Guild Wars 2

There’s been a lot of talk about megaservers in WvW. I’ll make no secret of the fact that I’m very much against the idea, but it would probably help increase the number of players per map.

However before megaserver is implemented in WvW there are a number of issues that would need to be addressed. Here are a few that spring to mind:

1 A guild group decide to play WvW. The first 4 get into instance A and the others into instance B.
The current megaserver system in PvE tries (sometimes successfully) to put guildies together, but the odds are higher than it may put your whole group into a new instance in order to do so. Whether that instance then fills up depends on other players joining. In PvE this doesn’t matter because you have events to do and stuff to kill, in WvW it would matter – a lot.

2. You’re enjoying a good game in WvW and some of the opponents leave. The map is now below the population threshold so you get a “map closing” message and the chance to move to a more populated map.
You either stay and do what all the “night capping” complaints are about or you take a chance on the megaserver putting you into a map that has other players that will stay too (look at all the threads about lost progress in HoT maps). If you move all your gains in the current map instance become void as the map closes. Any megaserver system for WvW would have much more trouble balancing the player population across three teams, and map closures would have much more impact on players than it already does in PvE.

3. You join a WvW map to cap stuff, for example for a daily achievement and find the commanders on the map are leading groups in PPK. Or conversely you join for the fights and find that map is PPT based and the commanders are more interested in capping stuff. Both sorts of play styles are valid and are currently catered for, albeit badly at times.
WvW megaserver would need at least a specific LFG system to try to put like minded players together, or perhaps a dedicated PPK map and a PPT map – but this would be moving away from the way megaserver works. As a minimum players should have some sort of choice as to the instance they join.

In short, as things stand at the moment all a megaserver system is likely to do is turn WvW into EotM 2 (across 4 maps instead of one).

We want something better than this that caters for fights and capping, with small parties and larger groups. I’m not at all convinced that megaservers can do this.

Yufi it deppends how megaserver is introduced to the game, if they just by magic make servers a megaserver without changes, yes that will happen.

The game needs to “evolve” much and change by alot to make megaserver a clever option, just how the game works now, it would be a awfull move.

In my opinion the population balance never were the most pressing issue. WvW post HoT release suffer from way more serious problems than that.

And apparently Anet are currently focusing on 2 things, population imbalance and wvw rewards. 2 things that isn’t even on my top 10 list of things that would need an emergency fix.

Remaking it into yet another EotM would be the final nail in the coffin for wvw.

I’ve been on Fsp since launch. And we who has been playing it for a while know who’s who on the server. Which commander is always yoloing, who has the best tactics, who always ppt.

We know who we want to be in subsquad with when playing a frontline guard. Who the best scouts are.

We know how the different servers are playing, How it is to fight Deso or Sfr. We also know which servers always run instead of taking the fight even if they have equal numbers. Which servers always go and hide in SM or run for the choke instead of taking it to open field.

This is why I personally play wvw. For the server vs server feature. This can be said a million times, but we just need the alpine borderlands back. Then Anet can work on the other solutions. Just drop everything, and bring back our old borderlands and let us have some fun again.

Then we can talk about the rest of things that doesnt work.

There are 4 ways they could go to address imbalance:

1. Megaserver as Yuffi described above: If anet could somehow keep the matchups guild based (rank and populate guilds based on activity and numbers in WvW) it would help but the constant opening and closing of instances would cause problems. And say goodbye to any meaningful TS based coordination on anything above guild level. Essentially EOTM 2.0

2. Shrink the number of servers: Look at overall popualation and redraw the lines. This would create quite a mess with server based resources (like TS etc…) and relationships and would not address what appears to be a continuously shrinking population.

3. Server alliances – Match up low population servers with high population servers. This would retain server relationships and resources (although the allied servers would still have challenges communicating with each other).

4. Leave the servers alone and provide larger buffs to outnumbered servers: If a server is outnumbered 2-1 or 3-1 they should be given huge damage and armor buffs to make it a fair fight. Buffs could be managed based on map population.

I think #3 would spark the most interest. The dynamic of cooperating with a different server adds an interesting element and anet could mix up matchups to make them intriguing too (like could the bottom 4 servers take on the #1?)

Max your 3rd point feels like organized server VS eotm heheheh.

The megaserver idea is great so long as the maps aren’t dynamic. WvW maps are VERY dynamic.

Megaserver itself needs a change so players can choose the shard they go to rather than a system arbitrarily choosing it based on some criteria that it never seems to get right.

A Guild Alliance system addresses the issues presented. There is a great article about this here:

https://toughlovecritic.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/putting-guilds-back-into-guild-wars-wvw-alliances-part-1/

I don’t fully agree with their concept but this system would be far better than Megaserver or the current server system.

In case a dev gets lost on this forum and reads this: I’m currently only playing because of my server- without them I would have no reason to even start GW2.
I get that population imbalances is a huge problem (more on NA than on EU), but I think fixing the combat first and not having bigger numbers = win would be more important.

ETA: And of course something about nightcapping – PPK was a good start.

They need to make it possible to select your megaserver.

When I played Champions Online, a much older game then this, you were prompted with a list of instances when you wanted to warp to a different map. It listed how many people were in each instance and if you had any friends/guild mates in those instances.

The technology doesn’t only exist, it has existed for years.

That it doesn’t exist in Guild Wars 2 is not a fluke. It’s a intentional design decision.

