Guild Wars 2

i will make sure to count to 8 hours, then i ll start saving golds XD

SlothBear.9846:

Super Kruegs.8967:

3. Roamers are generally bad, but have good builds. I feel like this is a big thing most servers ignore when talking kitten on T1 servers. T1 knows builds for W3. They will be tanky, they will try to res downed players, and worst of all are all they are 75% warriors and guardians. Be prepared for a lots of resets in battle as almost no T1 roamers will go down without at least trying to run and reset the fight.

I had to chuckle at reading this from an FA player.

The first time we fought you guys was one of those wtf rng matchups it was us, you and TC. We’d never fought either before that I can remember (or if we had it had been awhile).

TC despite having a huge number advantage over FA were all zerker specced and ran in one group and died by the truckload. It was like a rain of bags for almost no work. You could tell they were used to steamrolling with karma trains over outmatched foes and could almost sense the confusion when they ran into an equal sized group. So it was all “yay they’re all zerker zergers free loot! YAY!”

Then me and a few guildies broke off from our zerg and we ran into an equal number of FA and thought it would be the same so charged in heedlessly. It was all “OH GOD THEY’RE ALL PVT AND KNOW HOW TO PLAY! PULL UP! PULL UP!!!” Haha. And I’ve noticed that every time we’ve fought FA since, they can’t even come close in numbers or coverage but pound for pound they are the toughest server I’ve ever fought overall. So, yeah, /salute and all that.

But back to the topic at hand….skill lag in tier 1 is awful, there could be a zerg fighting somewhere in your general vicinity (yeah the above posters are right its usually the SoR zerg but not always) and you’ll find yourself wondering when/if your button presses will go off. If you’re playing a class that lives or dies depending on if you dodge at the right time it is inconvenient to say the least.

JQ queues are really dumb because when we’re losing to SoR / BG half the maps are outmanned. I’ve spent a lot of time in SoR border and seen five other JQ all night. On the other hand when we’re winning or fighting smaller serves every map is queued. Kinda gives you an idea of what t1 is all about.

Also tier 1 is probably the only tier where players dislike winning because it just means more fair weather transfers come in and you have a hard time even getting on the map to play. Not to say everyone who comes to tier 1 is just looking to zerg and be carried, but let’s be honest most are.

If you look at the matchups there are two other groupings of servers that should be really good mathcuhps with each other – Sea of Sorrows / Fort Aspenwood / Maguuma / Stormbluff Isle and Ehmry Bay / Yak’s Bend / Borlis Pass / Crystal Desert / Isle of Janthir. I would look at some of those servers if you want close competition and good fights. T1 maps feel very crowded.

Honestly the best fights I’ve had in terms of opposing player skill have been against Fort Aspenwood and Sea of Sorrows. Blackgate has some good roamers too but its rare I actually get to finish a fight against them without one zerg or another interrupting.

ty .we always work hard. i think our matchup with u gys has left a footprint on our morale though. maybe jq sea……they spawncamped all 3 exits of eb which was kinda annoying and also one of our big na eb guilds was bought by u guys. it kinda demoralized a few of us, but we will keep on fighting.

FA lost a few guilds after that, but i think we will be fine and get new guilds, as like u said, we are pretty tough fighers….maybe because in t3 we got smashed by tc for like 13 weeks. being outmanned is fa’s speciality. i also like sos as they are very similar. they even rushed jq’s spawncamping sea from behind for us :-)

i think though t1 really needs its own league or there needs to be a way to create alliances or something to balance the huge coeverage issues. we will see. if FA catches up this week, we might gonna see a lot of t1 again for 7 weeks.

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

My only question is if there are no queues on the maps where did all these players go from the countless guilds that have gone there? That’s the only thing that’s odd. And be honest, T1 servers have absorbed more guilds than any other servers out there. You guys should have eight hour queues by now … At all hours.

Gone from the game now I guess.

Why though? If T 1 NA is the best WvW …. You see what I mean? The constant T1 NA arms race is something every server below just scratches their head over …. I’m not meaning this to derail any T1 push, you guys have set it up that way for a reason, but it almost feels like people go to T1 NA and then stop playing shortly after.

Heck two medium guilds transfer to any server in EU and people start to freak out over the resulting queues. Most think 30 minutes is too long a wait.

At least the higher tier EU servers seem to be powered by full damage gear; Dezerkerlation since they were in T1 and haven’t grown out of it since, and when we were against Vizu last week I got added to a party and called a noob repeatedly from different players for running ‘tank’, whilst they angrily linked me cof armour.

Was wondering if this is prevalent in NA as well, or the higher tier EU I haven’t faced such as SFR?

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Gone from the game now I guess.

Why though?

People get bored of the game, maybe the move to a T1 server is a last attempt to reviving some interest. On SOR I know tsym for one are on hiatus but say they will be back at the beginning of December. I don’t think SOR has lost many guilds but the guilds have reduced numbers.

morrolan.9608:

Jayne.9251:

morrolan.9608:

Gone from the game now I guess.

Why though?

People get bored of the game, maybe the move to a T1 server is a last attempt to reviving some interest. On SOR I know tsym for one are on hiatus but say they will be back at the beginning of December. I don’t think SOR has lost many guilds but the guilds have reduced numbers.

That makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to explain

Some truths about the current T1 as seen from the #5 server:
buying guilds
1. BG has posted, on their community forums, a thread encouraging fundraising to pay for guilds to transfer over. This has been confirmed by guilds that have transferred oer.
2. JQ has admitted that they “help” with transfers. Whether or not they do fundraisers, they do pool funds to contribute.
3. SoR does not appear to have any “active” efforts to pay for guild transfers. It also should be marked that there are very few guilds open to moving that could fill their coverage gaps; most of whom continue to stack JQ.
lag
1. Lag is actually a serious issue with T1 servers and I believe anyone who says that they don’t have lag in Tier 1 matches is lying. While facing JQ 2 weeks ago and SoR this week, we always have someone who notices some lag when a large battle is happening anywhere on the map or if a large group is approaching. While it is manageable with only 2 servers’ forces on the map; it can make any 3-way fight or large 2 way fight nothing more than spamming 1

roaming
1. I have seen individual roamers from T1 servers, however I have seen very few roaming groups. I never saw any from JQ and the only time you can find them from SoR is during the early morning/ SEA hours (their weakest time zone).

blobbing
1. T1, whether by design or by happenchance (usually a bit a both) has a lot of highly skilled WvW focused guilds, and they also have a lot of scrubs who want to be carried to victory.
Most T1 guilds don’t bring more than 25-30 to a fight even on a good night, but they get a lot of people from smaller guilds or people waiting to queue up for where their guild is. The result is groups of 40+ people, all geared for WvW and experienced in mashing the “1” button when lag hits.

Why choose T2 or lower over T1
No one is going to carry you outside of T1. We aren’t going to pay your way, we aren’t going to blob up so you can chestthump by association, and we don’t fight balanced matches.
We are about fighting against superior numbers and winning out despite of it. With fewer numbers, we depend on every individual a lot more. We depend on our commanders a lot more. We depend on every scout, every person manning an Arrow Cart many times over more than T1 servers do.

I know that there are only a few left who have the guts to join any other server at this point. It takes guts to fight against numbers, but that’s what we all do.
You go ahead and make the right choices for yourselves and your guilds, but when the smoke from this Season ends; see who’s still standing and standing strong and wonder if anything you’ve gained is worth missing out on that.

Yes, I turned a T1 recruitment thread into a T2 recruitment thread; just because.

T1 motto: ‘compete by getting bigger, not better’.

What the OP says is fairly accurate. But the thread did quickly turn into a propaganda campaign for a few of the loyalists of various servers, so if your looking for actual legit information I wouldn’t read past the first post. If your reading this, its already too late :p

Hello Immolator,

No, on the contrary most folks in WvW T1 are strongly encouraged to use high V/T stuff whenever possible, especially melee. Meta have shifted to high usage of condition damage users. There are generally no discriminatory remarks against different armor usage (even zerkers) unless there are folks who keep dying on incoming, Then we try to help the dude out a little.

FW

Immolator.5640:

At least the higher tier EU servers seem to be powered by full damage gear; Dezerkerlation since they were in T1 and haven’t grown out of it since, and when we were against Vizu last week I got added to a party and called a noob repeatedly from different players for running ‘tank’, whilst they angrily linked me cof armour.

Was wondering if this is prevalent in NA as well, or the higher tier EU I haven’t faced such as SFR?

Niim.9260:

T1 motto: ‘compete by getting bigger, not better’.

Bold of you to say that I doubt you can even win against an average roamer from either JQ, BG or SoR or even TC, you’d get wooped.

Why do you think T1 servers are the top? The guilds are organized, many people who are in T1 WvW are competitive players.

Lanceor.2763:

Niim.9260:

T1 motto: ‘compete by getting bigger, not better’.

Bold of you to say that I doubt you can even win against an average roamer from either JQ, BG or SoR or even TC, you’d get wooped.

Why do you think T1 servers are the top? The guilds are organized, many people who are in T1 WvW are competitive players.

Does everyone get a free glass of purple kool-aid when you join T1? Out of curiosity where do you think all your recruits come from? Magical T1 quality player breeding server?

Shiren.9532:

BAITness.1083:

I am glad you posted this. Having played in tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3, I can say the biggest difference is definitely our commanders. Our commanders are the best of the best.

The lower tiers like to claim they have better roamers, but I have played against them and they are simply incorrect. In the lower tiers being a “skilled roamer” counts as being a person in a 1v1 build trying to hunt down someone in a team build en route to their group. In T1 we have roamers that can smash entire small groups by themselves, and survive encounters with the mega blobs we have here. When I played on JQ there was a thief who would flip all the camps on the map right before the tick… I don’t recall anybody ever stopping him. I ran into him a few times when groups of players were trying to chase him down, but he either won the fight or chased them off every time. There used to be a few groups completely dedicated to fighting drastically larger numbers, and they were successful – not because the larger number groups were playing very poorly, but rather because the small groups played very well.

It’s true that lower ranked servers don’t play as well with large numbers as higher ranked servers with large numbers. That’s because WvW is a different game outside of the top ranks. You cap towers without a zerg, you siege keeps without a zerg. The groups that cap supply camps in high tier servers are the size of the zergs in lower tier servers. You need to be far more self sufficient in lower tier servers. Individual actions will matter a lot more when you don’t have a massive zerg of people carrying supply or bashing down a door. Smallers guilds and invididuals matter a lot more in lower ranked gameplay and commanders don’t command giant zergs, they command small to moderate zergs that all have to carry their own weight. Giant zerg combat doesn’t matter as much in the lower ranks, it’s a different meta (one that I’ve seen giant zerg commanders that used to play in T1 suddenly fail at when they dropped to lower tiers). The zerg meta is dominant in T1 and to a lesser extent in T2, outside of that the zerg meta isn’t viable because there isn’t a consistently large enough group of people online to zerg all the time. You gotta be more self reliant and can’t rely on a zerg to get things done.

