Guild Wars 2

We are located on the Eredon Terrace server and recently had a large guild that made up four maxed guilds on our server decide to bounce. This happened after several weeks of battling with the top 2-3 servers and losing. They just decided to transfer the ENTIRE guild somewhere else. We don’t know the exact numbers but we believe it to be around 400 accounts mimumum.

This same guild did this to a low pop server earlier in the game start. I understand the point behind balancing servers but this is beginning to create a huge problem for the game. I understand the exploits and current bugs are ruining WVW. However, if guilds leave servers because transfers are free that is sad. They are creating a larger gap on servers in WVW and the balancing of WVW will be unreachable. Don’t forget about the population issues and queue times being affected.

ArenaNet needs to stop the free transfers and charge the folks to jump around. A 24 hour change is not the appropriate thing to do. I see people bouncing servers all the time because it is free. We need start to hiting peoples bank accounts and then the jumping around will stop.

Okay, hopefully this thread can avoid QQ and focus on being positive and petitioning for a worthy solution to our WvW issues caused by free server transfers, in the mean time while ANet is trying to put paid ones in place.

So, here’s a constructive suggestion to the devs that players from SBI developed:

We, as players, understand that devs are still working to implement guesting and other features so that paid server transfers can work. We offer full consideration to this.

However, in the mean time, established and upper tier servers continue to suffer because they are being flooded with the WvW bandwagon. This has been especially apparent recently.

Therefore, our solution that is that a WvW probation period is put in place for transferees. Here’s how it would work:

1.) Transferees would be given a WvW probationary period, length determined by server population (or possibly just until the end of the current match), upon transferring to another server.
2.) The probationary period would prevent players from joining WvW when there is a queue up.
3.) It would not, however, prevent players from joining when there is no queue, thus maintaining a server’s WvW presence.

The benefits of this proposal are threefold:

1.) It would reward dedicated players on servers with reduced queue times.
2.) It would add more weight to the decision of transferring servers, possibly reducing the number of people from server hopping and performing subterfuge during matches.
3.) It would not hinder players who make the noble decision of going from a higher population server to a lower population one to help increase WvW parity.
(i.e. transferring from JQ to Kaineng or Devona’s Rest)

Please feel free to ./sign this proposal and offer suggestions. The goal of this is that the players can help ANet and offer solutions to current issues with the game rather than decrying them. Let’s all show what good citizens we can be in this online community.

I have to agree with this. And…. this has been posted many times.

On my server, that we played on since beta, a large alliance formed up and started the live game on our server. While wuv wuv weekends were awesome where the top 3 servers would fight back and forth, the weekdays dragged on as people gave up.

Once everyone else saw our sever doing well in wuv wuv, they all transferred to it. Q times out of control….

Then, this alliance disbands and transfers off and now even on the weekends, wuv wuv is a drag.

Going further, other guilds are looking or have transferred off because the server died.

I’m fairly certain that if we started with only 1 or 2 weeks of free transfers, this would not have happened.

There is no server pride or community. There is no hope to create it when you consider anyone can just jump ship at any moment.

Server transfers are a good idea at the start of the game. It is a good way to ‘merge’ low population worlds into medium. It is a good way to ‘offload’ players from heavy populated worlds.

They need to put more limits on this. Let people only transfer off highly populated worlds for free. Everyone else pays.

I do like this suggestion a lot.

I don’t think it would be hard to code either. Just have the queue message have two versions, one for if people have recently transferred. Give them a message that says: "Sorry, but there is a queue and you’ve transferred within the past “x” weeks (x=whatever length is decided on) so you’ll have to wait until there is no queue or until you’ve been on your server for “x” weeks."

+1

I completely agree.

This lack of action of Arenanet is frustrating to say the least. Especially since Arenanet claims to be a community building company and not a video game company. For those veterans of games like DAOC and Warhammer one of the key factors in building server pride (a huge part of the “community” for many players including myself) is the ability to limit what accounts are on a particular server at any given time.

