Guild Wars 2

This isnt really an issue with the game but its more to do with population and balance when it comes to wvwvw. This mode is absolutely fantastic however on my server (white-side ridge) so few people ever do it and same goes for other servers. we are always at the bottom and we are so often matched up against a server that dominates us due to it’s size and how small we are. Now there are many possible fixes to this, one on the top of my head would be a server merge with another small server. I have been playing since early beta and i think alpha and i love every second of it however my Favourite part just isn’t as fun as it could be when it is for others. I greatly appreciate what you do but i just wanted to voice this concern. Thank-you for taking the time to read this

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance

Dayra.7405:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance

Thank you

Yes please cluster the NA servers

white side ridge may be small but we do well vs big zergs for our size

but sometimes no matter how hard 20 people fight vs the 100s in a mother blob u just cant win XD

white side ridge needs more small skilled guilds
and we will wreck the brainless mother blobs XD

Lower population caps and the people that still want to play will distribute themselves amongst the servers. People stacking servers caused this, so remove it as an option. Simples.

I like the idea of merging the three 3 lowest populated servers. Not sure if anyone on those servers agree. Do we even know what the 3 lowest populated servers are in NA and Europe?

Also, the new merged server should not retain any old server names. There should be rebranding.

Easy for me to say though since I’m not on a lower populated server .-.

Simply merging the lowest population servers would do next to nothing. Merging one small server with another small server would just create a not quite as small small server with the same issues as the previous small servers.

It would take combining all servers down to 12.

I do not want to see the low-tier servers merged into something like megaservers. If I wanted T1 play, I’d transfer to a T1 server. Please no.

I’m on Underworld and I’d merge the four lowest servers (not three, think about it) in a heartbeat. Between us we would actually make one viable contender. Just.

You know in the 2 years playing GW2 I’ve never heard that it is the lower population servers that’s ruining WvW.

Dashwood.3215:

I’m on Underworld and I’d merge the four lowest servers (not three, think about it) in a heartbeat. Between us we would actually make one viable contender. Just.

It’s more than that that needs to be done in EU.

One DE server needs to go, same one FR server (they should choose Vizunah because it’s a server that is dead anyway, because of the drama that occured there, the ones “holding it together” leaving, and the reputation it has in the french community now), and remove the last 5 servers (that are all international servers, and all but one from memory servers that weren’t in beta and shouldn’t have been opened at all), puting their population elsewhere (as in the 6th lowest server).

Since it’s something that won’t bode well with “ennemy” servers, you juste remove the last 6, create a new one and offer free transfers to there, with reduced transfer price (like 50/60% off) for any server between 11 and 18).

For the DE/Fr server, you just offer them free transfert to one of the DE/Fr server of their choice.

People keep pretending they are on the lowest servers because they “like” the WvW there… except there isn’t one.

21h out of 24h there is NOTHING going on with under 20 people total on all 4 maps.

“Roaming” means 2/3 thieves/mesmers capping camp that are never defended, and sometimes ganking a lonely player that isn’t one of those and sporting a group build.

If that’s what people “like” about WvW they can go EotM all day long, they’ll be able to do so whatever their colour, picking up on people who can’t defend themselves (upscaled), and at least they’ll get better rewards.

The main reasons people down there don’t move elsewhere are :
- it cost and quite some WvW players don’t have the gold for it, and don’t want to shard money for it
- they know people down there, not only their guilds, and don’t want to move without them (it’s what kept people in MMOs for ages now btw)
- they still think of WvW as it was over 1 year ago, with massive blobby lagfests and huge queues from mid silver to top gold, wich hasn’t happen for MONTHS now. They don’t realize what they pretend to want (roaming, small scale fights) happens more on those servers because you actually have the numbers to form a zerg/big group(s) to handle the ennemy ones AND then form chaos/roaming bands to have fun and split things elsewhere.

On top of that there is the gigantic hypocrisy about the “blobfest in gold we don’t want” down there, because EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY CAN they pile up and blob, like everyone else (ask FoW how they manage their events with 60+ people… if they split them in small roaming bands, smallscale fights or use them as gigantic blobs trying to outnumber and drawn the ennemy under 2/3 times their numbers….).

But push come to shove, mid/low silver now is like T7/8 around S1, and all those servers (the more you go down, the more it’s true) are holding on on the shoulders of a handful of people/commanders/guilds, that will finally kill the server the day they move (wich might pretty much happen quickly now that you don’t lose your guild amenities and Rep when moving servers anymore).

Take FoW, it just take RA and FD to leave right now and it’s basically dead. Just the officers of RA stopping playing hurt FoW so much it dived 3 places down in a couple weeks with no activity at all.

It’s the same for the rest, Vabbi just lost a dozen WvW dedicated players and it crippled them.

One day players will stop pretending they like it down there out of fear of moving and having to recreate links and relationships elsewhere, and those servers will go back to where they shouldn’t have been taken out of, limbo.
(and i’m on one of those low servers i say needs to go, at least for a few more weeks now – and i know more and more people are leaving, with a few guilds disappearing for game-unrelated reasons, meaning more people will follow the ones leaving, and once a couple guilds are gone, the server will crumble and rest will probably move too).

O

Swamurabi.7890:

You know in the 2 years playing GW2 I’ve never heard that it is the lower population servers that’s ruining WvW.

It’s not ruining WvW overall, it’s just there is no enjoyment there to be had with no WvW happening down there outside of MAYBE 2/3h a day (and even there it’s usually roflstomp or be roflstomped by cheer numbers depending on the side you are on), and the rest is perma PvD, with no scouting, nearly no upgrading, sieging, T3 objectives flipped without anyone showing up to defend, while there is like 4/5 people capping it slooooowwwly, “roaming” means “run around doing nothing but solo/duo flipping camps finding one enemy every 10/15+ mins” and so on.

The thing is those servers shouldn’t exist anymore, and people on them shouldn’t have to PAY to get out of servers that can’t fulfill what Anet calls WvW, on top of not being “high/very high” population like Anet pretends it does on the creation/server choice page specially for the only mode where population matters ?

i love white side ridge but some times it feels like our server is a single raid group lol
so i guess i would not mind a merge

as mentioned above . i dont want to move to a big server because i am afraid it will be a blob fest.
i dont like to run in zergs. its just not fun for me

there is no way to guest to test out different wvw servers- u can guest … but not 4 wvw :S
and i like the players on my server

but there is a difference between a low populated wvw and a almost nonexistence wvw…
mentioned above wvw is active about 3 solid hours a day :S
and a hand full of guilds keeping it going

there is a lot of random times when our wvw is just empty

I don’t know about you guys but in the 6 or 7 months since I started playing this game, I only had 1 or 2 matchups that were balanced to the point where we weren’t sure who was going to win, and it was exciting because people were playing and they had fun and they wanted to be first so it was very competitive.

However, more often than not, we are either being stomped hard, and because of that most people give up and do something else like PvE or whatever, or we are stomping the enemy so hard to the point one or both of them gives up and stops playing.