Giant zergs bashing into each other is about the only thing that top ranked servers can consistently provide that can’t be found as easily elsewhere.

I also disagree with the roamers in T1, you talk about lower ranked roamers picking on people built for zergs, that’s far more likely to happen in T1. Most people in T1 are bandwagoners and they moved their to zerg, not to roam. The thing T1 is most known for is the constant blobs bashing into each other. Most of the random people running around are doing so to join the commander on the map or to protect a dolyak/stop someone from contesting a WP, not because they are looking for a duel – it doesn’t surprise me that a roamer can kill a bunch of randoms that are not built for dueling.

On the lower ranked servers you’re far more likely to find players built for small team fights or 1v1 simply because quite often there is no allied zerg for them to join on the map. The only reason a T1 server could compete with this is simply because they have more people total.

It’s also a myth that there are consistently times when nothing happens in WvW outside of T1. The only time I see this is when a horrible match up happens and it’s a complete blowout to the point that an otherwise populated server is being spawn camped. The vast majority of the time there are healthy populations consistently on EB and there is almost always a fight to be found on an enemy borderland. Coverage differences aren’t as dramatic on lower ranked servers and even when a server has better coverage it’s usually nothing like the differences in T1.

The one thing that is almost exclusive to T1 servers than can’t be found in abundance anywhere else in the game is giant egos. The same egos that cause T1 guilds to abandon ship when their server looks like it might drop, the same egos that make T1 servers claim T1 is the best place to be or that lower ranked servers are just PvDoor.

tl;dr if you want giant blobs of people and everything that goes with that, go to T1. Everything else they say is just ignorance or a recruitment tactic to cannibalise other servers and continue the top heavy stacking that prevents them from having to transfer to remain in T1.

This

Niim.9260:

Does everyone get a free glass of purple kool-aid when you join T1? Out of curiosity where do you think all your recruits come from? Magical T1 quality player breeding server?

Recruits? We had no need to recruit. We simply trained the players already on are server. If you heart broken because players left your servers and came to ours, its probably because of the attitude, which judging by your comments here, is to make back handed comments to everyone else in an attempt to try to boost your own self esteem. But its okay may friend. Just remember, when they do that random rotation and your against us that week, that while your staring at your garrison and noticing that its been our color and not yours for most of the week, that we still love you.

Asudementio.8526:

Doomdesire.9365:

Gully.7358:

Doomdesire.9365:

Boulderbolg.3460:

BG has quite few roamers. We would like to see more roamers join SoR and JQ. SoR has been producing more, but not enough!

You mean BG has quite a few havoc squads.

If that is what you want to call 2-5 man groups, sure… Call it whatever you like!

1-2 mans could be considered roaming for the sake of clarity. Anything above that should be considered a havoc squad.

If that is the case then T1 has almost no roamers; they are mostly all havoc squads.

I’m a roamer. Typically by myself or with the last remaining guildie that still ventures out into WvW. We occasionally run into enemy roamers, but far too often we encounter enemy groups of 5 or more.

Oh, and we cap camps all the time without other friendlies. Not every camp is flipped by a zerg.

Niim.9260:

Lanceor.2763:

Niim.9260:

T1 motto: ‘compete by getting bigger, not better’.

Bold of you to say that I doubt you can even win against an average roamer from either JQ, BG or SoR or even TC, you’d get wooped.

Why do you think T1 servers are the top? The guilds are organized, many people who are in T1 WvW are competitive players.

Does everyone get a free glass of purple kool-aid when you join T1? Out of curiosity where do you think all your recruits come from? Magical T1 quality player breeding server?

So you’re saying that JQ BG SOR TC got their TOP TIER quality because they all recruited from lower tier servers? I guess ignorance is truly bliss. Don’t you know before the game was out people were already recruiting for guilds and whatnot? competitive gamers naturally converge together to be in a single server BEFORE the launch of GW2 happened. The people who transferred after release for the sake of wvw in either of the top servers are a welcome sight.

Mind you I am a native Jade Quarry and the people and guilds that I saw since launch are still here doing wvw.

The top 3 servers (and TC to some extent when they choose to admit it) have communities that play the “meta.” While the top 3 are entirely different beasts due to server make up and evolution of differing gamers/climates etc. etc. they all share the same goal. Beating your face in, and taking home your stuff.

The main difference (not skill wise etc) most fail to think about is T2 and lower are populated by guilds/wvwer’s fighting on battlegrounds with and against one another. T1 you are fighting against entire server alliances that play all four maps, 24/7, coordinated as one, and have been doing so for the majority of gw2’s existence.

Rank 4-6 are going to have to build their wvw communities to match this. Even with even numbers they will simply not win. T1 servers did not and do not dictate a-nets matches. I do not envy the work you’re going to have to do. But keep in mind with the exception of JQ (because we are just amazing @@) all T1 servers currently didn’t “start out” in T1 either. They built themselves as communities and wvw alliances over time.

All T1 servers would love to have more competition between different servers. Hopefully T1 becomes 6 servers instead of just 3 in the upcoming months. I mean…BG and SoR did it, so clearly ANYONE can. =) xoxo

Does JQ still need SEA guild?

declan.3968:

Does JQ still need SEA guild?