Lorelei.3918:

They need to make it possible to select your megaserver.

When I played Champions Online, a much older game then this, you were prompted with a list of instances when you wanted to warp to a different map. It listed how many people were in each instance and if you had any friends/guild mates in those instances.

The technology doesn’t only exist, it has existed for years.

That it doesn’t exist in Guild Wars 2 is not a fluke. It’s a intentional design decision.

Most other mmos allow you to select the instance. Anet just doesn’t want to display how many instances there are.

the more i think about it, the less i like the mega server idea – ( despite how much i suggested it at first )

It’s still not a good solution because the wvw score would still be meaningless.
It would mean more to beat the servers that host your biggest adversary guilds.

A megaserver is just a placebo to a greater problem in wvw – the score is meaningless, it will still be just as meaningless if random people were slapped together to fight. fun, but meaningless, it does nothing for the bigger picture of being appealing to the hardcore pvp community. it will balance the numbers, but not in a meaningful way.

Ricky.4706:

the more i think about it, the less i like the mega server idea – ( despite how much i suggested it at first )

It’s still not a good solution because the wvw score would still be meaningless.
It would mean more to beat the servers that host your biggest adversary guilds.

A megaserver is just a placebo to a greater problem in wvw – the score is meaningless, it will still be just as meaningless if random people were slapped together to fight. fun, but meaningless, it does nothing for the bigger picture of being appealing to the hardcore pvp community. it will balance the numbers, but not in a meaningful way.

Exactly this. Nothing will mean anything, noone will care about anything but winning, which means like in EotM people will join the winning team, the team with the most people and then they will faceroll the other team who will give up, because there is nothing to care about so why should you be in the loosing team, why should you make effort, you want to have loot. wvw-players will leave, more pvd, more karma, a good way to lvl up, trains going, noone cares about what was wvw before. The last of what was wvw will die.

Maybe we should ask EotM players what they think about their game mode and why they don’t play regular wvw. I guess it’s mostly for farming purposes and in that case it can as well be deleted = the rewards would be wvw exclusive again and everybody who wants them has to go to wvw = probably more players. There’s currently no real queues anyway, so we technically don’t need EotM (and I never entered it, even when I was number 50 in the queue – I rather read the news).

well no, it’s ok to have some middle ground for pvers to get familiar with pvp

as I mentioned many posts ago, technically pve is a training ground for pvp – pvp is end game …end game as in no more monsters to fight because you’ve beat them all.

I’m talking old school rules here, back when expansions didn’t happen often, but then back then pvp was awesome because exactly that, the regular pve game got boring and we had to improvise to keep things interesting – and they did ….

But today, with expansions, there is no real end of pve game since monsters get more diverse and harder – so this bends the perception some.

In its roots though, the natural order is – train your character so you can learn the game, get your gear, by then you know all the moves for pvp – after that , it’s a matter of doing personal style fighting …and that never gets old.

but again, since expansions to mmos became common place, obviously that paradigm of game flow has changed. – but unfortunately it seems to have dampened the progression of pvp – because now esports are mostly games dedicated to pvp – and instead of a pve mode, they use a tutorial.

There is no user motivation to be creative with pvp / ladders/ rules / guild created events / tournaments. either the gaming company gets it right, or there are choices of other games that got it right, no need to “make your own rules” to make it right. Back then there weren’t many choices, either you improvised or stopped playing. MMO’s were still new back then so the big deal was being online with friends…period. We made it happen. Now people being online to play a game together is not magical anymore, it’s expected. Cuba is in that magical phase now, because they just got wifi, they are just starting to learn to ignore each other for their smart phones lol

not only that but now you have companies saying “no, don’t make your own rules, your killing ‘my’ game mode” so that doesn’t help. – not mentioning names.

arenanet has an amazing game here, I just think they need to go back to the roots of mmorpgs, and update it the right way to continue what made online gaming a sensation – without losing what motivated people to make the game great …the game doesn’t make the people great, it’s the people that make the game great. think about cards. there’s nothing great about a deck of cards, the magic is in the players imagination. you spark it, we play it.

Your post didn’t make too much sense to me. So you’re saying that EotM should stay because you count it as a middle ground towards pvp?
Is wvw then a middle ground towards pvp as well?
Most people I know who play EotM do it either to karma train, or when they’re green to farm bags or because they’re simply bad players and want to feel good about themselves – and exactly that’s the reason why people play only PvE – so no one can show them that they’re not as good as they think.
ETA: EotM isn’t the introduction to wvw – people who play and like it don’t go to wvw afterwards.

I think EotM might be some of the root of the problems. I only really went to wvw (I have been a "DON’T DARE TO SHOW ME THAT I’M BAD!!! PvE player) for map completion there’s no initative to try wvw at all.

well no, wvw should be when it first crosses over to full pvp – then spvp would be the natural progression of funneling down the best from wvw to play competitively for title matches. for reference sake, lets label eotm – boot camp. lol

eotm should not be connected to all out pvp – it should be a nice place for people to get use to fighting other people, yet in a familiar zone that has pve elements they are use to.

remember, I’m looking at this as a progression to what “I” call end game.

