Guild Wars 2

First of all let me highlight that this isn’t a complaint thread. Rather it is just me voicing a fear that is growing day by day in a lot of us players

I play In Underworld. Did for a long time and don’t plan on leaving anytime soon since pve is now on megaservers.

The problem here is that our server is basically DEAD in terms of wvw.
We have but a handful of players and a bunch of “noobs” (as in not really playing seriously) roaming around and capping stuff when there isn’t an opponent’s zerg on the map. Not pointing fingers at anyone. it’s just a fact.

A really depressing fact…

AND SO I(/we) are a bit worried that with the release of the new borderlands (which look amazing nonetheless); our wvw is gonna simply vanish leaving only but empty maps with that one UW guy trying to melee a tower door for 15mins.

You see we already don’t have the numbers to handle the regular 4 maps (again not pointing fingers this is not a matter of skill but a matter of sheer numbers) and I’m quite sure it’ll get worse when 3 of those maps change to become 2 times bigger

So I’m asking if others are getting the same feeling as well and if someone at Arena Net is maybe considering the problem of wvw migration flux (I still have no idea why transferring to us, the last server is still something you’d charge for…)

In advance, thank you for your replies

The “dead” world argument is a bit of an odd one. Often its time zone that are dead not the world it self. Even if its a “dead” world for wvw the ppl who is talking about wanting x or y world to not? be dead show that there is at least one person willing to play they are simply being out number and realy only the ppl from there own world can fix that.

Wvw is meant to be populated by that world and that world alone and no one can truly fix / make ppl play on that world. How do you suggest fixing a “dead” world when ppl are free to go where they want?

I think you’re missing the point. Our players left the server to go elsewhere. That is their choice and I have no pb against that. the problem is that as a consequence, wvw can’t work how it’s supposed to (and trust me on that if I tell you it’s dead it IS dead).

So we have a game feature that we PAID for that can’t work properly. So the answer there could be to fuse us with other less populate servers or incite players from servers that are completely loaded with players with almost constant wvw queues (we never had a queue ever in wvw again trust me on that) to migrate here.

However if there is nothing to gain from moving to lower tier servers then there is no point in doing so. And therefore the spiral downwards increases again.

Basically we’re in a situation where it can only go worse if no one “official” does something about it.
And so the reason of my original post : )

The server system has to be changed. Anet will have to come to that conclusion eventually. There is so many better alternatives that other games are using.

I am from FoW and we currently “fight” UW. Or we would if there was any UW players left. There is nobody in UW.

Which is kind of sad, we are now left in lowest tier against 1 completely empty server and another full of stupid hackers. Both completely unfun. We are basically on the edge to stop all wvw completely until HoT is released, and thats stupid because we are pure wvw guild.

FoW has been in similar situation for long times, being constantly outnumbered and only gaining some points when enemy left the map. I remember fighting against UW too when they always had 3-4 times the players we had and not once did UW complained about the situation then. But I am not here to blame you. I would like you not to constantly stab us in the back whenever we go fight BT but of course you pick your enemies and if you like backstabbing, thats your way.

I still got advice for you. Stop worrying about the score. Enjoy the fights you can win (until the enemy zerg runs over you). Try to establish community feeling within players who still bother to play. Welcome every noob who gets lost into wvw first time.

Xillllix.3485:

The server system has to be changed. Anet will have to come to that conclusion eventually. There is so many better alternatives that other games are using.

Bingo! There is no way they are going to keep the current server system, let us pray they learned something from EotM and don’t completely destroy WvW…

Jski.6180:

The “dead” world argument is a bit of an odd one. Often its time zone that are dead not the world it self. Even if its a “dead” world for wvw the ppl who is talking about wanting x or y world to not? be dead show that there is at least one person willing to play they are simply being out number and realy only the ppl from there own world can fix that.

Wvw is meant to be populated by that world and that world alone and no one can truly fix / make ppl play on that world. How do you suggest fixing a “dead” world when ppl are free to go where they want?

LOL, you are new to this game aren’t you ? Or a T1 exclusive (which makes you part of the problem, not the solution).

Do some digging, starting from the very 1st WvWvW CDI. There is a TON of viable solutions, just zero effort on part of the devs in this area.

