Guild Wars 2

Almost all of the ongoing problems with the WvW matching system (season or otherwise) can be traced back to same critical mistake:

Free server transfers went on far too long, and created a culture in which server hopping and stacking were the norm. When free transfers stopped, you could still transfer using in-game resources and thus the era of severs and guilds stockpiling gold to encourage hopping and stacking was born.

I said from day one that every day free transfers continued, the long term health of WvW would be undercut. When the switch as made to gems and gold for transfers, the health of WvW deteriorated further.

What makes me angry is that this was all so completely predictable. And I refuse to accept that Anet can’t come up with other ways to make a lot of money that don’t have such a negative impact on the structure of WvW.

90 days after release of the game, free transfers should have ended, never to return. After that point, server transfers should cost real-world cash, and a fair amount of it. A decision to transfer should be weighty. A guild deciding to switch servers should be a major and difficult deal. It shouldn’t be this culture of hoping around on a whim.

I picked JQ in beta, and I have never transferred. In situations where a several population is low, ANET could allow for targeted transfers to specific servers for the purpose of merging. But that’s it. Before GW2 implemented this absurd transfer system, no one thought they were “entitled” to frivolous transfers anytime they wanted. It was a culture that Anet created, and it has done substantial damage to the health of WvW.

WvW is the only reason I have played GW2 all this time. WvW was what I was searching for for over a decade, ever since Dark Age of Camelot. And GW2 has been incredible. WvW is still fun, but only when the mechanics of a deeply flawed system aren’t getting in the way. And that keeps getting harder and harder to ignore.

Anet, you did this with a policy on server tranfers that quite frankly has boggled my mind since day one. Every week free transfers were still around I kept scratching my head wondering how on earth you could think that was good for the long term integrity of the game. When you decided to let people transfser through gold/gems I sat in stunned disbelief. How could anyone not see what effect this was going to have on WvW matchups?

WvW is such an amazing thing, really done well in this game. And that is all being undercut by a critically flawed transfer system and culture. You could still take steps of clean it up. I hope you do.

Glad I’m not the only old DAoC player who looked at the WvW concept that ANet borrowed from RvR, looked at server transfers and wondered how the heck those two opposing concepts could co-exist.

See post here: for my comments about not allowing WvW character transfers.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/What-started-the-WvW-decline/first#post4053474

Easy transfers, whether free or not, with a fully decked level 80, complete with WvW ranks earned elsewhere just corrupt the entire server vs server concept.

Like I said, I’ve never understood that, from day 1.

Players from GW1 stacked servers before release date. I remember chatting in GW1 which server to go to. WvW was imbalanced from the first second.

JQ, SoR, and BG were 1st, 2nd and 3rd before free transfers stopped.

Anet’s biggest failure was in thinking that the players would balance WvW on their own.

Why isn’t server transfer fees related to WvW population? Make it based on a 30 day player-hour average so a server would have to vanish for weeks to get their fees lowered.

Because there is such a hugh difference from TC/JQ/BG to SoS to MaG/DB, justify why is the transfer price the same for each?

Server affiliation and transfer fees need to end and WvW needs to be completely re-balanced. This needs to be actively managed by Anet because allowing players/guilds to be bought is wrong for WvW. Not logging in to lower server population status to allow transfers is wrong for WvW. Having a season 2 before fixing the problems exposed in season 1 is wrong for WvW.

The free transfers was a neat idea for re-balance, but when they allow servers to go from bottom 3 to first it’s just too much.

I can just see what is going to happen to season 3. Even more match fixing from NA T1. I wouldn’t be surprised if match fixing becomes common in all leagues.

With population now dipping so low in WvW, that the active drive is in the hands of a small group of people, never before smaller. Matchfixing becomes very easy.
A single guildleader of a large wvw guild can swing the outcome of a match, by making a deal with a similar person on one of the other servers. And its never been easier or more effective.
And i suspect it will only get much worst from here on out.

Servers were stacked when transfers to all servers was free. Servers were stacked when transfers to all servers was paid. Point is servers will be stacked… period. Happens in every game whether it is named a faction, realm, etc. Doesn’t matter if they have transfers or do not allow them at all.

No game that I know has ever cracked the population/coverage imbalances in a server driven design. DAoC had it, SWToR has it, GW2 has it, ESO has it, etc. Ultimately game designers need to leave the server design system completely if they want a better PvP, RvR, WvW system.

IMO for seasons, the day they announce the new one, all transfers between servers should be WvW locked until the season is over. Oh what’s that, you wanted to transfer and stack a higher server just for the rewards? Too bad, you can no longer enter WvW for 3 months until the season is over.

Is this a kitten move and basically giving the players the finger? Why yes it is…but in order to balance the servers for WvW, you must have an iron grip on the WvW server transfers. Otherwise you have people stacking higher servers which messes up Glicko and all the other server fights, leading to a stale WvW like you’ve seen the past 9 weeks.

Terrahero.9358:

With population now dipping so low in WvW, that the active drive is in the hands of a small group of people, never before smaller. Matchfixing becomes very easy.
A single guildleader of a large wvw guild can swing the outcome of a match, by making a deal with a similar person on one of the other servers. And its never been easier or more effective.
And i suspect it will only get much worst from here on out.

Anything that helps lowering the population in WvW would eventually benefit ANet financially.

WvW servers cost more money than WvW gem store items. Not counting the devs costs because there is none.

In one year time the WvW borderlands will merge into one EBG zerg map and EoTM will become a ghost town once its nerfed to the ground.

