Guild Wars 2

I have brought this up before and I’m bringing it up again.

The EU/US distinction needs to be removed. Since the data centers are the same, the separation at the moment only leads to more imbalance then their needs to be. Remove the name, and then guilds will more freely distribute themselves out to the servers for WvW and allow for more servers to have balanced coverage.

Separating the lists was a bad decision, and it’s time it was corrected. If you want a 24/7 global game, then you need to set your game up as a global game.

End Server Segregation

/signed.

24/7 WvW needs 24/7 ladder.

Lets fight for world ranking in world vs world.

Segregation never! Integration now!

i also agree. it just makes sense. especially considering that so many EU guilds are moving to NA servers, and vice versa, to cover off peak hours. essentially, the distinction has already been made obsolete.

I guess that settles it, ladders will stay the same and the matching will keep on changing until all transferring guilds have done so. Which will probably continue forever.

EU and NA players are already transferring between continental servers / data centers. Nobody is asking for removing EU and NA tags, just merge the ladders so we can compete on a 24/7 ranking not in some imaginary “continental primetime” when off-capping determines the winner in each match up.

Although I live in the UK but work USA east coast hours I’ve normally played any MMO on USA based servers. This time round I’m actually on an EU server for GW2 – I can honestly say I’ve never experienced any noticeable latency on any game I’ve played online.

The internet has moved on – it is a far cry from when I used to play Tribes over a decade ago and would get owned because my ping was 50-75ms higher than the guy fighting me.

Equally there are plenty of oceanic/EU/USA guilds joining servers elsewhere in the world and I don’t see them complaining either.

Worse still I feel for the FR and DE servers in Europe, as if it wasn’t already fragmented enough by USA/EU those guys are seeing massive bleeding from lower FR/DE servers to the stronger WvWvW country specific servers.

Sure without those FR/DE designations some EU servers would become “unofficial” French or German servers just as many have were known as unofficial Russian servers but LESS fragmentation of the player base is a GOOD thing.

So when you are saying it’s ok that us players transfer to europe and vice-versa what are you going to do about the fr/de/es tagged servers? They have no possibility to recruit a significant number of peoples from other timezones to stay competive in the highter tier rankings. and this servers are nearly 50% of the european servers and 25% of alle your servers. So you are saying such a large playerbase has just to accept, that they cant compete, because they chose to play on a national tagged server(what was your intention, or why you even created de/fr/sp servers?) and only servers with bored us guilds, who prefer to fight vs european gates instead of us players, will keep winning?

You have to realize that the whole motivation for many players is the possibility to reach the top. If that isn’t possible the people will move to a server where it’s possible. The people will leave the de/fr/es servers(like its happening atm on elonas) and move to the international ones or just stop playing. Which leads to a dropp of the mentioned servers. Is that what you want? All fe/de/sp servers at the bottom of the ranking with no chancee to get up?

Now I have a question, if ladders are not merged because latency is an issue, what do you make of huge communities (2000 NA players) coming to play on EU servers ? Doesn’t this make latency for EU servers and players when NA players play all together at night ?

If things that are hurting us (EU spoiled ladder experience), are done for latency, what can be done so we are not hurt again because they make latency on our servers that are not merged with the NA ladder because of latency ???

Is this really a concern about ping issues?
Please dont delete my post again, just i think your answer is a joke in my opinion.

You should simply unite the EU / NA ladder = 24/7 battles for all.
Servertransfers to 2000 Gems and put a barrier of “Match time * 2”.

For all PvEler free Guesting,
so you can play server independent like districts in GW1.

Or, if its really a concern about ping issues,
dont make it possible that players from NA can play on EU servers ( vise versa).

Scryar.2954:

So when you are saying it’s ok that us players transfer to europe and vice-versa what are you going to do about the fr/de/es tagged servers? They have no possibility to recruit a significant number of peoples from other timezones to stay competive in the highter tier rankings. and this servers are nearly 50% of the european servers and 25% of alle your servers. So you are saying such a large playerbase has just to accept, that they cant compete, because they chose to play on a national tagged server(what was your intention, or why you even created de/fr/sp servers?) and only servers with bored us guilds, who prefer to fight vs european gates instead of us players, will keep winning?