I see people acting arrogant and all, not just in this thread but in others, but they all know how it feels to being zerged down and feeling hopeless because they just don’t have enough people to cover all borderlands and sometimes not even one single map. It happened or has happened to pretty much anyone (except maybe in SFR) and I think it’s safe to say people don’t want that. I mean what’s the fun when you see all maps and EB painted green/blue/red and you know you can’t do anything at all?

And being the “giant” and facerolling the other two servers isn’t fun at all because it’s not challenging, and you don’t exactly fight anyone , you just do the PTT thing and capture empty buildings and objectives over and over without any resistance.

The week where Underworld had more than a 200K point advantage over FoW and BT was one of the worst for me. Yes, it felt good to be first, and to beat our opponents, until the score difference was so huge WvW became so tedious because the other two servers just gave up. I’m sure a lot of people in my server enjoyed that, but when I play a game I wanted to be challenged and have a fair chance, and I feel we didn’t give one to BT or FoW, but it’s not our fault, it’s just the mess of what the matchmaking system is.

Right now WvW is like playing a game of football or basketball with teams of different sizes, and you just hope you’re in the one that is bigger.

TL;DR – Population imbalance is not fun unless you’re a masochist or sadist. Games should be balanced by nature or else they aren’t called games, but torture.

It’s not just the last six months, its been this way for two years.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that 90% of matches are over as soon as they are drawn.

Too many people like their server and community. The suggestions to change outmanned and/or change the way keeps work could be a better fix.

Filovirus.6258:

People keep pretending they are on the lowest servers because they “like” the WvW there… except there isn’t one.

Please stop telling me what I think. You don’t know me and you don’t speak for me.

I play on what was the bottom-ranked NA server for a long time and I’ve never logged in and had nothing to do. Can it be empty at times? Yes. And we can also queue maps and throw orange swords at times. You complain that the bottom is dead and the bottom also zergs, so which is the problem? I like that range of experiences, including the nearly empty maps and the occasional queued map. I like the people I play with and the way they play, for the most part. I really do enjoy playing on my server.

I’ve tried EotM and know how to get there. I found the experience awful. I can afford to transfer anywhere I want to. I’ve been asked to transfer to higher-tier servers by the leader of a guild I belong to (they asked again today), who would probably pay for me to transfer if that was the only sticking point, and I again declined because I like playing on Eredon Terrace. I have fun. Really I do. The whole experience. Even when we were stuck at the bottom of the rankings and coming in 3rd every week.

Similarly, I liked PvE on Eredon Terrace before the megaservers, when a handful of people might try to do events like The Frozen Maw, even though some events were rarely or never done because we didn’t have enough people. I enjoyed running through Malchor’s Leap in near solitude, occasionally running across one or two other players. The megaservers ruined that experience, and I’m not alone in thinking that way. Two of my friends who played daily and have over 10,000 achievement points have pretty much stopped playing Guild Wars 2, to a large degree because of what the megaservers have done to the PvE experience for them.

I also think I have a petty good idea of what play is like higher up, not only because we get transfers from higher up and I’ve talked to people who have played on higher-up servers, including T1, but also because I can see it by looking at the live maps of various match-ups and because we have risen a bit in the ranks in the past and occasionally wind up playing a higher-tier server.

Would I mind playing a few tiers higher with a population a bit larger than what we have now? Probably not. But I’m concerned about what forcing two communities together would do to those communities, especially if they are rivals who don’t like each other very much.

But after the megaservers, I’m concerned that ArenaNet could really screw things up by merging everyone toward either a serverless megaserver or EotM-type experience and/or merging everyone toward a T1-type population under the assumption that everyone wants a T1 experience. Why would I want to give up what I already enjoy to take a risk of destroying the experience so badly that I’d probably stop playing?

If ArenaNet merges servers, I think they need to do their best to preserve the server communities and should merge small servers together rather than small servers with large servers. And they should probably send people in to play on the servers they are going to merge for a few weeks to determine which servers hate each other and which ones might be a good fit together rather than arbitrarily pairing them up. And they need to preserver lower tier play as distinct from higher tier play and not assume that everyone wants a T1 experience. I don’t. If they force me into a T1 experience or break my server’s community, then I’m probably done with Guild Wars 2 just like my friends are. And we’re all people who spent money on the game beyond the initial purchase.

Maybe things are different in the EU servers. And, yes, there are times when the match-ups can get so imbalanced that they are depressing to play, but those inbalance problems seem to happen up and down the tiers, not just at the bottom.

The so called “server communities” are pretty much a joke since a real small part of the players on a given server are there since the game started (or around that time) and never transfered to/from another server.

I laugh my kitten off everytime i see someone on my server i KNOW have been on 2/3 other servers (sometimes recently) explaining they would leave if Anet merged servers.

I don’t see how there can be ANY enjoyment in (nearly) empty maps where AT BEST you run into 1/2 people every half hour or more, solo flip camps, or “ninja” towers with 2 others without anyone defending.

That’s not WvW, that’s PvE making the mindless zerging of the LS events of last year look like it was the hardest and most complex gaming content ever created.

It’s sheer hypocrisy, specially coming from the gaming mode filled with people looking down/insulting/spitting on “PvE scrubs” all day long….

No one (with half a clue and a brain) is asking for Anet to make all servers like T1/T2 ones.

But all servers should have enough population and coverage to be the level of servers 12/18 actually or a bit more.

Under that level of activity, there is no WvW (that is something that is 24/7 fighting over week long matchups, not 2/3h of play a day at most, with the rest of the time PvD or empty maps/cheesy ninjaing at the wee hours), there is something that once was WvW and isn’t anymore.

Bronze servers (outside maybe the very last ones and even then i’m not sure) were WvW servers a year ago around S1 and after.
Yes there was coverage holes (some biggers than others), but you nearly never had 3/4 empty maps over 12h a day….wich is the bare minimum you have from rank 22 and down in EU right now, most of the time it’s more.

You have the vast majority of the MU with LESS than 20 players in WvW on those match up (realize that, and come tell me it’s WvW again).

That’s a problem.

The servers weren’t designed for massive amounts of time with under 5 people at a time/map. They were designed for 30+ people in each map most of the time.
It’s why those maps are that big, with that many objectives in them. It’s wasting the game mode just because people are too “proud” to recognize there is a problem that needs to be fixed, to recognize their server basically outlived it’s usefullness, and because most people aren’t ready to leave what they created/relations they grown during their months there, and start anew in a 2+ years old game (ie : you know what you lose for sure, not what you might win if it works), and that’s what refrain people mostly.

I really don’t see how you can pretend it’s “fun” and what you “like” to have empty maps, because that isn’t WvW at all.
It’s running around a themed treadmill jerking off, not WvW.

WvW isn’t about running around the map doing PvE without defense or opponent, it’s about (massive) GROUPS of PLAYERS fighting other (massive) GROUPS of PLAYERS…. and that don’t exist for most of the day in Bronze anymore and that needs to come back.

I don’ t know about the EU, but ET has quite a few core players who have been there from the beginning. I didn’t start WvW at the beginning, but I’ve never played on another server. And that seems to be true of other low-ranked NA servers, too. We do have some people who transferred off, tried different servers and tiers, and then came back because they had more fun on ET and with the people on ET, even though their fun isn’t perfect (which is why they looked elsewhere).