Lol that’s so false. ^

Couldn’t there be something like a server affiliation achievement that goes up over time of consistently being in a server and also active in WvW? What the reward could be is gaining better rewards from WvW loot (which sucks) and end of season (50+/100+/etc more mystic whatnot that your server will get) .

If you change server then what accruement you got in the previous server goes down as the accruement goes up in your new server. That way its detrimental to people jumping servers all the time in that yes they win at the end but over time get lesser rewards.

Im sure it could be exploited but just a thought.

RyuDragnier.9476:

IMO for seasons, the day they announce the new one, all transfers between servers should be WvW locked until the season is over. Oh what’s that, you wanted to transfer and stack a higher server just for the rewards? Too bad, you can no longer enter WvW for 3 months until the season is over.

This would drive some players out of the game and wouldn’t bring many if any in. This would also not solve anything since servers would still lose to coverage and population.

IMO locking the tiers is the problem since it traps overly strong or weak servers into tiers they should move out of. If they rewarded players for participation rather than being on a server with better pop/coverage, seasons would be more engaging for many players and feel more fair.

I don’t know why people keep posting threads like this. I’m sure most people will agree that when it comes to populations the state of WvW is less than optimal. It’s a point that has been made countless times already, and the reasons for it are well known. The format inherently rewards stacking, and players will invariably follow the path of least resistance.

Where the going gets tough is coming up with acceptable solutions. Not because none of the solutions suggested thus far have been viable, but because they are often met with significant degrees of disapproval. Everyone agrees about the nature of the problem, but there isn’t a hint of consensus when it comes down to actually doing something about it. Given that, I can’t say I’m surprised by a.net’s unwillingness to open this particular can of worms, despite the fact that we’ve had two CDI threads so far where people repeatedly attempted to get to grips with it. Straegen already nailed this thread anyway, and there’s not much more to add, so I’ll just quote him and be done with it:

Straegen.2938:

Ultimately game designers need to leave the server design system completely if they want a better PvP, RvR, WvW system.

And that’s the pill the WvW community has consistently proven unwilling to swallow.

Frood.8437:

Couldn’t there be something like a server affiliation achievement that goes up over time of consistently being in a server and also active in WvW? What the reward could be is gaining better rewards from WvW loot (which sucks) and end of season (50+/100+/etc more mystic whatnot that your server will get) .

If you change server then what accruement you got in the previous server goes down as the accruement goes up in your new server. That way its detrimental to people jumping servers all the time in that yes they win at the end but over time get lesser rewards.

Im sure it could be exploited but just a thought.

This probably could help a lot. And to make it easy on Anet: just make it a Magic Find bonus, so that no new system of rewards has to be created.

As for solving the problem as a whole. If we could just get servers that are close in ranking to have comparable coverage, that would already be an enormous improvement.

The big problem of getting all servers to have roughly equal coverage/population is probably too big an issue to solve directly at the moment.

The root problem was the utterly moronic PvE/WvW-Server coupling, or at least the way it was handled.
With PvE servers now gone, there is literally no reason to still retain this husk of a system for WvW exclusively. Make it a faction thing (with more factions than traditional MMOs, i.e. 2 or 3, have, but less than current servers) and make server transfers a non-trivial matter in this new system, like atleast once a month, costing a fairly steep price that isn’t interchangeable with gold/gems.

Implementing factions would kill WvW’s only revenue: server transfers.

Sure, you could charge for faction transfers. And it may take longer, but you could end up with a dominant faction. Then you run into the same population imbalance problem all over again.

I agree that making transfers harder/cost steeper would help as a speedbump.

There needs to be some restoring force (provided by the game/developers) to balance the sides, and I and the folks I’ve talked with about this in an on-going manner, aren’t smart enough to figure it out.

Even DAoC had this problem, and what they did, short term, was offer insta-leveling to level 20 and even 30 (for lower realm populations) on specific servers to help motivate players to balance out population there. That was a big deal when level 50 was endgame and it was time-intensive grinding to get there.

ManaCraft.5630:

Straegen.2938:

Ultimately game designers need to leave the server design system completely if they want a better PvP, RvR, WvW system.

And that’s the pill the WvW community has consistently proven unwilling to swallow.

We don’t know that because non-server based WvW systems have never really existed. The first game that comes out with a decent WvW system that is guild alliance based will likely be the first to have somewhat balanced matchups.

There is a lot of blame that goes to Anet but at the end of the day it’s the players fault. Most people want to win, they don’t want balance or competition. Regardless of the walls you put up people will tend to stack where they have the highest chance of winning the best rewards or most prestige. Even before there was any reward whatsoever players stacked. In short, players generally believe Anet should convince/incentivize players to act counter to their nature.

Totally agree, I posted something similar on a different thread.

This is 100% developmental oversight. In essence, it gave players a license, and a free one at that, to exploit and cheat the system. The outcome was obvious to the extreme, and how it could have been established that way in the first place without KNOWING the outcome is boggling.

On top of that, myself and many others wrote thread after thread about this very issue while the problem was still growing, and nothing was done until this year.

Even then, the issue was only band aided, the current restrictions really dont solve a thing.

All we can hope for is that by some miracle the decision makers at Anet will see a light bulb and radically change the way matches are put together.

Honestly though, Im not holding my breath.

On the bright side, Mark Jacobs is working on a new sequel to DAOC, if thats done well, and Mark usually does a great job, then I expect quite a few players (including myself) will be headed that way.