In my historically based paradigm of game flow –
The absolute end-game in mmorpgs, is a death match. thats when the loser becomes born again, has to do pve to get new gear for a new character and does the full circle of gaming.

this is the fight where the final 2 absolute best pvprs play for keeps, loser character literally dies, it loses everything and becomes born again, winner lives to fight future death matches and become a demi-god legend – feared, respected and well known to the entire pvp community. Not just another joe. A player of this calibre, is well known in the industry because they have so many fans by then. It’s like the player becomes a brand at that point – at least by today’s standards. he gets youtube views, possibly endorsements, so it is worth money to a pro that takes it serious. – thats when you start to see those corny kitten hollywood movies talking about the life of the greatest pvpr that ever lived. all hype, all of it…thats what made it esports, the hype among friends that like to talk kittens. the fans it generates though, is real money.

Good wvw players are better than pvp players – I’m actually pretty tired of this “pvp is the king and queen of this game” a wvw player has no idea what he will be up against next 1, 2, 3 , zerg or blob, yet he has to get out of every situation.

Yes, as I just added: there’s no reason to go from EotM to wvw – a reason would be if there were wvw exclusive rewards again. As far as the people I know who play it are concerned the rewards in EotM could as well be PvE rewards. And it would’ve been smart if that had been introduced half a year into EotM when it was clear that it failed to appeal the wvw players – yet there’s thousands of Diamond Legend EotM players who die to my D/D thief who’s the lowest of the low. That alone is an insult to me.

I’m not really looking at the endgame – I’m looking into solutions how to save wvw – endgame is what you make of it – I soloed all events in Sparkfly Fen back when there were no megaservers – that was my “endgame” then – and I had a blast.
And there’s tons of people who only want to play PvE and that’s fine – I don’t think your idealistic views about how everybody should play MMO’s are really helping No offense.

respectfully speaking, i know a girl that can knit a sweater better than you…and that means something to her.

So when you say “better” thats subjective to your preferred game mode.

The fact is, in true end game, there can only be 1.

kittens are in the eye of the beholder!

this is the true end game to mmorpgs.

whether you like it or not, that’s how it is.

Ricky.4706:

respectfully speaking, i know a girl that can knit a sweater better than you…and that means something to her.

So when you say “better” thats subjective to your preferred game mode.

The fact is, in true end game, there can only be 1.

kittens are in the eye of the beholder!

You probably should know that I’m a girl and that I knit my own sweaters – and they’re pretty great.

You said wvw should be the pre-step to pvp and I think pvp is pretty easy – you have your 4 comrads, you’re likely in TS (which isn’t always the case in wvw) you know where everybody is (also rather random in wvw), you’re on a small map, the team is mostly set – everybody has got their role – all of it is rather random in wvw – you can’t really cry for help as you’ll be dead until someone comes unless you know how to help yourself.

There can be tons of different endgames – I always wanted to solo a dungeon but couldn’t – yet my buddy and I have been carried (both) by 3 pros through all Arah Dungeons in less than 45 mins. I will never be as good in PvE as these guys.

yes, but that style of game is fun for you, some people like pvd – it’s still a game and people should have fun

so it sounds like you take your game mode serious, i’d love to see a match between you and a like mind …

I play any mode, hard core……I decided to give fractals a try today just to see what all the hub bub was about and i went for it, i beat level 1 …solo. I wasn’t sure what to do so i was winging it. lol

being great at pve, the faster you level and get your gear, the faster you can pvp! – and that plays a big part in that final death match, you don’t want to lose your character then take months to make a new one…that’s like salt on the wound embarassing after a death match… i’ll admit, i never walked into one. I was actually doing what you like doing, team play lol – the next step after team play is 1v1 – that’s grand masters levels in title fights.

Ricky.4706:

yes, but that style of game is fun for you, some people like pvd – it’s still a game and people should have fun.

so it sounds like you take your game mode serious, i’d love to see a match between you and a like mind …

I play any mode, hard core……I decided to give fractals a try today just to see what all the hub bub was about and i went for it, i beat level 1 …solo. I wasn’t sure what to do so i was winging it. lol

being great at pve – plays a big part in that final death match, i’ll admit, i never walked into one. I was actually doing what you like doing, team play lol

Yes – you were the one putting people into categories and talking about that everybody should play Highlander.
I’ve been on these forums for quite a bit – so there were clashes between me and people who think that PVP IS THE ONLY MODE AND GOD AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS ABSOLUTE TRASH AND DESERVES NOTHING!!!111!!! – and you sang the same tune.
I have no problems with fractals either – I also used to have no problems in pvp other than I tried to kill everything as I’m a wvw player. And also that D/D has been nerfed unbeknown to me.
I have no idea what you think I like to do. For starters: I like to let people play as they like, I don’t judge them for that (but I’m sceptical when it comes to the purpose of EotM) and I try to find solutions to save wvw – you went slightly offtopic.

nooo, there can only be 1. that spot is not for “everybody”

everyone deserves to have fun how they want. but in end game….there can only be 1

the guy thats mastered every mode, including a death match(es)

being that extreme is absolutely not for everyone, else there can be hundreds…no…there can be only 1. That’s what makes end game legendary. but there really is no end game because if you die, you start from square one, and these days you get an expac to go with it.

Ricky.4706:

nooo, there can only be 1. that spot is not for “everybody”

everyone deserves to have fun how they want. but in end game….there can only be 1

the guy thats mastered every mode, including a death match(es)

being that extreme is absolutely not for everyone, else there can be hundreds…no…there can be only 1.

