 2 years ago, it’s active 24/7 (australian so perfect), you have choices of roaming, small groups, guild raids and zergs…

After being on GoM>FA>GoM>IOJ>GoM>IoJ>CD>IOJ>FA over the years I’ve played this game I feel that the crap you guys a spewing is completely wrong… It is in no way or shape the communities fault or the players, in fact it’s not even Anets fault, the game will die out eventually as will any other game when people become bored of it or they have real life stuff or just a game that’s in general more fun.

Some of us (myself personally) only came higher up in the servers because in lower tiers the game is dying, you have a choice of solo roaming, 2 man roaming, 5 man roaming, zerging with a 20 man because that’s all that will rally to tag, yes we paid for a better experience, yes it’s our game and we most likely screwed up tiers and server population issues but at the current state of WvW unless it gets fixed magically then the game will continue to die as time goes on and people will continue to pay for a higher tier transfer…

Will Anet fix population issues? probably not.. Anet knows the game is dying, they also know people will pay for a better experience which is probably why they have not made any changes to servers as that is the only thing currently generating revenue from the WvW playerbase for them…

Bolded the part that confused me.

If it’s not the players, then who is it that creates such population gaps? Anet didn’t force anyone. Nobody magically popped into a new server. New players couldn’t possibly account for the massive gap (if they all went to WvW instantly when they finished installing). Old players leaving the game could dent a server, but only a select few?

It is 100% the players fault and it’s about time people hold themselves accountable.

I explained that with time, the game will die out like any other game… People will get bored, others will find another game they enjoy more, some might have real life stuff happening… Over time the game will gradually die out for various reasons and THAT is not the players fault or communities… During this process that causes a gradual loss in population, eventually people will miss the excess of enemies and move higher in tiers to keep the game active for themselves…

etrigan.4213:

The fact that there’s four servers that are full, and the rest a “very high” would point to the fact that there’s a lack of WvW participation more than there’s an issue of stacking.

Taking this idea further, remember I wrote above that Maguuma imploded because of a lack of new transfers to that server to keep T2 ad T3 balanced. They needed new transfers to stay ahead of player attrition, a form of weak WvW participation.

It would be remiss of many players still playing this game to not have noticed how bad player attrition is after all this time. Guilds and players have been moving up the tiers for a long time and are a finite resource. Of course there would come a time when player attrition starts to affect the higher tiered servers. The imbalances in the whole system will only increase without Anet addressing player attrition and lack of WvW participation. HoT should help alleviate some of that, but without changes to the WvW game mode with the goal of increasing WvW participation, it will be but a brief respite.

Chaba.5410:

etrigan.4213:

The fact that there’s four servers that are full, and the rest a “very high” would point to the fact that there’s a lack of WvW participation more than there’s an issue of stacking.

Taking this idea further, remember I wrote above that Maguuma imploded because of a lack of new transfers to that server to keep T2 ad T3 balanced. They needed new transfers to stay ahead of player attrition, a form of weak WvW participation.

It would be remiss of many players still playing this game to not have noticed how bad player attrition is after all this time. Guilds and players have been moving up the tiers for a long time and are a finite resource. Of course there would come a time when player attrition starts to affect the higher tiered servers. The imbalances in the whole system will only increase without Anet addressing player attrition and lack of WvW participation. HoT should help alleviate some of that, but without changes to the WvW game mode with the goal of increasing WvW participation, it will be but a brief respite.

I posted this in another thread, but I’ll post it here as well. In short we as endusers don’t have enough data to fully understand the issue, but ANET does and has made a choices in regards to WvW:

Honestly without knowing the metrics on server populations, its really tough to come up with a fix.
I mean we have 4 servers that are full, and three of them are at the top of the WvW heap. The fourth is fighting hard for place #5.
20 servers are at “Very High”. That obviously doesn’t mean they have WvW populations, but it may mean that they have low WvW participation.
We don’t have the metrics on those server populations nor do we have the metrics that would tell us what timezones are stronger for each server.
I’m sure ANET has those metrics, and could tell us if its a participation problem or not.