NO………….

Diehard.1432:

declan.3968:

Does JQ still need SEA guild?

NO………….

Don’t listen to them, JQ can always fit some more SEA guilds in!

JQ can’t go +695 during SEA yet, they still have room for improvement!

Mance.5640:

The main difference (not skill wise etc) most fail to think about is T2 and lower are populated by guilds/wvwer’s fighting on battlegrounds with and against one another. T1 you are fighting against entire server alliances that play all four maps, 24/7, coordinated as one, and have been doing so for the majority of gw2’s existence.

The difference between every level, whether it’s T1vTC, TCvT2, T2vT3….is coverage. The PROBLEM is that when your server has a severe coverage gap your more likely to lose the outmanned guilds to transfer than you are to get the population increase to be equal with the tier above you. PLAYING CONSTANTLY OUTMANNED IS NOT FUN.

Mance.5640:

Rank 4-6 are going to have to build their wvw communities to match this. Even with even numbers they will simply not win.

From where???, BG,SoR and JQ have been T1 for over 50% of the time GW2 existed and there’s nobody than can even come close. They’ve been recruiting players for longer and are still getting players. Now if SbI and TC merged that might push one of the T1 servers down, but there’s no way ranks 4-6 will become T1 unless one of the T1 server implodes, which hasn’t happened for over 32 weeks.

Mance.5640:

T1 servers did not and do not dictate a-nets matches. I do not envy the work you’re going to have to do. But keep in mind with the exception of JQ (because we are just amazing @@) all T1 servers currently didn’t “start out” in T1 either. They built themselves as communities and wvw alliances over time.

T1 servers don’t dictate matches, but they do prevent other servers from becoming T1 by leeching talent away from lower tiers. The reason BG and SoR became T1 was becasue servers like HoD, ET, SbI, SoS and IoJ had transfers OUT of T1.

Mance.5640:

All T1 servers would love to have more competition between different servers. Hopefully T1 becomes 6 servers instead of just 3 in the upcoming months. I mean…BG and SoR did it, so clearly ANYONE can. =) xoxo

No they don’t, and the T1 servers have done everything they can to prevent competition. What’s going to happen is that whichever T1 server is 3rd will recruit more guilds so they can move back on top.

Why don’t each T1 server send a 30-50 man guild from each time zone to one of the rank 5-6 servers to show how much you want competition…….yeah, I didn’t think so.

ykyk.2740:

JQ can’t go +695 during SEA yet, they still have room for improvement!

Fine, come over

@Swamurabi.7890, its a product of the games design. That is, this whole T1 debacle. I have played from the lowest ranked to highest ranked servers. I did enjoy my time in lower tiers more tbh. But at the end of the day I always had this negative feeling that no matter what I did, I was always going to lose. Its all a numbers game and the map caps allow for T1 servers to be T1 servers. I think if there were greater restrictions on this that things wouldn’t be so bad. About a week back Devon Carter did a Q&A on an external website and I questioned the map cap and he skipped my question. I don’t think they ever intend on WvW being a balanced fight where from time to time one server or another will win or lose. Its not about skills or tactics, its about numbers. There isn’t a single week where I have felt that skill or tactics have decided the outcome of a match, only the player turnout. The whole claim of recruiting and having a good community to get more players is complete balony. Its up to anet to fix what they are implementing and they dont intend on doing that.

Punny.9210:

only one thing bro.

JQ dominates during Night time now. So in term of point and result will most likely go in JQ favor.

JQ got totally ruined by SoR the last night of the T1 BG/JQ/SoR match-up.

…at least until BG DDOSed SoR community TS and started hardout double teaming with JQ.

Swamurabi.7890:

T1 servers don’t dictate matches, but they do prevent other servers from becoming T1 by leeching talent away from lower tiers. The reason BG and SoR became T1 was becasue servers like HoD, ET, SbI, SoS and IoJ had transfers OUT of T1.

Careful there buddy, T1 servers don’t recruit. They train their own talent, and attract players to their servers with the strength of their community.

Everyone knows that. If you aren’t in T1 yet you must not enjoy communities.

sostronk.8167:

@Swamurabi.7890, its a product of the games design. That is, this whole T1 debacle. I have played from the lowest ranked to highest ranked servers. I did enjoy my time in lower tiers more tbh. But at the end of the day I always had this negative feeling that no matter what I did, I was always going to lose. Its all a numbers game and the map caps allow for T1 servers to be T1 servers. I think if there were greater restrictions on this that things wouldn’t be so bad. About a week back Devon Carter did a Q&A on an external website and I questioned the map cap and he skipped my question. I don’t think they ever intend on WvW being a balanced fight where from time to time one server or another will win or lose. Its not about skills or tactics, its about numbers. There isn’t a single week where I have felt that skill or tactics have decided the outcome of a match, only the player turnout. The whole claim of recruiting and having a good community to get more players is complete balony. Its up to anet to fix what they are implementing and they dont intend on doing that.

But that’s the main problem with WvW…. It could be so much greater than it is now IF Anet did a better job at trying to make WvW closer to being balanced. For every blowout matchup. there’s one high or very high server that has players in WvW and TWO servers where the players have no incentive to play. All the way up to T2 you have coverage issues where players on high or very high servers have no incentive to play WvW.

Can we also look forward to a T8 faq? I have some vacation time coming up and I heard its nice there this time of year.

Omne.4603:

Can we also look forward to a T8 faq? I have some vacation time coming up and I heard its nice there this time of year.

