Guild Wars 2

Really interesting – and way overdue I reckon.

I am super curious as to what will happen out of this. i can see people using the discount to move mid-season as well.

All I gotta say is Manvil Rock !

Who’s Man enough ?

Snowreap.5174:

I don’t see how free transfers are going to help. are there a lot of players out there on higher-ranked servers who aren’t having fun in WvW, who think that WvW would be more fun on a server with largely empty maps, and for whom the gem cost was the big thing preventing them from moving?

-ken

Considering that the number of free transfers seems unlimited except by the possibility of a full status for a server. A coalition of WvW Guilds could decide on stacking one of the free transfer servers. The Swiss style tournament, will mean that the server will only have empty maps for the first 2 weeks… as long as the coalition does not completely fall on it’s kitten .

Of course this is uncertain, but this type of uncertainty will lead to a healthier tournament. The only problem, of course, is that I think the WvW guilds are adverse to uncertainty. Guilds need reputation to survive, and the only good reputation for WvWers, it seems now, is to be in a T1 Server. Players want to win or GTFO. Trying to stack a server could be risky for any guild working alone, but it might work, if several guilds get together and decide on a server. Even then, you risk the issue of filling the server and screwing some guilds. (but with a little bit of knowledge on how the server population is calculated this could be avoided).

It will be interesting if there will be a major push to stack some servers, or several servers. But, I believe that most will see such an attempt as a very risky move. More likely than not, people will stick to the servers they know will have some sort of momentum.

alright everyone, transfer to CD, for free, and we’ll be silver league champion !

Good news for some, we’ve already moved costing us 1000 gems! Really hating anet theses days. :@

Server transfers wont help, it will hurt. There is no one left on SOR. How many people transferred and how many just quit playing the game? I would bet more quit playing than most would think. WvW participation is dropping across all servers. I see server after server we play against barley being able to put 50 people in eb and maybe another 20 across the rest of the maps. I watch camps flip on BLs and 30 minutes later they are still enemy controlled. WvW has turned into PVE and most of the PVPers are leaving. The PVEers only come out when there is a huge zerg and no fighting. Lose one fight and 60% of them are done for the day.

Every week WvW becomes a little more boring. Transfers wont change that. Changing the motives and thus the strats for WvW might. I am beginning to think it is too late.

Nobody transfers down.

Forget free transfers, I wouldn’t play on a ghost town server if someone offered me $100.

Instead of offering free transfer to all mid and low tier servers, what anet need to do is monitor server coverage and only allow free transfer to those servers which need it!

But seeing how they have gone this way, if you are into WvW I would suggest those in lower servers move up to mid tier servers instead.

Puts the nail in the coffin for SoR, that’s for sure. We are in free fall but gravity is literally not fast enough to get us past rank 12 in time.

They just need to NORMALIZE servers. Lump 3-4 servers into one and suddenly its no longer a blob server PvDooring and 100 blobbing the poor 1 players on the lower pop server on reset night. There is just seriously too much disparity among server populations for WvW that it makes no sense.

azizul.8469:

alright everyone, transfer to CD, for free, and we’ll be silver league champion !

Isn’t CD the server that has imploded a whopping four times?

mikoe.6574:

Server transfers wont help, it will hurt. There is no one left on SOR. How many people transferred and how many just quit playing the game? I would bet more quit playing than most would think. WvW participation is dropping across all servers. I see server after server we play against barley being able to put 50 people in eb and maybe another 20 across the rest of the maps. I watch camps flip on BLs and 30 minutes later they are still enemy controlled. WvW has turned into PVE and most of the PVPers are leaving. The PVEers only come out when there is a huge zerg and no fighting. Lose one fight and 60% of them are done for the day.

Every week WvW becomes a little more boring. Transfers wont change that. Changing the motives and thus the strats for WvW might. I am beginning to think it is too late.

Well, transfers are killing a lot of communities. On SBI, we got that huge influx of people last summer, and as they just left, they took with them a lot of people who had been here since launch. I wonder how many of these guilds that transfered to t1 and t2 will implode during the season as the losses start to mount.

Some of the people aren’t quitting WvW, they just moved over to EoTM, which helps empty out the maps as well.

I feel for you SoR, I hardly see anyone one from your server in WvW when I am in SBI, DB, or even SoR BL. I hope you guys get settled into a tier sometime soon.

