Guild Wars 2

It seems things are hitting critical mass and we are seeing a mass exodus unfolding from high population servers to low pop servers. I know here at BP we’ve suddenly been fielding more queries in the last 2 weeks then the last 2 months. Are other Mid and Lower tier servers noticing the same? For that matter, are upper tier servers getting fond farewells? I’m curious to know if this is an aberration for us or in general something bigger. I am noticing for some reason Gates of Madness (Rank 18) is giving Yaks Bend (Rank 10) a run for its money. Which is surprising. Are we finally realizing tiers are not as important as being able to play WvW without dealing with skill lag and ques?

I would love if there were a mass exodus to lower servers, it would greatly improve the WvW scene in NA.

But I keep a close eye on my home server Dragonbrand, and the 6-7 other top ranked NA servers. We’re still gaining more people from lower tier servers then the few we are losing. The WvW population in general is continuing to migrate upwards and onto fewer and fewer servers.

BP to the best of my knowledge received a transfer guild or two recently, which probably helped boost morale and get even more numbers on the field. But I think overall this is an aberration and not indicative of the higher servers losing people.

Shame. I would love to see some lower ranked servers get more people. I want to see different faces each week to bash in. Does this mean we are in for more complaining threads about ques and skill lag?

Yea, most of the high tier servers are also growing in numbers.

Tier 1 is a lagfest where the server bogs down and many times the only thing you can hit that will work is your 1 attack. Servers can have 70 man zergs on multiple maps. Trust me, it really isn’t very fun.

I see more people leaving this game or transferring down to less laggy wvw.

Since matchups are pretty random what is the point in staying with a stacked Tier 1 server? More skilled fights? Psh, it’s more like who can blob the most players and pvdoor the fastest before the enemy blob of 70 players shows up.

A quarter of the people on T1 servers transferred up anyway and didn’t work their way up so there shouldn’t be much server loyalty from the transfers.

Transferring down seems like the best option. Less lag and less mega blob1 spamming zergs sounds great.

There’s lag in WvW?

Even in rank 22 in Eu we know lags. Mostly because we played against rank 12 servers.
When we got enemies on our rank, we dont know lag. And also queues.

Niko.8901:

Tier 1 is a lagfest where the server bogs down and many times the only thing you can hit that will work is your 1 attack. Servers can have 70 man zergs on multiple maps. Trust me, it really isn’t very fun.

I see more people leaving this game or transferring down to less laggy wvw.

Since matchups are pretty random what is the point in staying with a stacked Tier 1 server? More skilled fights? Psh, it’s more like who can blob the most players and pvdoor the fastest before the enemy blob of 70 players shows up.

A quarter of the people on T1 servers transferred up anyway and didn’t work their way up so there shouldn’t be much server loyalty from the transfers.

Transferring down seems like the best option. Less lag and less mega blob1 spamming zergs sounds great.

The lag really isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be. It usually only happens in 3-way zerg fights, which don’t happen all the time.

Transfer to Vabbi… No lag at all. lol

(That means you to caliburn! Bring WE with you!)

and then i’ll just leave this here for you..

Mada.5319:

Niko.8901:

Tier 1 is a lagfest where the server bogs down and many times the only thing you can hit that will work is your 1 attack. Servers can have 70 man zergs on multiple maps. Trust me, it really isn’t very fun.

I see more people leaving this game or transferring down to less laggy wvw.

Since matchups are pretty random what is the point in staying with a stacked Tier 1 server? More skilled fights? Psh, it’s more like who can blob the most players and pvdoor the fastest before the enemy blob of 70 players shows up.

A quarter of the people on T1 servers transferred up anyway and didn’t work their way up so there shouldn’t be much server loyalty from the transfers.

Transferring down seems like the best option. Less lag and less mega blob1 spamming zergs sounds great.

The lag really isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be. It usually only happens in 3-way zerg fights, which don’t happen all the time.

Agreed. It’s only bad in SM on server reset when you have 3 server blobs fighting for control over that single structure. Otherwise T1 is very much playable.

Yeah, I mean ultimately…I see more people congregating to the top, where servers simply have more coverage…because even if you don’t play for PPT, you have less to worry about with night capping etc. The fights tend to be more even and their are more guilds to fight against on higher tiers at any given moment…until Anet does something about it I don’t think this trend is going to change…

Lots? I don’t know about that. But some trickle down can and will happen for various reasons. BG had a smallish (but very skilled) guild move to BP last month to get away from the blob meta of T1. They liked to run tagless as a smaller ops crew and it can be frustrating when you can get insta-gibbed by a map blob. Blobs come and go in T1 but they do form often enough to frustrate certain types of players and guilds.

As far as skill lag goes, it happens sometimes, but as others have stated here, it’s not as bad as some make it out to be. It really only comes up during large SMC fights and 3-way Garrison fights. Both queues and skill lag can be an issue on reset night but generally disappear by Sunday with random infrequent flare ups here and there throughout the week.

The fact remains that the upper tiers is where players will most reliably find action during the times that they play. Servers with a large base of off-hour players (Oceanic/SEA/EU) will naturally rise to the top tiers due to the ability to score points during those hours, and tend to stay there because that’s where the action is during their play times. I play late NA (9pm server time start) which sometimes bleeds into early Oceanic, and there is always constant action well into the early hours of the morning when I go to bed. I enjoy this personally.

There will always be movement, but a mass exodus is not, and probably won’t happen.