Arius.7031:

You say destacking won’t fix a thing. I will list things that destacking will either fix or improve (as we’re not necessarily saying it’ll fix stuff, just improve stuff):

1. Matchup variety. If t1/2 were to spread around somewhat to tier 3 and maybe even tier 4, we’d see a lot more variety in matchups. This means more guilds to fight (as many servers have native guilds that refuse to leave), and new play styles to come into contact with, without necessarily seeing a drastic decrease in overall population for any individual server.

If all the guilds worth a kitten moved up to the upper tiers, there’d be more guilds to fight without having to wait week to week.

Arius.7031:

2. Ability to move through the ranks (mobility). Currently, t3-2, and t 2-1 have such massive gaps it’s almost impossible (or in the case of t1-2, 100% impossible) to even get a matchup. What this means is, since glicko moves pretty slowly in general, it is very hard to move ranks. If Dh were to suddenly be bandwagoned into oblivion, to the point where we were bigger than all y’all, we’d have to spend weeks beating up on t2.5 servers and t3 servers draining every ounce of glicko they have available. Funnily enough, the fact that there’s a t2.5 server actually alleviates this issue. If the tier 2 fights heaven were working perfectly as everyone seems to want (3 t2 servers, not 4), it would take months and months of complete utter domination of t3 to even get a chance at rolling t2.

This won’t be fixed by destacking/this isn’t a player caused issue. If t1 tomorrow had t8 populations, it’d still be impossible for them to drop.

etrigan.4213:

Except that its not a good solution. The underlying cause of the stacking is still an issue.

Your fix is pointless without a proper fix of the underlying causes.

That’s like saying plugging the hole letting water into your boat is pointless without fully repairing it first. It’s a way to alleviate the issues and makes things better that will last for as long as we need rofl, meanwhile an actual solution can be put in place. Making the best of a bad situation.

You’re also suggesting that players and guilds stop playing with other guilds they want to be with. You can moan all you want about the servers that got stacked, but in the end, all of those players and guilds want to be where they are.

Where they want to be is irrelevant to the discussion lol. You’re missing the point, motives, desires, so on and so forth, are 100% pointless in the discussion. We’re talking OBJECTIVELY, what would keep the largest amount of people playing their game? If you think for a second high tier servers have some massive server/community loyalty in all their guilds, you are 100% mistaken. There’s loyalty found here and there, but more often than not they’re just there for population/activity, to have fun, not cus they luf teh communities…

You’re asking for the health of one tier over 7 others.

What? I’m not saying we do anything to decrease the health of ANY tier. I’m saying t1/2 should destack for the overall health of the game. That act shouldn’t harm lower tiers unless we do it stupidly. At best you could argue I’m harming 2 tiers for the sake of 6 tiers. But, there’s a critical flaw in your thought: you assume de-stacking t1/2 is bad for those tiers. I beg to differ. I think t1/2 would enjoy the game far more, getting to fight a variety of guilds/players with variety of tactics every single week, wondering “ooooh, who we gonna fight next week?” You are missing a MASSIVELY enjoyable aspect of the game, getting to face tons of different groups each time.

The fact that there’s four servers that are full, and the rest a “very high” would point to the fact that there’s a lack of WvW participation more than there’s an issue of stacking.

We’re discussing how to best use what we have for the health of the game, it doesn’t matter if it’s 10 billion people or 10.

As I stated before…that I contend that the vast majority of WvW players are happy where they are. Whether that means they are in the top two tiers(likely right?)…or not.

To say you’re happy where you are, is not to say you wouldn’t be happier if you were somewhere else rofl. Y’all seem to think if t1/2 destacked your playstyle would be ruined… but with how amazingly overstacked t1 is, the population of the top 9 servers would probably be just somewhat below that of a current YB/DB rofl. Your playstyle should be completely intact on that scenario.

