Guild Wars 2

Hi,

My intention is not to create any hostility with the topic but to simply gain an understanding of this server’s rise and decline among the tiers in WvW. I have read a few topics among the forums but haven’t yet been able to gain a full understanding of it’s fall from Tier 1. Frankly, this occured before my time on GW2 and controversial (if it is) topics of this sort regarding server tactics, politics, rise and fall, interest me. I have some guild mates whom used to be on SOR that I could ask but if someone can perhaps give me an unbiased (hopefully) and objective history as to why this server rose and fell It’d be greatly appreciated.

Mind you, I have nothing against the server. It was before my time. I just want to hear perspectives. And please, lets keep this peaceful in the name of curiosity.

Thank you.

Go to your server’s forum at www.sanctumofrall.com and sign up. You’ll be able to post your question there and be answered, and you’ll (probably) be able to read past threads from the people that left.

SoR rose up when several high tier guilds, starting with TW from JQ, transferred into the server and got it organized in WvW. It had the strongest NA population but stalled in Tier 2 due to the lack of coverage. When SBI and SoS both imploded, many off-peak guilds from those servers went to SoR and pushed it to T1. Later IRON, a large EU guild, came in to round out their coverage and made them a solid Tier 1 server.

The WvW guilds made up mostly of transfers formed their own community and had very little interaction with the native SoR guilds like GSCH. From the outside it looked like SoR had an amazing community of guilds that worked well together to succeed in WvW but many didn’t realize that the server had two separate communities that didn’t mesh well together.

Things started going south when their main pst-ocx commander, Lorthos, quit the game and during Season 1, 2013 when IRON went on hiatus and the other EU guilds the server had acquired (KISS and WIC) transferred back to the EU servers. The lack of coverage hurt their ability to compete against the other T1 servers. Internal fighting between the WvW guilds happened. The oceanic and sea guilds were struggling. FEAR and the core of TW were the first to leave the server.

The rest of the guilds still wanted to be in T1 but recruiting new guilds to fill their coverage gaps was too difficult so the remaining guilds in their WvW community collectively relocated to Tarnished Coast.

SoR was left with pretty much zero wvw guilds. The server had barely any pug population to sustain it and it was up the the native SoR community which were shut out of WvW throughout all that time to step up and pick up the pieces.

But then guilds in that community left as well later on. lol

I am actually not a member of SoR, I’m just curious. i do know the back story as to how the server got it’s name which is in itself a great story.

Though the above story is in relation to SoR in particular, it does mirror a lot of servers that have fallen to the lower tiers.

Not mentioned though much can be attributed to free transfers to lower tier servers prior to WVW seasons where we see many guilds try to stack a server for rewards. Not particularly well thought out but it is what it is.

The population on servers seems to have stabilized somewhat. We will see what a new season will bring (if there is one) also what the new WVW map will do to the more casual WVW player.

It died because a ton of reasons that are far to complicated to sum up in one post, but I’ll provide a tl;dr version.

-Commander Burnout: When SoR died FEAR, IRON, Choo, and some other guilds did not have their main commanders, either from burnout(TY WvW Seasons) or IRL.

-TW lost it’s core which did a lot of work despite being relatively small

-More guilds wanted to GvG, less PPT, others wanted more PPT, less GvG

-People were demoralized from Seasons and BG’s strategy of tanking to recruit

-We had an extremely small pug population. SoR has never reached the full status, and probably wasn’t even near the amount needed to hit “FULL”. The server itself was carried by a few hundred people in hardcore guilds that raided every day. It was pretty amazing that it even hit the #1 spot many times with such a small population.

-Oceanic and Sea was insanely inconsistent. Some nights we would tick at the top, others we would be lucky to hold north camp in SoR BL

-Server meetings that became less and less meaningful. I used to love hopping into TS every friday before reset but near the end it became the same old crap where we talked about scouting for an hour.

There’s a lot more that contributed to the server’s destruction but that was the gist of it, but to say that it simply died only because the hardcore guilds didn’t get along with the casual guilds is bullkitten. There was never any hostility until it was clear the server was dead and guilds were about to leave.

Well from a player who joined SOR prior to TW/TWL/LUN moving to the server, there had been drama from the onset, and people got sick of it after 2+ years.

(That’s the super short version, minus drama, and possible things people will flame over/about.)

Sharpoon.8197:

Things started going south when their main pst-ocx commander, Lorthos, quit the game and during Season 1, 2013 when IRON went on hiatus and the other EU guilds the server had acquired (KISS and WIC) transferred back to the EU servers. The lack of coverage hurt their ability to compete against the other T1 servers. Internal fighting between the WvW guilds happened. The oceanic and sea guilds were struggling. FEAR and the core of TW were the first to leave the server.