But it doesn’t really matter if people have played on a single server for “server community”. What matters is that they enjoy playing with the people they are playing with now and don’t want to lose that.

I actually do enjoy playing on nearly empty maps, as part of my WvW experience. If it’s my home borderland or corner of EBG that’s “empty”, then it’s time to take care of housekeeping and get upgrades done and siege built because it’s not going to last forever. If it’s someone else’s map that’s empty, then I see what I can take before they start sending people after me to get rid of me, and if they only have a few people on, it’s an opportunity to play cat and mouse. I don’t know how empty the EU servers get on the bottom, but I’ve never hit a point on the NA servers where I didn’t see opponents for hours. If no enemies is the problem I want to solve, going to an enemy BL to flip things will solve it for me.

Do I want only a few people on 7×24? Of course not. But it never lasts 7×24. I get a wide variety of play across the day from maybe one other person on the map with me to events that can queue a map, and I like the variety.

The problem I see isn’t a lack of people where a few people play cat and mouse with each other or 1-2 people flip the camps and maybe a few towers but with populations that bome imbalanced enough that one side can unstoppably zerg around a nearly empty map flipping everything, including keeps with waypoints perhaps on both of it’s opponents because they’ve got a guild playing in OCS or SEA or Europe. That’s a coverage problem, not a population problem, per se. I’ve seen orange-sword level forces from all the servers we fight at some point during the day. The problem is if a server has nobody on at the same time.

Because the off-hour populations are smaller, they still won’t balance until you’ve compressed everyone to an old-style T1 experience, all queues all the time so that the queues balance the populations. That’s the only mechanism in the game that enforces population balance. It doesn’t take long (at most an hour or two) for everything a server owns to be flipped if they’ve got a dead spot in their coverage while an opponent doesn’t.

I don’t look down on PvE players or casual players. To a large degree, I was one and am one. And I found the mindless zerging experiences of the champion trains, EotM, the Living Story, and now many of the world bosses awful. But for all the talk I hear about wanting fights and challenges, everyone except the few guilds deliberately looking for open field fights seems to go for the easiest targets so they can win. It’s why the #1 and #2 server inevitably gang up on #3. It’s why people do sneak attacks on towers and keeps and use superior rams, catapults, and omega golems by the half-dozen.

Yes, I’ve seen a fight-oriented guild crack open a tower but not complete the capture to lure enemies in to fight (to the annoyance of people playing for PPT) and, yes, I’ve camped in open supply camps to see how long it takes the enemy to send in a zerg to flush me out, but I don’t see a lot of people hoping to encounter an even force on the other side most of the time.

I know nobody is asking ArenaNet to make all servers like T1/T2 servers, but the problem is that when they complained their servers didn’t have enough people to open temples or do Taquatl, they weren’t necessarily asking ArenaNet for a T1/T2 experience, but we’re stuck with megazergs on megaservers, anyway, because that’s how ArenaNet interpreted the problem and solution.

The example of the megaservers give me no confidence that we’ll get a subtle and modest solution to the population problems that doesn’t end in top-tier like play, especially because most of the developers seem to play at those tiers. Too few people? Megazergs for everyone! They’ve already done it in PvE and EotM.

Could they reduce the number of NA servers by 3 or 6 without messing it up too badly? Probably. But who are they going to merge? How are they going to merge them? And is it actually going to solve the problem? There are some low-tier servers that I would probably be OK with merging with, but I’m not sure everyone would be happy about it, nor would it necessarily solve either servers problems if it doesn’t fix the coverage problem.

There are other low-tier merges where the cultures wouldn’t fit well together at all, leading to a dysfunctional server or an exodus of people, thus erasing any benefits of a merger. But if they were to melt the lower-tier servers into much higher-tier servers, the effect would be to destroy the lower-tier community and change their style of play significantly, which they might not want.

As for the game being designed for 30+ people on each map, that’s the point (orange swords) where I see the WvW mechanics and play experience going down-hill. It becomes difficult to identify and target individual opponents. Frame rates drop unless you’ve got top-end hardware and/or dial the graphics settings way down to make the game look worse. Mechanical quirks like the AoE caps and overlapping boons start to give people near immunity to stand under attacks if they do it right and skill lag can start to kick in, where players try to use their skills but can’t because the server is overwhelmed.

And it’s not wasting anything if the players doing it are enjoying it. What’s a waste are my friends who, after investing years playing GW2 and raving about how fantastic the game is no longer playing the game because they hate the experience thanks to megaservers. So, how does merging the servers improve anyone’s game if they break communities and destroy an experience that players enjoy so they stop playing GW2 entirely? People play GW2 for fun. It’s a recreational activity, not a job they are paid to do. When it stops being fun, people will stop playing.

A sure-fire way to reduce the player base is to narrow the play style options to cater to a single preference, taking the things away from a lot of people that make the game worth playing for them. It’s like a bakery finding out that it’s most popular cake is an 8-serving chocolate cake and then declaring, “All we are going to sell from now on are 8-serving chocolate cakes. Want a smaller or bigger cake or a different flavor or some other baked good? Go talk to someone else.”

Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that other people are only “pretending” to like it. What you seem to fail to grasp is that WvW isn’t about what only one player likes best. It isn’t about just one thing. Not open field fights. Not GvG. Not PvDoor. Not zergs. Not roamers. Not thieves ganking people. It’s about different things to different people.

There are players who want to eliminate siege weapons, upgrades, and even objectives entirely because they don’t care about that stuff. It’s not why they play. There are other players who want to improve siege weapons, make upgrades more important, and to add objectives because that’s what they do like about WvW and it’s why they play. For some players, it’s all about the zergs and they want all the servers merged so it’s zergs for everyone all day long Other players hate zergs and transfer into the lower tiers to get away from them. There are players who like the mercenary camps and players who hate them. There are players who like long prolonged sieges and players who have no patience for them.

There is no one right universal reason to play WvW, and if anything is going to ruin WvW and drain people out of it, it’s going to be heavy-handed changes that try to force everyone into a single style of play in the mistaken belief that everyone plays WvW for the same reason and finds the same thing fun.

No, you can’t comprehend why other people enjoy elements of WvW that you hate and find awful any more than I’m ever going to comprehend why my wife likes broccoli and hates spinach while I love spinach and hate broccoli. It’s a matter of aesthetic preference. It’s what people enjoy. It’s not a moral issue and there is no one right or wrong answer.

I don’t understand why players enjoy ganking people from stealth as thieves. I don’t understand why people like the loot trains. I don’t understand why people like battles so massive that the game mechanics and client start working badly and everything becomes a chaotic mess. It doesn’t matter. They do. And it would be silly for me to ask ANet to destroy what they enjoy about the game just because I don’t find it fun and assume they must only be pretending to find it fun and don’t know what’s best for them.

What I love about WvW is the many different play styles available. But some people want to ruin it all by narrowing it down to suit how they want to play with no regard for others.

I am still yet to see any reason why servers should be merged that cannot be solved by allowing the complainers and their friend/guilds to transfer to a server that suits them.