With free transfers still active but on a 1 day cooldown, Arenanet is failing on two fronts simultaneously. With many accounts changing servers on a weekly basis any decisions made off of the metrics generated to rank servers are going to be skewed heavily because of the transfers. So the “balancing” is currently a waste of time and resources imo.

If the transfers continue and Arenanet fails to limit them by both a money value and a time value a community will never be built within each individual server and the server matchups will never become balanced.

The ball has always been in your court Anet, I personally would like to see a 1 month cooldown on all transfers. and 10 U.S. dollars per transfer sounds good to me.

I would also agree with this suggestion. It helps the issue with out flat out exluding people, and keeps people from switching willy nilly just cause one server has scores higher than another. Another issue though that I feel needs addressing is the amount of commanders on the field at a given time. there are people who use the commander buff to actually lead, and it causes confusion when u have too many on the field.

If you actually look at the scores for the T2 bracket. They’re very close to each other. I think they are all within 1000 to 2000 points.

Free server transfers need to remain as long as only a few servers are able to dominate an entire game due to not facing servers who have 24/hr coverage. What does need to hapkitten for ANET to make server transfers only offered once every 2 weeks. This means people won’t be able to hop when losing a single match and will help ANET collect better data.

I agree, the transfers need to stop. I’m from Maguuma, and we have low population. We don’t have a lot of people transferring off though, we are just battling servers that have people transferring to them. It’s not too logical to balance servers when you have the top 3 servers all having ridiculous Que times for WvWvW. There has been plenty of time for Anet to say ok, Servers are balanced enough, let’s start making people pay. Because right now, there’s a ton of mass exoduses happening upsetting an already unbalanced WvW system, which is another topic a ton of players have a grievance about. I know from Maguuma, only the Goons and SFD stayed from the first week of us getting stomped in WvW. We’re holding on though. however, if the Goons decided to leave Mag. We’d be completely out of luck for WvW. Please ANet. I love WvW. So stop the free transfers

Or ANET can increase the waiting period of transfers to 2 weeks and 2 days while only allowing a transfer once every 2 weeks. People transfer to winning servers not only because they win, but because the server they transfer from is probably losing. If it took 2 weeks and 2 days for a transfer to take affect, people would go through 2 matches. If their server does good in the second match, they are less likely to actually go through with the transfer. ANET would have to allow people to put in a “stop transfer” order as well, but that’s really easy to do since it appears the system is automatic anyways.

fadswaffer.5140:

I agree, the transfers need to stop. I’m from Maguuma, and we have low population. We don’t have a lot of people transferring off though, we are just battling servers that have people transferring to them. It’s not too logical to balance servers when you have the top 3 servers all having ridiculous Que times for WvWvW. There has been plenty of time for Anet to say ok, Servers are balanced enough, let’s start making people pay. Because right now, there’s a ton of mass exoduses happening upsetting an already unbalanced WvW system, which is another topic a ton of players have a grievance about. I know from Maguuma, only the Goons and SFD stayed from the first week of us getting stomped in WvW. We’re holding on though. however, if the Goons decided to leave Mag. We’d be completely out of luck for WvW. Please ANet. I love WvW. So stop the free transfers

If they stop free transfers you’ll never have a good WvW population….

ANET needs to increase the limits to transferring first

As long as we keep losing we will never have a good WvW population, Guilds and players will just run to the winning server just because.

And what do you mean by increase the limits? The time between transfers and playing wvw? That would work.
Some communication would also help calm a lot of the players and the people who are concerned about this system. It took hundreds of posts about night capping (Which I don’t know why people were crying about, if you hate it just stay up), but this is their next big issue that we would love some talk about from someone.

Can’t say I’d be sad to see Eredon Terrace get stomped, but I agree bandwagoners can mess with the rankings.

Why would you join a top server and then leave when you are shocked to discover it plays in top tier matchups?

fadswaffer.5140:

And what do you mean by increase the limits? The time between transfers and playing wvw? That would work.