Also, people leave and servers become more dead because of the depressing snowball effect. Right now in US T3 and T4 servers are what T8-T7 used to be, anything below that is just not even worth logging into anymore as the WvW experience as a whole as it used to be is completely gone. the new people do not realize this at 1st, it takes a while to dawn on them. You need to hop to T2 at least to get fights, and even T2 is unbalanced, SOS for all practical purposes is a T3 server now and needs to drop, there are only 2 T2 servers, 1 of them is nothing but ACs and only 1 fights.

SOS is going down, which is sad. If you hop on the TS you will see only couple people left in the map channels if that even at prime time, they were almost empty last couple days and its been like this for weeks. There are only some guild runs here and there that normal people can’t even join anymore except reset and weekends cuz they’re guild runs only. So we leave go do other stuff, dungeons, SW, whatever, no use in staying on empty TS and have no one to play with.

So overall, when I see things have gotten this bad even in T2, that is bad indeed and has really deteriorated since I played WvW very seriously for about a year and a half after game launched across multiple servers.

Anyways, back to the topic, solutions are MANY just lack of will to impliment them. See ton of various threads about it.

You can’t force PvE players to WvW, and vice versa. IF your server is populated with more PvE players that leaves your BLs empty, and you want to WvW with other players, it’s time to transfer.

JQ is one of the only servers that has a WvW population on all time zones. Consider going there.

I dont even know why they are still calling them servers. Rebrand them Campaigns or Allianced, or whatever the hell you want, and let people pick them after they create their character. You can still charge them to switch campaigns so they wont be loosing that money. But the fact you force people to pick them blind at creation and base population off that random choice, is stupid.

You know how much easier it would be to judge a campaigns population if you actually had to choose to join a wvw campaign, and not just assumed to be in wvw because of some random choice you made at creation?

Why should the map cater to servers who are completely non-participatory in WvW? I especially ask this when the solutions often come to the detriment to servers actually are playing the map.

Tongku.5326:

Jski.6180:

The “dead” world argument is a bit of an odd one. Often its time zone that are dead not the world it self. Even if its a “dead” world for wvw the ppl who is talking about wanting x or y world to not? be dead show that there is at least one person willing to play they are simply being out number and realy only the ppl from there own world can fix that.

Wvw is meant to be populated by that world and that world alone and no one can truly fix / make ppl play on that world. How do you suggest fixing a “dead” world when ppl are free to go where they want?

LOL, you are new to this game aren’t you ? Or a T1 exclusive (which makes you part of the problem, not the solution).

Do some digging, starting from the very 1st WvWvW CDI. There is a TON of viable solutions, just zero effort on part of the devs in this area.

Also, people leave and servers become more dead because of the depressing snowball effect. Right now in US T3 and T4 servers are what T8-T7 used to be, anything below that is just not even worth logging into anymore as the WvW experience as a whole as it used to be is completely gone. the new people do not realize this at 1st, it takes a while to dawn on them. You need to hop to T2 at least to get fights, and even T2 is unbalanced, SOS for all practical purposes is a T3 server now and needs to drop, there are only 2 T2 servers, 1 of them is nothing but ACs and only 1 fights.

SOS is going down, which is sad. If you hop on the TS you will see only couple people left in the map channels if that even at prime time, they were almost empty last couple days and its been like this for weeks. There are only some guild runs here and there that normal people can’t even join anymore except reset and weekends cuz they’re guild runs only. So we leave go do other stuff, dungeons, SW, whatever, no use in staying on empty TS and have no one to play with.

So overall, when I see things have gotten this bad even in T2, that is bad indeed and has really deteriorated since I played WvW very seriously for about a year and a half after game launched across multiple servers.

Anyways, back to the topic, solutions are MANY just lack of will to impliment them. See ton of various threads about it.

That the thing most of the “solustions” as in rewarding ppl to play on lower T worlds would never work in the long run if any thing it will cause a pve version of wvw not fixing wvw fighting for the ppl in the lower T. Most of them are on these lines and will boots the population for that world but it would be with the wrong type of players. That the truth of things its less about the size of the population its more about the type of players. PvP players like to play vs other PvP players and they like to play with other PvP players. So you will see ppl move accordingly to deal with there wants and needs.

What most ppl are asking for are means to forces other ppl on high in wvw worlds to come to low T in such a way that they can not go back.

FogLeg.9354:

but of course you pick your enemies and if you like backstabbing, thats your way.

Lemme guess? JD?

