Guild Wars 2

So, I came out pretty hard against Anet for this last round of linkings. When Mag places 1st, and is in T1 for weeks, I don’t understand how they can continue to get a link. But this is my laymans point of view. There’s lots of things going on behind the scenes regarding population and timezones that I’m not, and can not, be aware of.

It’s evident that even though Maguma still got a link, their new one is much weaker. This means that they would have been even worse off had they not had a link at all, and would have fell quickly down to T2, and possibly lower. Who knows. So, there’s more thought going on to these re-links.

I think one of the issues that I’m having, and others, is the apparent unfairness of these links. There’s lots of manual manipulations that Anet is doing. Whether it’s for better or worse is not the issue of this topic, but that it exists. Add to this the additions and subtractions of glicko. This also frustrates many poeple and makes their efforts in WvW seem deminished. What’s the point of trying to win if Anet is just going to negate that with a few keystrokes?

I understand that they’re trying to maintain a balance and prevent crazy volitility with the matchups. This would also not be as fun, as there would be a dead server falling in the ranks or an overpowered server dominating their way up.

Another big downside to the links is that as some servers get used to playing with their allies, they get re-linked and have to go through the whole process of making new friends, finding out who are guilds/commanders they like running with, who they get along with, etc. Some host servers are just, flat out, unfriendly, from what I’ve heard. That can’t be fun either.

It seems to me that the easiest and fairest solution is to just eliminate the 12 lowest populated servers. Offer them a free, one time use transfer to an un-full server.

Let the players go back to determining what level of activity they want. Let the players decide who they want to play with. This will also create less work for Anet as they don’t have to do this relinking. It will also benefit Anets perception as they won’t have to be the bad guy for apparent unfair matchups and deal with the kneejerk pushback from players like me who just don’t understand what’s going on.

Sure, this will kitten a lot of people off as the lower 12 servers will loose their identity. However, it will create an opportunity for them to find a new identity and have that aspect of the game to fight for. As of now, there is almost none of this.

I honestly don’t know why there’s been so much resistance to merging servers in the past. There really wasn’t enough population to fill 24 servers to begin with in WvW, but it was neccessary for the other aspects of the game. Since launch, GW2 has switched to a megaserver system where pve and pvp don’t depend on seperate servers. WvW is the only aspect of the game that still utilizes this. If there wasn’t a population to fill all aspects of the game at launch, why are we still using 24 servers four years later? All games have attrition. All games that use seperate server systems end up condensing them. It’s about time Anet gets around to doing so.

I just answered this in another post as well, but as short as I can make it:

Merging servers means we have static population on each server.

Player being players will as always move about an up to the bigger servers.

And the whole cycle of stacking servers will begin again, servers wanting to fill their coverage, wants the best fight guilds, wants a large enough militia etc. And people that goes there because they hear it’s great, or wants to be carried etc.

Byt merging to a STATIC 12 servers (NA), we would re-create all the same problems we’ve had with the server system since launch.

It would honestly be better to move to EOTM system than merging … But I still prefer linking to either, since it allows ANet to adjust the population by un-link/link servers to compensate. But let’s be fair, WvW was never competitive, and never will be. Trying to force it to be Competitive is like driving a WV beetle in a F1 race.

Anet cant merge or else the servers would go up and down tiers only by pure gameplaying without interference of Anet. We all know that anet is now using the system to make masses move from server to server and removing that will make them lose transfer gem money.
Lets face it the game as become a pay to win (transfer) and they are using wvw population to pay their pve updates

“Let the players go back to determining what level of activity they want.”

Sure, so we go back to the kitten state we had before. Great Idea.
Putting decisions in the hand of the players already proved to be bad. That’s exactly why there is so much crying about the poll results everytime it turns out to be what they didn’t wanted.

kefro.9312:

Lets face it the game as become a pay to win (transfer) and they are using wvw population to pay their pve updates

I don’t see how there can be pay-to-win in a game mode where you get nothing by “winning”. But sure, keep on the tinfoil hat kefro.

So far, a couple of you stated that the previous system was bad, that poeple will gravitate to the larger servers. That’s just flat out false.

Not everyone wanted to be in T1. Many actually preferred T2 as that was more of the “fight guild” GvG mentality. There were others who didn’t even want that, and they were in the lower tiers, and chose to stay there. That only occurred because the players tried to keep things that way.

At the current rate, it will be impossible for Anet to get metrics on full servers as people can just transfer more cheaply to a lower, cheaper server. What we have now is essentially the same structure as merged servers, i.e. we’re playing among twelve servers, but the control is out of our hands and being put into Anets. Whether that’s good or bad, I’m not sure. We’ve been playing with this now for what, eight months? From my perspective, it’s nice to have different people to fight, but I’d rather it be back in control of the community.

anet should blow up the servers

I think the best future for WvW is always a true megaserver system. But I understand it is hard to implement with this 24/7 matches.

Server linking is a middle ground between megaserver everything and merging servers, which I actually quite like. It gives Anet some control of balancing population.

Permanent merging servers will likely create big imbalance as time goes on. We have witnessed time and time again, if you let the population shift control into players’ hand completely. The players will always make sure things going into more imbalanced state.

This is just like the hot-join pvp. 90% of games just end up in hugely imbalanced state with losing players either quit or join the winning side. This is what WvW is like on a large scale.

Exciton.8942:

Permanent merging servers will likely create big imbalance as time goes on.

History shows this is true. You and I both recall the meat grinder of several T4-sized servers as they got sucked up into a T3 match against whichever of the four T1.5/T2-sized servers rolled a T3 match while none could roll a T1 match. Permanent merging is a terrible idea.

Or we could just unlink all and have an open moving period where certain servers are open for free transfers to move and then have the system that after each matchup one team moves up and one moves down, to create different matchups. Some people are just sick of the blobs and enjoyed playing in the lower tiers with less populations on them.

The linking is actually better than the merge, because every two month there is a normalization of the wvw population that makes the opponents equally strong and gives them an opportunity to have better balanced fights in all tiers.

People will always change servers if they want to, some because they want to play with friends or in new guilds, some because they want to play in different tier. We cannot change that. But the linking helps with keeping the servers balanced. A merge wouldn’t do that, since it cannot be changed again.

I posted this in another thread, but it relates.

Why merge or link servers?

Why not just re-design WvW to use a Modified World Guesting & let players pick which server they want to fight on?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World#Guesting

There’s an Alternative Solution that uses a Modified World Guesting tailored for WvW & is a better Long Term solution over Merging or Linking for both EU & NA players…imho