You honestly don’t believe that servers below you want to play with more people, want to see more activity? Sorry bro, you haven’t been where I been. When you see 20 people take an entire t3 bl in primetime like it can happen in bronze, you don’t sit there and say “I like this tiny pop”. Sure, people like smaller pop, any no one is suggesting every tier get tons of transfers. But a more evenly populated game where the highest pop and lowest pop servers aren’t as far apart would benefit our overall health GREATLY.

gennyt.3428:

@Arius

There are less people playing (for numerous reasons and this will continue), the poplulation will shift to fewer and fewer servers and you keep labeling this as being unhealthy and irresponsible because you’re too stubburn to leave the limb thats atrophying as the number of servers is becoming less and less viable. That’s like having favorite brick and mortar book stores and saying online shops are affecting their health. If people generally find online stores more attractive, that’s whats supposed to happen. It’s not worth dwelling on, either adjust or don’t. But preaching about why shoppers messed things up for book shops and should come to your favorite stores in order to save them (and the shopping experience of the people who still like to use them) will most likely be fruitless.

What I’m suggesting is a healthier, more competitive, more varied HIGH TIER experience. I’m not suggesting we fix t5-8, believe it or not, some people like it that way (though we should try to keep the gap between t6 and t5 manageable so as not to have this mag situation type of thing repeat again, that’s a dif topic).

You may like to pretend to yourself as you’re going to sleep every night “t3/4 are ded sevrs”, but that’s not even close to true. My server queues 2 maps on non-reset nights at times, every day there is at least 1 queue, we even have near queue size map zergs in SEA (I can give multiple pics of 50+ zergs that I commanded myself, I was surprised we had those numbers as I don’t always play SEA). We’re not dead servers, but we’re not hyper overstacked like your servers are. My server is not losing any guilds to t2 for months, but we’re getting transfers from it by the loads. The servers that are bleeding are lower ones, and I’m not necessarily suggesting we save those (again, some people like that play style of super low pop, it SHOULD exist).

And people talk among their guild and friends on where to go, that’s silly to even bring up. I mentioned getting people on ts in reference how difficult it is just for a typical public raid, I should have been clearer about that. But you want people to do this on a massive level involving many guilds and individuals spanning multiple servers. Thats nuts, not to mention many would outright reject being told where they should go if they even give the idea the time of day to begin with (and rightfully so). And I wish people will stop making NA/EU comparisons when the situation is different for several reasons (for starters, NA does not have language specific servers).

I don’t actually believe anyone will do that. If you’ll recall, this conversation started with us saying it was a bad idea to stack these servers in the first place, soon as it looked like they were super high pop people should have stopped… but they didn’t.

FYI I was on BP when they faced DB for weeks and when a server is ticking upwards of 400 before midnight server time every night, their NA can breeze through the week. Unless BP suddenly had 60+ bodies in organized groups regularly, then nobody was going to stick around or trickle in to deal with that. In the end, most people don’t care they just want to log in and have fun.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a WvW akin to eu then? Where there is no massive, huge gap among high tier servers like that? T4 can compete in t3, t3 in t2, and t2 in t1 (in case you missed, I’ll repeat again, their #5 server JUST BEAT the #1 and #2 LOL). I’m suggesting we move to a more balanced setup like that, where server populations compared to one another aren’t cliffs, just inclines.

• Transfer
• Quit
• Enjoy a small server community

or the third choice is to whine about why you’re right and everybody moving to have fun did something bad.

Lol, sorry you don’t like people telling you what you did was bad for the game, but I’m not here to make you feel good. I think it’s a perfectly fine thing to ruin the game for others and make it bad for the majority by making a selfish decision, again, games are fundamentally selfish pursuits. If you want to be selfless, that’s great and reflects good on your character, but being selfish is perfectly acceptable. That doesn’t change the fact that your decisions can damage the game, especially the selfish ones.

Cake.4920:

If all the guilds worth a kitten moved up to the upper tiers, there’d be more guilds to fight without having to wait week to week.

But they won’t, and they shouldn’t. Worsening t3-8 to make t2 marginally more enjoyable isn’t worthwhile in the context of overall WvW and stopping our favorite gamemode from bleeding more players. Every server down here (cept SBI to some degree) has native skill groups who will not leave, subjected to t2 playstyle they could become quite excellent.