As someone who plays oceanic hours, it tends to be quiet when I play, and I actually like it that way. I roam around flipping empty camps, escort dolyaks, and hop between towers and keeps to build/refresh siege and upgrades. I don’t really have good gear, so I am practically useless in a 1v1 fight, thus being able to roam unhindered is a plus for me.

Come the weekend, I might play during NA primetime, and running around with a larger group is also fun in its own way. But eventually I get sick of flipping objectives and go back to my defending/roaming activities. The server I am on has had its ups and downs. Sometimes we get steamrolled, sometimes we are the ones doing the steamrolling, which keeps things interesting.

If I wanted to be constantly fighting other players in fair and balanced matches, I would go play sPvP.

WvW isn’t perfect, things could be better. But don’t make things worse by implementing ideas that ultimately solve nothing.

Filovirus.6258:

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The lower tiers don’t want to be merged. That the lower tiers don’t run like the upper tiers doesn’t make them any less worth preserving.

Even more so, the lower tiers are dynamic while the upper tiers are static – very little changes in gold. If you’re going to change something, change the servers where people get stuck until they leave the game forever. That’s the top tiers, not the lower ones.

Or, you know, leave the lower tiers alone. Anybody who isn’t currently in a bronze tier but is advocating that they should be merged because the upper tiers are better should transfer down and prove their worth by riding that server up to the top. Otherwise they’re just being condescending jerks who are apparently threatened by people playing differently than they do.

QED, and put a fork in this.

Filovirus.6258:

I don’t see how there can be ANY enjoyment in …

Highlighted the relevant part of your post for you. You are not the litmus test for whether something is good or enjoyable for other people. If you don’t like where you are, go elsewhere. Do not tell the rest of us what is good for us and what isn’t. You have zero credibility and zero say in what we do.

Now recognize that, buy some gems, and go somewhere that you prefer playing. If you’re already there, stop slagging the neighbourhood.

As a Darkhaven player (been in bronze 99% of gw2, all the way down to T7), noopppeeeeeee. Do not merge my server with any other server please. I like the server I play on, I’d leave if I didn’t. Leaving is in option, but if server merges occur I never have the option to go to Darkhaven again, it’s gone.

The same line of argument that has been used forever in these discussions seems to stand… This is a severe, irreversible option (forever destroy the individual servers). Even if we’re to consider this an option (when lots and indeed most of low tier players don’t want it), we at least need to make it our last resort. First we should discuss proper incentives to stop stacking high tiers and spread some population around on the lower tier servers.

roxybudgy.8205:

What I love about WvW is the many different play styles available. But some people want to ruin it all by narrowing it down to suit how they want to play with no regard for others.

I am still yet to see any reason why servers should be merged that cannot be solved by allowing the complainers and their friend/guilds to transfer to a server that suits them.

As someone who plays oceanic hours, it tends to be quiet when I play, and I actually like it that way. I roam around flipping empty camps, escort dolyaks, and hop between towers and keeps to build/refresh siege and upgrades. I don’t really have good gear, so I am practically useless in a 1v1 fight, thus being able to roam unhindered is a plus for me.

Come the weekend, I might play during NA primetime, and running around with a larger group is also fun in its own way. But eventually I get sick of flipping objectives and go back to my defending/roaming activities. The server I am on has had its ups and downs. Sometimes we get steamrolled, sometimes we are the ones doing the steamrolling, which keeps things interesting.

If I wanted to be constantly fighting other players in fair and balanced matches, I would go play sPvP.

WvW isn’t perfect, things could be better. But don’t make things worse by implementing ideas that ultimately solve nothing.

Give free transferts to the players of the last 6 servers in EU/NA to any other server (except the firs t6) and you’ll see them leave in droves.

Having to PAY to correct a problem that Anet is totally responsible for (the main reason for the current state of WvW is stupid S2 with the totally stupid transfers system+rewards during it, that made pretty much all Gold/Silver servers cheaper to transfer to than bronze servers, or even free, which led to mass exodus from there, with bandwagoon on one (the “best” free transfer server) which killed it, then mass exodus back to high silver+, and to even more megastacking on the first 2/3 servers in Gold….).

Honestly, you can’t really pretend to love WvW if you play in EU Bronze now outside of primetime. It’s not WvW (and even during prime it’s not WvW on half the Bronze servers either).

WvW isn’t supposed to be half a dozen people running into circles capping camps and (at best) trying to find each others to fight once an hour….(reality is “ninja cappers” do their kitten best to avoid the half dozen people on the hour side that they could fight)

That’s exactly what all the pretended WvWers dislike about EotM : groups avoiding each others to PvD (aka : the lowest possible state of PvE ever).

Oh and if people could stop with the fallacy/lie that is : “Bronze is small scale fighting, every thing else is zerg vs zerg” it would be nice.

There is FAR more small scale/roaming level action on mid/high silver tier at all hours than there is on Bronze even during Prime Time, and even on Bronze, most players gravitate towards the zerg vs zerg as big as they can muster at the first occasion…..

Rimmy.9217:

Filovirus.6258:

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The lower tiers don’t want to be merged. That the lower tiers don’t run like the upper tiers doesn’t make them any less worth preserving.

Even more so, the lower tiers are dynamic while the upper tiers are static – very little changes in gold. If you’re going to change something, change the servers where people get stuck until they leave the game forever. That’s the top tiers, not the lower ones.

Or, you know, leave the lower tiers alone. Anybody who isn’t currently in a bronze tier but is advocating that they should be merged because the upper tiers are better should transfer down and prove their worth by riding that server up to the top. Otherwise they’re just being condescending jerks who are apparently threatened by people playing differently than they do.

QED, and put a fork in this.

I would looovve to be explained what “change” in lower tiers…. Outside of Bt crumbling after the bandwagon nothing has changed in EU bronze for months.

RoS is still hanging around rank #22 with something that is better than totally empty server, but nowhere near the numbers to rise again, MS/Dzag are still at the same levels they were after S1 roughly, the bottom servers are the same at the same place since UW crumbled (after S1 from memory) to dead bottom, and the servers plays the same, with mostly the same guilds around and so on.

And once again, you might “enjoy” running alone on a map most of the day, but it’s not WvW at all….

Oh and most players on low tiers servers are ok with transfering, merging and such, it’s just they don’t want to pay for moving, and/or (most reason) they don’t want to leave without their friends there.

µ

ps : would be nice of you to learn to read before saying stupid things.. i AM in EU Bronze (and i AM leaving too soon, finally decided to leave the only thing that kept me there for months behind, my guild and ebuddies, because i can’t take it anymore, and with a couple other guilds crumbling/disbanding i won’t be the only one. And FoW will probably have the same soon if RA’s officers and leaders don’t come back from AA quickly).

Despite a handful of players pretending they would leave the game if they were merger, the vast majority of players would have no problem with it.

Remove the last 6 servers and offer the players on it a free transfer to any other server but the top 6, and leave them a few weeks beforehand to organize their move, and nearly none will stop, they’ll go to other servers with the people they like (or avoid the people they dislike) and you’ll see in the end most servers players will split up without a second of remorse, leaving behind their so-salled “community” filled with drama and rivalry.

