Guild Wars 2

Dear Fellow Players:

WvW more than anything else in any other game, console, PC or real world, is a loyalty endeavor.

For the first eight months of the game I didn’t understand the “Portals” that took one into WvW. I saw them but didn’t really pay too much attention because I was used to games being very PvP heavy or dungeon heavy, that being where the rewards were to be had.

PvP just became my world. I played it almost exclusively, far more than I ever went into the Living World. Took me at least a year to do a single world completion I was so locked into a PvP world.

August 2012 the game was released, I was one of thousands of players who had early access, and I played so much PvP, I pretty much thought it was the best part of Guild Wars 2.

Then one day, they said “tournament” and Fort Aspenwood before the megaserver, was very much abuzz about the tournament coming up.

I started asking questions about four weeks before the tournament started and started dipping my toes, fingers, head and hands into WvW.

18th of October to the 6th of December, 2013

The frenzy that was WvW was fun.

Why? Because of map calls.

Because of banter about WvW in Lion’s Arch when the megaserver didn’t exist.

Because of the spies who taunted us in Lion’s Arch before the megaserver

Pugs. That’s how Ft. Aspenwood win that first season in Silver.

Every one of us who knew the maps, who knew the drill, would make map calls on every single map, not just Lion’s Arch, and just as any loyal people will, they rallied to the defense of their server.

Hard fought against the likes of Yak’s Bend and Stormbluff Isle as well as others, the hot and heavy fighting became a passion for many players who saw, not just a “reward” at the end of the season, but also the growth of a community of real players who could and would, for better or worse, get to know one another on the way to a victory or a loss at the end of the season.

Ft. Aspenwood won. But after it won, it fell apart, hard.

Many of us, disenchanted with leaders leaving, guild dissolving and moving to other servers to join friends, scattered to the four winds, so to speak, and looked forward to the next tournament.

I went on to the Henge of Denravi, and again pugs made up most of those who won the tournament. It was fun but stressful for many.

Again not many stayed after the season, but the servers were shaking out and moving around, even some who had been very successful had sunk to strange depths.

After Henge, I moved a couple more times looking for that “community” that had been so important in so many weeks of winning on any WvW server.

So I hit the forums and started reading about Yak’s Bend.

The leaders seemed connected to one another, communicative and fiercely loyal, not unlike many servers, but there was a tone and a determination about Yak’s Bend that seemed different.

So after being on two winners for two tournaments so far, I moved to Yak’s Bend.

September 12, 2014 and continuing through October 10, 2014.

The hardest fight I’ve ever seen for a win was pulled out by Yak’s Bend.

Did some leave after we won that last WvW season that Anet allowed us to have? You BET!

Did the good one’s leave?

No.

That was the difference.

Trolls left.

Disgruntled left.

Spies left.

But the core was only getting stronger.

The move from Silver to Gold was a fight against not only being double-teamed constantly, it was also a constant fight against siege trolls and more , all of whom were determined to see us lose by any means possible.

Fast forward to now – we’re still being double teamed only this time in Gold and by two servers who freely walk amongst each other’s keeps without a shot being fired.

The kind of loyalty I see on Yak’s Bend, the fierce determination we have as Yak’s would be gone in New York Minute if the servers were removed.

Servers matter.

Server loyalty is something many of us have waited for, for years. A specific place to call “home” even if we don’t have even a hovel to decorate in any game mode, it’s our home.

I’ve heard rumor after rumor after rumor that WvW will be disassembled and the servers will go away.

If you want WvW to become the worst game mode of all, by all means remove the servers.

If I can’t call others to my cause, my server and my game suffers, the megaserver is a mistake that should never have been made as far as WvW is concerned, we needed our cities intact and secure, what we have now is nothing like the WvW of old where a map call could and would excite the new and the old players alike to a rally point when things were getting tight and tough.

WvW has been marred by taking our alpine maps.

WvW has been marred further by not allowing us tournaments that get better with time, not completely disappear.

