Guild Wars 2

Wanderer.3248:

Server population has almost no correlation with WvW.

And gaining a bunch of new players won’t help lower tier servers. They’ll just go up the rankings until they get stomped by the highest tier servers.

Only if a server is ranked dead last week after week should they get any players funnelled to them. And then it would only be a temporary solution, because another server would probably take their place.

Such a solution would actually be quite good, and the temporary nature of it also works.

If you made whatever was the lowest ranked (24th in NA) the default starting world for new accounts, that’s as good a way as any to potentially add people to a WvW scene that needs them.

Sure, lots/most of the new players won’t go into WvW anytime soon (or ever), but they might. And a single person in WvW at the bottom can make a difference. People making extra accounts or wanting to join their friends can pay for the move (or their friends can).

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

So if you have a scroll of experience and 60 tombs, you’ll be level 80 in minutes on your new char.

Sixty?! That’s a lot of dead people!

I too am interested in this situation. I found the server population status to be flaky and mildly inaccurate at best, when servers such as Borlis Pass, and Jade Quarry/Yak’s Bend/SoS with the same population status. Has anyone even seen BP’s WvW? It’s a ghost town! I understand about keeping things from being gamed, but seriously, with as informative as this is, you might as well not have a population indicator at all and just a button that highlights for “no vacancy.”

This can’t be good for WvW, as evidenced in it’s current state.

Personally wouldn’t mind transparency because I don’t know what to think of it.

Transparency without safeguards means that the bulk of people would join the servers they regard as “best”, because in the absence of other experience – who would do otherwise?

Lock off gold, lock off the top tier in silver and bronze and then provide the data. We don’t want to encourage bandwagoning after all.

Use monthly population rating.

I completely agree and would definitely like some insight to this as well, would be awesome if we could be provided with more info on the matter! I think it is an amazing thing that everyone can get together and discuss things like this, we certainly could use some feedback from the Devs and potentially see a change for the better!
– Timmeh

Bump! Server population determination definitely needs an overhaul. WvW players should not be punished for PvE and absent players.

well, i would say if there hasnt been a response yet, more than likely we are not going to get a response.

making a new map is more important than fixing the glaring problems that cause the most complaints.

Yea, anet need to fix this. It has been mentioned many times over several threads.

Good Post! I am a returning player who baught several accounts during this 75% off sale for my real life friends to try and get them to play with me and they can’t even get on to my server.

Xanan.1356:

Good Post! I am a returning player who baught several accounts during this 75% off sale for my real life friends to try and get them to play with me

ah man i wish i had thought of doing that……

Anet stated years ago that they raise the pop cap if needed and because of that it is speculated that tier 1 servers have higher cap than the others.

Now for the “Very High” status, if you remember season 3, all servers, including t1 which were full at the time, were changed for that. They do not represent the real population, it was changed only to make all servers ‘equal’.

Could pull some crazy theory here and say the DB being listed as full is anet’s way to try to mend tier 3…

In anyway, would be nice to actual know the regular wvw pop for each server.

seems like if they were to monitor for say a month, not inform the community, and then base the population off the # of people who log into their wvw say more than 2-3 times a week for “x” amount of time. do it at random intervals throughout the year. and just never inform the community that you are doing it.

also, they could take the highest pop of their test and make the the ceiling for all worlds. when a world reaches that sealing it is locked. base the amount to transfer servers on how much space it has left. and then for newer players offer wvw leveling buffs or something for joining a world with low pop.

I’m pretty unhappy that I + 3 friends had to pay full price to move from DB to FC recently... So I would like to see this addressed as well

DB has no issue with WvW population, and no disadvantage. Everyone below you has half your population.

I can tell you that FA outnumbers SBI pretty freaking badly. SBI is a rank 10 sever playing FA who’s a rank 4 server.

FA queues every map on reset, SBI only queues EB.

If Anet is going to force servers into kitten matches vs. server that are in tier 1 they need to put some kind of balance system into the game.

grifflyman.8102:

I can tell you that FA outnumbers SBI pretty freaking badly. SBI is a rank 10 sever playing FA who’s a rank 4 server.

FA queues every map on reset, SBI only queues EB.

If Anet is going to force servers into kitten matches vs. server that are in tier 1 they need to put some kind of balance system into the game.

dont worry, it gets better as the week goes on.

FA possibly has the most active NA WvW population in the game. They certainly are competetive in T1 in NA prime

Actually SBI got to queue homeborder to a point, however, wasn’t enough to compete with 3 or 4 FA guilds with decent numbers plus IoJ. We didn’t had the outnumbered buff, but surely was in terms of pop defending vs attacking.

Bump this shizz. Not sure why servers that have a small WvW population (T5+, arguably T3+) have a Very High denomination as compared to T1 or T2. Nor why DB should have a Full status when FA, YB, and JQ lack such a status despite having a similar WvW population.