Don’t laugh, but that was kind of my plan the hour I started to play thief: “I want to become the best thief that I can be” – well anet, their buggy programming and nerfs destroyed that dream – so dream on and have fun!

i know a pvpr when i see one! lol

my point in all this, is not to change the game, but if anet understood what I’m saying, they will know how to keep everyone happy in whatever game mode. The circle of life.
were born, we level, we die …thanks to computers, we are born again – repeat. there is no end game, there’s just a starting point.

Ricky.4706:

but if anet understood what I’m saying

Dreamer…

what can i say, i love gw2 that much that i’m willing to go out on a limb :p

I came, I saw, I posted!

Straegen.2938:

A Guild Alliance system addresses the issues presented. There is a great article about this here:

https://toughlovecritic.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/putting-guilds-back-into-guild-wars-wvw-alliances-part-1/

I don’t fully agree with their concept but this system would be far better than Megaserver or the current server system.

That alliance system is stillborn from the start. Instead of servers you would get the “nightcap alliance”, “trolling every GvG alliance”, “farm nubs alliance”, etc….

Our server system isn’t perfect but imho still the best we can get. The focus should be on an engaging and rewarding game play and the maps will fill up again.

You might think that, Aezyr, but I’m betting that people would spread out as otherwise there’s nobody to fight. Most of us have moved on from ppt; it’s not 2013 anymore. We want to fight, and if… say… all of the OCX lumped into one alliance, they would be PvDooring, and aint nobody find that fun.

We know a fix to population imbalance is coming. While I think megaserver or alliances would maybe fix it, I’m not sure that’s it. It very well could be the merging of some servers, or at least a reduction to that all of the folks who want to WvW can be where this is actually possible.

If you’ve got, say, 10 or 12 servers in NA (for example; don’t get all huffy, EU!) full of active WvW players, that really does make it possible — in theory — to have different and interesting matches. It would need a glicko scrubbing, because holy crap the log jam there is worse than rush hour on I-90.

zhonnika.1784:

You might think that, Aezyr, but I’m betting that people would spread out as otherwise there’s nobody to fight. Most of us have moved on from ppt; it’s not 2013 anymore. We want to fight, and if… say… all of the OCX lumped into one alliance, they would be PvDooring, and aint nobody find that fun.

We know a fix to population imbalance is coming. While I think megaserver or alliances would maybe fix it, I’m not sure that’s it. It very well could be the merging of some servers, or at least a reduction to that all of the folks who want to WvW can be where this is actually possible.

If you’ve got, say, 10 or 12 servers in NA (for example; don’t get all huffy, EU!) full of active WvW players, that really does make it possible — in theory — to have different and interesting matches. It would need a glicko scrubbing, because holy crap the log jam there is worse than rush hour on I-90.

Our server has a realy good community (and not realy a histoy in ppt btw…) and we know that about 50% of our players arn’t organized in our guilds (including our community guild).
A guild alliance system will bar out even more players or is shuffling them randomly into a matchup were they don’t know anyone. No TS, no server website, no identity leads to no community for half of those playing WvW.
What we need is more players not less.

Aezyr.5304:

Our server system isn’t perfect but imho still the best we can get. The focus should be on an engaging and rewarding game play and the maps will fill up again.

The server system is incredibly old school thinking and leads to stale matches, horrendous amounts of PvD, night capping and huge population imbalances. Even the way a player lands on a server is completely arbitrary. It is a design that was required before multi-server scaling was brought into MMOs.

Aezyr.5304:

That alliance system is stillborn from the start. Instead of servers you would get the “nightcap alliance”, “trolling every GvG alliance”, “farm nubs alliance”, etc….

Depends on how the system is structured. In a design I support, guilds can align and declare war on each other. At reset, the matching system would pair guilds together that are friendly against guilds that aren’t but the only guarantee is that players in the same guild will be on the same side. The matching system would take into consideration typical play hours, relative guild strength, previous matchups, etc. Players that are effectively non-aligned (mercenaries) would be assigned into matches to even them out.

The matching system will be responsible for creating relatively even matches that change weekly. At the end of each week, guilds would be ranked based on how well they did in a variety of categories and receive WvW guild awards this way rather than the currently PvE crafted method. Players would also be rewarded based on how well they did in various categories such as Player Kills, various Defense/Offense, Escorts, etc. The more a player does the more they and the guild they play for get rewarded.

Yuffi.2430:

There’s been a lot of talk about megaservers in WvW. I’ll make no secret of the fact that I’m very much against the idea, but it would probably help increase the number of players per map.

However before megaserver is implemented in WvW there are a number of issues that would need to be addressed. Here are a few that spring to mind:

1 A guild group decide to play WvW. The first 4 get into instance A and the others into instance B.
The current megaserver system in PvE tries (sometimes successfully) to put guildies together, but the odds are higher than it may put your whole group into a new instance in order to do so. Whether that instance then fills up depends on other players joining. In PvE this doesn’t matter because you have events to do and stuff to kill, in WvW it would matter – a lot.

2. You’re enjoying a good game in WvW and some of the opponents leave. The map is now below the population threshold so you get a “map closing” message and the chance to move to a more populated map.
You either stay and do what all the “night capping” complaints are about or you take a chance on the megaserver putting you into a map that has other players that will stay too (look at all the threads about lost progress in HoT maps). If you move all your gains in the current map instance become void as the map closes. Any megaserver system for WvW would have much more trouble balancing the player population across three teams, and map closures would have much more impact on players than it already does in PvE.