You have to realize that the whole motivation for many players is the possibility to reach the top. If that isn’t possible the people will move to a server where it’s possible. The people will leave the de/fr/es servers(like its happening atm on elonas) and move to the international ones or just stop playing. Which leads to a dropp of the mentioned servers. Is that what you want? All fe/de/sp servers at the bottom of the ranking with no chancee to get up?

I think the same principle Habib outlined still applies. If you choose to play on a specialized community (DE/FR/ES), then you are making a decision to accept the pros with the cons.

The pros are obvious – you can play with a language specific community. The cons include that you may not be quite so competitive as a larger, more inclusive server can be. This is the same as an EU player that chooses to play on US servers and vice versa. The player is making a choice and they have to live with the benefits and consequences of that choice.

You might say well they should just region lock the game then so EU can only play on EU, and NA can only play on NA. Unfortunately, for every player that shares this sentiment there are probably two or three that hold the other view. Region locking in MMOs has always been an issue because most MMOs prevented global players from having the freedom to choose which community they played in.

Even if they implemented region locks, those would still be undone by dedicated players who would just purchase the EU version of the game despite being in NA. This happened extensively in WoW and leads me to conclude that there is no perfect solution to the problem, but that Arenanet probably offered the best one given the alternatives.

But when a large community come where they are not supposed to be (as stated in the faq), they can technically be there, they don’t violate any rule, and A.Net can’t do anything about people who already made this choice. But EU community is asking for bigger switch time (more than 7 days, and gems costing transfer between NA and EU after the first choice). We just don’t want massive NA communities moving in our ladder, breaking the balance without the possibility for us to have a fair fight (for that it would require merging ladders and it’s not happening) . Except from that, everybody can play wherever they like.

Now we have NA communities in both ladders having fun, and EU players having nowhere to play WvW properly. Let’s add that massive NA players on EU players don’t help with the queue for players on those servers, and may add latency but that’s something else.

cold.3946:

Scryar.2954:

So when you are saying it’s ok that us players transfer to europe and vice-versa what are you going to do about the fr/de/es tagged servers? They have no possibility to recruit a significant number of peoples from other timezones to stay competive in the highter tier rankings. and this servers are nearly 50% of the european servers and 25% of alle your servers. So you are saying such a large playerbase has just to accept, that they cant compete, because they chose to play on a national tagged server(what was your intention, or why you even created de/fr/sp servers?) and only servers with bored us guilds, who prefer to fight vs european gates instead of us players, will keep winning?

You have to realize that the whole motivation for many players is the possibility to reach the top. If that isn’t possible the people will move to a server where it’s possible. The people will leave the de/fr/es servers(like its happening atm on elonas) and move to the international ones or just stop playing. Which leads to a dropp of the mentioned servers. Is that what you want? All fe/de/sp servers at the bottom of the ranking with no chancee to get up?

I think the same principle Habib outlined still applies. If you choose to play on a specialized community (DE/FR/ES), then you are making a decision to accept the pros with the cons.

The pros are obvious – you can play with a language specific community. The cons include that you may not be quite so competitive as a larger, more inclusive server can be. This is the same as an EU player that chooses to play on US servers and vice versa. The player is making a choice and they have to live with the benefits and consequences of that choice.

You might say well they should just region lock the game then so EU can only play on EU, and NA can only play on NA. Unfortunately, for every player that shares this sentiment there are probably two or three that hold the other view. Region locking in MMOs has always been an issue because most MMOs prevented global players from having the freedom to choose which community they played in.

Even if they implemented region locks, those would still be undone by dedicated players who would just purchase the EU version of the game despite being in NA. This happened extensively in WoW and leads me to conclude that there is no perfect solution to the problem, but that Arenanet probably offered the best one given the alternatives.