Anyway please don’t try to troll on a serious forum post ty : )

And like you guys said: Even if I introduced the debate with my personal case of UW; The situation definitely applies to several other servers (Fow was in a tight spot a while back regarding player count) and needs to be at least officially acknowledged…

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You can’t force PvE players to WvW, and vice versa. IF your server is populated with more PvE players that leaves your BLs empty, and you want to WvW with other players, it’s time to transfer.

JQ is one of the only servers that has a WvW population on all time zones. Consider going there.

100% correct but once upon a time you used to be able to enter the land of PvE to ask for help and though you may not have gotten a ton of people you usually managed to get a few. Mega Servers ruined that, now you can’t even attempt to pull PvE players in.

And the auto upgrades are going to make it harder for the mismatched servers too. People already doing well are going to get buildings that become upgraded.

I just don’t see how leaving the servers to die helps Anet. People join WvW and what do they see?

When the game came out even lower tier servers(but this was before there was as much server stratification of course) had queued maps during certain hours of each day. Even servers down in tier seven or eight.

When the new map comes out, you will see an influx of new players in WvW, and the game in general. For a couple weeks, maybe a month or two server populations will be in radical flux.

The lower tier servers able to best welcome and encourage those new incoming players will thrive. The servers that just roll over and hope for some “mega-server” fix will stay at the bottom.

Anet could delete all server and just move guilds and pugs in random servers. This would stop my tier 1 winning streak, but there would be shorter queues in new borderlands and better fights in EotM.

Caliburn.1845:

The lower tier servers able to best welcome and encourage those new incoming players will thrive. The servers that just roll over and hope for some “mega-server” fix will stay at the bottom.

Easy to say that when you’re not one of those “rolling over server” eh : )

How do we encourage players to come back when pve is now fused, and wvw is empty? Think for a second.

Even as a loyal player its hard to play when your getting totally wiped week after week. Your own garri is taken by the other server and fully upgraded so they can WP in their already overwhelming numbers easily. Its hard to play like that week after week when you know the WvW setup try that when your new or the comms just get burnt out so its hard to find one to follow.

Jski.6180:

Tongku.5326:

Jski.6180:

The “dead” world argument is a bit of an odd one. Often its time zone that are dead not the world it self. Even if its a “dead” world for wvw the ppl who is talking about wanting x or y world to not? be dead show that there is at least one person willing to play they are simply being out number and realy only the ppl from there own world can fix that.

Wvw is meant to be populated by that world and that world alone and no one can truly fix / make ppl play on that world. How do you suggest fixing a “dead” world when ppl are free to go where they want?

LOL, you are new to this game aren’t you ? Or a T1 exclusive (which makes you part of the problem, not the solution).

Do some digging, starting from the very 1st WvWvW CDI. There is a TON of viable solutions, just zero effort on part of the devs in this area.

Also, people leave and servers become more dead because of the depressing snowball effect. Right now in US T3 and T4 servers are what T8-T7 used to be, anything below that is just not even worth logging into anymore as the WvW experience as a whole as it used to be is completely gone. the new people do not realize this at 1st, it takes a while to dawn on them. You need to hop to T2 at least to get fights, and even T2 is unbalanced, SOS for all practical purposes is a T3 server now and needs to drop, there are only 2 T2 servers, 1 of them is nothing but ACs and only 1 fights.

SOS is going down, which is sad. If you hop on the TS you will see only couple people left in the map channels if that even at prime time, they were almost empty last couple days and its been like this for weeks. There are only some guild runs here and there that normal people can’t even join anymore except reset and weekends cuz they’re guild runs only. So we leave go do other stuff, dungeons, SW, whatever, no use in staying on empty TS and have no one to play with.

So overall, when I see things have gotten this bad even in T2, that is bad indeed and has really deteriorated since I played WvW very seriously for about a year and a half after game launched across multiple servers.

Anyways, back to the topic, solutions are MANY just lack of will to impliment them. See ton of various threads about it.

That the thing most of the “solustions” as in rewarding ppl to play on lower T worlds would never work in the long run if any thing it will cause a pve version of wvw not fixing wvw fighting for the ppl in the lower T. Most of them are on these lines and will boots the population for that world but it would be with the wrong type of players. That the truth of things its less about the size of the population its more about the type of players. PvP players like to play vs other PvP players and they like to play with other PvP players. So you will see ppl move accordingly to deal with there wants and needs.

What most ppl are asking for are means to forces other ppl on high in wvw worlds to come to low T in such a way that they can not go back.