3. You join a WvW map to cap stuff, for example for a daily achievement and find the commanders on the map are leading groups in PPK. Or conversely you join for the fights and find that map is PPT based and the commanders are more interested in capping stuff. Both sorts of play styles are valid and are currently catered for, albeit badly at times.
WvW megaserver would need at least a specific LFG system to try to put like minded players together, or perhaps a dedicated PPK map and a PPT map – but this would be moving away from the way megaserver works. As a minimum players should have some sort of choice as to the instance they join.

In short, as things stand at the moment all a megaserver system is likely to do is turn WvW into EotM 2 (across 4 maps instead of one).

We want something better than this that caters for fights and capping, with small parties and larger groups. I’m not at all convinced that megaservers can do this.

TESO has done it. They just have to copy their server system.

Xillllix.3485:

Yuffi.2430:

There’s been a lot of talk about megaservers in WvW. I’ll make no secret of the fact that I’m very much against the idea, but it would probably help increase the number of players per map.

However before megaserver is implemented in WvW there are a number of issues that would need to be addressed. Here are a few that spring to mind:

1 A guild group decide to play WvW. The first 4 get into instance A and the others into instance B.
The current megaserver system in PvE tries (sometimes successfully) to put guildies together, but the odds are higher than it may put your whole group into a new instance in order to do so. Whether that instance then fills up depends on other players joining. In PvE this doesn’t matter because you have events to do and stuff to kill, in WvW it would matter – a lot.

2. You’re enjoying a good game in WvW and some of the opponents leave. The map is now below the population threshold so you get a “map closing” message and the chance to move to a more populated map.
You either stay and do what all the “night capping” complaints are about or you take a chance on the megaserver putting you into a map that has other players that will stay too (look at all the threads about lost progress in HoT maps). If you move all your gains in the current map instance become void as the map closes. Any megaserver system for WvW would have much more trouble balancing the player population across three teams, and map closures would have much more impact on players than it already does in PvE.

3. You join a WvW map to cap stuff, for example for a daily achievement and find the commanders on the map are leading groups in PPK. Or conversely you join for the fights and find that map is PPT based and the commanders are more interested in capping stuff. Both sorts of play styles are valid and are currently catered for, albeit badly at times.
WvW megaserver would need at least a specific LFG system to try to put like minded players together, or perhaps a dedicated PPK map and a PPT map – but this would be moving away from the way megaserver works. As a minimum players should have some sort of choice as to the instance they join.

In short, as things stand at the moment all a megaserver system is likely to do is turn WvW into EotM 2 (across 4 maps instead of one).

We want something better than this that caters for fights and capping, with small parties and larger groups. I’m not at all convinced that megaservers can do this.

TESO has done it. They just have to copy their server system.

It is hard to cut and paste anything into code as complex as a game. I do not want them to COPY TESO, that game is a disaster.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Xillllix.3485:

Yuffi.2430:

There’s been a lot of talk about megaservers in WvW. I’ll make no secret of the fact that I’m very much against the idea, but it would probably help increase the number of players per map.

However before megaserver is implemented in WvW there are a number of issues that would need to be addressed. Here are a few that spring to mind:

1 A guild group decide to play WvW. The first 4 get into instance A and the others into instance B.
The current megaserver system in PvE tries (sometimes successfully) to put guildies together, but the odds are higher than it may put your whole group into a new instance in order to do so. Whether that instance then fills up depends on other players joining. In PvE this doesn’t matter because you have events to do and stuff to kill, in WvW it would matter – a lot.

2. You’re enjoying a good game in WvW and some of the opponents leave. The map is now below the population threshold so you get a “map closing” message and the chance to move to a more populated map.
You either stay and do what all the “night capping” complaints are about or you take a chance on the megaserver putting you into a map that has other players that will stay too (look at all the threads about lost progress in HoT maps). If you move all your gains in the current map instance become void as the map closes. Any megaserver system for WvW would have much more trouble balancing the player population across three teams, and map closures would have much more impact on players than it already does in PvE.

3. You join a WvW map to cap stuff, for example for a daily achievement and find the commanders on the map are leading groups in PPK. Or conversely you join for the fights and find that map is PPT based and the commanders are more interested in capping stuff. Both sorts of play styles are valid and are currently catered for, albeit badly at times.
WvW megaserver would need at least a specific LFG system to try to put like minded players together, or perhaps a dedicated PPK map and a PPT map – but this would be moving away from the way megaserver works. As a minimum players should have some sort of choice as to the instance they join.

In short, as things stand at the moment all a megaserver system is likely to do is turn WvW into EotM 2 (across 4 maps instead of one).

We want something better than this that caters for fights and capping, with small parties and larger groups. I’m not at all convinced that megaservers can do this.

TESO has done it. They just have to copy their server system.

It is hard to cut and paste anything into code as complex as a game. I do not want them to COPY TESO, that game is a disaster.

Still in the top selling mmo. They’ve fixed a tons of issues and their server system is far from a disaster, it’s perfect for WvW.

Xillllix.3485:

Still in the top selling mmo. They’ve fixed a tons of issues and their server system is far from a disaster, it’s perfect for WvW.

And at the same time impossible for WvW. The smaller amount of generated campaigns (effectivly a server choice) worked as a system because the map supported like 1800 players.