Zanshin.5379:

The higher your server is ranked, the more tickets you get.
Yeah, people will transfer but NOT to the lower ranked servers.

I don’t believe this is true. For instance the bottom of gold will be getting around 1/2 the rewards that top silver will be getting. Ditto for bottom of silver versus top of bronze.

Free transfers are good for the low servers, I just hope people have learned their lesson about stacking and bandwagoning, it never ends well.

Ashadow.6874:

Tired of the current state of your WvW?

Want to move to a new server but can’t afford it, and you also enjoy WvW?

Well get ready…

-

All transfers to the rank 13, 14 and 15 servers (exact servers to be announced) will be FREE before WvW Season 2.

So everyone get your mouses ready and topple Silver League! The prizes at the top of the Silver League will be the same for those in Gold and Bronze.

And all three of those servers (whichever they end up being) will likely be where all the good fights in Silver League will be coming from.

If you are on a server you are wanting to transfer away from. Good money (free) says this is where you will want to be.

Good luck SBI/BP and DB or possibly FA. The horde is coming for you, and their transfers will be strong.

Free isn’t good enough. You’ll have to actually pay me to transfer to those servers.

Implement a mercenary system or something.

BlackBeard.2873:

I’m not advocating for Kaineng, especially b/c they aren’t my server (that would be AR, which is also free!), but don’t punish the few loyalists who are still there. The “kittens” who abused the system and gave Kaineng that rep are probably no longer even on the server, so don’t spit in the faces of the people left whom have committed none of those sins.

I don’t think it is fair but a lot of “old timers” really dislike the Kaineng brand. I am sure their current lot of players make for a fine server.

As for AR they will always have my reverence as a server. We were locked into a tier with them and EBay for months and they fought fiercely with some of the best skirmishers/roamers in the game at that time. That tier was an incredible skirmish tier with EBay skirmishers in their prime and AR with a crazy good amount of sPvP’rs coming into WvW. The huge population imbalance sucked and was a big reason AR fell to the bottom. Had BP been in the 3rd slot in that tier caught between two substantially more populated servers for months, I suspect the same would have become of us (and may still).

Deli.1302:

azizul.8469:

alright everyone, transfer to CD, for free, and we’ll be silver league champion !

Isn’t CD the server that has imploded a whopping four times?

lol yup…..

CD has lost guilds but you know what? We are in the same exact position we were in months ago right at the start of season 1 even after losing over half a dozen guilds. CD will never die.

Aitadis.8269:

CD has lost guilds but you know what? We are in the same exact position we were in months ago right at the start of season 1 even after losing over half a dozen guilds.

Yes, but if your competitors are also bleeding guilds to T1/T2 – and I’m fairly sure that applies to pretty much everyone south of Dragonbrand these days – then that’s not really saying much.

Grav.3568:

Aitadis.8269:

CD has lost guilds but you know what? We are in the same exact position we were in months ago right at the start of season 1 even after losing over half a dozen guilds.

Yes, but if your competitors are also bleeding guilds to T1/T2 – and I’m fairly sure that applies to pretty much everyone south of Dragonbrand these days – then that’s not really saying much.

Both of you are wrong. The reason CD has stayed in the same position since Season 1 was because all 4 mass exoduses happened before it.

Good luck to servers 11 and 12, to the bottom we go……

Liston.9708:

Good luck to servers 11 and 12, to the bottom we go……

YB had a good ride in the last league system. If we do plummet we can do it together.

Why free only for 13-15, and 20-24 and not 16-19? What’s up with 16-19?

Jeff.5139:

Why free only for 13-15, and 20-24 and not 16-19? What’s up with 16-19?

I guess they dont want people to bandwagon for easy bronze server wins, even tho we still lack population like the rest of bronze.

Jeff.5139:

Why free only for 13-15, and 20-24 and not 16-19? What’s up with 16-19?

16-19 are top tier of bronze league…..

you basically stomp every server there

I think this is a terrible policy. With the guilds BP/YB have lost/are losing, I suspect they’re actually competitive with HoD/CD, maybe even a bit weaker. Yet, due to the terrible RNG, BP/YB don’t have enough time to lose ratings, so if guilds do bandwagon to 13-15, BP/YB will be hit the hardest.