Yes. You limit transfers to once every two weeks or make transfers take 2 weeks and 2 days to go through (there is a difference). What both systems accomplish is force people to play at least 2 matches (under the current system) before being able to transfer. If they lost heavily during the first, they are forced to stick around for the second match. If that second match goes better than the first, they are less likely to transfer. Doing this will also give ANET better data about population trends and their ranking system to allow them to incentivize people to transfer servers to get a better time zone spread across all servers. Of course, before ANET can do that the guesting system has to work, and IMO, ANET is waiting for that feature to work before charging people to transfer servers anyways.

Xpiher, that might also help keep people transferring to other winning servers, but it would greatly hamper people who want to play with friends who ended up on another server, keep people from changing servers to do bugged skill points, and make those who are frustrated with long queues angry.

Also, anet would then have to keep track of people waiting for server transfers. Not worth it imo.

I still like the original suggestion a lot more.

The advantage of the original proposal is that it helps people who WvW without hurting those who don’t. The probationary period would still allow people to transfer, but not abuse those transfers to follow the top servers. It would allow ANet to continue letting free transfers balance out server population without watering down WvW. It’s a win win for everyone.

I think the best solution would be to disable free transfers. If guesting as a feature and free transfers in lieu of their failure to implement it is more important than WvW as a feature, then I question the direction of the game.

Basically, they’re sacrificing WvW balance and stability for the sake of people being able to go to another server and say hello to a friend in ‘person’. That right there is ridiculous.

Nevron.9413:

I think the best solution would be to disable free transfers. If guesting as a feature and free transfers in lieu of their failure to implement it is more important than WvW as a feature, then I question the direction of the game.

Basically, they’re sacrificing WvW balance and stability for the sake of people being able to go to another server and say hello to a friend in ‘person’. That right there is ridiculous.

You have a point. However, this proposal allows people who have some burning manifestation to go say hello in “person” to go do as they wish without destroying our WvW.

So another week of me logging into the game eagerly mashing the WvW menu only to discover that we dominate 3/4 or more of the entire WvW maps.

This adds to how most WvW has been to date — brief periods of stiff competition and amazing fun a midst a sea of lopsided contests without any meaningful gameplay (due to lack of competition, not quality of the WvW concept.)

So let’s take a brief trip down memory lane from my perspective, shall we?

My server, Jade Quarry, had a brief period of being #1 very early on. However, it was also a time when mass queues were causing a lot of server transfers. During this “settling out” period, Henge sever began their rise to dominance.

Within a week of their wins, messages were filling discussion boards about people transferring to Henge and looking for guilds, etc. This began the mass transferring to the “winning” server, leading to disproportionate and fully lopsided game play.

Then Henge’s major guilds called it quits. Leading to a massive exodus from Henge as tons of people transferred to the new #1 – Jade Quarry.

Now once again, Jade Quarry controls most of the map most of the time. It’s boring and a complete disappointment.

I’m not bragging because it has NOTHING to do with JQ being “better” – it has everything to do with free server transfers that are completely ruining competition for WvW.

Anet, you must* have a system of boundaries for the masses if you want to have any kind of fun, competitive gameplay. You can’t just have “faith.” Free transfers ruin competitive balance. Period.

I am a veteran DAoC player and I have been looking for a WvW (or as we prefer to call it, “RvR”) game for years and years. This is my last hope. And the environment you have created for WvW gameplay is absolutely fantastic.

But you are killing it by refusing to enforce some balancing boundaries to promote decent competition. It’s incredibly sad to me.

And the longer you wait to fix it the more difficult it will be to rebuild community, as people are already losing interest in what they would otherwise feel 100% passionate about.

PLEASE, DO SOMETHING.

STOP FREE TRANSFERS.

Another post I totally agree with. I do not come to these forums often, but after two weeks of getting shafted because the server standings are so out of whack due to the free transfers I have to say something. At this point can we just have random servers fighting each other and just get rid of the rankings?

why do you all keep posting this? This is intended by Arena Net, i really dont get why you all think it would change.

epics.9310:

why do you all keep posting this? This is intended by Arena Net, i really dont get why you all think it would change.

Because it should change, and maybe if it gets enough attention, it will.

old news.

*why do i need 15 characters to post ?