WvW is the real end game of Guild Wars 2.

WvW can become better, but not if you remove our servers, never if you remove our servers.

Don’t force us into more EOTM, which we begged you not to do to us before the maps you gave us, which are far too close to EOTM and untenable for roamers.

If you want WvW to become better, give us more life for each person, *_a boatload more._

If players can’t " one " to " three shot " one dead, it’s going to be up to skill to “win”. Give us a chance for skill to be evident, not impossible.

This one hundred percent!

KKaelyn.5904:

This one hundred percent!

Thank you.

That’s all well and good for the chosen few that sit in the upper echelons of the leaderboard. What about the rest of us?

What about the people that log in to WvW and are lucky to see five enemies all day?

What about their inability to transfer to a higher pop WvW server? What about what happens to people when their server empties out for the week because of tier population imbalances?

What about the fact that removing servers does not dismantle communities. Communities choosing to dismantle themselves does

If you need the game to tell you who is on your team, then your team isn’t as strong as you thought it was.

WvW might seem fine from the perpective of the top. I used to run on TC, and it looked fine from that vantage point.

However, more than half of all servers don’t have the ability to fight competitive WvW matches, and exhorbitant server transfer fees shouldn’t be a permanent requirement for guilds to reorganize in to and out of larger armies.

It’s easy to forget how horrible WvW is as a game mode when you’re not at the top. This is unlike any other part of the game. Even in complete noob tier pvp you are still getting good matches. Even in completely screwed PvE maps you still have events adjusted to solo.

When there isn’t a population that is roughly equivalent for all teams involved there is no WvW and the current server model does not support, and can not support enough teams to make that happen due to the effect of server stacking and basic human desire to win

Yes, ANet could permanently leave open T1 and T2 servers and make it so that it doesn’t cost as much to jump around for those that want to do that. I have had server loyalty for a long time to a T7-ish NA server (Kaineng). Yes, we did WvW, and no we weren’t as good as say TC (T2 server) is, but it was fun.

The person that got me to play GW2, didn’t want me to play WvW on my first character, but once I was introduced to it, I was hooked negating most of personal story until HoT came out and wanted the mastery points from personal story.

WvW is the one place in the game that I loved on Kaineng running around solo capping camps and testing my skills out on solo capping towers, though almost always I’d see at least one enemy to fight and most times, yes I lost… That was back in the days of Fortified and Strength stacks (hated those, but miss them now).

WvW sucks too though, I mean I want to play with my friends on FA, SoS, TC, Kaineng, GoM, and DB, but EotM doesn’t do it. If we are in a party, TC is almost always green color that week, so I go to EotM and be on green side while my other friends are on their servers color side. You so can’t play EotM with friends like that. So my question is why EotM exists if it was to make it so that servers could play together with each other while still having server matters aspect.

In the end though, those WvW buffs that all players on that server get no matter if they play WvW or not, shouldn’t be getting those buffs if you don’t play WvW. and having a way we can play with our friends on other servers, would be nice no matter what color the server we on is that week. Yet, to make a megaserver WvW, I can see where that would be a major turn off for some cause some guilds could fill EB queue just by themselves on T1 and T2 servers. So megaserver would be the same way while guilds that focus on lower tier servers may not even have enough in their instance to help take their own BLs let alone the EB area.

So how many times op changed server? Didn’t have motivation read whole post. So loyalty means that you change server like socks?

atheria.2837:

Servers loyalty is something…

Is a joke when most WvW players (who have played since the start) are no longer on their original server.

atheria.2837:

If you want WvW to become the worst game mode of all, by all means remove the servers.

WvW has great combat, but in nearly every other way it is inferior to other RvR games, it is already a crappy game mode that does not work, with a population that has died down to an all-time-low and part of the reason for its failure is servers and the issues they cause imbalanced matchups / stale matchups.

atheria.2837:

WvW has been marred further by not allowing us tournaments that get better with time, not completely disappear.