Arenanet created 7 de, 5 fr, 1 es tagged servers. No one knew at the beginning how the wvsw would evolve. Nobody could know that big american guilds would move to europe and destroy the balancing, because….well they have 24 own servers.
They wanted us to play on our national server or why should they have tagged them?
And now we dont have a small disadvantage because of this. The higher tier rankings willl be unreachable for these servers and you say we have to deal with it?
Arenanet wanted that the german, french and spanish speaking players choose one of the mentioned servers and they said, the european servers are for europeans:

There will be 3 major regional designations for the release of Guild Wars 2:
•Europe: Defined as Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Players in these regions connect to the European datacenter.
•North America: Defined as Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Players in these regions connect to the North American datacenter.
•Other: Players in countries not listed above will connect to the North American datacenter.
https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9184/kw/regions

The FAQ says that the european servers are more regional then the us servers. We are all in similar timezones ( even most of the russians are only 4 hours ahead), so the balacing was quite good until Ruin joined and started to nightcap everything.

So we have the possibility to accept that we wont have the opportunity to stay/reach in the higher tier matchups or to switch servers. Is that we Arenet wants? A dying WvsW community on all national tagged servers? (50% of the eu servers)

It’s Arenanets fault and they have to solve it:
a) Region lock
or
b) Get rid of de/fr/es tages and merge all us and eu servers together, so every server has the chance to get an 24/7 coverage.
or
c) change the valency of nightcapping

Respectfully, the HabibLoew response is clouded by developer sensibilities and ignores the real pain point. HabibLoew argues technicalities and presenting facts that, broadly speaking, are irrelevant from a customer satisfaction point-of-view.

There is a broader design issue at the heart of the pain point. The game’s has a core incentive that rewards “follow-the-sun” commitment; however, there is a gross engineering gap in the infrastructure (that bleeds into execution and adoption) that works to deny opportunity to geographic loyalists (the basis of the loyalty, honestly speaking, is moot).

Perhaps there are “laws of physics” issues — unfortunately, from a game design schema perspective — few people really care (see supra — incentive mechanism). In a meaningful play context, the infrastructure itself (and the perception of institutionalize segregation) has been elevated to a position of meta-gaming importance.

I believe the HabibLoew response presents a myopic perspective that tries to suggest that we simply ignore the smell and taste of bacon because it is high in fat and cholesterol. The response speaks to the wrong question. The response is a non-starter towards addressing the real concern.

How would the NA ladder look like if the french/german community (as I understand you’re the ones having most problems with this) transferred to a mid-tier NA server and do what Ruin did on the other side of the pond? The possibilities…

Facing EU guilds and fighting with EU players (thanks for the correction on the datacenters) it’s hard to believe that latency is a factor. Sure in sPvP it’s a huge factor (and only at the top tier of players), but in WvW it’s not nearly the factor that you might think it is.

The ladders need to be merged. The designations can stay, but the “global 24/7” wvw needs to sort itself out. Coverage is key, and players are going to do this themselves. Already upsets are forming when mass guilds transfer from one region ot the other.

Let’s stop with all and make 24/7 WvW a reality. This will only strengthen the game in the long run.

Right now WvW is determind by coverage, because the different time regions are not being equally represented because of the separation of servers.

Merge the servers, the coverage will happen, and WvW can become a 24/7 game of skill. Not coverage.

zortek.9607:

Respectfully, the HabibLoew response is clouded by developer sensibilities and ignores the real pain point. HabibLoew argues technicalities and presenting facts that, broadly speaking, are irrelevant from a customer satisfaction point-of-view.

[…]

I believe the HabibLoew response presents a myopic perspective that tries to suggest that we simply ignore the smell and taste of bacon because it is high in fat and cholesterol. The response speaks to the wrong question. The response is a non-starter towards addressing the real concern.

Have to agree unfortunately. With Desolation and Black Tide actively recruiting North American players the separation of the ladders is largely irrelevant already, no matter if ArenaNet acknowledges it or not.

Scryar.2954:

No one knew at the beginning how the wvsw would evolve. Nobody could know that big american guilds would move to europe and destroy the balancing, because….well they have 24 own servers.