Especially considering the fact that there’s literally no differentiating factor between servers besides WvW. In every other game mode, server is irrelevant. So why not base it off tier placement, in the least? Give Bronze league High or lower, Silver Very High or lower (never Full for Silver), then adjust Gold league server according to WvW population, not PvE or PvP population. To be honest, I’m not sure how we’d measure WvW population as it’s constantly in flux, but the current measures are not healthy for WvW as a whole, T2, and/or the lower tiers especially.

Unless depopulation of lower tiers with simultaneous filling of top tiers is a scheme to make T2/T3 more competitive while shutting down Bronze league to consolidate players. In which case, I shake my head and think WHAT A DISASTER ©.

Basch.1347:

Bump this shizz. Not sure why servers that have a small WvW population (T5+, arguably T3+) have a Very High denomination as compared to T1 or T2. Nor why DB should have a Full status when FA, YB, and JQ lack such a status despite having a similar WvW population.

Especially considering the fact that there’s literally no differentiating factor between servers besides WvW. In every other game mode, server is irrelevant. So why not base it off tier placement, in the least? Give Bronze league High or lower, Silver Very High or lower (never Full for Silver), then adjust Gold league server according to WvW population, not PvE or PvP population. To be honest, I’m not sure how we’d measure WvW population as it’s constantly in flux, but the current measures are not healthy for WvW as a whole, T2, and/or the lower tiers especially.

Unless depopulation of lower tiers with simultaneous filling of top tiers is a scheme to make T2/T3 more competitive while shutting down Bronze league to consolidate players. In which case, I shake my head and think WHAT A DISASTER ©.

IMO the best way to calculate active WvW population would be through player hours.

One would need to calculate the cumulative number of hours spent by players from X server in WvW.

That sort of metric wouldn’t differentiate between a server with 400 players who spend an hour in wvw each week, or a server with 100 players that spend 4 hours in wvw each week.

Don’t you have to take into account the fairweather effect? Whether any server wants to admit or not, every server will have a significant portion of their population long in more often and longer when winning and log in less often and shorter when losing.

Though if it was a constantly recalculated metric, that could work. The only question would be if it could react fast enough to changing circumstances.

azyume.6321:

Anet stated years ago that they raise the pop cap if needed and because of that it is speculated that tier 1 servers have higher cap than the others.

Now for the “Very High” status, if you remember season 3, all servers, including t1 which were full at the time, were changed for that. They do not represent the real population, it was changed only to make all servers ‘equal’.

Could pull some crazy theory here and say the DB being listed as full is anet’s way to try to mend tier 3…

In anyway, would be nice to actual know the regular wvw pop for each server.

That sounds really convincing. Many PvP MMO often have their “capacity” manually adjusted. They don’t determine the population through only system, the system is there only to serve as a temporary measure. They adjust the capacity when necessary based on the actual situation.

In that case, if what you said is accurate, then Anet has actively being part of making servers stacked by continuously increase cap on certain servers and undermine the process of population spreading out across other servers.

T1 is very capable of queuing maps at many different timing, there have been many propaganda that certain T1 servers lack that, certain T1 servers lack this. However, T1 is totally capable of queuing maps on several different timing, not just NA time alone. NA queue on T1 is just simply big when compared to T2. As far as I have gathered, T1 doesn’t lack population (because they have queues), they simply lack experienced and well-trained commanders.

So, how the hell T1 managed to queue so many maps at so many different timing IF the population system is SAME for every server? That is like saying T1 do not have PvE players but we all know that is false, those who are here before megaserver knows very well how big T1’s PvE population is. Back then, the lower tiers are also rated “Very High” but their WvW population is so low and their PvE population is pretty much empty too, so where does that “Very High” comes from?

It’s a bit of a foobar situation. They can’t merge servers to consolidate WvW populations because there’s no where to fit all the non-WvW populations.

Just a wild guess that DB’s full status is coming from inactive accounts that suddenly became active over the weekend as the HoT hype hit.

Well, since the server transfering and stuff is automated anyways, they could just setup PvE Server 1-10+ and transfer people with 0 WXP over there. Would be rather fun to come and see all servers at "empty".

grifflyman.8102:

I can tell you that FA outnumbers SBI pretty freaking badly. SBI is a rank 10 sever playing FA who’s a rank 4 server.

FA queues every map on reset, SBI only queues EB.

If Anet is going to force servers into kitten matches vs. server that are in tier 1 they need to put some kind of balance system into the game.

Actually SBI queued EB, and SBI BL, and had 50 people on FA BL at one point. But, of course we can’t sustain those types of numbers for long. FA is a beast compared to us lowly t3 and below servers.