On the other hand, if SOME of the guilds worth a kitten moved down to the high-mid tiers, you’d have MORE guilds to fight overall AND variety (instead of facing YB’s siegehumping every week, alongside their awesome fights guilds, you’d face it every other week, instead maybe facing Dh’s terribad pug zergs with awesome fight guilds).

This won’t be fixed by destacking/this isn’t a player caused issue. If t1 tomorrow had t8 populations, it’d still be impossible for them to drop.[/quote

And they wouldn’t have been able to drain so much glicko from t2 servers if they hadn’t been so overstacked, they couldn’t have gotten stuck in the first place. That was a stupid decision. Further, they CAN drop, one server simply needs to bleed a lot of glicko while the other 2 maintain their massive glicko. If BG starts getting rekt, they’ll drop enough that t2 will eventually rng a matchup with t1, the t2 server will basically have no choice BUT to bleed the massively inflated t1 glicko, and eventually t2 will be in a position to rng into t1. Not saying that’s a plausible solution, it’s obviously not. See why overstacking t1 wasn’t particularly smart? :P

I love having Arius doing all of the talking – my metaphors are better, but he doesn’t foam at the mouth. Better spokesperson.

Rimmy.9217:

I love having Arius doing all of the talking – my metaphors are better, but he doesn’t foam at the mouth. Better spokesperson.

I just actually looked through my posts for grammar/spelling errors and general typos. The horror. I really need to start proofreading again :/.

Arius.7031:

Rimmy.9217:

I love having Arius doing all of the talking – my metaphors are better, but he doesn’t foam at the mouth. Better spokesperson.

I just actually looked through my posts for grammar/spelling errors and general typos. The horror. I really need to start proofreading again :/.

People won’t care about your spelling when they’re trying to climb out from under the rubble of your falling Walls of Text.

Rimmy.9217:

People won’t care about your spelling when they’re trying to climb out from under the rubble of your falling Walls of Text.

Arius.7031:

There’s loyalty found here and there, but more often than not they’re just there for population/activity, to have fun, not cus they luf teh communities…

I think t1/2 would enjoy the game far more, getting to fight a variety of guilds/players with variety of tactics every single week

Y’all seem to think if t1/2 destacked your playstyle would be ruined… but with how amazingly overstacked t1 is, the population of the top 9 servers would probably be just somewhat below that of a current YB/DB rofl. Your playstyle should be completely intact on that scenario.

LEL

- Yes, the loyalty is to the population/activity level. That’s exactly why players do not destack and have no interest in destacking.
- No they wouldn’t enjoy the game far more because again, the loyalty is to the population/activity level. They enjoy it.
- Yes, destacking would ruin that playstyle. Less players = less variety. I already know what it is like to have less population than what current YB and DB have. It sucks for anyone outside of NA Prime. There is less variety. Guilds are forced into specific roles.

Arius.7031:

Rimmy.9217:

People won’t care about your spelling when they’re trying to climb out from under the rubble of your falling Walls of Text.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVl_sjUrNQE

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

There’s loyalty found here and there, but more often than not they’re just there for population/activity, to have fun, not cus they luf teh communities…

I think t1/2 would enjoy the game far more, getting to fight a variety of guilds/players with variety of tactics every single week

Y’all seem to think if t1/2 destacked your playstyle would be ruined… but with how amazingly overstacked t1 is, the population of the top 9 servers would probably be just somewhat below that of a current YB/DB rofl. Your playstyle should be completely intact on that scenario.

LEL

- Yes, the loyalty is to the population/activity level. That’s exactly why players do not destack and have no interest in destacking.
- No they wouldn’t enjoy the game far more because again, the loyalty is to the population/activity level. They enjoy it.
- Yes, destacking would ruin that playstyle. Less players = less variety. I already know what it is like to have less population than what current YB and DB have. It sucks for anyone outside of NA Prime. There is less variety. Guilds are forced into specific roles.

- Yup, even though as already described there’d be plenty of population for those who like it at aprox t2 pop, because t1 is so incredibly overstacked we’d probably wind up with 9 servers around the current pop of db/yb but slightly lower (highest probably being what FA is now).