Wrong.

While game design is not an exact science or mathematics, it is a study of predictable human behavior similar to the study of economics or politics.

Today we have nearly 20 years of online PvP gaming history: from wotmud to Ultima to DAOC to WAR to EVE to Darkfall to GW2, to mention just a few. Time and again it’s been proven that given certain incentives players will behave in certain ways.

There’s absolutely nothing surprising in the power of nightcapping in this game, it is a natural result of ANet’s scoring design interposed on the human day/night cycle.

Then there’s nothing surprising in certain groups of players moving to exploit the above relation in the most favorable way (and to the detriment of other groups of players).

There are only two possible explanations to ANet’s decision on nightcapping:

1) They are aware of the consequences and are fine with them

2) They are unaware of the consequences because they lack basic competence in this field

In the first case, they won’t change anything unless pressured extensively by public opinion, and maybe not even then, depending on ANet’s middle management policies.

In the second case anything can happen, but chances are on the side of nothing happening. Even if change occurs, it’s a 50-50 tossup of things getting better against things getting even worse.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

Right now WvW is determind by coverage, because the different time regions are not being equally represented because of the separation of servers.

And THIS is the pain point…

It is not good enough to play well. The best players in the world can and will commit incredible amounts of time and resources… only to have their efforts evaporate due to lack of coverage.

Even the most dedicated and determined players will eventually be demoralized and their commitment broken by such a powerful disincentive.

The number one message I see in map/team chat EVERY day sounds like this: “OMG, what happened to the map?” or “I just came in and I see we lost everything again…”

The seeds of cynicism have sprouted… Cynicism has begun to grow roots.

AN needs to take these concerns very seriously. This strikes at the very heart of “stickiness.” When futility becomes the recognized standard… once a player’s commitment is broken, it’s on to another game. No more micro-transactions for you.

3) They are aware and work on fixing it but don’t communicate enough about what they are doing scared that speaking about it too soon ’cause worst troubles than there already is.

Since the servers are separate why does Europe reset happen same time as US?

Midnight in Europe instead of prime time Friday evening same as US?

Evene.5796:

3) They are aware and work on fixing it but don’t communicate enough about what they are doing scared that speaking about it too soon ’cause worst troubles than there already is.

They are aware and the post from Habib admits there’s no change at all in the works. So what are you referring to in your post.

The developers are wrong in this aspect. The health of the game demands that they remove the distinction, throw everyone into one ladder, and then let the coverage sort itself out.

Guilds will move and sort themselves appropriately, otherwise the game is going to suffer wvw burnout, and lose pvp credibility (something no mmo to date has survived (Rift, SWTOR, Warhammer, Conan)

Lets say the latter is merged. 1 NA server and 2 EU servers are placed in 1 bracket. Where would the WvW map be placed? The NA data center or EU data center?
There are people who can play on the NA servers but have unplayable latency on the EU servers and viceversa. Those players will be screwed whenever a NA server and EU server share the same bracket.

zortek.9607:

Respectfully, the HabibLoew response is clouded by developer sensibilities and ignores the real pain point. HabibLoew argues technicalities and presenting facts that, broadly speaking, are irrelevant from a customer satisfaction point-of-view.

There is a broader design issue at the heart of the pain point. The game’s has a core incentive that rewards “follow-the-sun” commitment; however, there is a gross engineering gap in the infrastructure (that bleeds into execution and adoption) that works to deny opportunity to geographic loyalists (the basis of the loyalty, honestly speaking, is moot).

Perhaps there are “laws of physics” issues — unfortunately, from a game design schema perspective — few people really care (see supra — incentive mechanism). In a meaningful play context, the infrastructure itself (and the perception of institutionalize segregation) has been elevated to a position of meta-gaming importance.

I believe the HabibLoew response presents a myopic perspective that tries to suggest that we simply ignore the smell and taste of bacon because it is high in fat and cholesterol. The response speaks to the wrong question. The response is a non-starter towards addressing the real concern.