Ironically, the last time I read about AvA their “fix” was to reduce player cap to a third or something, lol.

Really, Anet already have the system sitting in front of them. On left hand side you got server based WvW with a population that no longer fill (or bother with) 4 maps. On right hand side you got instanced 3-faction WvW. Clap your hands hands together and make it one WvW – server based EBs with instanced borders. 24/7 PPT is only generated on EB while borders are 3h matchup that give your color a stacking boon (as in something like extra supplies, ppt bonus, etc, not a player boon) when a border is won.

Dawdler.8521:

Xillllix.3485:

Still in the top selling mmo. They’ve fixed a tons of issues and their server system is far from a disaster, it’s perfect for WvW.

And at the same time impossible for WvW. The smaller amount of generated campaigns (effectivly a server choice) worked as a system because the map supported like 1800 players.

Ironically, the last time I read about AvA their “fix” was to reduce player cap to a third or something, lol.

Really, Anet already have the system sitting in front of them. On left hand side you got server based WvW with a population that no longer fill (or bother with) 4 maps. On right hand side you got instanced 3-faction WvW. Clap your hands hands together and make it one WvW – server based EBs with instanced borders. 24/7 PPT is only generated on EB while borders are 3h matchup that give your color a stacking boon (as in something like extra supplies, ppt bonus, etc, not a player boon) when a border is won.

At this point I think that even if they merged all the tier they wouldn’t fill all the maps. The only problem it would create is a huge queue for EBG which they could fix by adding multiple instances of it or bringing the EotM map to real WvW.

Xillllix.3485:

Dawdler.8521:

Xillllix.3485:

Still in the top selling mmo. They’ve fixed a tons of issues and their server system is far from a disaster, it’s perfect for WvW.

And at the same time impossible for WvW. The smaller amount of generated campaigns (effectivly a server choice) worked as a system because the map supported like 1800 players.

Ironically, the last time I read about AvA their “fix” was to reduce player cap to a third or something, lol.

Really, Anet already have the system sitting in front of them. On left hand side you got server based WvW with a population that no longer fill (or bother with) 4 maps. On right hand side you got instanced 3-faction WvW. Clap your hands hands together and make it one WvW – server based EBs with instanced borders. 24/7 PPT is only generated on EB while borders are 3h matchup that give your color a stacking boon (as in something like extra supplies, ppt bonus, etc, not a player boon) when a border is won.

At this point I think that even if they merged all the tier they wouldn’t fill all the maps. The only problem it would create is a huge queue for EBG which they could fix by adding multiple instances of it or bringing the EotM map to real WvW.

It depends on the time of day and at what time in the match. Try T1 – T3 and try to get in EBG when the matches start – we always have queues there and in T1 you get queues in every map. So, no, server merges will not do anything.

The problem is, who can you fills the off times on an NA server, let’s say. How can that be done? To most WvW player’s thinking, it is too Onerous to do. Alliances? NO. GW1 had Alliances and they ended up being OP because the big guilds only aligned with big guilds. A.Net will not be able to force which guilds go into which alliances because that takes away choice from the players and they will end up losing players.

The point being is, they should have worked on this at the same time as PvE and PvP but they did not. Now they are reaping what they sowed, which is player discontent.

Dusty Moon.4382:

It is hard to cut and paste anything into code as complex as a game. I do not want them to COPY TESO, that game is a disaster.

Its issues were unrelated to its RvR design which is far better than WvW in GW2.

One of the best things that could be done for WvW would be the removal of megaservers from PvE. Before that change happened, there existed a now-mythical thing that is essential to a gametype like WvW: Server Pride. We’d leave WvW and still hear people cheering for our server’s WvW team and good-naturedly bad-mouthing the other teams, like you’d see with any organized sport. (eg Yankees vs Red Sox). People could ask in map chat when more troops were needed, and in out server’s case, people often would respond. My server’s homeland pride was strong enough that I believe it was that main factor in rising to a high tier in the beginning, and it made for a great homecoming after the dark few weeks I spent on another server. I was literally welcomed back with smiles.
All of that pride has totally vanished by now. Everything is so mixed, there is no mapchat recruitment, no ability or desire to rally the troops, and none of that warm homeland feeling.
More megaservers is the last thing WvW needs. All the motivation and fun of it comes from the sensation of being part of a team. If all people want is a random fight and to approach it from an individual perspective, they can PvP. But WvW is for teamwork, and teamwork requires teams.
…For the t’oast.

zhonnika.1784:

You might think that, Aezyr, but I’m betting that people would spread out as otherwise there’s nobody to fight. Most of us have moved on from ppt; it’s not 2013 anymore. We want to fight, and if… say… all of the OCX lumped into one alliance, they would be PvDooring, and aint nobody find that fun.

We know a fix to population imbalance is coming. While I think megaserver or alliances would maybe fix it, I’m not sure that’s it. It very well could be the merging of some servers, or at least a reduction to that all of the folks who want to WvW can be where this is actually possible.

If you’ve got, say, 10 or 12 servers in NA (for example; don’t get all huffy, EU!) full of active WvW players, that really does make it possible — in theory — to have different and interesting matches. It would need a glicko scrubbing, because holy crap the log jam there is worse than rush hour on I-90.