Was it not IRON who left first to go back to EU, they left after the first week or so of the season, as did they not want more fights instead of PPT, I don’t blame them either, but once they went the core of the EU WvW for SoR died with it.

From the conversations I heard on TS I don’t blame FEAR for leaving, they got blamed for so much crap that happened on there, yet they where always tagged up, and one of the people crying about them never tagged up and ran with there guild untagged.

The long story short it the continuous drama behind the scenes is what killed that server.

On an up note good job for GSCH for sticking to there values and staying with SoR in memory of there friend.

Sharpoon.8197:

it was up to the native SoR community which were shut out of WvW throughout all that time to step up and pick up the pieces.

But then guilds in that community left as well later on. lol

So you’re saying that once the usurpers moved on and it was finally the “natives” turn to shine… They straight choked?

SoR from launch until December 2014 when I transferred to NSP here.

I wasn’t a big WvW-er at the time, but Server Folklore, as you have it, is that the drama stemmed from a disagreement over whether to keep fighting to stay in T1 (where SoR was routintely outmatched by JQ and BG) or tank a bit into T2 where the matchups would be easier.

In the end, ALL of the guilds involved in this fight left.

The problem after that was a combination of things. SoR clearly lost the population and was outmatched, but Glicko adjusts slowly. VERY slowly. SoR placed 3rd every single week for 5 or 6 months.

After that, it was a cycle. Certain players or guilds would try to rebuild, get frustrated with the lack of interest from other players in rebuilding, and leave. SoR would drop a few ranks, stabilize, and then somebody else would try to handle the rebuilding process.

For awhile, T6 looked like our spot, but then we got hit by yet another transfer of 50-75 WvWers off the server as well as one of our large PvX guilds fracturing (with the WvW portion transferring) within a period of a couple months. Yet another fall, yet another series of transfers, this time including my guild.

LetoII.3782:

Sharpoon.8197:

it was up to the native SoR community which were shut out of WvW throughout all that time to step up and pick up the pieces.

But then guilds in that community left as well later on. lol

So you’re saying that once the usurpers moved on and it was finally the “natives” turn to shine… They straight choked?

The thing to remember is that a huge portion of the “natives” weren’t really WvW guilds. Folks like myself who did WvW typically ran around with the coordinated guilds (I liked Hel and Shdw personally) swinging the loot stick. We were mostly PvE players who occasionally enjoyed some WvW here and there.

A few folks, myself included, tried to train up players, increase the overall skill level, get people into good builds, etc. This was tough as it required a lot of work ahead of time to build the knowledge and then share it. The reception to this was probably predictable: it’s a game, not a job, leave me and my Ranger alone plz.

In the end, it’s nobody’s fault, but the community wasn’t really unified in terms of goals. Smaller PvX guilds like mine would gather up 5-8 players, look at the WvW map, see a 65ppt tick in NA prime, and just decide to do something else. Larger guilds (like GSCH) didn’t recognize the problem because they’d run a guild event, pull in 30-40 people, and that 65ppt would quickly become 200-300.

tl;dr starting from a single mass exodus, too much dramatic change for too long of a period forced out anybody who cared for stability, creating a vicious circle that destroyed SoR

Season 1 was the start of the downfall for SoR, although there were things going on weeks or months before that. The one problem SoR had was they did not manage their pugs properly, in some cases there was a lack of respect, there were elitist on the server too which affected the server pugs and TS as well, such as inappropriate bannings.

A couple weeks before season 1, guilds and commanders took the week off citing “training week”, (didn’t even want to train their pugs?) barely anyone tagged up and it affected their pugs. In week 1(or 2 don’t remember now) of the season SoR had managed like a 18k or so lead coming out of the weekend, in two days they lost that lead and most guilds took the rest of week off, which of course had a massive hit on morale for the rest of the server.

Around that time the Iron leader had become sick irl, as well as BG had acquired a guild to counter Iron, it completely swung the tables around for the matchups thereafter. In the week after the pugs disappeared because the guilds and commanders had done so in the week before.

After season 1 things were still rocky, SoR still had the smallest population of T1. They were not getting new blood, maybe they chased a lot of new people from wvw because of attitudes, while a lot of other servers gained new players from pve with the season. Three months later guilds were tired of ppting and the drama? and decided to move, with a lot of them moving to TC to help bring them up into Tier 1. [TW] was one of the last guilds to move, they went to SoS instead for a couple months before going to Wildstar for a few months, they came back and moved to BG since SoS had it’s share of drama that affected one of their former commanders.