I think while there may be some overlap on the issues, what you’re talking about is more closely related to the lack of penalty for server transfers. On this subject I agree with you 100% – that is to say, I firmly believe stronger WvW restrictions should be in place on players that change their home world.

If it were up to me, I’d charge a gem fee for transferring servers and institute a 30 day WvW lockout for newly transferred players. This way Arenanet can gain a little revenue, there is a financial barrier to server hopping for any reason, and an extended barrier for server hopping to a winning WvW server.

I agree completely that this is an issue Arenanet should investigate, and I’m fairly certain they are taking a look at it since they’ve already increased the lock out previously. I’m hopeful that more penalties for server hopping are on the horizon. This will stymie the big problem of server instability, and super servers that players flock to because they’re successful.

However, I disagree that this is heavily tied to the concept of region locking or that Habib’s post doesn’t materially address customer satisfaction. Fact is every MMO has seen players clamoring for unlocked regions so they can choose what guild to play with. Many EU players played with NA guilds and vice versa. Those communities migrate between games, so players had to purchase an out of region version of a game to afford them an opportunity to play with who they wanted.

I don’t think there is a right answer to this problem, but it makes sense how Arenanet implemented it.

I think there is change comming in the way WvW works, and nightcapping, not saying anything about this being good or bad, right or wrong, but I think that’s what A.Net expect to do, fix the gameplay of WvW and they thought they could take the time to do that. A bit of nightcapping was just an aspect of the game. Now big guilds have moved, it’s all broken badly I agree. But they will have a hard time fixing that if they don’t want to merge (and it may involve technical difficulties that are not stated, added to those mentioned).

There is an elephant in the room that is being ignored.

How is it that the Oceanic and/or PacRim folks are able to participate and enjoy the game without precious regional datacenter advantages?

I’m not saying there are no challenges… only that there is an elephant in the room.

Say they instituded the lock right now. Draconian locks that solved people moving.

Guess what? Coverage > all.

NA guilds in EU upset the balance there.

Vice Versa.

Because of the distcintion and separate ladders, people aren’t moving en masse, and the server with the most coverage wins.

This is going to cause burn out and apathy. Players just won’t play any more since (generally, I will still run around an empty map hoping for pvp) all their work will be for naught since coverage > skill.

The regions wall needs to be torn down. Players understand the latency, but the state of WvW will continue to suffer until the regions are removed, and more EU/NA guilds are joining each other servers.

zortek.9607:

There is an elephant in the room that is being ignored.

How is it that the Oceanic and/or PacRim folks are able to participate and enjoy the game without precious regional datacenter advantages?

I’m not saying there are no challenges… only that there is an elephant in the room.

Exactly. This is why Habib’s point makes technical sense, but then really doesn’t. I don’t recall ever hearing an Aussie cry “oh it was lag”.

Evene.5796:

3) They are aware and work on fixing it but don’t communicate enough about what they are doing scared that speaking about it too soon ’cause worst troubles than there already is.

Nope.

This doesn’t explain why they created it that way.

It’s really simple. They either understood the synergy and consequences of the scoring mechanic (and were fine with it), or they didn’t.

If they were fine with it despite the downsides they understood, it will probably have to do with entrenched views in ANet’s design team…good luck changing that.

If they didn’t, shellshocked silence is to be expected. However, there’s no reason to conclude that now the design team is experienced enough in WvW…after all I said this is “basic” level of competence in the field for a reason. I haven’t noticed ANet shopping for an experienced mass PvP designer either…so, there isn’t really anyone to “somehow silently develop sweeping awesome changes”.

From there we should launch an operation called “Expose the Elephant”

And Zid: it’s the best WvW we have seen in a while, so I don’t see any reason to call out their designer skills. The biggest issue is only about massive transfers, there is way to fix that, and they are not impossible.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

zortek.9607:

There is an elephant in the room that is being ignored.

How is it that the Oceanic and/or PacRim folks are able to participate and enjoy the game without precious regional datacenter advantages?

