Guild Wars 2

no dedication. no growing together. no retention. spying. guilds leaving, new ones coming in.

when will you stop free transfers? currently, servers cannot grow as communities because people keep flaking and moving around everywhere en masse. keeping the free transfers for so long makes no sense, unless im missing something. people have settled with their friends, it’s time to start building communities.

Isaac.6041:

we also need official server specific forums that would help grow our server communities.

True

But free tansfers need to stay because server populations aren’t spread out enough. ANET just needs to increase the wait time to transfer servers. Say once every 2 weeks instead of it being instant.

The player base is not fixing itself with the world transfers. The once most populated server is now a ghost town and now people are transferring to the new super server.

The free transfers need to end now.

Agreed. It’s a mess that is destructive to server community in any sense and just leads to headaches on all sides. This issue really needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

The population will never spread out with free transfers, the winning servers just keep growing while the weaker servers keep dwindling in WvW population, the damage has been done and I’m afraid it can’t be fixed.

They can’t disable free server transfers until they get guesting working, that’s the crux of it.

Yes, end free transfers NOW…. the ranks aren’t real right now… their are spies in the worlds.

Losing servers will decrease in population for higher ranking ones. Most people don’t join WvWvW when we are losing, because they can just transfer to the winning server, therefore the ranking right now means nothing.

Stop free world transfers TODAY… then restart the ranking system to get real server rankings in WvWvW.

Have it cost 20,000 gems or something… that will make people really think if it’s worth transferring, or would it be better to make their server the best in wvwvw

The glaring issue with free transfers and WvW is that it makes the ranking system not work. If the population is not reasonably stable, then the ranking does not apply from week to week.

I’m convinced the WvW will work splendidly for most servers, regardless of absolute value in the ranking, once the transfers are disabled. As it is, there’s just too much variance in population from week to week to make the ratings terribly relevant, and good match-ups will be difficult to get.

I’m on a lower pop server and every week you notice less and less participating in WvW

As a former TA member, I hate to say “We told you so” but that is about the long and the short of it.

We said free transfers are pure poison for WvW. For queue times, for fair play and quality of community building they have been nothing but trouble. We got walls of replies saying it’s all TA’s fault and we should split up or change servers. Well guess what? We did both. And what happened? Exactly what we said would happen.

The bandwagon packed up shop and within a week, JQ is pretty much HoD all over again. Again, all because AN are being so stubborn on this issue and refuse to close free transfers. I am honestly completely clueless on what the hell they are thinking at this point. I went into this game with high hopes as WvW was a real gem for this game and yet nearly two months down the road AN have and to this day continue to make a complete train wreck of it.

I really have no idea what to say any more on the issue. Myself and other guldies/alliance-mates have campaigned for months trying to get AN to see sense on this problem and WvW in general but it has been completely and utterly ignored. WvW was one of the biggest drawcards of this title and it continues to be disregarded. I wish I could for the life of me see the method behind AN’s madness but all I am seeing is them taking one of the most promising MMOs in about half a decade and watching it drive off a cliff by ignoring feedback and displaying an overwhelming show of inaction with key selling points of the game like WvW.

THIS is why people are getting fed up and leaving the game.

Again, you don’t get that this isn’t about WvW but guesting. If they disable free server transfers now you won’t be able to play with friends on different servers, something that was promised as one of the main features of the game. The only reason you can transfer for free right now is that this feature doesn’t work, as soon as they get it working server transfers will cost gems.

We need 30 more threads based on this exact same topic.

we also need official server specific forums that would help grow our server communities.

Agreed, this would be nice!

katniss.6735

We need 30 more threads based on this exact same topic.

Totally. Because 3849324 threads isn’t enough.

I just got this game and I’d like to play with my friends but the world is full. Why did I wait until today to purchase this award-winning game you ask? Because when I tried to buy this game initially it said…“SOLD OUT” The digital edition…was sold out. I was like…you know what…screw this.

So anyway, bunch of pals have been talking it up lately so I figure what the hell and this time it’s…“WORLD FULL”. The fact that your entire account is tied to one single server vs. being able to create characters on different servers like other MMOs means, if they didn’t have free world switches right now you’d be totally boned. Your friends are all playing on another server? Oh well. Enjoy.

So until they fix these “full” issues they should have free world switches.

