Guild Wars 2

There is always talk about balancing server population but never any talk about how exactly population is calculated.

I know there is no hard cap for population. But without this Anet can never know the true activity potential of any server and any given time.

For example, a server that seems inactive for long periods of time may keep their population status superficially lower so they can still recruit and add population, and then during their push weeks they would outnumber their opponents. Given that WvW is won by population this could give some servers an advantage during seasons or other critical times.

Does Anet have a system to keep this type of thing from happening?

It is better than the opposite that was occurring, servers being full with very low WvW activity because of server members who only set foot into WvW once in a blue moon and players unable to recruit new WvW players.

Samples activity levels throughout the day, unknown what constitutes “activity”, uses a smoothing mechanism over a roughly 3-4 week period.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Population-Changes-Are-Coming/page/4#post5324934

Samuel Loretan.8601:

• I agree that asking new players to chose a World before doing anything in the game is odd, now that Worlds are a WvW concept. This isn’t something we can change easily, however, but I’ll keep it in mind if an occasion arises.

This seems to be at the heart of the matter. It may not be easy to change, but it may now be necessary. Disconnecting the WvW entities from the general community will allow the implementation of hard population caps and absolutely should be a part of any WvW 2.0 implementation. The metaserver has rendered the general concept of server meaningless.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

• I won’t detail the way the new algorithm works, because I want to minimize the risk of people trying to game it. That being said, I am confident it is robust against such attempts. It’s not looking at a short period of time, and it’s looking at many aspects of the ways players are interacting with WvW to determine a server population.

Security through obscurity never works. If the game mechanic itself cannot stop someone from gaming the system, the assumption should be that someone will be gaming it. Never underestimate the cleverness of your player base.

problem is just that over night with the server linking beta 1 server went from high to full and has been full ever since = no chance for me to play with my husband. i think this must be a bug as all host servers are full now….