A very skeptical me would say ArenaNet feels there aren’t enough players in T8 to warrant a faq. Most people’s problem in the games are too many zergs, skill lag, queues and so ArenaNet should worry about those. Transfers are just a way to convert other problems into those problems, after all.

The questions I have is when will the T1 servers will feel enough is enough? The fundraisers, the out and out aggressive recruiting. Fuzzion was posting in every single matchup thread, responding to every comment that someone expressed dissatisfaction of the matchup.

ANet has done EVERYTHING to facilitate this situation. RNG matches, the Leagues, etc.
Now if you log in, there is a “pick the right world” message for the Season.
It’s bad enough with T1 buying guilds, now you have ANet doing your own advertising?

The most diabolical part of this, is that after they have stacked the top 3 enough; they can say that WvW is only played on a handful of servers and that they are going to close the format due to lack of interest.

Brew Pinch.5731:

Punny.9210:

only one thing bro.

JQ dominates during Night time now. So in term of point and result will most likely go in JQ favor.

JQ got totally ruined by SoR the last night of the T1 BG/JQ/SoR match-up.

Why would JQ fight seriously or any other T1 servers on the last night of reset matchup if we/they have a big lead and seriously impossible to takeover?

Swamurabi.7890:

sostronk.8167:

@Swamurabi.7890, its a product of the games design. That is, this whole T1 debacle. I have played from the lowest ranked to highest ranked servers. I did enjoy my time in lower tiers more tbh. But at the end of the day I always had this negative feeling that no matter what I did, I was always going to lose. Its all a numbers game and the map caps allow for T1 servers to be T1 servers. I think if there were greater restrictions on this that things wouldn’t be so bad. About a week back Devon Carter did a Q&A on an external website and I questioned the map cap and he skipped my question. I don’t think they ever intend on WvW being a balanced fight where from time to time one server or another will win or lose. Its not about skills or tactics, its about numbers. There isn’t a single week where I have felt that skill or tactics have decided the outcome of a match, only the player turnout. The whole claim of recruiting and having a good community to get more players is complete balony. Its up to anet to fix what they are implementing and they dont intend on doing that.

But that’s the main problem with WvW…. It could be so much greater than it is now IF Anet did a better job at trying to make WvW closer to being balanced. For every blowout matchup. there’s one high or very high server that has players in WvW and TWO servers where the players have no incentive to play. All the way up to T2 you have coverage issues where players on high or very high servers have no incentive to play WvW.

Totally agree with you man.

Lanceor.2763:

Niim.9260:

T1 motto: ‘compete by getting bigger, not better’.

Bold of you to say that I doubt you can even win against an average roamer from either JQ, BG or SoR or even TC, you’d get wooped.

Why do you think T1 servers are the top? The guilds are organized, many people who are in T1 WvW are competitive players.

Never compare server ranking with roamer ranking. You have good roamers on pretty much any tier. In some ways, I think the quality of roamer is better the lower you go since that is their speciality. That doesn’t mean there aren’t amazing roamers in T1.

The difference between T1 and lower servers is two fold:
1. Coverage
2. More coordinated guilds/players who know what they are doing in large scale battles.

ykyk.2740:

Swamurabi.7890:

T1 servers don’t dictate matches, but they do prevent other servers from becoming T1 by leeching talent away from lower tiers. The reason BG and SoR became T1 was becasue servers like HoD, ET, SbI, SoS and IoJ had transfers OUT of T1.

Careful there buddy, T1 servers don’t recruit. They train their own talent, and attract players to their servers with the strength of their community.

Everyone knows that. If you aren’t in T1 yet you must not enjoy communities.

haha. Well done

Swamurabi.7890:

sostronk.8167:

@Swamurabi.7890, its a product of the games design. That is, this whole T1 debacle. I have played from the lowest ranked to highest ranked servers. I did enjoy my time in lower tiers more tbh. But at the end of the day I always had this negative feeling that no matter what I did, I was always going to lose. Its all a numbers game and the map caps allow for T1 servers to be T1 servers. I think if there were greater restrictions on this that things wouldn’t be so bad. About a week back Devon Carter did a Q&A on an external website and I questioned the map cap and he skipped my question. I don’t think they ever intend on WvW being a balanced fight where from time to time one server or another will win or lose. Its not about skills or tactics, its about numbers. There isn’t a single week where I have felt that skill or tactics have decided the outcome of a match, only the player turnout. The whole claim of recruiting and having a good community to get more players is complete balony. Its up to anet to fix what they are implementing and they dont intend on doing that.

But that’s the main problem with WvW…. It could be so much greater than it is now IF Anet did a better job at trying to make WvW closer to being balanced. For every blowout matchup. there’s one high or very high server that has players in WvW and TWO servers where the players have no incentive to play. All the way up to T2 you have coverage issues where players on high or very high servers have no incentive to play WvW.

They conceded that WvW is an inherently unbalanced game mode (this is true to a certain extent because of how levels and gear come into play, as well as the fact that numbers tend to prevail). Then, instead of working with what they have, the devs adopted the “it’s unbalanced anyway so everything we do to make it MORE unbalanced is justifiable” approach and just went wild.

It’s sad to see.

The lower tier players talking trash in this thread could use a trip to tier 1. As one of the few people to reply with experience in multiple tiers (1, 2, and 3), please take my word that tier 1 has better competition in every area of playing, whether it be solo, small group, or large group.