Fa is a beast for the rest of t2 after all their recent recruitment… They are fun, but they just overwhelm you with the numbers.

2 pages and no dev reply?

Bumping for an explanation on server populations. This has been a sore spot for us since the game launched with few explanations. I would like to see an in-depth explanation as to server population and what counts towards it.

EDIT: I’m guessing this issue will never get cleared up as it’s been ongoing for years. Anet wont drop down populations because that wouldn’t make their game look as active to players. I really feel bad for the players who joined servers like Devona’s Rest/Anvil Rock/ET or any of the lower servers because when they enter WvW they’ll never get to experience the true glory of the game mode. Just a baron wasteland.

Coyote.7031:

This is a fair point, I just started playing and while choosing my home server I think the majority of them said “Very High”. I didn’t notice any full servers, but I’m sure they were there or hidden since I can’t chose them. I had been told server don’t matter much, so I was confused if servers don’t matter, why am I choosing one and why are they “Very High”? I understand that WvW is one of the reasons to choosing a server, but no where on that server list does it tell me anything about WvW or the servers I’m choosing. It seems odd to me to keep information external. It also seems odd to me that they charge for server transfers when the only reason you’d want to change is WvW. I’m sure it’ll make more sense when I become more experienced. I can see people switching teams constantly becoming an issue, but there are other ways around that.

The truth is: we don’t have official informations from ANet about the state of WvW.

We don’t know how many people are on average in each map for each server, we don’t have a web or in-game interface to check which guilds are on which server, what kind of coverage each server has… it’s nearly impossible for a new player to pick a server with WvW in mind.

Newbkakes.4971:

2 pages and no dev reply?
I really feel bad for the players who joined servers like Devona’s Rest/Anvil Rock/ET or any of the lower servers because when they enter WvW they’ll never get to experience the true glory of the game mode. Just a baron wasteland.

I don’t know who this Baron Wasteland is, but you know that ET shot up the ranks from dead last, and even though it has peaked and dropped somewhat, it’s still in the top tier of bronze, right? Still lots of fights at that level.

So many great posts and points from so many different servers. The thread is over 3,000 views already. Hopefully we get a reply soon!

Wanderer.3248:

Server population has almost no correlation with WvW.

And gaining a bunch of new players won’t help lower tier servers. They’ll just go up the rankings until they get stomped by the highest tier servers.

Only if a server is ranked dead last week after week should they get any players funnelled to them. And then it would only be a temporary solution, because another server would probably take their place.

Speaking from the consistently dead last server…funneling new players to our server doesn’t guarantee new WvW participants, especially if we’re getting run over every week. I almost wish there were some radical solution, like megaservers with your WvW rank determining what tier you belong too (and keeping WvW rank separate from EotM).

Glicko = PPT = Coverage, so base the transfer price based on WvW rank.
but then tanking.. ~_~

Rimmy.9217:

Newbkakes.4971:

2 pages and no dev reply?
I really feel bad for the players who joined servers like Devona’s Rest/Anvil Rock/ET or any of the lower servers because when they enter WvW they’ll never get to experience the true glory of the game mode. Just a baron wasteland.

I don’t know who this Baron Wasteland is, but you know that ET shot up the ranks from dead last, and even though it has peaked and dropped somewhat, it’s still in the top tier of bronze, right? Still lots of fights at that level.

If you haven’t been on the higher servers, you don’t know what “lots of fights” really means. I speak from experience.

Grimaldi.8532:

So many great posts and points from so many different servers. The thread is over 3,000 views already. Hopefully we get a reply soon!

Why would you believe it is going to get a reply? We have a thread with over 63,ooo and 51,ooo views that discussed this all ready, in which the devs created and participated in. Why would they bother posting on recreated threads on an already discussed topic, in which the same ideas are regurgitated and repeated again? I have trouble

SkyShroud.2865:

So, how the hell T1 managed to queue so many maps at so many different timing IF the population system is SAME for every server? That is like saying T1 do not have PvE players but we all know that is false, those who are here before megaserver knows very well how big T1’s PvE population is. Back then, the lower tiers are also rated “Very High” but their WvW population is so low and their PvE population is pretty much empty too, so where does that “Very High” comes from?

you want truth, i think there are a plethora of pve ktrainers in T1 wvw (surprisingly they arent just in eotm lately). every once in awhile i get really annoyed cause the majority of players from all 3 worlds are running around in circles capping stuff and barely fighting. it was bad last night.
most times tho this is not the case and there alot of zerg v zerg v zerg battles that go for hours (more common than the ktrainers).

coglin, they already answered this question? Can you post a link, I would greatly appreciate it.

Grimaldi.8532:

coglin, they already answered this question? Can you post a link, I would greatly appreciate it.