Tournaments were a joke, the game mode is not competitive, which part of that don’t you get? Most matchups over the course of this game get decdied by people PvDooring off-peak, avoiding fights and playing when the other servers do not, do you not get why that is a broken farce of an alleged mass scale PvP mode?

atheria.2837:

WvW can become better, but not if you remove our servers, never if you remove our servers.

Entriely depends on how they do an alliance system, they could even do it in a way that keeps servers.

atheria.2837:

Give us a chance for skill to be evident, not impossible.

Skill isn’t evident in WvW, that is the problem, it doesn’t take skill to get up at 4am and run round a borderland PvDooring when the other server is asleep to tick for 500+ and “win”.

The current system does not work, which is why the WvW population is at the state it is.

zinkz.7045:

atheria.2837:

Servers loyalty is something…

Is a joke when most WvW players (who have played since the start) are no longer on their original server.

Yeah, I know many that have left other servers for servers that are kitten T4 servers. They were on lower T7 and T8 servers and just got fed up with it when it came to defending and having coverage throughout the day.

atheria.2837:

Give us a chance for skill to be evident, not impossible.

Skill isn’t evident in WvW, that is the problem, it doesn’t take skill to get up at 4am and run round a borderland PvDooring when the other server is asleep to tick for 500+ and “win”.

The current system does not work, which is why the WvW population is at the state it is.

Yeah, many servers stay mostly inactive at the T6 and lower level, waiting for the rival server to sleep then going from there up to a 695 tick. I mean seriously, its bad then and holding that or a 600+ tick for at least an hour or two makes it nearly impossible for some servers to catch up and pass that during a week’s time. I was turned off by the 695 tick play when I was on the one server I know that when its against some servers gets a 695 tick easily It makes WvW boring… So why play it then as the winning side or even as the losing sides?

I have server loyalty too (TC since day 1), but the megaserver is already here. Most of the OP’s post talks about going into LA and rallying for help. You can’t DO that anymore, the rest of PvE (and WvWvW seems to be considered an extension of PvE) is a megaserver now.

They’re not going to go back to servers again for PvE. We need to move forward. The only problem now is finding the right fix, and so far I don’t think we’ve seen it proposed by Anet (or anyone).

My opinion is they should do 9-ish alliances (total, for both NA and EU). Everyone can choose which alliance they want to belong to (so entire server communities can put out the word that they’re all going to try and go to one place if they want to stay together), and after that you can pay a modest (not the high price we have now) to change alliances if you want later. NA and EU would be part of the same alliances, so you would have people earning points all day long for their alliance, instead of the night-time imbalance we have now.

Whatever they decide to do, I hope they take the time to really think it through, so that WvW doesn’t end up even more broke than it is now.

PopeUrban.2578:

That’s all well and good for the chosen few that sit in the upper echelons of the leaderboard. What about the rest of us?

What about the people that log in to WvW and are lucky to see five enemies all day?

What about their inability to transfer to a higher pop WvW server? What about what happens to people when their server empties out for the week because of tier population imbalances?

What about the fact that removing servers does not dismantle communities. Communities choosing to dismantle themselves does

If you need the game to tell you who is on your team, then your team isn’t as strong as you thought it was.

However, more than half of all servers don’t have the ability to fight competitive WvW matches, and exhorbitant server transfer fees shouldn’t be a permanent requirement for guilds to reorganize in to and out of larger armies.

It’s easy to forget how horrible WvW is as a game mode when you’re not at the top. This is unlike any other part of the game. Even in complete noob tier pvp you are still getting good matches. Even in completely screwed PvE maps you still have events adjusted to solo.

When there isn’t a population that is roughly equivalent for all teams involved there is no WvW and the current server model does not support, and can not support enough teams to make that happen due to the effect of server stacking and basic human desire to win

Do you really think that Yak’s Bend didn’t and doesn’t recruit?

