Guild Wars 2

I’d like to change servers, but they’re all “Very High” ($22.50).

Are they actually separate servers, hardware-wise? Because if they’re not, and they’re all sharing the same hardware, then the fact that all North American servers are currently “very high” doesn’t mean anything, does it? It just means they’re all close enough to the same that ArenaNet can call them all the same thing, and they chose “Very High” because it describes the price they want to charge?

It’s annoying, because I want to transfer to a lower-tiered server along with my wife, but to move both of us it would cost $45. That’s more than the game itself costs!

Is there a reason the price is so high? Are they just trying to strongly discourage server transfers right now? Because if every single world is “Very High,” then they really need to expand their server capacity.

Are they just trying to impress the new players? I can’t imagine that working out well. “Oh, wow. This game must be AMAZING!!! Every single server is VERY HIGH!!!” Well, no, I’d better stop there. I don’t want to derail this with the “New Player Experience” and its implications for the New Player Intelligence.

TL;DR: Why is the transfer fee so high? And is it coming down?

That’s a $22.50 question for you.
Have you been asked to voluntarily move to another instance and then like 10 min later, being asked to move again? If you really got lucky, you could be asked 3 times in a row.
That’s also a $22.50 question for you.
Have you been an instance at your home world, then guest to another populated world, then guest to another less populated world and found the commander tag on that map is under the same name?
That’s another $22.50 question for you too.
I don’t have any answer for these but I think Anet has all the data in the world to prove that the servers’ population is very high.

Very high compared to what?

What I mean is, doesn’t the megaserver system make all worlds in a region run on the same hardware (if it didn’t already)? And in that case, wouldn’t “world fullness” basically be the percentage of players who are identified with that world for WvW purposes?

And if the population is indeed so evenly distributed as the world selection screen would have us believe, then why would they all be “very high” instead of, say, “medium” or even “high”? That would allow for a potential imbalance caused by new players coming in, current players transferring, etc., so that the lower-population servers to be classified as “low” and the higher ones could be upgraded to “very high,” right?

Or if it’s “very high” because the servers can’t handle much more before they reach maximum capacity, then why the big push for new players recently? Shouldn’t they upgrade the hardware before they try to max it out?

So the most likely scenario I can think of is that they want to encourage population balance in WvW (which is now the only aspect of the game affected by world choice), but to keep the current equilibrium, they had to discourage transfers by (1.) making all world populations look the same and (2.) charging a ridiculous amount for transfers.

So, there you go. I think the “very high” is an artificial rating, and while making them all say “high” or “medium” may be more accurate (though still not necessarily a reflection of actual distribution), it would allow us to move around more freely because it would cost far fewer gems.

Wish I was very high…