Guild Wars 2

In fact, I suspect they may be beginning to do what they are intended to do. We’re seeing guilds move off the high pop server with long queues in favor of other servers.

What is a problem is not locking people out of WvW after a transfer. You want shorter queues? Sure, you can transfer for free, just do it on Thursday or Friday before the reset or you’ll miss a few days of WvW.

Nabrok.9023:

In fact, I suspect they may be beginning to do what they are intended to do. We’re seeing guilds move off the high pop server with long queues in favor of other servers.

What is a problem is not locking people out of WvW after a transfer. You want shorter queues? Sure, you can transfer for free, just do it on Thursday or Friday before the reset or you’ll miss a few days of WvW.

The all out free transfers are not helping and in fact hurt server communities. It makes it a lot harder for servers to form bonds & strategies with the guilds on said server for WvW. It also throws scores off and cause pops to shift greatly.

If A.Net really wanted transfers to even out the pop they would direct it by allowing transfers off the higher pop servers but not to them.

Overall server population is not necessarily related to WvW population. A lot of people in this part of the forum seem to forget that.

Transfers are not a problem? Go tell that to the die hard HoD players that are sticking it out.

Nabrok.9023:

Overall server population is not necessarily related to WvW population. A lot of people in this part of the forum seem to forget that.

Can I have some of what your smoking? Please do explain how server pop has nothing to do with WvW. I will try to not laugh when I read it.

Hate to break it to you but this is exactly the problem, you just havent seen the effects of what you are talking about yet.
Servers like IoJ, JQ, SoS, BG are seeing influxes to their servers. Just like HoD did and we all know what happened to HoD. JQ had three guilds xfer off recently due to queue times
These 4 above servers are going to feel the queue weight
Problem is these guilds are just as bad as the individuals, they are all swapping together to the same servers, which I don’t understand because again the transfers are going to create the issues on those servers now. From what I understand all 3 former JQ guilds all went to SoS DB guilds kinda went SoS and BG

Transfers create a cycle, which we haven’t completely seen yet, but JQ finally gets 1 rank and poof out goes 3 guilds replaced by bandwagoners. There is only so much frustration people can take if they log onto 2+ hour queues.

Now if guilds actually spread out, which is what I would imagine ANet was thinking, all would be good but it is doing alot more harm then good

Actually I am starting to think Nabrok is just trying to troll. Either that are he is clueless.

Mog.1589:

Nabrok.9023:

Overall server population is not necessarily related to WvW population. A lot of people in this part of the forum seem to forget that.

Can I have some of what your smoking? Please do explain how server pop has nothing to do with WvW. I will try to not laugh when I read it.

He does speak truth. Alot of servers are full and have barely any WvW presence. What the free transfers is messing up is the ranking, so there may never be the close fights that were intended.

You are incorrect. And a red post on this topic from Anet means the “data” they are collecting on the matter doesn’t properly reflect whats going on.

It’s the difference in being connected to your community through the community and being connected through a spreadsheet.

Yes some guilds and players are migrating to lower population servers. But from listening to other players, the majority of the ones doing that are transferring for PVE to get out of spammy map chat, or zergs on dynamic events. They just want a less crowded environment. Lower queue times for PvP is a perk but not the determining factor.

Now, from the last two WvW matches rounds we have had…
There was a guild and alliance migration during Dragonbrand’s match with Blackgate. Even a spread-sheet will show that those transfers won Blackgate that match. Overnight they went from a 50k deficit to a 100k lead and owned 98% of the over-all map.

This weeks match, three WvW guilds, tired of losing to zergs and transfers, transferred themselves to Sea of Sorrows. Just to be on the winning team.

These situations are being echoed on nearly every server. If you lose a match, expect your population to drop. Why put effort in to doing better next time when you can make the same or half the effort on the server that you know can win?

As the OP sort of suggested: If you transfer, you shouldn’t be allowed to participate in the current match. Period. There is really not one single reason to have been allowing this that makes all of the negatives we are experiencing worth it. Migration, trolling, griefing, harassment. This shouldn’t have been allowed on launch day, yet alone two months later.

But this still wont solve the server abandonment problems people are seeing and experiencing. We would just see it happening less and usually with moves to the top tier servers, so players know they can wait a week and win their next match.

- WvW current match lockout for transfers
- No free transfers
- and if Anet is serious about populating med/low servers, lock out the servers that are at capacity until populations stabilize. Instead of letting players wait until 3am to transfer when a shard is high instead of full and bloating an already bloated sever.
- post a date on the login news section to let people know the date this is going in to effect. Three months to figure out how to play with friends and organize each other on a server has been plenty.

Mog.1589:

Nabrok.9023:

Overall server population is not necessarily related to WvW population. A lot of people in this part of the forum seem to forget that.

Can I have some of what your smoking? Please do explain how server pop has nothing to do with WvW. I will try to not laugh when I read it.