Other servers have as many people as the top three, and if they do not, that’s an issue that is of importance to know from Anet, otherwise it’s a matter of getting your own server interested enough to play.

YB is still open the last time I saw… You want real fights? Think you are good? Not a troll who will leave?

YB was in the middle. We aren’t JQ, BG nor TC, but we keep beating all of them and landed on top because of exactly what I said before – Community and a fierce loyalty to the server, not the people on it who do or do not play WvW or even care that it exists.

If you aren’t happy on your server, recruit.

If you believe your server actually has fewer players than the top ten, let’s say, _that’s a serious issue that does need to be addressed rather than ignored _ – because that would make the difference in players and would have a direct impact on the percentage of active WvW players,.

If my server is larger than yours by total players, yes, dog gone it, we need to know if that is true because if it is, that’s the issue, not that people aren’t playing WvW and “have left it for HoT” which is a crock for some, true for many and so not true for the WvW’er who is dedicated and loyal to the server we fight to hard to honor.

The game is the same for all players, we all have the same maps, but we might not have all the same number of players on our servers.

If YB can ‘best’ two of the largest servers; being constantly double teamed. If we can do it so can others. I know it’s true because I have been on Henge of Denravi and it wasn’t big in comparison to FA, YB, BG, and JQ… I have seen “smaller” servers do just as well with organized forces and commanders who know what the heck they are doing.

Roamers matter – we make up a large percentage of the points that are made on “off” times when others are asleep.

One person can matter in WvW…

Can’t say the same about the other game modes, if one player isn’t there, even upper fractals are doable with just one and even two players not really participating, we all know it.

WvW is different.

Please keep it different.

Oh and “exhorbitant” transfer fees?

Hmmm… how much in coffee, cigarettes and other crap are some of you spending on?

I have moved four times. I paid all four times and was glad to do so to find a more cooperative and better fighting environment.

Junkpile.7439:

So how many times op changed server? Didn’t have motivation read whole post. So loyalty means that you change server like socks?

I moved off Fort Aspenwood becuase there was no WvW to be had for months after the first season win.

Thereafter, I was looking for a permanent community, maybe you didn’t read my posting all the way through, but that’s what many of us were searching from from the beginning.

Because we didn’t find it permanently, because the ebb and flow of players weren’t “set” or “core”, each of those servers was unstable. Unstable leaders, unstable players and few pugs who fill in for the rest of the times when people are asleep in NA time zone, that’s the time I try to be on most, when I am needed most.

If I had started on Yak’s Bend, I would never have moved.

But I started out on Ft. Aspenwood and only during the first season was there any level of cohesion or camaraderie. After any server implodes like several have, it’s not fun especially if there isn’t a core to hold them over until things “shake out” again.

Apparently you don’t know our history. We lost forever. Never won a tournament. But I won on three different servers, so I saw what worked and what lost. YB had everything and now, when they are the most mature of servers, they know what works and what does not, even with the thin times we push through and grumble like anyone else.

I am sorry you think my moving is an issue, but I think logically that you aren’t happy with your server or the position it sits are and are a bit jealous that some of us had the courage and the will to try to find what, especially in gaming, is the hardest thing of all to find and keep – which is the company of those you can trust even if you don’t always agree.

@atheria

+1000

Servers loyalty is something many of us have waited for, for years. A specific place to call “home” even if we don’t have even a hovel to decorate in any game mode, it’s our home.

^This is the true essence of what WvW should be.

The only thing keeping WvW from reaching its full potential…is a Broken Base Map Mechanic & a Population that has to Stack servers to have fun because of this.

Fist bump buddy…you totally get what it feels like when you have a strong emotional tie to a place called home…sink or swim…we stick together. We’re a band of WvWers.

KayCee.4653:

Yes, ANet could permanently leave open T1 and T2 servers and make it so that it doesn’t cost as much to jump around for those that want to do that. I have had server loyalty for a long time to a T7-ish NA server (Kaineng). Yes, we did WvW, and no we weren’t as good as say TC (T2 server) is, but it was fun.