Please, as a forum specialist: realise one thing: NA and EU are different. I bet if you ask anet nicely you’d get a free transfer to a server your choice and back – look at EU and see that there is still community on each and every server and that an alliance or megaserver system would destroy that.
I don’t really care what you guys do on NA, I left a long time ago and know that my (NA) buddies are unhappy in wvw, but we’re pretty fine as it is on EU.

I’m not a forum specialist, and haven’t been for a long time (late summer?). I’m commenting as myself, so direct the comments to me as a fellow player. I was just tossing out ideas in response to the OP. It’s not like I can make these changes. What’s already in motion, will happen regardless anyway — be it megaserver or something else.

zhonnika.1784:

I’m not a forum specialist, and haven’t been for a long time (late summer?). I’m commenting as myself, so direct the comments to me as a fellow player. I was just tossing out ideas in response to the OP. It’s not like I can make these changes. What’s already in motion, will happen regardless anyway — be it megaserver or something else.

So how should I know if you’re still wearing that title?
Then take the passage of you being called a forum specialist out and take the rest of what I wrote.
And better ask anet to remove that title if it outrages you that people think you’re “halfway official”.

zhonnika.1784:

You might think that, Aezyr, but I’m betting that people would spread out as otherwise there’s nobody to fight. Most of us have moved on from ppt; it’s not 2013 anymore. We want to fight, and if… say… all of the OCX lumped into one alliance, they would be PvDooring, and aint nobody find that fun.

Oh my goodness, tell me you’re being facetious!

Because history has proved that players won’t “spread out” to get fights — they’re not going to magically start spreading out with any new system. EU has done it to some extent, but not NA. It’s why there’s existing problems now.

That’s a bit naive if you believe this though and shows that you don’t really understand the playerbase.

Jayne.9251:

zhonnika.1784:

You might think that, Aezyr, but I’m betting that people would spread out as otherwise there’s nobody to fight. Most of us have moved on from ppt; it’s not 2013 anymore. We want to fight, and if… say… all of the OCX lumped into one alliance, they would be PvDooring, and aint nobody find that fun.

Oh my goodness, tell me you’re being facetious!

Because history has proved that players won’t “spread out” to get fights — they’re not going to magically start spreading out with any new system. EU has done it to some extent, but not NA. It’s why there’s existing problems now.

That’s a bit naive if you believe this though and shows that you don’t really understand the playerbase.

As an ocx player I wouldn’t want all ocx lumped into 1 server/alliance so yes the player base could spread out so long as its an appropriate number of servers for the entire player base.

“what if”

Hypothetically – wvw was broken up into races – I’m thinking this would open up doors for gvg in wvw – because different guilds can agree to a variety of matchups by simply logging on to different races. Something that can’t easily be done now without an all out guild transfer to a different server.

a special competitive mode can be made where all 3 guilds join up for competition – like old gw1 gvg challenge – and when they go into wvw, they enter the same map, a criteria could be set, such as – who captures sm first and puts their guild banner on it! – AND they come into the game with a special marker letting the whole map know they are doing competitive gvg…- further only competing guilds can throw up tags in those matches and when they enter a match, sm grays out – other players can partake in the competition and make things even more interesting! It wouldn’t be unfair either, because as races the matches would default to full or at least relatively balanced maps. – except maybe the last map with 50 asurans 1 norn, and 5 humans lol this would also highlight the guilds prowess to direct a whole server to victory, not just their own guild…this would also count in the score – guild wvw influence. A rockstar guild would control the blob du jour! Cue the top commander ladder and top wvw guilds ladder. there could be a variety of criteria as well, such as highest score, or who turns the entire map one color, or who ran the most karma for the event, you can even have clandestine events, where all 3 guilds are roaming thieve specialists and their competition is based on how many kills they get as roamers, no tag and none even know of a competition…. if you look at wvw as a pvp sandbox, then the possibilities are endless. The non competing players become part of the environment!

think about it for a moment, there would be a never ending story related to lore of what race holds the highest score, so the actual race scores would mean something, and since players can change races, they can arrange competitions. Plus it would encourage game related role play. – plus it would make the war more aesthetically entertaining as well as encourage server wide race strategies – asurans with their golems, humans with their healings, char with their flamethrowers, sylvari with their root/trapping specialties, it could be interesting strategies. I’m guessing this would also empower anet to balance the server numbers more effectively – since server pride is now about race, and not general population. Not exactly a mega-server, because you can organize competitions with it. Cheating / trolling wouldn’t be easy because unless you are in a match, or with a squad, you can’t control being in your gvg map. you can watch it though, wvw could now be watched in spectator mode depending on what matches are happening! Anet Official Mods can come in and referee important title matches ( basically to remove trolls ) – And is probably the best fitting resolution as the next level of gw1 HA and GVG. – fort aspenwood fights was all about lore, and it was fun! This would be a hybrid of HA, GVG, Fort Aspenwood and of course wvw.

and it would probably encourage a new race for the next expac so we can have 6 races in rotations of 1v1v1 – frog people maybe ? you get that tongue lash thing as a racial skill to make up for being ugly :x

-puts up tomato shield just in case-

Straegen.2938:

Aezyr.5304:

Our server system isn’t perfect but imho still the best we can get. The focus should be on an engaging and rewarding game play and the maps will fill up again.

The server system is incredibly old school thinking and leads to stale matches, horrendous amounts of PvD, night capping and huge population imbalances. Even the way a player lands on a server is completely arbitrary. It is a design that was required before multi-server scaling was brought into MMOs.