Try transfering to CD. It’s full most of the time, if you want on you have to try at odd hours and hope for a “high”. And yet we only have WvW queues on Friday nights. This is what I mean. NOT EVERYBODY PLAYS WVW.

You do realize that free transfers are how servers got overpopulated to begin with, right? You’re basically saying that free transfers are alleviating a problem that was caused by free transfers in the first place.

It’s good that some people are spreading out, but it’s generating other problems. Certain servers are receiving a higher influx of players than others, so while they’re spreading out from HoD and ET, and maybe some others, they’re still somewhat centralizing on a small handful of servers. The bigger problem it’s generating is that the recipient servers are dominating their current match-ups due to the influx, making the current server ratings completely irrelevant in the determination of the match-ups.

I fail to see how paid server transfers which will likely cost about the same as 1 (maybe 2) month subscription for any other MMO will make the slightest bit of difference if WvW is not also locked out for the duration of the current match. That is the problem.

Locking out servers completely is not an option. Again, not everybody plays WvW.

Nabrok.9023:

I fail to see how paid server transfers which will likely cost about the same as 1 (maybe 2) month subscription for any other MMO will make the slightest bit of difference if WvW is not also locked out for the duration of the current match. That is the problem.

Locking out servers completely is not an option. Again, not everybody plays WvW.

What you say is the problem is a problem, but it’s not the only problem. If you fail to see how taking something free and applying a cost will mitigate the problem then I don’t know what to tell you. It’s pretty simple, really. You take something free, apply a cost, and a percentage of players will opt out of using it.

Nevron.9413:

The bigger problem it’s generating is that the recipient servers are dominating their current match-ups due to the influx, making the current server ratings completely irrelevant in the determination of the match-ups.

That is an issue, but the ratings are moving fast and servers are likely to move up and down 3 to 4 places in this match. It’ll balance out.

And yes, we have groups of guilds/alliances moving together, but I don’t think we are seeing every single guild on one server moving to the same other server (which would be pointless). I think this is fine, we don’t need everything distributed equally among all servers. We just need to have groups of 3 to 6 servers that are roughly even.

Nabrok.9023:

Nevron.9413:

The bigger problem it’s generating is that the recipient servers are dominating their current match-ups due to the influx, making the current server ratings completely irrelevant in the determination of the match-ups.

That is an issue, but the ratings are moving fast and servers are likely to move up and down 3 to 4 places in this match. It’ll balance out.

And yes, we have groups of guilds/alliances moving together, but I don’t think we are seeing every single guild on one server moving to the same other server (which would be pointless). I think this is fine, we don’t need everything distributed equally among all servers. We just need to have groups of 3 to 6 servers that are roughly even.

It has not balanced and in fact keeps getting worse each week. What is happening is a bunch of guilds join a server bring that server to tier 1 then due to long queue times, Bandwagoneers, or just kitten and giggle drop down a tier or two, and start all over again. This is a process that is being repeated over and over, and the main reason is free transfer.

Nabrok.9023:

Locking out servers completely is not an option. Again, not everybody plays WvW.

So what? Not all of the transfers are to play WvW. Winning servers get realm bonuses. I have known players that jump to the winning servers so they get an extra orichalcum from each node. And I would bet a shiny nickel that more people like that are transferring than honest to goodness little drops of sunshine PvE and RP players.

What happened to JQ when the HoD wvw alliance split up and moved around? It got completely flooded. Just because people knew it would be the next top server. Do you think all of those transfers were for PvP?

If a server is only listed as not full for three hours in the early morning, then there shouldn’t be any good reason to let 500 more people flood in during that window. It’s full. Other servers are not. So go there. If they did a temp lock-out on full servers, then the lower population servers would see their populations get up to par within a few weeks. Instead of allowing free transfers, hoping people will join them for lower queues, and letting it ruin WvW for months at a time.

Banono.4597:

It has not balanced and in fact keeps getting worse each week. What is happening is a bunch of guilds join a server bring that server to tier 1 then due to long queue times, Bandwagoneers, or just kitten and giggle drop down a tier or two, and start all over again. This is a process that is being repeated over and over, and the main reason is free transfer.

It’s going to be a long process, but every time it happens we’ll probably see more fragmentation of those players transferring.

OK, I’ll admit I perhaps understated the issue of free transfers, but the reason I did so is because I believe the lack of a WvW lockout to be a far more serious problem, and I think addressing that will also address a lot of the problems currently attributed to the free server transfers.

I do agree that free transfers should be removed, with transfer costs scaling to population, but in terms of priorities WvW lockout should come first.

AcidicVision.5498:

Nabrok.9023:

Locking out servers completely is not an option. Again, not everybody plays WvW.

So what? Not all of the transfers are to play WvW. Winning servers get realm bonuses. I have known players that jump to the winning servers so they get an extra orichalcum from each node. And I would bet a shiny nickel that more people like that are transferring than honest to goodness little drops of sunshine PvE and RP players.

What happened to JQ when the HoD wvw alliance split up and moved around? It got completely flooded. Just because people knew it would be the next top server. Do you think all of those transfers were for PvP?