Moreover, I’m also against this as someone on IoJ (currently rank 10). We worked our kitten off post-Leagues to climb the ranks, and now we risk getting screwed over by free transfers. I understand the rationale, but Anet needs to look beyond Glicko ratings before deciding to blindly make 13-15 free.

mango.9267:

We worked our kitten off post-Leagues to climb the ranks

yet you seem to forget what being 13-15 was like during the league.

it’s all about degrees. no one wants a kaineng-like invasion of their server that destroys the pre-existing culture/community.. but getting an extra hundred or so players and some additional coverage could go a long way to making those 7 weeks of non-stop outnumbered a bit more bearable.

mango.9267:

I think this is a terrible policy. With the guilds BP/YB have lost/are losing, I suspect they’re actually competitive with HoD/CD, maybe even a bit weaker. Yet, due to the terrible RNG, BP/YB don’t have enough time to lose ratings, so if guilds do bandwagon to 13-15, BP/YB will be hit the hardest.

Moreover, I’m also against this as someone on IoJ (currently rank 10). We worked our kitten off post-Leagues to climb the ranks, and now we risk getting screwed over by free transfers. I understand the rationale, but Anet needs to look beyond Glicko ratings before deciding to blindly make 13-15 free.

BP/YB are where they are because of the coverage they have. CD and HoD have very little coverage during NA EST 12-7pm. The free transfers will help bolster those timezones up (hopefully) so we can compete fairly with BP/YB/Isle of AC’s. I have no doubt CD can win in ZvZ battles against higher servers in our tier but with the way PPT is and scoring there is no way in hell we would be able to compete for score. We would have some pretty epic fights to say the least at night but during the day you would karma train our BL and side of EBG with minimal efforts. This is to make it fair for those servers who lost people to Tier 1 and 2.

Good luck in Season 2 everyone!

Nuzt.7894:

Free transfers are good for the low servers, I just hope people have learned their lesson about stacking and bandwagoning, it never ends well.

You mean like being rewarded with Edge of the Mists so that waiting in queues isn’t such an unpleasant problem?

Zanshin.5379:

The higher your server is ranked, the more tickets you get.
Yeah, people will transfer but NOT to the lower ranked servers.

The only way to do this so that it won’t matter and people will be happy to be on lower-tiered servers is to differentiate the reward tiers through skins and other mechanically irrelevant differentiators that have no real value in the game. As soon as they give better rewards to the winners, the incentive is to stack to the top.

Andrew Clear.1750:

etrigan.4213:

So basically server stacking/coverage will define what rewards you get….

Wonderful.

Honestly, just a few mediocre weeks from you guys, and you can shaft DB into the gold league…

Oh wait, didn’t you do that the last time? Well, you wont have any competition in silver this time around, unless their are mass transfers into t5.

Yah you’re right dude. We totally paid SoR to implode so that DB could leach ratings from them. :P

Berk.8561:

Nuzt.7894:

Free transfers are good for the low servers, I just hope people have learned their lesson about stacking and bandwagoning, it never ends well.

You mean like being rewarded with Edge of the Mists so that waiting in queues isn’t such an unpleasant problem?

No, what I mean is when ever people stack/bandwagon they climb the ranks and all leave as soon as they hit a wall that requires them to play vs. just outnumbering.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

mango.9267:

We worked our kitten off post-Leagues to climb the ranks

yet you seem to forget what being 13-15 was like during the league.

it’s all about degrees. no one wants a kaineng-like invasion of their server that destroys the pre-existing culture/community.. but getting an extra hundred or so players and some additional coverage could go a long way to making those 7 weeks of non-stop outnumbered a bit more bearable.

No I’m sure he doesn’t forget. It’s great NSP is potentially getting some transfers. He’s not saying the transfers won’t help some servers, he’s just saying the way they’re going about it is going to affect some servers negatively. He’s thinking beyond the season, which is what they should be doing too. The negative effects are a natural result of inducing huge population swings, immediately before you start a tournament based on rank…..it’s stupid. Fix populations in between Seasons.

It is about degrees, but the issue is transfers won’t be regulated in any way that I’m aware of.