Coming from the founding TA alliance, and from a guild that has had to literally spend weeks of duration being part of mass coordination changes to try and rectify the severe problems that free transfers have had on WvW:

Please stop free transfers with immediate effect. We have lost more than half our roster size since launch, and have just gone through a major reorganisation with many other guilds all across the game. We will not do this again.

There are a lot of topics on Server-Transfer and the issues arising with it.

I will sum up the basic problems I and obviously a lot of other people are seeing.

1. The WvW-Ratings are meaningless. As long as guilds transfer around as they like it is hard to rate servers based on their current population. A servers performance decreases if a strong guild leaves and increases if a strong guild joins, but the rating does not notice such changes. In the Europa-Brackets this and some other issues create a situation where 7 out of 9 Matchups are heavily dominated by one Server and this is without heavy nightcapping, which isnt as much an issue on weekend as it is during the week.

2. Although your stats say that this is only a minor issue, there are a lot of people that join strong servers instead of weak ones. This “Winning Team Joiners” ruin the experience for servers performing good by increasing their Queues. I share your position, that it isn’t an important issue, but it does not help either. It is something that upsets people and I can understand them.

3. I haven’t seen a lot of changes in the lower half. If you put Kaineng aside most people will tell you that servers with low pop are losing players instead of gaining them.

My suggestion is simple and I don’t have only one but 4 of them:

1. Stop Free-Servertransfers

2. Give every player one free transfer to use as they like with the option to undo the transfer within 2 weeks.

3. Keep free transfers open for Low-Pop-Servers (exspecially the last bracket)

4. Gradually increase the price for a transfer until reaching your normal idea about how much it should cost.

Exspecially Number 2 should make it possible for every player to find a home. And if they don’t use their transfer, they could keep it for later, maybe they should be timed.

Number 3. Should stop the jumping between Mid-Pop-Servers. I would like to see stats about this, because as far as I noticed the destiny of most transfers is a server with a medium population and there is a lot of movement between such servers and of course a lot from full servers towards medium servers. But only a few people really transfer to empty servers.

Since I guess that not only the community has thought about server-transfers and their impact on WvW you may have some thoughts avaible that we miss. I would be happy to hear your ideas about this, since we might lack information or maybe you are always investigating the options of cutting the free transfers without removing them completly.

I’m sorry to create yet another thread about this, but I felt the need for at least one thread centered about solutions and alternatives instead of useless “Do this or I quit.” etc.

Syntax.9602:

There are a lot of topics on Server-Transfer and the issues arising with it.

I will sum up the basic problems I and obviously a lot of other people are seeing.

1. The WvW-Ratings are meaningless. As long as guilds transfer around as they like it is hard to rate servers based on their current population. A servers performance decreases if a strong guild leaves and increases if a strong guild joins, but the rating does not notice such changes. In the Europa-Brackets this and some other issues create a situation where 7 out of 9 Matchups are heavily dominated by one Server and this is without heavy nightcapping, which isnt as much an issue on weekend as it is during the week.

2. Although your stats say that this is only a minor issue, there are a lot of people that join strong servers instead of weak ones. This “Winning Team Joiners” ruin the experience for servers performing good by increasing their Queues. I share your position, that it isn’t an important issue, but it does not help either. It is something that upsets people and I can understand them.

3. I haven’t seen a lot of changes in the lower half. If you put Kaineng aside most people will tell you that servers with low pop are losing players instead of gaining them.

My suggestion is simple and I don’t have only one but 4 of them:

1. Stop Free-Servertransfers

2. Give every player one free transfer to use as they like with the option to undo the transfer within 2 weeks.

3. Keep free transfers open for Low-Pop-Servers (exspecially the last bracket)

4. Gradually increase the price for a transfer until reaching your normal idea about how much it should cost.

Exspecially Number 2 should make it possible for every player to find a home. And if they don’t use their transfer, they could keep it for later, maybe they should be timed.

Number 3. Should stop the jumping between Mid-Pop-Servers. I would like to see stats about this, because as far as I noticed the destiny of most transfers is a server with a medium population and there is a lot of movement between such servers and of course a lot from full servers towards medium servers. But only a few people really transfer to empty servers.