Don’t forget, ultimately this situation snowballed and came to existance due to nothign else except A-Nets neglect. And you are incorrect, when I was on the low tiers heavily into WvW, I recruited TONs of PVEers into WvW and many of them stayed.

What tore our server apart was time gaps. No matter how hard we fought, we have to eat, sleep, go to school work etc. The scoring vs no opponents is the biggest failure here. This is what depressed everyone and collapsed the server and the community as a whole which his really sad, as in the upper tiers the communities suck in comparison, they can’t even come close. many think they do, but they can’t.

As far as rewards go its 1 improvement over the current situation and only 1 of the steps that would need to be taken, it in itself is not even a complete part of a solution after a dev kitten up as big as this. If they were to actually commit, it would take them as many years to rebuild as it has taken it to collapse, and it took this long exclusively for the above mentioned reason, the communities that were hanging on with teeth and claws for as long as they could.

From someone that has ran their own business for x amount of years, albeit in a different industry, I can not for the life of me figure out how or why would any reasonable business person let a cash cow like this just slip through their fingers. I mean, you’d have to be ultra stupid to build something like this and then let this much money go by you. If I were A-nets CEO I’d fire all the people responsible for this with as extreme prejudice as legally allowed. I fired and replaced people for a lot less then that.

Even If I won’t go as far as to promote massive sackings Tongku makes a valid point. There could be tons of money to be made by arena net (siege skins, tower skins, “paid” tournaments, etc etc) if only Anet would JUST put a little effort to it.

I mean I enjoy the living story, kinda. But I don’t see why, in an industry where every mmo has a heavy pve basis, GW2 that offers a fresh (as in currently) view on realm pvp and gameplay would voluntarily abandon it…

It’s not abandoned, just the focus is on PvE. From what i red GW1 started as a PvP focused game but the PvE part in it overcome everything else and that’s why we have PvE focused GW2.

Another problem seems to be that allot of players prefer PVE in the context of WvW. I lost count of the number of times myself and maybe one other player chased of a zerg of 20-40 players by our selves from our keep gate or at the sight of an incoming zerg of 8 friendlies just to run off for easier pickings.

Everyone taunts PVEers but in my 2+ years of playing WvW it’s basicly players running around looking for someone to gank or an unprotected keep or fort to take. That’s way there’s such an imbalance in the servers, players running off to the biggest and baddest to be part of it instead of trying to build up their own server.

Granted the cheap transfers didn’t help, but WvW woes are player induced problems just like the imbalances between the different professions. Each class had their own unique flavor, strong in what they did until players started crying and moaning about balance instead of learning to adapt and now we have what we have.

Players are spiteful…. I remember a WvW post that said that said " We complained about balance because bad players were playing too good because of their skills and mechanics, now that everything’s been changed they don’t play anymore. GOOD!!!"

Look where we are now… I guess there’s something to be said about casual players. Have fun with that WvEers

From my perspective its kinda sad. I can see where players got burned out, frustrated with unbalanced match-ups, build and rebuild, plowed over or plow over with a server vs server dynamic blown out of the water with a mega server.

….but WvW is the thing I liked best about the entire game and I’m finding out what everyone else already knew. Which is that its broken.

Truthfully I don’t know how they can fix it.

Having spent a few days now on the forum looking up threads on similar subjects I find myself wondering in a giant lower tier fusion of servers would not be a viable solution in the meantime.

-That way we’ll all get a population boost.
-And Arena Net can SAVE MONEY (got your attention there eh!) by having less servers.

However that can only be a temporary fix before some core changes are designed and implemented.

I was wondering if there should be 2 types of WvW (maps etc)? One for higher pop servers and one for lower. You want to blob and not play EotM? Have the existing setup. For those of us with pop problems maybe some bottle necks or smaller areas on maps, one less guard on a camp. Something for less people.
In PvE I can avoid world bosses and SW but its harder to play towards smaller groups in WvW

There have been lots of discussions about population imbalance in WvW almost since the start. I remember very heated ones in this forum around November 2013. There have been development threads and very detailed ideas on what could be done. To no avail I guess.