Trying to balance things up for leagues through a server-wide game of musical chairs is a hopeless exercise in gem store sales. Matches in Season 1 were a joke, in particular when matched with servers outside of respective tiers. Server populations have gotten even more polarized since then, so let’s all do the math on that one.

This approach to server population management is kind of like what not to do when a vehicle goes into an uncontrolled slide. When your car goes into a slide, the thing you don’t want to do is throw the steering wheel completely in the opposing direction to correct the slide. That’s called overcompensation and tends to keep your vehicle fish-tailing. Anet is attempting a similar overcompensation here, but the car is already off the road.

I don’t understand the logic behind this, the Rank 20-24 makes sense for free transfers but why give 13-15 free transfers ? All I see this accomplishing is giving 13-15 more people while the bottom ranks who truly need the transfers get ignored by most which leaves them in the same position they are in now.

I guess they base it on a simple logic that…
1. These servers are the bottom of their league
2. Better rewards are given to the winner of the league
3. If players are to transfer, they would like to transfer to the server with highest chance of winning the league.
4. If many servers are given “free” transfer including the potential winner of the league, then, most likely the people will transfer to the potential winner than the loser.
5. They don’t want people to be transferring to the top well-to-do servers, so they impose a high cost.
6. They want people to spread out yet they don’t want people to flood the potential winner server so they come up with the these costings.
7. Any server lower than 16 might or might not join the 13-15 but even if they do join, they only force these server WvW population to go closer towards 20-24. As a matter of fact, 20-24 might actually end up the winner of the league because they are too having free transfers, who know some guilds with guts from top servers might transfer down.

Nuzt.7894:

No, what I mean is when ever people stack/bandwagon they climb the ranks and all leave as soon as they hit a wall that requires them to play vs. just outnumbering.

I misunderstood your point. Sorry.

What I’ve seen on ET was that the wall we hit was less about having to play vs. outnumbering and and more about hitting the point were we were greatly outnumbered or couldn’t close coverage gaps. I wouldn’t accuse either of the two big WvW guilds that we recently lost of being afraid or unable to play and fight rather than outnumbering their opponents. They were doing that. I’m disappointed that two of our largest WvW guilds left, but I wouldn’t accuse either one of them running away from true fights because the going got too tough for them. A rising server hits a point where they hit a server with enough population that allows that server to field multiple times their number or have strong coverage during times when they don’t and they can’t win.

Now, you can certainly argue that there is still a lot a server can do with inferior numbers to do well in points and as a defense-oriented player, I’d agree with you. The problem there is that WvW rules make defense a pretty thankless task and I need to spend time in PvE or zerging in WvW in order to subsidize the gold I lose on upgrades and the time I spend running dolyaks and defending towers and camps where I get almost nothing in return. It’s hard to convince anyone but a true masochist to supply, siege-up, scout, and refresh to hold on to things when the game offers almost no reward for doing it. And it’s incredibly frustrating to spend a weekend morning and afternoon getting and keeping a set of towers and camps fully upgraded only to come back after leaving for a few hours to find they’ve all been flipped because nobody that was on at the time was paying attention to defense. We lost a fully upgraded keep that way this weekend.

For the records, I kinda like the style play down at the bottom. I’m not looking to fill up all the servers for Tier 1 style play. What I’d like to see are solutions that mitigate the problems of population imbalances and make undefended upgraded towers a little tougher than a job that a few players can pull off on their own in 10 minutes or so.

Let me rephrase that, I understand what they are attempting to do, I do not understand the logic of opening the free transfers at the same time. The truth of the matter is most if not all free transfers will go to 13-15 because people already believe everything in bronze is a ghost town. I don’t think 20-24 will see many transfers at all, most are already against moving down whether its free or not, 20-24 are going to need significant transfers to put them on par with the top of bronze.

I agree to a point, I don’t want to pull a Kain and storm up to T2 or where ever it was they crashed and burned. I would like to see some more numbers to get to T5-T4 where we once were. I found those Tiers were the sweet spot, not to zergy (other then reset) not a whole lotta night capping, and usually all around fun/relatively even match ups.

Andrew Clear.1750:

Can’t wait to see which t4 servers are going to tank on purpose to get into t5 for thos free transfers. It really would be a smart move, so they could get some population back for when the leagues are done.