- Has t2 ever been lower pop than it is now? It seems to me that y’all have enjoyed t2, as it has risen and decreased in population over the years since gw2 has been out. Do not sit here and, frankly, lie through your teeth, and say it would not be fun with a slight population decrease. Don’t waste our time trying to justify your opinion with falsehoods. You know, and I know, you may find the population of t2 atm ideal (for all we know, you want it more populated, idk why it’d magically be perfect right now), but you wouldn’t exactly be crying if tomorrow suddenly a few guilds from each t2 server disappeared. The amount of guilds you’d gain too, when you include native t4/3 guilds, would be a large payoff to that as well, more guilds to fight.

- Idk what you think lower pop servers look like. My server can easily field a 50+ zerg in EB in EU, and then havoc/roamers here and there. We usually get 20-50 pugs on tag in SEA, then 1-3 guild groups fielding 10+ depending on if son/sot run (sotd always runs). OCX we’re ded sevr and we can still do 30+ on tag + havoc and 1 guild group lol. This is all assuming a tag ofc, it can get quite dead otherwise. It may not be the massive pop you’re used to, but it’s far from dead.

Arius.7031:

- Has t2 ever been lower pop than it is now? It seems to me that y’all have enjoyed t2, as it has risen and decreased in population over the years since gw2 has been out. Do not sit here and, frankly, lie through your teeth, and say it would not be fun with a slight population decrease. Don’t waste our time trying to justify your opinion with falsehoods. You know, and I know, you may find the population of t2 atm ideal (for all we know, you want it more populated, idk why it’d magically be perfect right now), but you wouldn’t exactly be crying if tomorrow suddenly a few guilds from each t2 server disappeared. The amount of guilds you’d gain too, when you include native t4/3 guilds, would be a large payoff to that as well, more guilds to fight.

I would appreciate if you don’t accuse others of lying. It is not constructive to this conversation at all and does nothing to support your arguments. I have not always played in T2.

I was on SoS when we fought DH like a year ago or whatever; You guys had no OCX that showed up even when we only ran like 10 people, tagless.

I keep hearing these mythical “30 man OCX” zergs in low tiers but it’s just bs.

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

- Has t2 ever been lower pop than it is now? It seems to me that y’all have enjoyed t2, as it has risen and decreased in population over the years since gw2 has been out. Do not sit here and, frankly, lie through your teeth, and say it would not be fun with a slight population decrease. Don’t waste our time trying to justify your opinion with falsehoods. You know, and I know, you may find the population of t2 atm ideal (for all we know, you want it more populated, idk why it’d magically be perfect right now), but you wouldn’t exactly be crying if tomorrow suddenly a few guilds from each t2 server disappeared. The amount of guilds you’d gain too, when you include native t4/3 guilds, would be a large payoff to that as well, more guilds to fight.

I would appreciate if you don’t accuse others of lying. It is not constructive to this conversation at all and does nothing to support your arguments. I have not always played in T2.

You misunderstand me. I don’t think you’ve lied—yet. I’m pre-empting you, I’ve had this conversation a million times. “Oh, if we lost players this tier would suck!” the tier 2 person asserts, without actually grasping that we’re not suggesting T2 lose many players (in fact, it’s mostly tier 1 that would lose, and even then it wouldn’t be massive, they’d still have enough to match/surpass what FA is atm). Sorry if I’ve offended you, but this is a very annoying and personal topic for me. It sucks to see t2 folks literally coming to our teamspeak, moving to our server, and outright stating they’re here to take players for t2. They will sit in our main teamspeak channel and tell us “oh, t2 is great, much more skill, way more fun”, if you even say that you just prefer an alternative playstyle, they call you a casual and belittle you. Fallen ran into our thread on gw2wvw with a couple other people and did just that a few months ago even lel. Dealing with this whole t2 situation, when every outside of t2 can see t2 is hurting the game so bad, is just an annoying situation. So again, sorry, that was more rude than I should have been considering how civil you’ve been.

fishball.7204:

I was on SoS when we fought DH like a year ago or whatever; You guys had no OCX that showed up even when we only ran like 10 people, tagless.