Shinzan.2908:

Again, you don’t get that this isn’t about WvW but guesting. If they disable free server transfers now you won’t be able to play with friends on different servers, something that was promised as one of the main features of the game. The only reason you can transfer for free right now is that this feature doesn’t work, as soon as they get it working server transfers will cost gems.

Again though, who’s fault is that? It’s not like this is launch week. We are coming up to two MONTHS and the guesting feature AN went on and on about is still nowhere to be seen nor is an ETA or even an explanation offered. It’s just another example of the inaction and poor communication we have been shown since BWE and retail launch.

Even disregarding all of that, I have to ask are transfers really worth killing off WvW? I think the irony for me at least is out of all my friends that bought this game, I don’t think I would have the need to transfer anywhere to play with them as they have pretty much stopped playing. Some have given up on the game completely, some are like me and waiting to see if AN to come out of their lethargic stupor before the majority of players write them off as the next Bioware and go elsewhere. Granted, that is just my personal situation but I think it is madness poisoning one of the, if not THE biggest attractions to your game just so you can be lazy in adding promised features that should have been ready before launch.

Free transfers don’t need to be done away with, just need to be stricter so population stabilizes better. Either increase the wait time to transfer between transfers, and/or make transfer not happen instantly. I think a two week window, while WvW matches are a week long, is plenty of time.

Xpiher.5209:

Free transfers don’t need to be done away with, just need to be stricter so population stabilizes better. Either increase the wait time to transfer between transfers, and/or make transfer not happen instantly. I think a two week window, while WvW matches are a week long, is plenty of time.

That also would of made sense. HoD should have been taken off the list when the queue times started to be a nightly thing.

Instead, AN decided to release a list of the highest ranked servers in WvW and then keep the transfers wide open just in case absolutely everyone didn’t know they could stampede on over to HoD and jump up and down on the deck of the sinking ship. I can think of no other words to describe that move other than “complete and utter madness”.

Yea, no this is certainly something to fix, I’m just pointing out that it’s not as easy as Anet just going alright and turn off server transfers, doing that in the current state of the game would lead to more issues than it fixes and I imagine more people would be driven away than those who care about WvW, even more so since they promised they’d get guesting working first and inform people well in advance.

I’m kinda wondering what the holdup is with enabling Guesting, if that’s what’s keeping free transfers from being turned off. At the moment, it looks like Public Enemy No. 1 for WvWvW, and if people keep bouncing servers to try to ride the gravy train, it’s pretty much free money for ANet.

How many people bounce between servers to play with different groups of friends, anyway?

It’s all true. I concur with the OP. #Concurrance.

Kinda feel like doing sPVP at this rate. There’s absolutely no balance between top team and the 2 below it in a given week (of WvW).

Sarrs.4831:

How many people bounce between servers to play with different groups of friends, anyway?

To be fair, the free transfers were not just for playing with friends. It was, rather ironically, also put in place to help balance server populations and queue times. The problem is AN made absolutely no effort to stop people piling on to overloaded servers with massive queue times. Between raising the population caps (but not the WvW caps) and advertising which server had the most wins for WvW, AN made the problem worse, not better for HoD. Now that TA has dissolved, we are seeing history repeat on other servers as the bandwagon simply rolls on over to the next flavor of the month server.

katniss.6735:

Kinda feel like doing sPVP at this rate. There’s absolutely no balance between top team and the 2 below it in a given week (of WvW).

Sadly, it isn’t like the balance in SPvP is any better. Just a whole different type of broken.

It does seem counter-intuitive for the ANet GW2 team to try to have balanced match-ups in WvW with a ranking system…while server swapping is almost wide open…

Needs to be a little more difficult or costly to server move.

Best way would be to just have free transfers, but you can’t join WvW for that week.

The servers will never be balanced for population….

… low population servers attract people that don’t want to share the server with many others, then the bots infest the low pop servers because they think they can go about their business and not get reported as much…. then the people wanting peace and quiet see their server is not so quiet and filled with pests (bots) so they transfer…

…high population servers attract the people that want many people to share the server with, and those servers continue to grow….

same for all MMOs. Always has been that way. I know because I have been playing MMOs for years and I was the guy that transfered servers when the population got too high. I watched the numbers. What’s happening now in GW2 is what happens in any MMO with free transfers.

There is only one solution to this problem, and it’s a solution no one wants. Enough Said.