Since I guess that not only the community has thought about server-transfers and their impact on WvW you may have some thoughts avaible that we miss. I would be happy to hear your ideas about this, since we might lack information or maybe you are always investigating the options of cutting the free transfers without removing them completly.

I’m sorry to create yet another thread about this, but I felt the need for at least one thread centered about solutions and alternatives instead of useless “Do this or I quit.” etc.

This plan is good and I would love for it to happen, but I do not get why this is such a tough issue for this game. Just stop doing transfers after you give a date a week or two out saying get where you need to be, and after that its a industry standard 20 dollar service.

I think this is a well thought out post. Although I do think they should have locked server transfers a long time ago… I wonder what would happen if they locked them now? Would we have JQ as the new HoD forever? Would even more people xfer to JQ once the announcement went out?

What are some options? First off, I think that once guild banks can be carried cross server, more guilds would be willing to move. Any sort of semi-forced xfer can’t really occur (imo) until that feature is in. I am not sure if that can even happen technically.

Do we need a semi-forced server xfer? I think we do, but how would it work? It would seem unfair to JQ since they are now in the lead. (and other servers that are currently dominating)

What would people think if they announced mandatory moves for a fairer game play?
How would it effect pve and larger guilds, and people who don’t even play wvw? There would be an outcry. So by semi-forced xfer I guess I mean a large incentive to switch. But how would that work? What sort of incentive would it take to get people to disperse evenly? How would we even know if we were dispersed evenly before the next match?

Do we separate wvw from our actual home servers? Then we possibly risk losing the incentive to win. Right now it is about server pride. Would the pride still be there if you were on Red#1, Blue#7, Green #12 etc? Maybe?

I was responding to Selwynn.2758’s post btw when I said, ‘well thought out post’ Then this thread was merged.

If transfers would be locked we will not have JQ as the new HoD because the guilds that mattered are already leaving JQ. HoD’s implosion seems to be rippling to other servers now destroying WvW for everyone.

With free transfers you get band wagoners and with that you get the leading guilds leaving. At some point too many players will no longer just transfer but just quit entirely. Domination is not fun but being on a dying server which used to dominate is not fun either. I fear JQ and some other servers are toast. Free transfers don’t work with WvW and I believe one week matches don’t work either with players giving up once their server is behind. Heck, right now, thanks to players who jumped ship to JQ and players leaving the servers we are up against WvW is not even fun anymore during the weekend. I don’t believe for a minute that ArenaNet is not seeing this really bad trend with a big part of the game becoming useless unfun for too many players with the possibility of players even leaving.

I think that closing free transfers will not solve much currently. I believe the harm has already been done and the only way to fix some of the mess is by restricting transfers while restarting the ranking system from zero with some necessary server mergers.

And no, we don’t need to make it easier for guilds to leave their servers behind because currently leading guilds already leave way too easily. Most players in WvW are followers and if leaders leave you will have to start all over again. Many people may have moved to JQ but too many early members are also jumping ship because of the increased queues. There is no unwillingness to move. The opposite seems to be true currently.

Dutch Lion, please elaborate on ‘restricting xfers’.

Problem isn’t the free transfer, the problem is that there isn’t a time restriction on it. Put in a 2 weeks limit to transfer would solve a lot of issues. And as for new players, give them a week or two of free transfer before the 2 week limitation kicks in would be fair.

I agree 100% that free servers have and are ruining WvW. Although i also agree with some posters that the damage is done. At this point, just cutting them off wouldnt fix the issue, as the imbalance already exists.

I propose taking extra steps to promote self balancing while setting a hard date for the cutting off of the transfers.

It seems one of the biggest issues right now, is that the high pop servers get tired of queues and the “bandwagoners”, and many large guilds move, but they dont go to the low pop servers, they move to the mid pops. Thus the mid now become the highs, and the highs drop. Theres no real incentive to move to the low pops.

Part of this is because there are no real benfits for the outmanned buff atm. Its purely fluff and should become something more active like the orb bonuses. It also needs to be reflected in the guards, allowing the outmanned server to have a chance against being out zerged 2v1, or in some cases 3v1.