This is not the first time Underworld has had such low numbers and a rather depressing WvW experience. I have been on UW from the start too, and do not plan on leaving. (A suggestion for A-net – how about a title for accounts that have never changed server ever – like “true blue” or “well grounded” or “till death do us part” and the server name next to it ;-) )

But not switching is MY choice, I actually feel bad for new players who recently bought the game and who will buy it in the future. They stepped into this unknowingly. If the expansion does not change something and servers are left as they are now, picking a server will be like buying a lottery ticket. Some new customers come out with the short end of the stick, they will find out they can’t play parts of the game as advertised. It would be ruthless deception on A-net part to let them walk into that without warning, having to delete all chars or coughing up another 10 Euro to switch to some server with more reliable action.

On a side note, when numbers are low, commanders are also lacking. That means at prime time there is nobody tagging up in EB or home border. Many players log in and see no tag, they log out again. Maybe lowering the cost of the tag back down to 100 gold (maybe add some badges and karma) would help activate the new players that came with the recent sale. They probably do not have 300 g left over yet to play around with something they are not sure about. If you are afraid of comm spam on pve maps how about a wvw version that can’t be used outside.

And for everybody who has not understood yet what is happening in the lowest tier:

Yet if you look on the sever list on the login screen UW as a number of others are counted as very high when WvW is the only place this matters and we are very low!

I keep telling them that everybody’s dead! : D

AmberUK.5380:

Yet if you look on the sever list on the login screen UW as a number of others are counted as very high when WvW is the only place this matters and we are very low!

That is also right.
The migration system only takes into account the global pop server. So in UW’s case wvw is still empty since we have all the old ghost accounts and ppl who simply stopped playing the game but somehow it’s still max price to move because “lol u’re a full serv”

In the EU servers the lists are one full and the rest high or very high. Seems a very inaccurate listing.

Servers full/high etc rating is based on all accounts active/playing/online at that moment. At least that is the only solution that makes sense, considering the rating can change on the times of day and week. For all game modes.

Yes this definitively should be changed. Move all players to nameless pve servers, and choose a WvW server when entering WvW. Then only list people from WvW servers for the rating.

joneirikb.7506:

Servers full/high etc rating is based on all accounts active/playing/online at that moment. At least that is the only solution that makes sense, considering the rating can change on the times of day and week. For all game modes.

Yes this definitively should be changed. Move all players to nameless pve servers, and choose a WvW server when entering WvW. Then only list people from WvW servers for the rating.

Seems an interesting idea.
Basically make a sweep for wvw players (based on time in wvw, they can do that). Or maybe less intrusive offer free tranfers towards a WvW or Pve more oriented server for all tier 8/9 players.
Then dump all the dead accounts (ppl who haven’t done anything after 2/3 months) in the pve one.

That way you can use less servers and pay LESS Anet! Yay we all win!

The worst part in this scenario is the giant lack of communication on Anet’s side.

I see countless threads about wvw population and yet NONE have been replied to. Not even a little “we saw that” automated response

How can we not get MORE angry facing that type of reaction by something we PAID for? How hard it is to tweet/post a little “we saw your thread” from time to time?

I mean what is the next stage? After facing the emptyness of our wvw servers, should we imagine that all those hackers we’ve been having in lower tiers are in fact Anet people in disguise and that this is all a giant scheme to get us to pay to move to upper servers so they can close lower ones while making money out of voluntary transfers instead of having to dedicate resources to move us?! Yeah that definitely sound crazy and yet without any guidance I don’t see why we couldn’t get to that conclusion

The problem Anet here is that when you leave us alone in a mess like that, it can only lead to more rage and a worse image for you. There is NO scenario where being silent is a suited solution.
And I think you know that. And that’s what’s worrying me the most…

I know that ANet has said before that they do look at and send posts around the office even if they don’t comment on them. But I must admit I was quite a bit disappointed when I saw them comment on the "other ideas like the golem week" thread and encouraged it. Don’t mind such events, just sad that they doesn’t even acknowledge things like the server issues.

But to be honest, they might have been ordered not to.

ANET has acknowledged the WvW population balance problems before with CDI and such so it is not like this is news to them. Without any feedback we are only left to wonder if they have some super secret plan they are not ready to share with us yet (and if that is the case we are gonna need a hint PDQ cuz its getting hostile in here) or they honestly believe that HoT and the new map will somehow solve all their problems. I think it would take a lot more to sell me on the latter but I am willing to suspend disbelief for a bit longer while more HoT infos drop. After PAX I will be done waiting and start raging or find something else to distract me awhile. >.<

They’re playing a dangerous game with their communication that’s for certain. Like you said PAX will be a turning point.