It also has drastically less players doing small group/solo stuff. It still does happen, and the groups that persist are the groups that can handle running into the full map zergs. It seems like the lower tier players think that is impossible, but they are simply incorrect.

One of the arguments I hear frequently from lower tier players is that less of them are doing the same thing, so they must be better players. If they were better players, then those players could do what they do against larger groups. Good small groups can take fortified keeps if they know how to play the map properly – when I was playing yesterday an 8 man group took a claimed hills by themselves during primetime (props to WORK).

Once again, for repetitions sake, because lower tiers continue to disbelieve me: there are small groups in tier 1. They are just a lot better at what they do. There are certainly drastically less small group ops, but that is likely because there are not that many players that are organized enough to get things done with huge zergs rolling around. It is definitely a challenge against uneven odds, but that is part of WvW. If you want balanced small group play, sPvP is more up your alley. WvW is inherently full of fights between uneven numbers, even drastically uneven numbers. Complaining about fighting large groups in wvw is like complaining your nachos are cheesy.

I freakin love nachos. And I love wvw. Even when JQ is kicking my kitten .

Edit: Something I thought would be interesting to point out to the euro poster above: Right now high survivability is the only way to gear in tier 1. Our meta is strong frontlines and high survival, which makes most fights determined by a combination of stability, boon strips, and restacks. When I was in tier 3 though, everybody seemed to be wearing berserkers gear. The meta game in tier 3 seemed to be based around bursting and porting groups in with mesmers (who were frequently glitching, I guess there are less people to report them?). I felt like tier 2 was a lot closer to tier 1 in meta, with most people gearing for survivability and running good frontlines. I expect the meta to continue to focus on high survivability with this patch, as frontlines are getting more survival buffs (and my dearest engie earns its place with stability).

Edit2: Also I want to ask the groups in lower tiers that are confident of their ability, how do they gauge their ability if they do not find opportunity to fight against larger groups? I know in tier 1 I consider a skilled group one that beats groups much larger than theirs.

BAITness.1083:

Big long blah blah blah that roughly translates to: I am a special snowflake.

I remember you I think. Were you part of the folks that tried to bandwagon to DB then bailed when it didn’t work? Is that your ‘excursion’ to the lower ranks?

Some of the better guilds and better players in the game play in lower tiers. For quite a while the lower tiers were actually alot better tbh. Things have changed since though and I have seen a considerably improvement in high tier players.

Also, the remark about PVT and high survivability. This is only because most people are bad at the game. Its not because the gear is the best option. Its only the best option if your bad at the game and don’t want to be a rally bot. Although there are some builds that it might actually work on optimally. For compositions yes, its still good to have a heavy frontline, although this meta is changing and its still only because most players are bad at the game.

Niim.9260:

BAITness.1083:

Big long blah blah blah that roughly translates to: I am a special snowflake.

I remember you I think. Were you part of the folks that tried to bandwagon to DB then bailed when it didn’t work? Is that your ‘excursion’ to the lower ranks?

1: Reading comprehension is not your specialty
2: What is your definition of bandwagoned? Transferring with your guild?
3: If by didn’t work you mean smashed the hell out of tier 3, beat tier 2, then got very effectively doubleteamed to prevent our progression, then yep. TC and FA were really tough together, they are good servers and they didn’t like getting passed. I stopped playing after that for rl bs and when I came back my favorite com was elsewhere, so I joined him.

I am definitely missing your point here.

This entire thread should be mandatory reading for anyone looking to transfer into tier 1. Ya’ll raise a lot of interesting topics for discussion. I wish people could just enjoy the game for what it is and not get so worked up about winning all the time.

I’ve been on JQ since beta for the people not the wins but ANET sure as heck doesn’t make it easy for us to start over or build up our in-game communities or else I would be happy to find a new home in the interest of balance. Just seems so pointless when everyone keeps jumping around all directions with mega blobs being most rewarded so until ANET gets on those underlying issues I don’t expect things to change all that much no matter how aware we all are of what the real problems are.

To this very day (and I can almost guarantee someone from each T1 server will say this tonight) “we need to recruit more people for x timezone” is the mentality in T1. It doesn’t matter that your oceanic population is 5 times the size of a T2 server’s oceanic population, if another T1 server has 15-30 more people than you then you’re outnumbered and need to recruit.

You people transferring are spending gold to do the same exact thing on the same exact maps hoping that a new server every couple of months or so will somehow keep WvW interesting. Apart from the culling change, WvW has pretty much remained the same since launch. Then as soon as things settle down, we get gimmicky changes with matchmaking and the kittenstorm starts over and servers implode as the lowest common denominator hop on the bandwagon and move to T1 servers.

Tell me when we finally have 3 different borderland maps.

The main difference (not skill wise etc) most fail to think about is T2 and lower are populated by guilds/wvwer’s fighting on battlegrounds with and against one another. T1 you are fighting against entire server alliances that play all four maps, 24/7, coordinated as one, and have been doing so for the majority of gw2’s existence. [/quote]

“The difference between every level, whether it’s T1vTC, TCvT2, T2vT3….is coverage. The PROBLEM is that when your server has a severe coverage gap your more likely to lose the outmanned guilds to transfer than you are to get the population increase to be equal with the tier above you. PLAYING CONSTANTLY OUTMANNED IS NOT FUN.”