Im also not completely against the idea of removing the outmanned state completely and instead having pop caps equal to the lowest pop. This wouldnt kick people out that are already on the maps, but if they begin to hugely out number the opponents, it will just prevent new players from joining until the balance has returned. This also adds the incintive for larger guilds to move to lower pop servers, not mid pop, to avoid the longer queues and get the whole guild in at once.

All of that being done over a period of a match (1 week) to allow those transfers to balance, then a cut off with a hard set date, not a flexible one, for the free transfers. That allows people to move and balance, but not enough time to bandwagon hop if they find thier new home doesnt fit. It adds risk vs reward, and that is something missing from WvW right now.

Pop caps= to the lowest pop will never happen. First off, a higher pop server would be given incentive to log out to keep their lead. Second, some people would never be able to play wvw at all and have no idea when they were in queue if it would ever pop at all.

at this stage of the game, i don’t think it’s a problem. as the op said – balancing. if free transfers were halted, those of you still qqing about long queues would keep qqing (in both senses of the term), and wold have literally no other option than to just endure.

right now, though, you can jump down to a lower server and get your game on. i like to think in the early days everyone jumped up. now they realise their mistake and are jumping down. it’ll balance out and everything will be cool.

as for the guilds losing their “roster” or servers losing a few guilds, then perhaps you weren’t offering the support needed to keep those players. it’s a two-way process. if the guild feels no server pride, or the player doesn’t feel they want to be in your guild, then you’ve lost nothing.

for me, there’s really only one server filled with genuine server pride. and this is where someone from kaineng can shout it out loud and proud.

fadswaffer.5140:

I know from Maguuma, only the Goons and SFD stayed from the first week of us getting stomped in WvW. We’re holding on though. however, if the Goons decided to leave Mag. We’d be completely out of luck for WvW. Please ANet. I love WvW. So stop the free transfers

General consensus amongst Goons/SFD = we will never leave Maguuma. Theres alot of hidden greats on this server that just need building up like RPH and iRez. Its a shame so few of us can play with RPH because of time zone differences but I hope they are doing well. I’d like to play under Caleum and just see how they do things for a little while. The iRez folks are really just some of the classiest people you will ever play videogames with. I don’t think any of us mind losing if we are in good company.

EK, iLL and MLM turned out in force over the weekends and everyone was just chill as hell, even when we were getting our…errr, you know. Pushed. In.

This is an easy solution, but for some reason the waffling and lack of action from Arenanet is making things progressively worse. I’m not sure if the thought process is simply “The players and guilds will balance out servers over time”…. as that is NOT working.

The simplest solution could be done immediately… only allow free transfers to lower ranked or lower populated servers. If anyone wants to transfer to a high ranked or high population server they have to pay 2000 gems. This way you can still join a friend on a high population server, but it will stop the “band wagon” jumpers and promote people to go to lower population servers. So with this in mind….

1) Allow guilds to transfer servers and KEEP all guild upgrades. Arenanet said they are working on this, and it really should be done ASAP.

2) Give lots of notice (7 days minimum) before charging for any kind of server transfers. This is to allow guilds and players to organize and settle servers.

3)After 7 days charge for server transfers to high rank/populated servers. No charge for players or guilds to move to low ranked/populated servers.

This will do more for balancing servers than simply leaving a open ended transfer system we currently have that is ripe with abuse.

I thought it was always the intention of ANet to eventually have paid transfers and greater than 24hour tranfer delays – I thought this was related to the ramp-up to the full two-week WvW cycle?

Some people are saying “this is what ANet intends.” Is it? Pretty sure they said the was not their intention for free and unlimited xfers to be permanent.

So my reason for posting is – I believe that the continued extension of free and essentially unlimited transfers is dramatically hurting WvW and needs to end. I may have been the plan to extend them a bit longer, but it turns out they need to be stopped and they need to be stopped now.

I really really hope they don’t put in 2 week matches cus once you are down by a large amount, there is almost no way to get back up. Then people stop queing and it’s GG. As we have seen it only takes, in some cases, a few days to determine the winner.

2 week matches will be a total disaster and will encourage even more server stacking.