Better to accept the fact that some servers will always be bigger, over populated…. and some servers will always be the step child like Devona’s Rest (my server) and others.

I transferred to a couple other servers when the bot plague got out of hand on DR, plus I had tried WvW and fell in love with it, but I felt like a traitor for leaving DR. No argument can negate my real life “ethical conditioning” so to speak. I came back to DR, bots and “die trying” WvW and all. (so I am paying a high price for my opinion and decision on this issue). I am glad I came back.

I agree completely , really takes a lot of the drive to win and do well away when 1 guild is in 2 different worlds in the same WvW group and spies/trolls are everywhere.

Guess what no offical word on this at all. and i was just browsing other section wow some thread theres actually a DEV replying when will it get into ur head that FREE TRANSFER KILL WvW ? and till what day will the server actually be “Balanced” ?

nerva.7940:

no dedication. no growing together. no retention. spying. guilds leaving, new ones coming in.

when will you stop free transfers? currently, servers cannot grow as communities because people keep flaking and moving around everywhere en masse. keeping the free transfers for so long makes no sense, unless im missing something. people have settled with their friends, it’s time to start building communities.

And combined with weekly matches that can not keep up with the transfer zergs, you get matches that don’t even come close to reflecting reality. HoD is Tier 3 more than likely it was obvious to anyone in that match by the middle of last week. And yet Anet’s lovely match system pits them against their old nemesis again.

Shinzan.2908:

Again, you don’t get that this isn’t about WvW but guesting. If they disable free server transfers now you won’t be able to play with friends on different servers, something that was promised as one of the main features of the game. The only reason you can transfer for free right now is that this feature doesn’t work, as soon as they get it working server transfers will cost gems.

How hard is it for a friend to find out where you play and start their game there? This is a lame reason and not worth the frustration of WvW right now.

Gardavil.1762:

Better to accept the fact that some servers will always be bigger, over populated…. and some servers will always be the step child like Devona’s Rest (my server) and others.

This misses the point. No one believes the goal must be for all servers to be roughly equal to each other. You only play two other servers at a time. The goal need only be for each match to be equal enough for the match to not be over after playing only 20% of it. But we are so far from that it’s absurd.

you can not equalize servers with unlimited Free server transfers people can freely Move and Flow to wining PVP servers. Its that simple. IDK why there is any kinda debate?

/signed
today we had whole guild sabotaging wvw…. god kitten #8230; this is so stupid….
Last week we had a person who was draining supplies from castle over and over again so we cannot get upgrades..
SO kitten ITS HARD TO BELIAVE
Yes im totally mad.
good night

maybe time consider somes server merge its good to wvw in overall
and close free transfer
->
change wvw match to 3 day
best at all because after 3 day people giveup

about upgrade made more cheap and fast

Cullan.9645:

The population will never spread out with free transfers, the winning servers just keep growing while the weaker servers keep dwindling in WvW population, the damage has been done and I’m afraid it can’t be fixed.

+1

3 server warfare and 1 server has the entire map? Save a supply camp for 2-3 minutes. Maybe we should all go to the same server so we can sit on forts and collect our points…oh wait.

Xpiher.5209:

Isaac.6041:

we also need official server specific forums that would help grow our server communities.

True

But free tansfers need to stay because server populations aren’t spread out enough. ANET just needs to increase the wait time to transfer servers. Say once every 2 weeks instead of it being instant.

That would be a start. But even it we assume transfers will lead to a better “spread” among the servers, the problem is that the match system as it stand is not able to keep up with how frequently servers are shifting in power. HoD had such a huge glicko rating it will take two weeks for it to be bumped out of tier 1 despite the fact that it clearly hasn’t had tier 1 strength for over a week.

Waiting for whatever balance or other features (guesting) they are hoping for currently means being very bored in WvW until that happens, if it ever does.

Time to pony up Anet, with your sage like wisdom, explain to your customers what you are doing about this. No response just continues to foster these discussions. And you wonder why there are so many threads on the same subject…

Mystik.9561:

Time to pony up Anet, with your sage like wisdom, explain to your customers what you are doing about this. No response just continues to foster these discussions. And you wonder why there are so many threads on the same subject…

Seeing how this thread hasn’t been merged and the appearance of server call out threads, I’d say the moderators are out for the night.