Coverage has been built by T1 servers to compete with each other. This happens through various types of recruitment. If you want to compete with T1, you will have to build up your community. Can you, do you want to, will you, I know not. It’s just a simple fact. It takes weeks, and months and months to do this. T1 coverage is a reflection of time put in by all T1 servers. I personally, never do fractals, but I don’t get angry because someone is at lvl 89789745 fractal, and I am not. I have not put in the work. Again life, and wvw aren’t fair. If you want to compete at a certain level, you’ll have to put in the work.

Mance.5640:

Rank 4-6 are going to have to build their wvw communities to match this. Even with even numbers they will simply not win.

“From where???, BG,SoR and JQ have been T1 for over 50% of the time GW2 existed and there’s nobody than can even come close. They’ve been recruiting players for longer and are still getting players. Now if SbI and TC merged that might push one of the T1 servers down, but there’s no way ranks 4-6 will become T1 unless one of the T1 server implodes, which hasn’t happened for over 32 weeks.”

You will have to recruit from all the tiers. My best answer would be to get into contact with T1 community leaders and ask for help if a server is looking to become competitive in the new Gold League/T1 league. Any aspiring servers will have 24 servers to recruit from, just like everyone else. T1 servers are thousands of gamers working together towards one goal, dozens of wvw guilds. It will be extremely hard work. It is extremely hard work.

Mance.5640:

T1 servers did not and do not dictate a-nets matches. I do not envy the work you’re going to have to do. But keep in mind with the exception of JQ (because we are just amazing @@) all T1 servers currently didn’t “start out” in T1 either. They built themselves as communities and wvw alliances over time.

“T1 servers don’t dictate matches, but they do prevent other servers from becoming T1 by leeching talent away from lower tiers. The reason BG and SoR became T1 was becasue servers like HoD, ET, SbI, SoS and IoJ had transfers OUT of T1.”

Again, T1 servers are fantastic recruiters, you will have to become so if you wish to beat them. This goes without saying for almost every aspect of life. We’ve seen the rise and fall of many servers from T1. BG and SoR have both risen up from the ranks to their current positions, so have others before them. It’s not easy, but can be done.

Mance.5640:

All T1 servers would love to have more competition between different servers. Hopefully T1 becomes 6 servers instead of just 3 in the upcoming months. I mean…BG and SoR did it, so clearly ANYONE can. =) xoxo

“No they don’t, and the T1 servers have done everything they can to prevent competition. What’s going to happen is that whichever T1 server is 3rd will recruit more guilds so they can move back on top.

“Why don’t each T1 server send a 30-50 man guild from each time zone to one of the rank 5-6 servers to show how much you want competition…….yeah, I didn’t think so.”

You are in point of fact, entirely wrong. T1 is hyper competitive, the guilds/players etc in T1 are ALL about playing competitively, extremely so. Currently only 3 servers in NA are able to match this spirit, and reside…in T1. No server in T1 is going to “give” you anything, you have to take it from them. All three are complete competitive monsters. The apex predators of gw2 servers.

Why don’t you recruit t1 guilds? There are plenty of them. Why should servers who have spent more than a year at this point working on their alliances, break them up, and leave everything they have worked for? Why don’t top sports teams give their best players away to other teams who don’t have as good of a record?

Some T1 guilds, do transfer and build up new alliances. TW xfered from JQ to SoR and helped to build SoR. It took them a loooong time to reach T1 and lots of hard work. This is what it takes. Can you do it? I hope so. I bet you have my precursor!

(also I suck at forum quoting!)

Tier 1 guys can keep zergin the thread but when you say the highest ranked servers are the best servers, no one believes you.

Mance.5640:

You are in point of fact, entirely wrong. T1 is hyper competitive, the guilds/players etc in T1 are ALL about playing competitively, extremely so. Currently only 3 servers in NA are able to match this spirit, and reside…in T1. No server in T1 is going to “give” you anything, you have to take it from them. All three are complete competitive monsters. The apex predators of gw2 servers.

Again, the T1 servers have been T1 for 32 weeks, and at the end of the league season 1 it will be 39 weeks, 3/4 of a year at T1. The problem is that T1 takes the one resource that takes longer to regenerate, players. At some point, the player resource gets so low it never comes back.

Mance.5640:

Why don’t you recruit t1 guilds? There are plenty of them. Why should servers who have spent more than a year at this point working on their alliances, break them up, and leave everything they have worked for? Why don’t top sports teams give their best players away to other teams who don’t have as good of a record?

“Come to my server, you can PvD your way to 600 PPT” or “Come to my server, everything you take will be gone the next day” doesn’t get guilds to drop from T1.

Mance.5640:

Some T1 guilds, do transfer and build up new alliances. TW xfered from JQ to SoR and helped to build SoR. It took them a loooong time to reach T1 and lots of hard work. This is what it takes. Can you do it? I hope so. I bet you have my precursor!

SoR has been in T1 longer than it took them to get to T1. SoR’s rise to T1 corresponds to ET and HoD’s fall FROM T1, again, something that hasn’t happened and will not happen for 3/4 of a year.

Any proposed solutions?

I know it’s a tall order to beat T1 servers for T2 servers. Everyone does.

How are you going to do it? If you intend to beat T1 servers you will need a serious game plan of some sort. They have more manpower, more experience, and are more organized from top to bottom than you. 4 out of the 6 servers in the league can field similar #’s. TC has the most coverage holes, but roflstomps ranks 5 and 6.

I would suppose due to the concern that the above posters are all on the 5th and 6th ranked server? That you’ve beaten the snot out of ranks 7-24? Ie… 18 other servers, to get your rank.