All servers pretends to be a “community” when it’s in fact communitIES plural, with people that don’t mesh, people that despise each others despite being on the same server, and with regular drama occuring because of that (and there is drama all year long in Bronze, not so much elsewhere, even if when it happens it’s far bigger drama that usually leads to server death/crumble like UW/Vizu or a few others).

Filovirus.6258:

I would looovve to be explained what “change” in lower tiers…. Outside of Bt crumbling after the bandwagon nothing has changed in EU bronze for months.

RoS is still hanging around rank #22 with something that is better than totally empty server, but nowhere near the numbers to rise again, MS/Dzag are still at the same levels they were after S1 roughly, the bottom servers are the same at the same place since UW crumbled (after S1 from memory) to dead bottom, and the servers plays the same, with mostly the same guilds around and so on.

And once again, you might “enjoy” running alone on a map most of the day, but it’s not WvW at all….

Oh and most players on low tiers servers are ok with transfering, merging and such, it’s just they don’t want to pay for moving, and/or (most reason) they don’t want to leave without their friends there.

µ

ps : would be nice of you to learn to read before saying stupid things.. i AM in EU Bronze (and i AM leaving too soon, finally decided to leave the only thing that kept me there for months behind, my guild and ebuddies, because i can’t take it anymore, and with a couple other guilds crumbling/disbanding i won’t be the only one. And FoW will probably have the same soon if RA’s officers and leaders don’t come back from AA quickly).

Despite a handful of players pretending they would leave the game if they were merger, the vast majority of players would have no problem with it.

Remove the last 6 servers and offer the players on it a free transfer to any other server but the top 6, and leave them a few weeks beforehand to organize their move, and nearly none will stop, they’ll go to other servers with the people they like (or avoid the people they dislike) and you’ll see in the end most servers players will split up without a second of remorse, leaving behind their so-salled “community” filled with drama and rivalry.

All servers pretends to be a “community” when it’s in fact communitIES plural, with people that don’t mesh, people that despise each others despite being on the same server, and with regular drama occuring because of that (and there is drama all year long in Bronze, not so much elsewhere, even if when it happens it’s far bigger drama that usually leads to server death/crumble like UW/Vizu or a few others).

Change in the lower tiers means: look on millenium once in a while and see how servers change position. Some doggedly climb up, others sail down. Change.

As for you saying that “most players on low tiers servers are ok with transfering”, go to each and every one of their server forums, register, and pose that question to them. I’ve seen it on several bronze NA server’s forums and guess what? “No thanks” is the overwhelming response.

And you’re transferring soon? Great! Although that explains the motivation for these months of your posts ripping on anybody who doesn’t want to leave bronze – you want to bail and have someone else pay your way. All previous rants now understood. Enjoy your new server.

As for me learning to read before saying stupid things, I’m not the one saying that everybody who says no to server merging is pretending to like where they are or are delusional about their placement. Thinking that your own opinion reflects everybody else and that anybody who doesn’t agree with you is lying is ridiculous.

Encouraging transfers and merging servers would be a band aid fix – regardless of the servers you merged or pushed to make transfers.

Ive been on the same server since launch. It isnt a gold tier server (even though it was top tier at points in the past). Ive seen it rise and fall in the ranks.

I dont stay on the server because “it plays differently” than T1 servers. I dont stay because we have won matches in the past (even though weve been losing lately).

I stay for one reason – and that reason is the reason the vast majority stay on their servers – I HAVE FRIENDS HERE.

It’s that simple.

I want a better wvw experience – one that is more competitive and even – but I dont want it if it means not playing alongside the wonderful friends Ive made here. And, I would like to keep our identity as a server community.

For me, the only real solution is the battlegroups idea that has been floated multiple times. There really is no downside. It doesnt force people to play together. It allows people to continue to play with their friends. It evens out the populations. It removes queues from larger servers. It ensure people can find fights (and probably find quiet maps, if that’s their thing).

On paper, it really looks like it would solve virtually every current problem with WvW.

And to repeat – most of the people I know on the lower level servers want the same WvW experience that people on the top tier servers want. Saying otherwise is misleading. What we want is to stay with our friends and retain the communities we have worked so hard to build – while still having a fun and equitable experience (compared to every other server) in WvW.

Filovirus.6258:

Oh and most players on low tiers servers are ok with transfering, merging and such, it’s just they don’t want to pay for moving, and/or (most reason) they don’t want to leave without their friends there.

And you know this for certain because? And you can speak with authority for both the NA and EU servers, all 18 servers in bronze leagues?

Filovirus.6258:

Despite a handful of players pretending they would leave the game if they were merger, the vast majority of players would have no problem with it.

I am not pretending to know what I want. I know what I want and you don’t. It’s the height of arrogance to tell someone else that you know what they want better than they do. You don’t.

Filovirus.6258:

Remove the last 6 servers and offer the players on it a free transfer to any other server but the top 6, and leave them a few weeks beforehand to organize their move, and nearly none will stop, they’ll go to other servers with the people they like (or avoid the people they dislike) and you’ll see in the end most servers players will split up without a second of remorse, leaving behind their so-salled “community” filled with drama and rivalry.

If everyone really wants what you want, then why not simply offer everyone free transfers to any non-gold server and let the players decide what they want to do instead of forcing them to do it?

“People don’t know what they really want but I do.” “People are clinging to bad habits that hold them back from true happiness so they need to be forced to give them up.” “People choose the wrong things if you let them choose on their own, so those in charge should make the hard choice for them.” “People just need to be forced to accept change for the better and then everyone will be happy.” “They think they’ll hate the changes but they’ll learn to enjoy the new order of things over time.”

I doubt you’ll like to be on the receiving end of those arguments.

i think all of you should just get a free transfer to the server of your choice

One of the things that is a problem with this, and people I’m sure have said this already I just don’t have time to read all the posts, is that having higher tier-ed servers and lower tier-ed servers provides diverse WvW gameplay. If you don’t like a lower tier server WvW with the havoc groups and “rogue squads” hit and run and defend where you can tactics, then you can always move to the upper tier servers where the name of the game is “megazerg” and vice versa. A lot of the people in the lower tiers like how they do their WvW and a lot of people in the upper tiers like how they do it too. Sure you might never see Eredon Terrace or whatever lower tier-ed servers you have in Gold Rankings, but the people there like how they play and they don’t really care. They accept it and continue to play how they know how and like to. Being a Silver ranked server I have to say that I do like my mix of running in the blob and running havoc, it’s all personal preference.

Shpongle.6025:

i think all of you should just get a free transfer to the server of your choice

I agree bottom tier servers should get free transfers or it should only cost a few hundred gems.

I’m from the same server as filovirus – RoS.
Why does RoS complain about the current situation?
Because we have exactly 2 types of MU’s:
1. Being matched against millers/RoF, which results in only prime being playable, everything else is a blobb-fest to downgrade everything we have.
2. Being matched against the rest of bronze, which results in steamrolling against them and 100% PPT, sometimes even during prime.
And both is boring.