I keep hearing these mythical “30 man OCX” zergs in low tiers but it’s just bs.

You do realize we were in tier 6, and now we’re in tier 3, right? I fought SoR before it went to t1, does that mean SoR never had more pop than I saw it with? Also, enjoy the pics of our OCX and SEA (the time stamps are in the bottom right, I’m PST). Count the mini dots.

Arius.7031:

t2 folks literally coming to our teamspeak, moving to our server, and outright stating they’re here to take players for t2. They will sit in our main teamspeak channel and tell us “oh, t2 is great, much more skill, way more fun”, if you even say that you just prefer an alternative playstyle, they call you a casual and belittle you.

Wow, that’s amazing! Certainly not the kind of recruiting tactics I use or condone.

11pm and 6am PST aren’t OCX.

And I said nothing about SEA, plenty of servers have SEA including SBI, CD, DH and others.

BTW, in my experience, many guilds have never concerned themselves with balanced matches. Historically only the GvG guilds have cared about tier balance because they want to ensure that they are spread out amongst all three servers so they have a wider choice of fights than just if they were to all stack on 1 or 2 servers.

That seemed to have changed since a few PPT guilds stacked into DB and started causing the 4-server rotations with T3. Now these GvG guilds seem to be more interested in stacking into the servers most likely to stay stable in T2. Balance never equaled server stability. If there were a GvG mode that gave these guilds access to fights against other GvG guilds in other tiers, this stacking wouldn’t be such the problem that it is now.

Arius.7031:

- Idk what you think lower pop servers look like. My server can easily field a 50+ zerg in EB in EU, and then havoc/roamers here and there. We usually get 20-50 pugs on tag in SEA, then 1-3 guild groups fielding 10+ depending on if son/sot run (sotd always runs). OCX we’re ded sevr and we can still do 30+ on tag + havoc and 1 guild group lol. This is all assuming a tag ofc, it can get quite dead otherwise. It may not be the massive pop you’re used to, but it’s far from dead.

As someone who has recently been on dh I can say that this is completely false. Never saw a 50+ zerg during eu timezone. I saw zergs but never that big and all not on teamspeak and many uplevels. You know, those zergs made up of casual pve’ers that you see on every server. Ocx was completely barren wasteland. Sea time same as eu, lots of uplevel pugs not on teamspeak.

I’ve played in high and low tier servers and if the numbers this guy claims is true then dh would have been in tier 2 a loooooooooong time ago.

Chaba.5410:

If there were a GvG mode that gave these guilds access to fights against other GvG guilds in other tiers, this stacking wouldn’t be such the problem that it is now.

But there isn’t, and there isn’t going to be anytime soon, so that’s a pointless avenue to go down. And good thing there isn’t a GvG mode.

Although, isn’t that what EotM is actually good for? It gives a given guild the chance to meet up with guilds from 2/3 of the other servers and fight them.

And despite that… there’s no indication of destacking.

Rimmy.9217:

Chaba.5410:

If there were a GvG mode that gave these guilds access to fights against other GvG guilds in other tiers, this stacking wouldn’t be such the problem that it is now.

But there isn’t, and there isn’t going to be anytime soon, so that’s a pointless avenue to go down. And good thing there isn’t a GvG mode.

Although, isn’t that what EotM is actually good for? It gives a given guild the chance to meet up with guilds from 2/3 of the other servers and fight them.

And despite that… there’s no indication of destacking.

1- Have you tried to GvG in EOTM? It is done sometimes but the area that supports it is trolled by auto-spawning cannons.

2- IDK why you say there’s no destacking. Where do you think all the players that went to Maguuma came from?

3- No, no GvG mode anytime soon. It is no more pointless to suggest than destacking is. Players don’t care about balance because they mistake stability for balance. How many guilds did you talk to that are interested in transferring or have transferred somewhere else? Have you asked them why they made the server choice they did? I have. Time and time again “stability” is the answer. Players don’t like to transfer to a server that is at risk of falling out of a tier or leaving them high and dry.