Guild Wars 2

So I’m really curious about something here. In my time playing on multiple servers ive noticed a large descrepency in several servers actual population in wvw and what the server list states. Ive heard that its supposed to be only active wvw population, yet from my own observations and from friends on other serves ive gathered this information:

1: several servers were closed recently, right before the relinkings, and the reason given was that anet was lowering the difference in a high pop and a low population servers, yet now most of the servers that were full are open again, in the space of just a few weeks?
2: 3 servers remain closed, bg in t1 and jq and… yb? yb is in t3, so I got really curious about how they could have that many numbers.
3: As of last reset the highest queue on bg maps was 20 for one map, the others were all around or lower, and one map didn’t even have a queue for a good 20 minutes after reset or longer.
4: As of last night, sunday during na primetime, very high population sever sos in TIER THREE had 4 maps queued at one once for several hours. as well as queues during the rest of the day.
5: Multiple friends on maguuma have reported at least one queue of 30+ during non na hours, and multiple maps with queues of over 30 on reset and multiple maps queued during na.

So I’m really curious as to why servers that seem to be permantly full seem to have less numbers than servers on very high and even in very low tiers. Yes linking could account for part of the numbers on sos, but most people in t1 view lower tier wvw as almost dead, however since transferring this account to t3 I have seen more numbers from all three servers in that teir than most t1 servers pull, with the exception of maybe maguuma.

Anet closed 5 servers recently, 2 of which have opened back up. They lowered the population thresholds for servers meaning that a server goes full faster with less people than before.

Your firsthand experience, is just that. And I don’t say that to be mean, unless you are able to monitor the activity and population for each server, throughout the day, you cannot properly judge what the actual population is or how active it is.

archer of fatalis.5398:

2: 3 servers remain closed, bg in t1 and jq and… yb? yb is in t3, so I got really curious about how they could have that many numbers.

YB doesn’t match T1 servers in pure numbers, but I believe one of the devs stated that “population” has something to do with the aggregate amount of hours played on a server. Many YB players spend their life on GW2 (such as DK), and that leads to an inflated hours played count per capita. Many of them also camp in keeps hugging their siege, so I’d wager a guess that also inflates their hours played and makes them look more active compared to servers that don’t play passively.

Tyrx.2471:

archer of fatalis.5398:

2: 3 servers remain closed, bg in t1 and jq and… yb? yb is in t3, so I got really curious about how they could have that many numbers.

YB doesn’t match T1 servers in pure numbers, but I believe one of the devs stated that “population” has something to do with the aggregate amount of hours played on a server. Many YB players spend their life on GW2 (such as DK), and that leads to an inflated hours played count per capita. Many of them also camp in keeps hugging their siege, so I’d wager a guess that also inflates their hours played and makes them look more active compared to servers that don’t play passively.

Maguuma has a lot of players who spend most of their time in WvW so on that above basis it should have remained closed. I keep saying but my inference from what the devs have said is that the population is based on number of players and to be included in that population you have to spend a certain amount of time in WvW or activities like dailies. So BG, JQ and YB have a lot of players who spend smaller amounts of time in WvW than Mag players but they spend enough time to be counted. I think population caps should be based on total man hours but I don’t think it is.

1. I question when a map has a queue if it has the max players on the actual map.

2. I also question “WvW activity level” algorithm as being accurate in determining server population.

From Mag here, our server is extremely NA heavy, with a good EU and decent OCX, however having literally 0 SEA population probally was enough to put our server to very high.

dude population isn’t about who has more queues. it’s about total # of active wvw people across 24 hours of the day. just because sos has 4 map queues during na doesn’t mean it has more people than bg.

You can’t compare SoS queues with YB, BG, Mag, TC, nor JQ since it has a server link. They’re linked with GoM which was one of the mid-tier servers prior to server links. The old mid-tier servers bring more population to their host server than the old servers below them.

The real reason for the differences IMHO has to do with how population is averaged out.