If you do end up rank 5 and 6 for leagues, and would like some organizational help or advice, many people from Sor/BG/JQ will help. Your community leaders (which you will need if you do not have already) can probably also join teamspeak with any of the above servers and have real time conversations.

I can respond to any e-mails and can set aside time for some teamspeak and offer advice etc. Most long time GM’s of T1 servers would also probably do this. You’ll have alot of work to do if you’re ranked 5 and 6 for the leagues in the future. Good luck.

The first solution is for Anet to realize that they have a problem, something they did with the “Night Capping and You” stickied thread a year ago, but have yet to do anything about it. Maybe they were waiting how things settled down, looking at their metrics and checking them twice.

Recently Devon said that WvW population balance was the biggest issue. That’s a good step but they won’t and have not had an open discussion with the players as to what ideas they are working on.

As to how to fix it, there’s been several ideas, some are quick and painful and others will take a lot of development time.

Everything from map caps, stat boosts, score adjustment, reward adjustment, NPC adjustments, WvW “server teams” to completely removing server ties to WvW (red,green,blue or Priory, Vigil, Whispers factions) are possible solutions.

But the one true fact about WvW is that coverage and population beats skill.

And for WvW to survive it needs to be a game of skill.

BAITness.1083:

Niim.9260:

BAITness.1083:

Big long blah blah blah that roughly translates to: I am a special snowflake.

I remember you I think. Were you part of the folks that tried to bandwagon to DB then bailed when it didn’t work? Is that your ‘excursion’ to the lower ranks?

1: Reading comprehension is not your specialty
2: What is your definition of bandwagoned? Transferring with your guild?
3: If by didn’t work you mean smashed the hell out of tier 3, beat tier 2, then got very effectively doubleteamed to prevent our progression, then yep. TC and FA were really tough together, they are good servers and they didn’t like getting passed. I stopped playing after that for rl bs and when I came back my favorite com was elsewhere, so I joined him.

I will take that as a yes.

Mance.5640:

Any proposed solutions?

I know it’s a tall order to beat T1 servers for T2 servers. Everyone does.

How are you going to do it? If you intend to beat T1 servers you will need a serious game plan of some sort. They have more manpower, more experience, and are more organized from top to bottom than you. 4 out of the 6 servers in the league can field similar #’s. TC has the most coverage holes, but roflstomps ranks 5 and 6.

I would suppose due to the concern that the above posters are all on the 5th and 6th ranked server? That you’ve beaten the snot out of ranks 7-24? Ie… 18 other servers, to get your rank.

If you do end up rank 5 and 6 for leagues, and would like some organizational help or advice, many people from Sor/BG/JQ will help. Your community leaders (which you will need if you do not have already) can probably also join teamspeak with any of the above servers and have real time conversations.

I can respond to any e-mails and can set aside time for some teamspeak and offer advice etc. Most long time GM’s of T1 servers would also probably do this. You’ll have alot of work to do if you’re ranked 5 and 6 for the leagues in the future. Good luck.

The solution is to reduce the map cap. Its the only way things will change from the status quo. I see no other way. And this is in the hands of Anet. T2 servers won’t ever be on an even footing with T1 servers, with the exception being the rise and fall that goes on from time to time…but I hardly count that. As for the T1 servers, there is nothing they do that is sufficient to place them above the other. I must have played on about 15 servers now including the current top 3 right to the bottom. There are little differences, like ET only setup a public TS a couple of months back.

But its all the same. Players just flock to the servers that are winning. The only exception is JQ and its the longstanding loyalty of certain guilds in the server that have kept them “T1” for so long. Its not anything JQ specifically does, they have just been fortunate in this regard. There just aren’t the numbers in the game to provide for the map caps on a 24 hour basis, so there is always going to be this issue regardless of how much blood, sweat and tears you put into your server.

T1 skill lag really isn’t as bad as it has been in the past. I’ve had my auto attack not go off for 5+ seconds in a 3 way fight in previous weeks. That’s not to say that I was always able to use my F1-4, 2-0 skills on reset night now though. It’s still pretty normal to get skill delay on EB at various times. Other than on reset night the BLs seem fine. This is from my TC POV without one of the 3 top servers being in the matchup. I would suspect that it would be quite a bit worse in a 1,2,3 matchup.

Roamers… this is all what I’ve seen from personal experience… please don’t take this as if I’m saying everyone on every T1 server is like this. I know some people on my server do this and other servers that usually play in T2 do this stuff regularly as well (smh).

T1 “roamers” tend to be either scouts or players that got lost and are returning to their groups. Scouts aren’t there to fight and will almost always be thieves and just stealth. That’s fine though, they are doing their job.

The lost players… usually what happens in the majority of cases is they’ll start to fight, start to lose then proceed to try to run to allies/into a tower/etc. (this is hardly unique to T1 though). Some don’t even fight and just bee line it for allies/into a tower/etc. It’s really boring to just shoot some one in the back as they just try to run away… but at the same time I don’t want to reward them by letting them live.

There are some legit solo/duo/trio roamers in T1, but they are pretty rare in my experience. However, when I do find them, they tend to be good players and I enjoy those fights. I wish there were more of these types of players.

I do see some 5-10 man gank/havoc teams, but if evenly/outnumbered they tend to leave post haste. I see a lot of these in the bloodlust ruins areas.

There are always exceptions to the above… but the population of the solo/duo/trio roamers seems to be in steady decline in T1/T2. Again, this isn’t anything personal against any server, just my 2 cents.