Guild Wars 2

With two of the issues from Season/tournament/9weeksentence 2 in mind and a CDI on the way to inspire creative thought, here’s something:

Handicap matches like those found in the ancient art of entertainment wrestling. In these matches, one team fights another team that has numerical superiority. Simplified, this proposed idea is an official 2v1 match. No red, only one server as blue vs 2 servers as green.

The 2 green servers might be a tier 2 and a tier 3 while the blue server is a tier 1. I do not have access to any population data, so I don’t know if that is at all feasible, but it serves as an example of what I mean. One stronger, advantaged server vs two smaller ones.

Thinking historically, the complaints about being 2v1’d by the 1 are probably fair: it shouldn’t be their closest competitors who form the 2 against them, for the 2 closest are definitely stronger than the 1 leader. There were also complaints by people of the 2 servers that this was lame or scummy. A structured version of this handicap match solves both – it is officially sanctioned (so the 2 servers should really try and stick it to the 1) and it is a match where the 1 is a true juggernaut in comparison to the 2 (so it will remain a close fight despite the 2 enemies).

There is also the matter of match stagnation – something I think this obliterates. If a server is tired of facing the same opponents every other week, this match idea is a shot of variety. Not only will the guilds and players be very different from what is normally seen in the ‘balanced’ match-ups, but the tactics too; a low tiered server specializing in guerrilla warfare paired with a guild-heavy raid server against a population behemoth would surely involve some new strategies!

Thoughts? In before ’someone would abuse it by mass transferring to a green server on a moments notice at reset night!!!!" doomsayers.

EDIT: I should add that I don’t think it would be good to share the chats, keep map chat server specific (to avoid the textspam or weekend chatter wrecking things) and that the two green servers shouldn’t be able to see their allies’ player dots or anything exceptional. Just two servers who are, for the purposes of point totals and damage calculation, allies.