SoR started dropping down the tiers but not fast enough as they got stuck in a bad spot for season 2, and missed out on free transfers which could have helped them recover (like 1 server rank off), instead HoD received the bandwagon.

I was on SoR for 22 months from before t1 all the way to t8 before finally leaving for a more competitive environment. I’ve pretty much seen it all through the 3 tournaments/seasons, the guild/server drama etc.

Basically SoR rose up to t1 much the same as any other server rises up, guild transfers from other servers. However although we had a strong NA for a long time, our OCX & SEA was always weak compared to BG & JQ. I remember many nights being part of a skeleton crew in EB with maybe 5-10 people while the other 2 servers had blobs during those time zones, and we basically had little support and did what we could to hold our corner. Sometimes we got help from a bounce group on home bl, sometimes their reply was keep is paper we don’t care. And usually it was, because we watched our keep get flipped every night by their blobs while we tried to defend with 5-10 people.

This caused the major fundamental problem for SoR ppt or fights. Recruiting for OCX & SEA coverage was difficult and basically led to an attitude of “we are just in it for fights because who cares about ppt we are just going to lose everything overnight.” We could finish NA coverage leading by 10k, and wakeup losing by 10k because of that lack of coverage.

Guild/server drama…SoR was long seen as having a toxic environment particularly in TS where certain commanders would ban people and verbally abuse players for no real reason, there was one incident where a well known FEAR commander verbally abused a player to the point where she started crying. Another well known FEAR commander was well known for his bigmouth and giant ego. Friction between guilds was also common, non wvw guilds would often be chastised and excluded from wvw events, guilds like GSCH and EG, because they were seen as not hardcore wvw and were even asked to keep out because wvw maps were assigned to individual guilds for the week at server meetings. This caused a huge lack in militia participation and cost a lot of manpower that could have greatly helped.

At the time SoR was in t1 there was sooooo much garbage going on in t1 it was just plain disgusting, just the worst of the worst behavior you could expect in a game. Our TS would constantly be DDOS’ed, we had to deal with JQ & BG using alt accounts on our server to spy on us and clog up our queues, the massive guild buying which BG at the time was so proud of and publicly showed off on its website, the constant organized double teaming, the many incidents of hacking, glitching, and exploits. It just goes on and on. This created a lot of animosity and frustration that players just started taking out on each other creating an even worse environment.

Then came the first Season and the inevitable demise. Going into it SoR actually had a chance to do pretty well, although JQ had the better matchups, we were in a good position to do well. Then…BG pulled a nasty surprise, they had rented out a large Russian guild from I believe Seafarers Rest, and this basically turned EU coverage around, not only had BG already stacked their EU coverage prior to the season to compete against IRON, but now they brought in zdS and basically neither SoR nor JQ could compete in this time zone after this, it was just to much. IRON’s leader had some real life health issues that came up and had to stop playing, and IRON eventually decided to move back to an EU server. Next to go was DIE (formerly WET) a late NA, early OCX guild. And basically the other major hardcore wvw guilds eventually would leave SoR, some got bought off. There was talk of wanting to drop down to t2 and try to stabilize there and rebuild but it turned to nothing. Where they went is not important, as most if not all have moved to another server by now as most wvw guilds do. The first season had burned out so many players, turned many more off of wvw, it was a death blow for SoR in t1.

Those of us who stayed, mainly PvX guilds like EG, HL (later AGNY), GSCH etc and some wvw guilds like SHDW, FIRE etc tried to help rebuild not only SoR’s wvw community but SoR itself. We created a new TS with new rules that did not allow toxic behavior, we tried to recruit players from other servers and tried to encourage and teach players from SoR to get into WvW.

Unfortunately the second tournament came at the worst possible time, it was just after the exodus and left us little time to stabilize and recruit so we basically got stuck in Silver league and could not compete for 9 weeks, ratings, ranks dropped and more people/guilds left.

After we settled in bronze it got a little easier, for a while we got some new blood in PF, NQ, VEX, and some returning players. We actually started winning matchups and were having fun in more balanced matchups. Then came the third season and many people got very burned out especially after the first week which was very close up the final day but the realization that we could not compete with the other servers coverage frustrated many people, and we would be matched up with those same servers 3 out 4 weeks iirc. Another exodus followed after.

From what I understand now SoR is basically a casual environment in terms of wvw.

I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this topic either publicly or privately. I’ve ready every post thus far and I have to say, this is almost like a book. Pretty kitten fascinating from my point of view. Not necessarily the consequences of a swift rise to tier one but more the overall process (both good and bad) the went in to achieving it. Topic isn’t closed, just wanted to thank everyone for putting in the time to respond.