Aeros.2046:

It seems things are hitting critical mass and we are seeing a mass exodus unfolding from high population servers to low pop servers. I know here at BP we’ve suddenly been fielding more queries in the last 2 weeks then the last 2 months. Are other Mid and Lower tier servers noticing the same? For that matter, are upper tier servers getting fond farewells? I’m curious to know if this is an aberration for us or in general something bigger. I am noticing for some reason Gates of Madness (Rank 18) is giving Yaks Bend (Rank 10) a run for its money. Which is surprising. Are we finally realizing tiers are not as important as being able to play WvW without dealing with skill lag and ques?

Actually, opposite. Gate of Madness had two guilds (probably a couple hundred people) transfer to Jade Quarry a week ago.

My theory is this. Before the random match ups, BP/EB/AR were stuck in a tier and DH couldn’t get into it. There was a fair bit of movement between the bottom of tier 6 and tiers 7 and 8 so I think those servers were more or less well ranked against each other. Ever since the random match ups opened up, every time a server below tier 5 is faced with a tier higher than that they’ve gained rating (ie. NSP/DH). GoM has just kept rolling the same tier 6-8 servers though (‘cept AR, which hadn’t much rating left to lose) – this in fact led to the boredom that led people to try the free server transfer (‘cause apparently transferring to Jade Quarry is free, if anyone didn’t know). NSP though kept rollin BP and whoever else and gained rating but we’ve actually beat NSP for the last few times we fought them and lost to DH last time. So if I had to guess, we’d actually be more like rank 16 instead of 18.

Also apparently the population difference between rank 1 and 4 is like a billion times bigger than the population difference between rank 10 and rank 18. How kittened up is that!

Edit: I also think all the servers in the bottom still need to go up in rating, if not in ranking (so servers above rank 15 will bleed rating to them for a while).

I experience game-breaking lag only once a day on average, not as often as others make it out to be. Most of the people who complain about lag aren’t even in tier 1, but just want us to transfer to their server.

Mada.5319:

Niko.8901:

Tier 1 is a lagfest where the server bogs down and many times the only thing you can hit that will work is your 1 attack. Servers can have 70 man zergs on multiple maps. Trust me, it really isn’t very fun.

I see more people leaving this game or transferring down to less laggy wvw.

Since matchups are pretty random what is the point in staying with a stacked Tier 1 server? More skilled fights? Psh, it’s more like who can blob the most players and pvdoor the fastest before the enemy blob of 70 players shows up.

A quarter of the people on T1 servers transferred up anyway and didn’t work their way up so there shouldn’t be much server loyalty from the transfers.

Transferring down seems like the best option. Less lag and less mega blob1 spamming zergs sounds great.

The lag really isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be. It usually only happens in 3-way zerg fights, which don’t happen all the time.

This person speaks the truth. Other than 3 way fights, SM lords room can cause skill lag with 2 server zergs

Aeros.2046:

It seems things are hitting critical mass and we are seeing a mass exodus unfolding from high population servers to low pop servers. I know here at BP we’ve suddenly been fielding more queries in the last 2 weeks then the last 2 months. Are other Mid and Lower tier servers noticing the same? For that matter, are upper tier servers getting fond farewells? I’m curious to know if this is an aberration for us or in general something bigger. I am noticing for some reason Gates of Madness (Rank 18) is giving Yaks Bend (Rank 10) a run for its money. Which is surprising. Are we finally realizing tiers are not as important as being able to play WvW without dealing with skill lag and ques?

GoM actually lost some WvW players (Zombieland, MVP) who left to JQ just before our matchup with Yak+Kain.

I am not aware of any major Upper-Tier transfer to GoM.

However, from what I see, the core of the GoM-Alliance is alive and kicking, and this is how we have some success. GoM-WvW is now a strong and mature community built over the months. I’ve seen it rise from a handful to greater numbers slowly but surely, with the website, dedicated TeamSpeak, weekly meetings and the efforts of many guilds.

Unlike servers mostly made of x-fer guilds, I expect strong-community servers to have more and more success over time, as they slowly grow a stable base of dedicated players.

Strong community servers are also less affected by transfers or mass-exodus, because the core-players within their community stick together, have server pride and don’t think grass is greener on the other side. Some join, some leave, but the server’s strength is somewhat stable.

• * *

It would indeed be great if the population would spread evenly in NA, but we still see the transfers to the upper-servers happening, and I don’t think it will ever stop.

However, great communities exist in the mid-lower tier servers and they can offer a lot of challenge, as they will often fight against bigger foes, and can still have fun and success with good coordination and communication.

I’ve lost many friends over the past few months. They’ve just gotten bored of the game and stopped playing. This is all anecdotal but it feels like the overall player base is shrinking (maybe not pve but wvw feels like it is). Consequently, more people are moving to stack the top servers because they are searching for groups to play with and against.

Avatar of Belle.9623:

I’ve lost many friends over the past few months. They’ve just gotten bored of the game and stopped playing. This is all anecdotal but it feels like the overall player base is shrinking (maybe not pve but wvw feels like it is). Consequently, more people are moving to stack the top servers because they are searching for groups to play with and against.

Sadly this is so true and have noticed and experienced it myself, The constant PVE patches (which tbh are garbage) are not enough to keep people playing this game.

Gw2 needs substantial end-game and sadly that is withering away with the constant neglect, It has become stale and boring.

“queries” and “ques”? Is queue really that hard of a word?

BG and TC hit full server population status again. Thus, I’d have to say no, people aren’t dropping from the top.

Seigfried.5938:

I experience game-breaking lag only once a day on average, not as often as others make it out to be.

QFT

One thing people forget is even if Guilds drop from tier 1 servers, there are a lot of guilds that like playing together and will follow each other. 1 major guild could end up bring 2 or 3 smaller guilds with them shifting power to a different server. You might as well get used to having a few stacked servers. If its not BG and SoR it will be some one else. There will always be one top server and other server recruiting to beat them.