Aezyr.5304:

That alliance system is stillborn from the start. Instead of servers you would get the “nightcap alliance”, “trolling every GvG alliance”, “farm nubs alliance”, etc….

Depends on how the system is structured. In a design I support, guilds can align and declare war on each other. At reset, the matching system would pair guilds together that are friendly against guilds that aren’t but the only guarantee is that players in the same guild will be on the same side. The matching system would take into consideration typical play hours, relative guild strength, previous matchups, etc. Players that are effectively non-aligned (mercenaries) would be assigned into matches to even them out.

The matching system will be responsible for creating relatively even matches that change weekly. At the end of each week, guilds would be ranked based on how well they did in a variety of categories and receive WvW guild awards this way rather than the currently PvE crafted method. Players would also be rewarded based on how well they did in various categories such as Player Kills, various Defense/Offense, Escorts, etc. The more a player does the more they and the guild they play for get rewarded.

And you would lose at least 50% of the WvW player base. That system is anonymous and exactly like EotM. It would degenerate even more into zerging.

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

zhonnika.1784:

You might think that, Aezyr, but I’m betting that people would spread out as otherwise there’s nobody to fight. Most of us have moved on from ppt; it’s not 2013 anymore. We want to fight, and if… say… all of the OCX lumped into one alliance, they would be PvDooring, and aint nobody find that fun.

Oh my goodness, tell me you’re being facetious!

Because history has proved that players won’t “spread out” to get fights — they’re not going to magically start spreading out with any new system. EU has done it to some extent, but not NA. It’s why there’s existing problems now.

That’s a bit naive if you believe this though and shows that you don’t really understand the playerbase.

As an ocx player I wouldn’t want all ocx lumped into 1 server/alliance so yes the player base could spread out so long as its an appropriate number of servers for the entire player base.

Then why aren’t you doing that now? Or heck, even three years ago? You most certainly don’t need a new WvW system to accomplish this. This is a player-organized thing that can easily be done.

Ricky.4706:

“what if”

Hypothetically – wvw was broken up into races – I’m thinking this would open up doors for gvg in wvw – because different guilds can agree to a variety of matchups by simply logging on to different races. Something that can’t easily be done now without an all out guild transfer to a different server.

a special competitive mode can be made where all 3 guilds join up for competition – like old gw1 gvg challenge – and when they go into wvw, they enter the same map, a criteria could be set, such as – who captures sm first and puts their guild banner on it! – AND they come into the game with a special marker letting the whole map know they are doing competitive gvg…- further only competing guilds can throw up tags in those matches and when they enter a match, sm grays out – other players can partake in the competition and make things even more interesting! It wouldn’t be unfair either, because as races the matches would default to full or at least relatively balanced maps. – except maybe the last map with 50 asurans 1 norn, and 5 humans lol this would also highlight the guilds prowess to direct a whole server to victory, not just their own guild…this would also count in the score – guild wvw influence. A rockstar guild would control the blob du jour! Cue the top commander ladder and top wvw guilds ladder. there could be a variety of criteria as well, such as highest score, or who turns the entire map one color, or who ran the most karma for the event, you can even have clandestine events, where all 3 guilds are roaming thieve specialists and their competition is based on how many kills they get as roamers, no tag and none even know of a competition…. if you look at wvw as a pvp sandbox, then the possibilities are endless. The non competing players become part of the environment!

think about it for a moment, there would be a never ending story related to lore of what race holds the highest score, so the actual race scores would mean something, and since players can change races, they can arrange competitions. Plus it would encourage game related role play. – plus it would make the war more aesthetically entertaining as well as encourage server wide race strategies – asurans with their golems, humans with their healings, char with their flamethrowers, sylvari with their root/trapping specialties, it could be interesting strategies. I’m guessing this would also empower anet to balance the server numbers more effectively – since server pride is now about race, and not general population. Not exactly a mega-server, because you can organize competitions with it. Cheating / trolling wouldn’t be easy because unless you are in a match, or with a squad, you can’t control being in your gvg map. you can watch it though, wvw could now be watched in spectator mode depending on what matches are happening! Anet Official Mods can come in and referee important title matches ( basically to remove trolls ) – And is probably the best fitting resolution as the next level of gw1 HA and GVG. – fort aspenwood fights was all about lore, and it was fun! This would be a hybrid of HA, GVG, Fort Aspenwood and of course wvw.

and it would probably encourage a new race for the next expac so we can have 6 races in rotations of 1v1v1 – frog people maybe ? you get that tongue lash thing as a racial skill to make up for being ugly :x

-puts up tomato shield just in case-

Been done in other game already and ended up with people joining the team that wins and they faceroll the others until they feel it is not fun anymore and also move to winning server or quit game. The point is that wvw is something that no other game have and why it is good. Change to whats already been tried in other games and nothing will be different in this game about it.

hrmpf, yeah, i can see the asurans being an instant dominant force, the charr wouldn’t stand a chance, the rest of the races wouldn’t even matter :x which is why i originally suggested just an asuran server, so the rest of the races can team up and at the very least, almost win. it truly is lonely at the top. -sigh-

ps – your argument is flawed because GW isn’t just any other game, and it worked perfectly with fort aspenwood for many years, but then I’m an asuran, and I have to agree we’d be the dominant force giving credence to your argument.

I know it’s very hard to take Ricky seriously.