If a server is only listed as not full for three hours in the early morning, then there shouldn’t be any good reason to let 500 more people flood in during that window. It’s full. Other servers are not. So go there. If they did a temp lock-out on full servers, then the lower population servers would see their populations get up to par within a few weeks. Instead of allowing free transfers, hoping people will join them for lower queues, and letting it ruin WvW for months at a time.

Let me revise my comment and say that locking out servers completely is not an option until guesting is implemented (assuming it ever is). There has to be a way for people who picked different servers to be able to play together.

Going a bit off-topic but I wonder how guesting would affect the bonuses? Would you get the bonuses for the server you are guesting on or for your home server or none at all? Hmm, seems like if you get the bonuses for the server you are on it makes the bonuses kind of meaningless.

A long long time ago when WvW information was trickling out:
- you were supposed to pick a home server to represent in WvW
- you could guest to other servers but NOT WvW while guesting
- if you were winning WvW you would get realm bonuses
- you did not get these bonuses while guesting
- If you transferred you COULDN’T PARTICIPATE IN THE CURRENT MATCH

So obviously in the design phase of the mode itself Anet guys knew that it was important to keep people guesting and transferring from being able to jump in WvW to prevent possible abuse.

But now instead we get:
- Unlimited free home server changes
- 24 cool-down (that was only recently implemented)
- Transfers to opposing servers
- Transfers get realm bonuses
- Transfers to full servers during small windows making them full-er.

What happened to that careful intentional design? So guesting wasn’t working right at launch. But the entire awareness of what transfers can do to WvW was just forgotten and the after-effects were allowed to get out of control. I get making allowances to account for a promised feature that isn’t available. I don’t get sacrificing the integrity of an entire game mode to pay for that allowance.

My server before the 2 biggest guilds left had a ton of WvW going on and we did very very well .Now … we struggle we have 0 que timers on wvw maps. We get dominated all day and night due to the fact we have all the good players transfered off. If they made it 10-15$ to transfer it be fine and with all the new people joing and playing every day it will auto balance. They can give new accounts 30 days to transfer 4 times to see what server they like there ould be no issue there. Just Stop this BS of server transfers its killing WVW.

AcidicVision.5498:

A long long time ago when WvW information was trickling out:
- you were supposed to pick a home server to represent in WvW
- you could guest to other servers but NOT WvW while guesting
- if you were winning WvW you would get realm bonuses
- you did not get these bonuses while guesting
- If you transferred you COULDN’T PARTICIPATE IN THE CURRENT MATCH

So obviously in the design phase of the mode itself Anet guys knew that it was important to keep people guesting and transferring from being able to jump in WvW to prevent possible abuse.

But now instead we get:
- Unlimited free home server changes
- 24 cool-down (that was only recently implemented)
- Transfers to opposing servers
- Transfers get realm bonuses
- Transfers to full servers during small windows making them full-er.

What happened to that careful intentional design? So guesting wasn’t working right at launch. But the entire awareness of what transfers can do to WvW was just forgotten and the after-effects were allowed to get out of control. I get making allowances to account for a promised feature that isn’t available. I don’t get sacrificing the integrity of an entire game mode to pay for that allowance.

Yes, it mostly stems from guesting not being available. It’s part of the fundamental design of this game that you have one home server and unlike in other MMOs you can’t have other characters on other servers and with that design you must have some mechanism so that people who rolled on different servers can play together. Unfortunately without guesting this does compromise WvW, but I understand it’s for the greater good of the game overall and should be temporary.

What I don’t understand is why there is still no WvW lockout after transfer.

Unfortunately I don’t think we will ever know. The only response I have seen has been that – and I am paraphrasing – “We have seen data regarding transfers and it all looks great, people are moving away from queues”.

Well, we seen first hand with JQ that’s not the case. Two hour long queues be kitten people sat up all day and night waiting for the window they could slip into that server on. Dragonbrand is full with a 15-30 min queue at peak times and I had people PMing me last week asking what the best time to transfer on was (I think because we were anticipated to beat SoS, before three of our Wvw guilds…::gasp:: TRANSFERRED to the opposing team).

So as far as we know, they think it’s a non-issue.

For all those people who are saying “not everyone pvps” that is cool – we understand – but the point is.. PVP is what is impacted by the free transfers.

1. Announce the end of free transfers (say a week)
2. Take the current rankings of all servers and move to a 3day rotation.
3. After the rankings of the servers even out and we know where everyone stands turn back on 1week matches.

Charge 10$ in gems to server transfer. (oh and fix guesting)

I sincerely doubt that avid WvW players transfer to another server for the PvE.

Since this forum deals with WvW, the statement that free transfers are hurting WvW is probably valid and has nothing to do with the PvE crowd.

Just because a few guilds went to lower pop servers for a challenge, does not make it the norm. Many many many many more pug’s/randoms switch to the winning side, and do so week after week, draining every server, and turning into a snowball effect. Server trasfers need to stop.