I’m not saying there are no challenges… only that there is an elephant in the room.

Exactly. This is why Habib’s point makes technical sense, but then really doesn’t. I don’t recall ever hearing an Aussie cry “oh it was lag”.

Are you kidding me? How long have you played multiplayer online games? The number one thing people complain about is lag.

I dislike the fact that Arenanet only runs US datacenters out of Texas. It gives central players a ping advantage. It may be small but it’s there and if you play competitively, every edge counts.

You can bet that a majority of Oceanic/PacRim players would prefer to play on a datacenter with the lowest possible ping. Every player wants that. Some of them might make a conscious choice to join some other region, but as Habib said – they make the choice, they live with the consequence/benefit.

The elephant in the room everyone is missing is that there is no way to enforce players sticking to a particular region. They can make it more challenging, sure – require you to buy an out-of-region game or even proxy your IP address via tunnels, but there is no technical way to prevent someone from EU playing on a NA server in any game.

By increasing the barrier for casuals you will be left with only the hardcore guilds who co-opt this strategy. That would exacerbate, not alleviate the very problem you guys are trying to fix.

So the only other viable option you’ve suggested is to merge everything into one datacenter. Habib outlined why they aren’t doing that. As much as you think this is a major detriment, I can assure you that far more online gamers care about their latency. Going back 20 years you will find that the number one complaint in any online game is lag.

Night capping is a legitimate strategy. They have a sticky about it on this very forum. If your server is up against another with better coverage then yes, you are at a disadvantage. However, with the current system you can try to organize to remove this penalty.

SBI suffered from poor coverage and up until a few weeks ago was only very strong during NA primetime. Win by day, lose by night – that was our dilemma. For awhile we just internalized the issue. Our server forums came up with the motto of “log-in, rock out, screw the score” as a way of saying we will still compete and just ignore the fact that we can’t be #1 due to our low after hours coverage.

After getting sent down to T2 by HoD and their superserver style coverage, SBI found allies in the Korean community that joined our server. We’re still weak with EU coverage, but our new Asian friends have been devastating during their primetime. You need only ask our competitors about the strength of WM, SYN, UL, DD to understand.

So to all those seeking a technical solution to a non-technical problem, I say you need to realize this is a community issue instead. As long as night capping is a sanctioned activity, we must adapt or die trying.

Evene.5796:

From there we should launch an operation called “Expose the Elephant”

And Zid: it’s the best WvW we have seen in a while, so I don’t see any reason to call out their designer skills. The biggest issue is only about massive transfers, there is way to fix that, and they are not impossible.

Eh…the last competitor in this exact segment was WAR…so the bar was set pretty low. Mind you, I recognized the option of them being good, but holding strong views in favor of the present scoring system. In fact, this scenario makes fixing nightcapping less likely because they already know your arguments and have deemed them lacking.

Is this whole off-peak/nightcapping issue new to EU with the arrival of Ruin a couple of weeks ago? Because it’s (nightcapping, etc) been going on in N/A servers for a while. It got a lot of people angry but the solution was recruitment drives. Any server T3 or higher has at least some level of off-peak coverage from Oceanic/Asia/EU. Any server seeking to reach that level is trying to do the same.

Or am I missing something here?

In the last days the latency wasn’t the best, even if you play as an EU on an EU-Server. Since the last Halloween-Patch, I think. And it is even worse since the Culling-Problem was offical noticed. I’d never had problems using my skills, but this happy times are over.
Doors at night, in “my” EU-Night, don’t fight back. I think Ruin and guilds like them don’t have as many problems like me. Who lives here. Tze.

So latency is not really a explanation for me… can we put that do the elephant, too? Pls…

Haldunius.7864:

Is this whole off-peak/nightcapping issue new to EU with the arrival of Ruin a couple of weeks ago? Because it’s (nightcapping, etc) been going on in N/A servers for a while. It got a lot of people angry but the solution was recruitment drives. Any server T3 or higher has at least some level of off-peak coverage from Oceanic/Asia/EU. Any server seeking to reach that level is trying to do the same.

