Guild Wars 2

I was just reading a post from a player on the Desolation EU server complaining about skill lag. I immediately assumed Desolation was an EU zergfest server ala JQ/BG/etc on NA, and my heart started bleeding for the poor chap….

However, I then looked further down the table and saw the last 2 matchups. This looks very, very, very bad. What’s going on? Are the low scoring servers (Vabbi, Whiteside Ridge, Fissure of Woe, and Arborstone) dead in WvW? Must be terrible to be playing there.

Tietus.8013:

Are the low scoring servers (Vabbi, Whiteside Ridge, Fissure of Woe, and Arborstone) dead in WvW? Must be terrible to be playing there.

Feel free to come and check it out.. Kitten..

Mmmm, it is par for the course on Maguuma in the Oceanic timezone to be outnumbered, and we are regularly getting our arses handed to us by zergs. I think we know a little of the pain you probably suffer.

A lot depends of course on the matchup we’re in.. Some high-popped servers just zerg more than others..

When we used to be in our Vabbi/FoW tier, we would always get zerged by the third server.. But with some guild transfers and so on there has been a bit of a change in the lower tiers.. You might not have noticed, but FoW managed to crawl out of T9 (took us 10 months).

However, an issue still is the off-time coverage. We don’t have that many other-continent players who are willing to WvW while EU is sleeping..

Nevertheless, we have some nice fights, we have enormous fun.. And we like to kick the kitten of those servers that like to mock the “trash can” tiers..

No mocking from here, let me tell you. It’s just the scores really stood out and I was just imagining how tough it might be. Kudos to you all for taking the fight up….

Desolation is in a weird place at the moment – a high population server ranked 3rd. You’d think that we have access to a high WvW population which consequently contributes to the skill lag.

But that isn’t the case. Last week we were placed 6th. Our current predicted rank is set to be 6th again next week, even though we are comfortably winning our match-up. The last 2 weeks, we were stomped by Vizunah and then Seafarers – both of which can roll over us with much higher WvW populations – Deso is primarily a PvE server, and hence only do well during prime-time. Even then, we can’t compete against the T1 servers.

What keeps us going is a remarkable determination to keep going, developing tactics to counter the big guns.

As far as skill lag is concerned – I’m beginning to wonder about that. I upgraded my PC recently – to counter my FPS issue (which I know was down to the CPU and GPU that I had). That improved tremendously – but I also noticed that skill lag wasn’t so bad as well.

I put that down to benefiting from increase in FPS and perception – and maybe finally benefiting from any changes Anet made to reduce Skill Lag.

However, the other day I was involved in the defense of Garrison on Deso BL where both opposition servers were sending in blobs. It was a huge fight – and skill lag was not a problem for me. But suddenly – it did become a problem. Total lock up – nothing worked except skill 1 – everything else .. meh! I could move – no issue, I could access menus – no issue. Definitely skill lag. Lasted for about 5 maybe 10 minutes. Then it disappeared. Everything was back to normal .. blobs were the same size, no indication of what went wrong.

Interestingly – and maybe had nothing to do with it – one of the opponents started setting off fireworks ..

Go figger..

I like to correct and add a few things.

EU RANKS

Desolation’s current rank is 3. We haven’t been rank 6 for about 2 months. http://mos.millenium.org/servers/history/15

Desolation is unique server in EU. We are the leading spvp/tpvp server. We are also the English language pve capital. You can find overflows on several pve maps and Lions Arch is full almost around the clock. Our WvWvW attendance is however close to medium ranked server. In our recent match ups against EU rank 1 and 2 (VS and SFR) we have been “enjoying” the outnumbered “buff” almost all the time. Still surprisingly we didn’t lose score wise that badly, despite it was obvious that enemy had at least twice as many players on most maps I must say this is probably big part to entire Desolation server using same TeamSpeak + good coordination and we have a decent night team. We also have some amazing commanders.

Now we are matched up against EU rank 11 and 14. NA player would assume that rank 3 would completely overrun the lower populated opponents, but believe me or not the difference in number of players has been small. Today I have several times seen even our own borderland (Desolation BL) having so few players on our side that we have the outnumbered buff, not to mention those other BLs which were all empty from Desolation players. We regularly have the outnumbered buff on EB. That implies that Gandara (rank 14!) and Abaddon’s Mouth (rank 11) have at least twice as many players on those maps. We will win this match up by large margin, but since we are not facerolling our opponents, we will drop in rating and our next rank will be 5 or 6.

LAG

I bought a brand new powerful PC this summer. I can enjoy full frame rate even when there is over 100 players fighting on the screen + have pretty high details on, but especially those situations where all the 3 servers bring in their blob at the same location enormous lag hits the entire map. Arenanet devs have confirmed that the lag is caused by lots of players in same vicinity and their servers being overloaded. And I know that other servers in EU (and probably in NA) are facing the same. All three server blobs in Garrison or massive fight in Stonemist is guaranteed lag, unfortunately.

EU SERVERS IN GENERAL (primer for NA players and those who are not much into WvWvW)

The very high population vs medium population has very little meaning in EU when it comes to WvWvW. For example Underworld is very high population, just like Desolation. Yet Underworld’s current rank is 17. Piken Square is medium population, but their current rank is 6 and they are going to rise up to rank 3. I do not know all the EU servers, but I have fought against several of them multiple times to give few guidelines:

Vizunah Square (French, PuG server, stacked, strong night crew, famous for their love for golems, siege and playing for points, ability to do amazing come backs)
Seafarer’s Rest (International, mostly English, but lots of Russians, very stacked and getting even more stacked, lots of big WvWvW guilds, has had issues with elitism)
Piken Square (International, very guild oriented server, not that PuG friendly, currently lacking a bit in night crew, but peak hours stacked as well, hosts many of the best guilds in this game, but has been lacking server wide organization)
Desolation (International, mostly Northern + Central Europe, PuG server, pve oriented thus lacking WvWvW players, only around dozen major WvWvW guilds, no queues at the moment)
Elona Reach (German, heavy armor, has more WvWvW players than Desolation, but seems to lack internal organization to score high, loves to use siege)
Riverside (German, for their love of Arrowcarts they are sometimes called Rivercart)
Jade Sea (French, similar to Vizunah Square, but less dedicated players)
Augury Rock (French, small but very high quality guild oriented server)
Kodash (German, small scale roamers, loves to use siege)
Abaddon’s Mouth (German, massive blobs earned them the nick name: Blobbadon’s Mouth)
Gandara (International, small scale roamers mostly, lots of spvp play style & builds)
Miller’s Sound (German, hosts couple of good guilds, but lacks 24/7 coverage to fight in the top)
Baruch Bay (Spanish, hosts couple of strong guilds who used to play on Desolation, has a decent night crew, but seems to have unknown issues to make it unable to fight in the top)

(PuG = Pick up Group, random players, militia in NA)

My assumption is that NA servers are much more stacked than EU servers. The queues are longer and the fighting is much probably more zerging in NA. Here you can still amazingly do fruitful stuff solo roaming as in busy prime time e.g. yesterday me + one guild mate were taking one tower while our enemy (we were outnumbered) was busy blobbing elsewhere. I also started to solo capture enemy Garrison in busy prime time, but I unfortunately got spotted so I had to flee. Grr, reinforced door 80%, all guards killed. So even playing on EU rank 3, there can still be solo / small scale fun for others than thieves (I usually play engineer).

I already apologize if I insulted anybody with my server wide or NA vs EU generalizations. Note: they are just my personal opinion, based on my limited experience.