Do I personally want to be merged with other servers?
Nope.
>but why anon, it would be the perfect solution.
No it wouldn’t. Why? Because the servers have really different Identities. Blacktide for example is the unofficial polish EU Server. Would I like polish mapchat-spam? Would they like english mapchat-spam? Then we have guilds that were accused of hacking, most hated for it and suddenly they are sitting in the same boat?! There is no better way to alienate a community but to merge it with another, incompatible one.

My solution: Delete WvW or keep it that way and simply offer new game-modes.
Not even kidding. This game-mode is so utterly broken and imbalanced that it is actually a slap in the face to create competitive seasons based on it. Plus we have a mega-server anyways, destroying the identity of the previous servers most effectively already.
So, since we got rid of the old WvW-Server-System, a-net could focus on delivering competitive battlegrounds.
F.E.:
- 20 vs 20 matches on a small map with 3 towers and 2 keeps, accessible for random groups or as GvG invitation. After 2h the match is over and the winner gets a reward-chest for the whole group, while the loser at least gets some WvW-xp and karma as well.
-EB, accessible in EotM style. Participants choose a color / get assigned with a color automatically and randomly, and get dropped on a random instance of the map.
-The Old borderlands, re-designed as Guild-property with customizable and upgradeable citadel, the whole map can be purchased with influence for the guild and leaders (everybody with the correct guild-rights) has the option to sign the whole map up in a global list of accessible “guild-borderlands” for allowing random players on the map, that queued up themselves on the list. Once assigned, it must stay open for 6h until it can be closed again. Delete the Siege-timer for this borderland, also give them the option to invite other guilds specifically to organize private, “uphill” GvG’s. to prevent the spam of thousands of inactive maps, let guilds pay a monthly fee, be it influence, merits or gold.
-For competitive Seasons, don’t use the old 24/7 model anymore, but allow guilds / signed up teams of people to participate in a 20v20 tournament, going 2 per match, swiss style. The tournament of legends was awesome, so stick to what you can a-net: small-scale, highly polished content.

Ty
(and yes, I know my ideas are work-heavy and we will most likely never see them, but maybe a friendly mod could forward them to a project manager for consideration anyways.)

X Factor.2641:

One of the things that is a problem with this, and people I’m sure have said this already I just don’t have time to read all the posts, is that having higher tier-ed servers and lower tier-ed servers provides diverse WvW gameplay. If you don’t like a lower tier server WvW with the havoc groups and “rogue squads” hit and run and defend where you can tactics, then you can always move to the upper tier servers where the name of the game is “megazerg” and vice versa. A lot of the people in the lower tiers like how they do their WvW and a lot of people in the upper tiers like how they do it too. Sure you might never see Eredon Terrace or whatever lower tier-ed servers you have in Gold Rankings, but the people there like how they play and they don’t really care. They accept it and continue to play how they know how and like to. Being a Silver ranked server I have to say that I do like my mix of running in the blob and running havoc, it’s all personal preference.

Except the “MegaZerg” tactic haven’t existed for real for months, and the “rogues and hit and run and chaos tactics” in Bronze tiers don’t exist either….

It’s just washed down WvW with no one around for above 70% of the day (no, flipping a WHOLE border your color with 5/6 people without anyone coming to defend or 1/2 people at most isn’t “chaos/rogue/guerilla” tactics, it’s empty maps….and PvD).

The problem is that for rogue/chaos/guerrilla tactics to exist, the “zerg” is required, to be able to occupy/hold the majority of the ennemy, otherwise your “chaos” squads can’t exist they get crushed every single time they make a move by 5/10 times their numbers.

And the people down there like their the way it plays sooo much they keep trying to get people there to rise up the ranks, and start chestbeating like madmen and explaining how “great” they are and how they do all better than other EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. a server is bandwagooned ?

(see RoF multiple times, Bt last time, RoS before that, and so on and so on, and so on).

Oh and on a side note, a really high chunk of people are ready to move, on RoS and other bronze servers, the nearly only reason they don’t is always the same : “not moving without my guild/friends”.

They aren’t against merging either. And to be honest, the whole “yeah those people from those server are bad, don’t want to play with them” is (most of the time) coming from people who have moved servers more than half a dozen times, and even were on those servers at some point and STILL have friends there.

It’s mostly bravado/ways to justify the fact they jumped ship.

But, once again, the problem with Bronze is that it isn’t WvW at all, because there isn’t the numbers for that.

It’s empty and dead maps most of the day, with 80% of PvDing (or even more, because the rest of the day is that for a good chunk of the time due to the vast difference in numbers, meaning it’s one way mu).

Bronze T7/T8 (and even t9) was nice WvW 1 year ago… but it has the activity we see on mid/top silver servers now.

Bronze right now is a desert with a blip on the radar 3/4h a day.

edit : ho and kuddos on your hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.:D
I love the whole “hey stop telling people on tiers you aren’t how they should play -i’m in bronze – then gtfo and transfer if not happy – i’ll be transfering out soon – ahah, it’s why you are saying what you say so you are to be ignored”.

Between us 2, one is pretending a dead game mode, that can’t be player for 18+h a day, with nobody around (when it designed to hold 340+ players at a time, on each side, and have under 20 on each side for that much a week it’s called dead, not “low pop” sorry to burst your bubble) is exactly what they like/want, the other just want back what was promised to players by anet at the start, and was real and was how it was played in Bronze till just after S2 (that is only a few months back you know).

Yeah i’m pretty sure i’m the one trying to force others to play like i want, and not how the game is supposed to be played and how it was promised to be played.

I’m not responsible for the state of Bronze’s WvW, Anet is, so as a player (who actually sharded money for the game) i’m entitled to ask them to fix their mess, or a least give the players a way to correct it by themselves, without having to reward Anet (aka pay them) for screwing it up and destroying bronze WvW with their stupid transfer pricing politic coupled with rewards encouraging stacking back with S2…..

WvW was fine overall till that point, it’s broken overall since them. I “wonder” what changed between those 2 points… go figure.

Merging small servers together would do what exactly? People wouldn’t stop moving up tiers, the merged server would end up empty again sooner or later.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Merging small servers together would do what exactly? People wouldn’t stop moving up tiers, the merged server would end up empty again sooner or later.

Servers will all end up empty at some point, like with every MMO out there. But you can’t pretend that editors needs to open up servers when servers are too full, without accepting they need to remove servers when there isn’t enough pop to sustain them.

Empty servers make people stop playing even more than full servers and queues.

With time, servers will need to be reduced in numbers (like with every other MMO) to keep a “per server” population level that is healthy for the game (wich dead/empty servers aren’t).

At the very least it gives Anet TIME to try to find a solution (and no, battlegrounds aren’t, if people wanted battlegrounds they would be in one of the dozen games with them) to change what needs to be changed in WvW.

On top of that, merging servers allows to reduce significantly the variations in population levels, and hence the population/coverage imbalance that is source of stale matchups and lack of variation….

If all servers had (roughly) the same population levels than silver servers 8 to 15 you would have a pool to pull out mu far wider than now, and hence more interesting matchups too (which would in turn make less players burn out and leave)….