Or am I missing something here?

There are not many englishspeaking Persons that wants to play on a german/french/whatever Server. That’s the point you are missing.

The region locking encourage players to play with players from their region. But magnifies the WvW Coverage problem by the few servers that attact coverage, will be dominant regardless of skill.

If the region locks were removed. If all servers were on the same ladder system, then the top few servers would go from being about coverage, to being about skill because the best players would flock to the server they could get on, and once all regions are covered, skill takes over.

HabibLoew.2590:

tl;dr: data centers are on different continents, latency is an issue with intra-continental connections, data center distinctions are here to stay.

The only thing we are asking is to be able to play against each other and not exactly merge the ladders. I’ll try to define it more clear: To create one big serverpool. NA players in NA would have their data center, EU players would have theirs. Only to be able to face each other and not erase data center from some place.

The latency between data centers aren’t that bad as you seem to be believing. Nobody could blame the lag or even feel the difference when playing intercontinental matches. Yet nobody has whined about the lag even when EU players are playing in NA servers or the opposite.

Please consider it again and put up a beta test for it. I would gladly test it out!

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

The region locking encourage players to play with players from their region. But magnifies the WvW Coverage problem by the few servers that attact coverage, will be dominant regardless of skill.

If the region locks were removed. If all servers were on the same ladder system, then the top few servers would go from being about coverage, to being about skill because the best players would flock to the server they could get on, and once all regions are covered, skill takes over.

There is no region locking in GW2, I don’t think you understand the term correctly. Your proposed solution is exactly how it works today. Guilds that care deeply about WvW can transfer to any server NA or EU and compete there. Once all the regions are covered, skill takes over.

The difference between merging the servers and today’s system is that one forces everyone to play with suboptimal ping. The other allows those, who care about WvW enough, to stomach higher latency and participate as you suggest, while still allowing those who care more about latency to play on a regional datacenter.

This is why I say the GW2 is the best of both worlds. It can’t solve the problem entirely, but it offers the best options for players to choose.

cold.3946:

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

The region locking encourage players to play with players from their region. But magnifies the WvW Coverage problem by the few servers that attact coverage, will be dominant regardless of skill.

If the region locks were removed. If all servers were on the same ladder system, then the top few servers would go from being about coverage, to being about skill because the best players would flock to the server they could get on, and once all regions are covered, skill takes over.

There is no region locking in GW2, I don’t think you understand the term correctly. Your proposed solution is exactly how it works today. Guilds that care deeply about WvW can transfer to any server NA or EU and compete there. Once all the regions are covered, skill takes over.

The difference between merging the servers and today’s system is that one forces everyone to play with suboptimal ping. The other allows those, who care about WvW enough, to stomach higher latency and participate as you suggest, while still allowing those who care more about latency to play on a regional datacenter.

This is why I say the GW2 is the best of both worlds. It can’t solve the problem entirely, but it offers the best options for players to choose.

It obviously doesn’t solve any problems. The separation of EU/NA servers makes only technical sense. Not from an actual pvp/competition sense. It encourages the most dedicated guilds to make sure they always have a coverage advantage, and then everyone else just gets to suck it up because of the regional differences.

if this isn’t fixed WvW will start to suck and fewer and fewer people who up. I don’t want to run around on empty maps.

Arenanet needs to merge ladders, and let players sort themselves out in one bracket, as opposed to the 2 different brackets that will be dominated by the one or two servers that get the coverage to stay on top, while trying to court other guilds over.

This system is messing with the natural flow of what could be a great system.

So basically you propose giving everyone a latency disadvantage to make up for your lack of community effort to attract guilds that expand your coverage.

cold.3946:

So basically you propose giving everyone a latency disadvantage to make up for your lack of community effort to attract guilds that expand your coverage.

Your guilds on SBI don’t seem to have a problem with latency from EU/Asia. Do they? In order to match coverage, someone would have to take a latency hit.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

cold.3946:

So basically you propose giving everyone a latency disadvantage to make up for your lack of community effort to attract guilds that expand your coverage.