But on topic, I want to see Anet officially make a statement on this matter. They said team hopping wasn’t much of a problem but I for one see it first hand how it is a HUGE concern.

I don’t think there’s a need for some of the complicated suggestions I have seen when a simple lock-out will work. You move to a new server and you are locked out of WvW for 8 days. Simple. Matches increase to two weeks (please no) and the lockout increases to 15 days. Matches decrease to 5 days and the lockout reduces to six days.

Once again, a game developer shows that they do not understand basic human nature on internet games. Unfortunately, most people don’t give a crap about balance and challenge. They just want to win.

Free server transfers are making things worse, not better.

This is really easy ANet: Charge money for those going from a lower population to a higher population.

If people want to get away from queues, they can. Maybe let people transfer for free during the first 2 weeks they own the game.

It really is pretty easy to make all of this work.

Call me crazy, but here is my guess. Most people don’t care if they are on the best shard or the worst when it comes to WvW: they just want an even, fun match each week.

Dervo.9186:

Xpiher, that might also help keep people transferring to other winning servers, but it would greatly hamper people who want to play with friends who ended up on another server, keep people from changing servers to do bugged skill points, and make those who are frustrated with long queues angry.

ANET needs to implement the guesting system. And people who are frustrated with long ques are likely that way because transfers are TOO quick. For instance, when TA existed on HoD ques went from two hours to 5 hours because of all the people jumping servers to be on a winning one. Bugged skill points is a separate issue, one that can be fixed by server resets and/or ANET fixing the issue.

Also, anet would then have to keep track of people waiting for server transfers. Not worth it imo.

The transfer system is automated. ANET doesn’t have to do anything other than code in the ability to stop a transfer from going through

Suggestion for a payment to higher pop server or tier 1 server = win.

Suggestion of INSTANTLY stopping free transfers and giving everyone a token for 1 free transfer is also WIN.

The 2nd suggestion made in this post is just, amazing. Give everyone 1 free transfer and be done with it. They could use it a few weeks from now or a year from now, or right now.

THIS is what will balance the servers. Give someone a 1 shot at something free and they won’t throw it away. This will giver guilds the time they need to make informed choices.

I like the idea of that if you transfer, you cannot participate in wvw for the server you transfer to for the next couple weeks. (Presumably for around the proposed amount of time that it takes for a new server matchup to occur. Except with off-timed overlap to prevent transferring just before a new matchup.) This would allow players to transfer to servers their friends play on to enjoy the game with them in pve.

I would also like a caveat that if you transfer BACK to the server you just came from before that time expires, you will be able to participate in wvw on the original server.

This will have the effect of putting a damper on spying as well as encouraging server loyalty. If you really like a server that much that you want to wvw, you have to commit to it.

A ‘server guesting’ system for this would probably sort this all out. Guesting for pve should be allowed. Then put in place restrictions however severe (such as charging money or a time limit on wvw participation) are necessary for wvw.

They need something in place that would help to stabilize the populations first. As others have stated above, do something that would funnel people to lower population servers. At that point once things are more balanced across servers, stop transfers. Bioware screwed up by having to many servers. ANet may damage their game by continuing to operate in this manner. ANet boasted how they wanted WvW to be about server pride and have servers compete with each other almost as if it were a sporting event. Sometimes one wins and the next game or match the other could win. ANet you are not doing things the way they need to be done to make what you yourselves had as a vision for WvW come true.

Selwynn, you are completely correction.

Originally ANet had announced a diversified payment option for transfering to a different server. I forgot the exact costs but transfering to a “larger” server costed more than transfering to a “smaller” server. Likewise, there was supposed to be a seven day lock out for WvW in anticipation of a two week WvW period.

ANet had stated in the days leading up to launch that free transfers will be available until the server pops stabilized.

Well, neither has happened, and servers for WvW are getting wrecked all over the place. It’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out.

Good game. Fun WvW, but for the servers on the higher tiers, getting into WvW was atrociously long, and the constant flood of “hanger ons” or “band wagoners” really makes things complicated and messy for those that helped build the server community during beta.

Ah well.