The problem with the actual population levels is that the pop is sprayed FAR too thin because there is (at least) 6 servers too many (the 4 they added when they shouldn’t have, and the ones that were never big servers before either), probably 9, which in turns hurts all servers because that makes totally unbalanceable match ups and reduce the number of possible opponents.

Merging/removing servers would (partially) solve that for a good time.

The bottom 3 servers should have been gone before S2, and the 3 next ones should have been removed before S3).
There is simply not enough people to sustain them anymore (and anyone pretending population in GW2 didn’t shrink a LOT in the past years is either blind, hypocrit, or have no clue, nor player a year ago….).

Even with mega servers you barely reach the level of activity you had on the biggest PvE servers, and T1 in WvW have roughly the same activity low Silver had 1 year ago….

The problem with server merges is the most of the low populated servers are populated, or even full… In prime time.

Server merges will just queue up these players.

Yeah these players are on servers that have little/nothing for off prime time coverage, but that the issue. Forcing populated prime time players onto full prime time servers isn’t the solution.

Server merges will not fix the real problem which is a 24/7 game mode with separate servers for EU/USA.

nekretaal.6485:

The problem with server merges is the most of the low populated servers are populated, or even full… In prime time.

Server merges will just queue up these players.

Yeah these players are on servers that have little/nothing for off prime time coverage, but that the issue. Forcing populated prime time players onto full prime time servers isn’t the solution.

Server merges will not fix the real problem which is a 24/7 game mode with separate servers for EU/USA.

WTF are you smoking ?

At rank 22 RoS is MAYBE getting queue in one map once or twice a week (and by queue i mean "less than 10 people in queue when whole guild groups jump maps at the same time) and it’s because everyone tries to play on prime time because there is nothing to do outside of that…

There won’t be queues more than that (ok maybe 15/20 mins queue on EB on reset/Satursday night, and queue once a blue moon elsewhere).

Even in Gold there is seldom more than one map queued and no queue goes beyond 15/20 mins (which is more than bearable) and that’s easily avoidable with a 30/60mins shifting of the time people play around, which is possible when you don’t end up with 15 players overall as soon as it"s 22/22h30 uk time….

Oh and i’m not even sure FoW manage to queue EB when they do their PvE events on week nights with 50/60+ man blobs there….. so no, it won’t queue up people.

Those servers are already all lacking during Reset Prime Time, with (for the most populated ones, including the Silver server that tanked on purpose to get there) not even 2 maps with enough people to dream of a queue… that leaves 2 full maps with no one (or nearly no one ) no them during prime, that’s far more than enough to handle the last 6 server’s population at those times if needed (those that aren’t even able to queue up one map if their life depends on it), even more if said population is spread over all the silver/top bronz/low gold servers….

Once again, the total population of the last 6 servers isn’t even coming close, at prime time, to what mid silver pop was 1 year or more ago, there is absolutely no problem integrating them elsewhere (unless you dump them all on the same server that can already nearly queue up 2/3 maps during the whole prime time, but that would be stupid).

Hello! I am Oscuro of Kaineng. If you are on kaineng and frequent WvW, you probably know who I am. Kaineng is a low population server and I, and many of my fellow server mates, feel that way. Let me tell you the story of my time on GW 2 WvW!
When I started playing this game, I was in the server Black Gate. Black Gate was an awesome community and I had a great guild. I loved roaming on my thief and it was definitely a plus having some good zerg fights every so often. For the first months of the game, everything was great. Than, something came that ruined everything. One of the most damaging and fundamentally flawed aspects of the game…blobs.
Blobs completely changed the face if WvW T1 for the worse. So, one game changing week, we played Yaks Bend. Yaks Bend was not blogging, yet our blobs were slowed to a crawl by tactical siege placement and superior strategy. Being an avid roamer, I could respect what they did, it wasn’t much different than a 1vX, just on a larger scale. Some weeks passed and the blob got worse. Roaming became difficult on my older computer, and I couldn’t take it. I took a small break (1-2 weeks), and when I got back, my whole guild had transferred to ioj. So I decided to act. I transferred to Yaks Bend.
Yaks Bend was awesome. It had a great community and so many people were welcoming. However, the Blob was gaining fake for its unprecedented amount of badges, karma, and XP. Soon, small blobs began to appear in Yaks Bend. I saw the same thing repeating. Meanwhile, one of the friends I had originally began playing with way back in beta began playing and had transferred to Kaineng. He said it was great, the Blob was present but fairly contained. This was around the time Kaineng had been almost T1. I though about it but did not act. Eventually, events transpired in Yaks Bend that made me want to leave. Note that this is almost a month later. Kaineng had fallen a decent bit because of transfers. So, I talked my friend and he said that roaming in the lower end of the WvW spectrum was great. I saw my opprotunity and took it. Not once have I regretted it. There have been frustrating times. Like guilds transferring and taking many of our active players, but I like KAINENG. Not the servers we play, not winning, but I like the current people i play with. I like our lack of numbers and our teamwork we are developing.
If you want to see balanced matches and true roaming fun, look at places like Kaineng. Occasionally a higher population server comes along and smacks us around, and it is somewhat frustrating, but we still find ways to have fun. Think about 5 people holding a t2 tower from the Blob. It is fun, and it is what we have learned to do.
Let this serve as a message to all of you who say lower tier servers should merge so they put up a fight. IT IS NOT TRUE! We do put up a fight, only because we can outsmart people. We aren’t going to run a 7 man group into the Blob and give you free loot bags, no, we will kite you and slowly kill you for a long time until you get too frustrated to kill us. We don’t necessarily play to win all of the matchup, we play to win the fights we do fight. If you expect a lower tier server to field a Blob the same size as that of a higher population server, you are fooling yourself. AND if you are on a low tier server and want to have more people to zerg with, transfer or make full use of EOTM. But, don’t ever, EVER, suggest combining lower tier server, ESPECIALLY if you aren’t in one!

People can move wherever they want right now – all the servers went very high. The people that don’t move obviously like it where they are. No need to force them from where they feel comfortable enjoying the game they have fun playing…..

if everyone is so against a server merge

then they should allow free transfer/or severely reduced the price for low T servers to transfer.

side note : it is kinda a bummer u cant guest for wvw

even if it was a once a week guest for wvw .
it would let people test out different servers for wvw to help them find one they like better

Liston.9708:

People can move wherever they want right now – all the servers went very high. The people that don’t move obviously like it where they are. No need to force them from where they feel comfortable enjoying the game they have fun playing…..

Except that right now Anet is forcing people that don’t want the shadow of WvW to pay for Anet’s mistakes and errors, because Anet is the number one reason of the current problem (it’s basically all a consequences of the stupid transfer policy during S2 and the fact they artificially change the level of population of servers to milk players more….because there is no reason for a server to jump from “medium” to “very high” in under a week when the 2 biggest PvX guilds of the (already small) server (as in 300+ players leaving at once) move away, outside of milking the cow and pure bs pr job (hey it’s not true we did megaservers because all servers are empty, proof, all servers are high/very high/full… even those that couldn’t get a Tequatl/3headed wurm or LS overflow at prime time if their life depended on it).