Your guilds on SBI don’t seem to have a problem with latency from EU/Asia. Do they? In order to match coverage, someone would have to take a latency hit.

Sure they do, but they make a conscious choice to deal with that because they want to be part of our community. In your model, everyone is forced into that role regardless of if they agree with it. See the problem now?

Where are the servers located? Where is the NA and EU data centers?

For the average person the latency issue probably doesn’t matter. But some someone who already has a latency issue connecting to a server that is relatively near might not be able to connect well enough if they have to connect to a server in another country for WvW. I understand why arena net did what they did with the servers. I do think it is broken system though and they need to figure out a way to fix it.

satkis.7021:

HabibLoew.2590:

tl;dr: data centers are on different continents, latency is an issue with intra-continental connections, data center distinctions are here to stay.

The only thing we are asking is to be able to play against each other and not exactly merge the ladders. I’ll try to define it more clear: To create one big serverpool. NA players in NA would have their data center, EU players would have theirs. Only to be able to face each other and not erase data center from some place.

The latency between data centers aren’t that bad as you seem to be believing. Nobody could blame the lag or even feel the difference when playing intercontinental matches. Yet nobody has whined about the lag even when EU players are playing in NA servers or the opposite.

Please consider it again and put up a beta test for it. I would gladly test it out!

As I said above, where would the WvW maps be located? I play on a NA server; I can’t play on a EU servers because latency is unbearable, in NA it is tolerable. I imagine someone playing in the EU servers would have a similar issue with NA servers.
Those who transfer from NA to EU or viceversa are those who can play on both. Don’t confuse them with the majority who never transfered.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

Where are the servers located? Where is the NA and EU data centers?

IIRC Texus and Germany Frankfurt(?)

Regarding Oceanic players and our latency disadvantage – we experience the issue in every online game so are used to it. Previous experience in other MMOs shows that US or EU players would never put up with the lag we deal with on a daily basis.

The main point in Habib’s post is that they will not FORCE people in US/EU to put up with a higher latency. If you willingly accept the latency then more power to you.

The simple fact is that the community already has the power to create worldwide PvP servers. Just nominate a set of servers and organise to transfer a bunch of guilds over. Funnily enough some guilds have already realised this and are already doing it.

It never made sense to me…you could merge the servers and just have it as a side note that there are different centers.

First of all, latency is not that big of a deal in an RPG as opposed to what many people might exagerate, the only type of game where latency is a a game breaker is FPS games. As long as you are under 200 ping in pretty much every other type of game you can do fine competitively. Look at heroes of newerth; most tournaments are hosted in the states or sweden, yet there are many asian teams that do more than fantastic, and that’s a purely competitive game.

Latency is becoming less and less of an issue as technology improves. Personally I play from the middle east on a US server, no latency issues whatsoever and I definitely do not have the best ISP.

Now I know some people do suffer from the latency issues, they can stick to their lands respective server….I know of the whole issue with advantage/disadvantage depending on which server the WvW battle is hosted on due to latency. But when an EU guild transfers to a US server, or vice versa, that server has a much more distinct advantage, because having numbers+covering a longer time frame in WvW is much more significant than latency issues experienced by a few individuals. And of course, having more servers to fight is more interesting since many servers keep facing the same servers and having the same results.

The region locking encourage players to play with players from their region. But magnifies the WvW Coverage problem by the few servers that attact coverage, will be dominant regardless of skill.

What does “skill” in relation to a (server) community mean? To me, organizational capabilities and communication on such a large scale, putting together dedicated off-peak teams, definitely are “skill” in my book, much more so than individual combat skill and geared up-ness by the players.

I still support region locking for EU servers so that everyone in this region is on a somewhat even footing time-zone wise. If it was done on an IP basis it would deter 98% of “offenders”, and the remaining few working with proxies could be sorted out manually.

its interesting that players from sbi are the ones worried about latency; they know what would happen to them and their #1 status if the ladders were merged.