“most people in t1 view lower tier wvw as almost dead”

Ah, found your problem right there. If they’re looking for 50v50 battle arena, yea, wvw is pretty dead.

Well, the problem always has been we are making assumptions based on what information we have available. Additionally, the “full” status currently is based on an aggregate over time. Servers have incredibly busy weeks with a number of queues, then will go quiet again. I would guess based on understanding data that there is a formula attached to this that takes a number of factors into account.

For instance, what constitutes “active” in the context of WvW? Would it be for those who get WvW reward track points? I found I was still getting points last night, while in Hills even though I was mostly dormant. (doing sentry duty while eating supper). Sure, I’d move occasionally refreshing siege and checking walls, but that isn’t very active. The posts above mine here talking about establishing a number calculating play time within WvW makes sense. We don’t really know though.

Fatherbliss.4701:

For instance, what constitutes “active” in the context of WvW? Would it be for those who get WvW reward track points?

Rewards tracks utilize the “participation” mechanic, which I’m pretty sure was in place before the reward tracks were released. “Participation” goes back to at least HoT release and the introduction of the new Squad UI, which was something that came out of Adopt-a-Dev; trying to find a better way to reward different roles, for example, the scout, through “shared participation”. That same summer saw the world population change so I would not be surprised if that also utilizes the “participation” underlayment in order to calculate “active” man hours.

The other way to measure “active” would most likely be based on the length of time spent in a WvW map rather than activity taken in that map. I don’t recall any clear statement from Anet on idle players on a map.

SoS is very high pop, I assume, because of balanced coverage, not anything else. Running 2-3 map queues in NA and sizeable 25-40 man groups through OCX, SEA and EU consistently tends to give that to you.

Compared to JQ, who as I saw a couple weeks ago can queue 1-2 maps all through NA and SEA, and run 40+ in OCX and EU, and are currently full.

This distinction in numbers seems perfectly fine to distinguish between Very High and Full.

Try looking at Mag’s numbers over a full 24-hour period, would you? Then comparing to another server on a lower tier’s.

Queues on weekday, 4 maps, kitten , HOD doesn’t even has a single queue on reset.

And having an average population across all times of the day is actually detrimental to your server (server link) now. You will more than likely never have enough players to outsize one of the two other competing opponents.

This forces a case of always being #2/#3 in point score for every session which really skews player perceived coverage more.

Unless you are in T1 (i.e., BG which doesn’t always get what it needs either) and have a extremely healthy population across all hours of every day in WvW, you will continue to see the fault in the average WvW time that bars new players to home servers.

Ultimately, the problem is aggregated map play time is not multiplied by some factor like PPT match outcome or kills-to-death ratio to determine the more relevant perceived coverage issue.

Artaz.3819:

And having an average population across all times of the day is actually detrimental to your server (server link) now. You will more than likely never have enough players to outsize one of the two other competing opponents.

This forces a case of always being #2/#3 in point score for every session which really skews player perceived coverage more.

Unless you are in T1 (i.e., BG which doesn’t always get what it needs either) and have a extremely healthy population across all hours of every day in WvW, you will continue to see the fault in the average WvW time that bars new players to home servers.

Ultimately, the problem is aggregated map play time is not multiplied by some factor like PPT match outcome or kills-to-death ratio to determine the more relevant perceived coverage issue.

The other option to having an average population across all timezones is to have only 1 or 2 stacked timezones which leads to a different kind of problem: timezone mismatches.

For example, there are a few servers light on NA players and heavy in OCX or SEA time players. When these servers get matched up against servers heavy in NA and very light in OCX or SEA, it makes for rather boring matches for both sets of players.

Now you used the example of BG having a “healthy population across all hours of every day”. I hope you realize that the only difference between a server with an average population across all timezones and BG is scale. Both would have population across all timezones; i.e., players would at least have someone to fight and not have boring timezone mismatches.