The single fact that PvE/PvP population still have a bearing/impact on transfer prices when servers don’t exist in PvE/PvP anymore is a MAJOR problem.

The only thing that should matter for transfer is WvW ranking with pricing by tiers (ie : last tier is always free, the tier above is 100 gems and you just can’t transfer or create new accounts on T1 servers ever).

That would alleviate some problems too, but right now, who in their right mind would pay 1200 gems (or more) to a server like RoS/Bt/FoW/UW/Vabbi to KNOW there will barely be action during prime time (and “action” is a loose term, including one way fights all weeks long, being destroyed or wiping the ennemy all day long just because of number disparity), and the whole week of WvW is resumed by 4/10 people playing most of the time all week long, mu after mu.

Be serious 2s.
The only ones coming to these servers are guilds that lost people (specially to AA recently), that know there is some quite good and decent guild groups that have the same problem down there (since there is basically no “milicia” organization down there, it’s guild groups, a pug commander once in a time, but followers are pretty much all WvW regulars/guild players that are just playing too outside their guild raids times, or a guild commander tagging up to pull in the “pugs”/astray guild members/small guilds together to form a bigger strike force) that are ripe for the taking and that will leave again in a few weeks/couple of months if they can recruit, or just crumble and disappear and merge into another guild if they don’t.

But once again, no one down there is asking for T1 of old levels of activity/population with the hours long queues (that happened for EB with the T7 germans during/after S1 btw to the now inexisting ones or under 15 mins even on reset during season at the same level), just to get back something that is WvW and not circlejerking PvD… :/

And now, “battlegrounds” or anything like it isn’t the solution. It’s not RvR/WvW or so, it’s too controlled, it’s too balanced, it’s too short/instantaneous, and it’s not the same (not that it’s bad, you can have loads of fun there, specially if you have separate queues for premades and randoms, but it’s not the same thing as WvW and shouldn’t be what people asked WvW be made into….at least not if they like WvW like they pretend.
The problem is everytime “fixes” are discussed, there comes out of the woods the throng of people who in fact never liked wvw, and want to change it all to a watered down bg system, by removing WvW. That and the people pretending Anet should do like DAoC did when they are already complaining of “unbalance” and “broken systems” with 1/100000th of the balance problems and coverage wards that DAoC had, without the fact it basically left out of a good chunk of content (and the profitable one) the people from the non stacked servers (and was prone to great manipulation and griefing).

“fixes” aren’t something that will come soon or are even possible without basically destroying the community and losing a good chunk of it (whatever way you go).

“patching” the current system to make it last some more months (a couple years maybe) while it’s worked upon is far easier, and will keep most players and most playstyles (basically it would bring back most servers to the level of activity and gameplay they were before S2 wich is good).

Filovirus.6258:

Except the “MegaZerg” tactic haven’t existed for real for months, and the “rogues and hit and run and chaos tactics” in Bronze tiers don’t exist either….

It’s just washed down WvW with no one around for above 70% of the day (no, flipping a WHOLE border your color with 5/6 people without anyone coming to defend or 1/2 people at most isn’t “chaos/rogue/guerilla” tactics, it’s empty maps….and PvD).

The problem is that for rogue/chaos/guerrilla tactics to exist, the “zerg” is required, to be able to occupy/hold the majority of the ennemy, otherwise your “chaos” squads can’t exist they get crushed every single time they make a move by 5/10 times their numbers.

And the people down there like their the way it plays sooo much they keep trying to get people there to rise up the ranks, and start chestbeating like madmen and explaining how “great” they are and how they do all better than other EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. a server is bandwagooned ?

(see RoF multiple times, Bt last time, RoS before that, and so on and so on, and so on).

Oh and on a side note, a really high chunk of people are ready to move, on RoS and other bronze servers, the nearly only reason they don’t is always the same : “not moving without my guild/friends”.

They aren’t against merging either. And to be honest, the whole “yeah those people from those server are bad, don’t want to play with them” is (most of the time) coming from people who have moved servers more than half a dozen times, and even were on those servers at some point and STILL have friends there.

It’s mostly bravado/ways to justify the fact they jumped ship.

But, once again, the problem with Bronze is that it isn’t WvW at all, because there isn’t the numbers for that.

It’s empty and dead maps most of the day, with 80% of PvDing (or even more, because the rest of the day is that for a good chunk of the time due to the vast difference in numbers, meaning it’s one way mu).

Bronze T7/T8 (and even t9) was nice WvW 1 year ago… but it has the activity we see on mid/top silver servers now.

Bronze right now is a desert with a blip on the radar 3/4h a day.

edit : ho and kuddos on your hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty.:D
I love the whole “hey stop telling people on tiers you aren’t how they should play -i’m in bronze – then gtfo and transfer if not happy – i’ll be transfering out soon – ahah, it’s why you are saying what you say so you are to be ignored”.

Between us 2, one is pretending a dead game mode, that can’t be player for 18+h a day, with nobody around (when it designed to hold 340+ players at a time, on each side, and have under 20 on each side for that much a week it’s called dead, not “low pop” sorry to burst your bubble) is exactly what they like/want, the other just want back what was promised to players by anet at the start, and was real and was how it was played in Bronze till just after S2 (that is only a few months back you know).

Yeah i’m pretty sure i’m the one trying to force others to play like i want, and not how the game is supposed to be played and how it was promised to be played.

I’m not responsible for the state of Bronze’s WvW, Anet is, so as a player (who actually sharded money for the game) i’m entitled to ask them to fix their mess, or a least give the players a way to correct it by themselves, without having to reward Anet (aka pay them) for screwing it up and destroying bronze WvW with their stupid transfer pricing politic coupled with rewards encouraging stacking back with S2…..

WvW was fine overall till that point, it’s broken overall since them. I “wonder” what changed between those 2 points… go figure.

Not entirely sure if you’re edit was directed at me because I’m not transferring and I’m silver… so… not sure if I should answer that. All I’m saying is that you aren’t going to find the same style of WvW play on a T1 server as you will a T8 server. You can argue that however you want but at the end of the day you just won’t. That’s all I was saying was that, people should find a style that suits them. I was also saying not everyone in lower tiers thinks it’s a good idea to server merge. So is it right to try to get ANet to force them to do something they don’t want to when you could just transfer yourself to a server that you want to try out?

No intellectual dishonesty there just laying out the facts and playing Devil’s Advocate. And like I said, I’m silver tier so I’m pretty neutral because I’ve seen our servers “dead hours” where we have maybe four people on EB and our “active hours” where we have a megablob and there is a queue.

Filovirus.6258:

EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. a server is bandwagooned ?

(see RoF multiple times, Bt last time, RoS before that, and so on and so on, and so on).

Only once in GW2 lifetime we had guilds incomming. 4 guilds joined us before Season 2 and 7 guilds left after Season 2. Nextime please check your informations sooner than you write anything.

But Anet should change gems for transfers.
I suggest to start with free transfers to last server and increasing price by 100 by every rank.
This way T1 wil cost more than 2000 and Bronze less than 1000.

Leave the bottom tiered servers alone. Disband the top three and let them populate the other tiers.