T4 is ahead in points by almost 200 points so tanking that hard in one week wont happen. They can try but it wont. My interest is seeing if NSP or SF takes that last spot less then a point difference in prediction.

oh wow thats pretty exciting actually

let nsp into bronze this time, they got the butt end of silver in s1!

Nuzt.7894:

No, what I mean is when ever people stack/bandwagon they climb the ranks and all leave as soon as they hit a wall that requires them to play vs. just outnumbering.

Can’t really defend what happened with KN since they spent like 2 months climbing the ranks and murdering everyone, even doing ultimate scrub things like siege camping map spawns on a regular basis.

But…every server that does not have a large native population of EU, Oceanic and / or SEA players eventually figures out that you can never buy enough coverage to compete with the higher servers that do. Maybe you convince a guild or two to come with fine words or help with the cost, but when they get there, they have a smaller number of players on the server to recruit and grow, or even replace just attrition, and few other guilds to have fun with.

Coverage causes every server hits a wall where no amount of enthusiasm or hard fighting can push you higher.

Nuzt.7894:

Let me rephrase that, I understand what they are attempting to do, I do not understand the logic of opening the free transfers at the same time. The truth of the matter is most if not all free transfers will go to 13-15 because people already believe everything in bronze is a ghost town. I don’t think 20-24 will see many transfers at all, most are already against moving down whether its free or not, 20-24 are going to need significant transfers to put them on par with the top of bronze.

the difference between the top and bottom of bronze is approximately 3 large dedicated active guilds and 25~100 inconsistent but active pugs from all time zones

Three large guild is 40+ each, add in 25-100 Pugs, that means on the low end of things thats a difference of 145 active players in WvW (keep in mind that the low end using only 40 from three guilds and 25 pugs) thats a significant number down here at the bottom. We have fought your servers so we are well aware of the population difference.

eh i was just sayin…

if say a group of people in t2 wanted to “win”, thats about what theyd need to pubstomp bronze.

Indeed, I really don’t want to win because of transfers. When AR fights SF and FC we have a great time the battles are epic for all sides but we just can’t keep up with the PPT/Coverage. I would like to have enough to make these matches a down to the wire in all aspects. Let’s face it even if you guys enjoy the fighting spirit we have, you know your going to beat us in the point game.

Deli.1302:

Grav.3568:

Aitadis.8269:

CD has lost guilds but you know what? We are in the same exact position we were in months ago right at the start of season 1 even after losing over half a dozen guilds.

Yes, but if your competitors are also bleeding guilds to T1/T2 – and I’m fairly sure that applies to pretty much everyone south of Dragonbrand these days – then that’s not really saying much.

Both of you are wrong. The reason CD has stayed in the same position since Season 1 was because all 4 mass exoduses happened before it.

No, we lost 2 major guilds that were good people [KA] and [Tofu] post seasons. We lost a couple havoc groups that were kinda there sometimes and kinda not. that was post season for CD. The gap between t3 and t4 is huge, t4/t5 probably not as bad. These were home grown guilds which stung a bit.

The guilds we lost pre season weren’t really home grown, they came in taught us some new tricks and gave us an umph.

Honestly we could do with some transfers, but not many. We direly need 1-2 wvw focused small guilds (10-20) to be able stay around the T3-4 mark. Yeah, we may get 40 man blobs on reset night, but other then that its usually pretty decent. We’re fighting uphill at the moment but despite that, we keep showing up.

Straegen.2938:

YB had a good ride in the last league system. If we do plummet we can do it together.

In the end it only worked against us making 2nd place in Silver League. The reward for putting in overtime and giving our all was a silly reward chest and having to face stronger servers for months afterwards, causing all remaining WvW guilds to eventually leave for greener pastures. Those of us who are left on YB won’t be able to repeat the success of season 1, and i think there are very few people who actually care what result we will get. Season 1 killed WvW on YB.

So, what do i think about free transfers…
Free transfers for certain ranks means absolutely nothing, as no one will go to these servers. WvW guilds are transferring up, not down, because the tournament is not an important factor for their decision to transfer. They go to servers that give them a chance to be competitive and get the fights they want after the tournament has long ended.

If anything this tournament will accelerate the trend of some servers getting more stacked and all others turning into ghost towns in WvW.

COME TO DARKHEAVEN!!

Dont go to Snarkhaven