We have an entire sub section of the forums titled “CDI” (collaborative development initiative) that is devoted to dev started or dev participated discussion on most of the hot topics that are commonly recreated and discussed repeatedly.

Grimaldi.8532:

coglin, they already answered this question? Can you post a link, I would greatly appreciate it.

Here’s a link to the World Population CDI. It’s from a year and a half ago and nothing has been done so far so don’t get your hopes up.

It’s a long discussion with many suggestions. Unfortunately the bottom line is that people disagree on what needs to be done. And Anet did not give any indication that anything can or will be done.

Personally I don’t think anything can be done about the actual population. Its a 24/7 game mode on a round planet with a diurnal cycle that is not itself balanced with respect to population in the game.

The only thing you can do is to attempt to mitigate the imbalances. There were many suggestions for that too, mostly involving scoring and reward incentives.

Hopefully with the expansion Anet will do something to try to mitigate the imbalance.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/first

here is an idea
get rid of the WvW maps
open up all the pve maps to pvp
your world vs everyone elses world.
pvp 24/7 everywhere you go

yes im serious but i know it wont happen

And their bread and butter people (pve) would leave en masse……

Liston.9708:

And their bread and butter people (pve) would leave en masse……

https://theagileproductowner.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/captain-obvious.jpg

This is my first time posting but I echo much of the sentiments posted on this thread and other threads as well. It would be wonderful to know what Anet plans to do with WvW. Not withstanding the top tier servers who have continuous coverage, there is no balance in WvW.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind getting totally wiped if it was because I was outclassed in skill (I rank myself as a mediocre player by the way). I however do not enjoy at all logging on and being continuously wiped by a glob of players five times larger than all of the people my server can muster on any given map…repeatedly. Things have even degenerated so much for our server where our opponents literally have the manpower to 24/7 spawn camp all our borderland spawns and keeps while we don’t even have the manpower to take back a single keep and hold it.

I do not pretend to know what the formula Anet is using to “rank” the servers, but there is clearly a disconnect between what is being calculated from what is actually occurring. I also would like to know how Anet wishes to preserve a sense of community within the lower WvW tier servers when there is currently zero incentive to stay on. And no, the outnumbered bonus is not incentive enough. Why participate in a perpetually losing, constantly being steamrolled experience when you can transfer out and have a more enjoyable experience?

If I have to switch out servers to have a better WvW experience, so be it. Or simply just stop playing WvW because it has stopped being fun. I just happen to really enjoy the community made up of the last few people left in my server which I am loathe to leave. Anet just needs to flat out tell us if WvW will ever be balanced with respect to server population/power/score points/etc. in a way that makes meaningful sense. WvW should be an enjoyable experience everytime a GW2 player logs on irrespective of what server they’re on.

Good post and I agree! The populations should be re-assessed, definitely.

As a player with two accounts, one on Dragonbrand and one on Sorrow’s Furnace I see a significant difference between these two.

Dragonbrand is currently full, we can pull our weight but it’s obvious some of our opponents have a higher WvW population than ours.

Sorrow’s Furnace shows as “Very High” and WvW is not fun. I can’t even remember the last time I enjoyed WvW on SF. I haven’t seen a zerg in months. Commanders that tag up will have max 3-5 running around with them until they’re rolled over by an enemy zerg; they become so discouraged to play that they just tag down or leave altogether.

Despite the existing player issue; it’s nearly pointless for me to refer a friend to buy & play GW2 with me on Dragonbrand. I’ve had NEW players waiting to get in to the server because they have a specific interest in WvW and would rather be able to join my server now than pay $20 USD later.

and still not a single word from dev, my friends want to join DB but they can’t, now i have to move out of my “full” title sever which is cost me a lots for no reason.

Try at odd times I swear I saw db not full the other day…..

Liston.9708:

Try at odd times I swear I saw db not full the other day…..

Yup if you try at off-peak times of the server there is a chance you will get the server listed as High instead of Full which will allow you to join.

A restructuring of the servers is needed, the megaservers were to reduce cost really, too many players left the game, they no longer needed so many servers, so why waste money.
Though HoT may change that as some players come back, so expect lag and long queues, queues to even log into the game!

Its pretty surprising that a server like Darkhaven went full right after the $10 sale went live O.o

Move all the the four to six month+ inactive accounts to lower populated servers.

Shinoobi.1259:

Move all the the four to six month+ inactive accounts to lower populated servers.

Probably don/t even need to go that far. Just taking out anyone not in in 2 year would thin out basically everyone that quit within the first 6 month. I would suspect they are the least likely to return as well.

Uh i really dont think inactive population counts against a server being “full,” if it did all the servers would be full and not fluctuate as they do through out the day. Coordinated log-out has worked to get full guilds onto servers that maintain full status.