The person that got me to play GW2, didn’t want me to play WvW on my first character, but once I was introduced to it, I was hooked negating most of personal story until HoT came out and wanted the mastery points from personal story.

WvW is the one place in the game that I loved on Kaineng running around solo capping camps and testing my skills out on solo capping towers, though almost always I’d see at least one enemy to fight and most times, yes I lost… That was back in the days of Fortified and Strength stacks (hated those, but miss them now).

WvW sucks too though, I mean I want to play with my friends on FA, SoS, TC, Kaineng, GoM, and DB, but EotM doesn’t do it. If we are in a party, TC is almost always green color that week, so I go to EotM and be on green side while my other friends are on their servers color side. You so can’t play EotM with friends like that. So my question is why EotM exists if it was to make it so that servers could play together with each other while still having server matters aspect.

In the end though, those WvW buffs that all players on that server get no matter if they play WvW or not, shouldn’t be getting those buffs if you don’t play WvW. and having a way we can play with our friends on other servers, would be nice no matter what color the server we on is that week. Yet, to make a megaserver WvW, I can see where that would be a major turn off for some cause some guilds could fill EB queue just by themselves on T1 and T2 servers. So megaserver would be the same way while guilds that focus on lower tier servers may not even have enough in their instance to help take their own BLs let alone the EB area.

I agree with your post.

Why is EOTM like it is and not allowing us to “guest” like we did to get our bosses done back in the day?

All tiers should be able to EOTM with each other, which is where the megaserver is and should stay.

I don’t know the answer for your post but it’s a valid point. If EOTM was supposed to be an all inclusive mode, then they missed the mark by quite a bit.

WvW stands alone and should stay as it is, unless they want to roll back the maps and give us back the maps that have real paths and not constant dead ends and lousy markings.

Junkpile.7439:

So how many times op changed server? Didn’t have motivation read whole post. So loyalty means that you change server like socks?

Didn’t have the motivation to read the post.

No wonder your server is struggling.

Those who want community certainly won’t settle for less.

Ignoring all the matchup discussion by OP, I agree with the loyalty part. Currently, barring a few on few servers, most are transferring to tiers (90% of the cases to upper tiers) where its active or suitable to their play style (this is especially true after the disastrous 23rd October patch). More rewards for general WvW (scouting/sieging/defending/escorting yaks/ninja’ing/havoc/fights, etc) and staying on a server has to be implemented (maybe a title exclusive to a particular server for “x” duration?) and get rid of the current map or rectify the map to be much simpler and not a PvE maze map.

atheria.2837:

Junkpile.7439:

So how many times op changed server? Didn’t have motivation read whole post. So loyalty means that you change server like socks?

Didn’t have the motivation to read the post.

No wonder your server is struggling.

Those who want community certainly won’t settle for less.

We have good EotM community. Winning every evening in EotM.

Nice spin, short on fact.

atheria.2837:

Junkpile.7439:

So how many times op changed server? Didn’t have motivation read whole post. So loyalty means that you change server like socks?

Didn’t have the motivation to read the post.

No wonder your server is struggling.

Those who want community certainly won’t settle for less.

Wow, your attitude is something else considering your server got out of T2 when a bunch of T1 guilds decided they wanted different server matchups.

Most servers in the lower tiers struggle due to population imbalances, because of people switching servers 4 times or so to find “better” (higher ranked) ones. The megaserver in PvE did not help this situation.

I love Tarnished Coast. But if the health of the game means we have to evolve from servers to something else, fine. And there is probably a way to maintain the communities we’ve created while moving beyond the servers, we just have to hope Anet finds that way.

atheria.2837:

The frenzy that was WvW was fun.

Why? Because of map calls.

Because of banter about WvW in Lion’s Arch when the megaserver didn’t exist.

Because of the spies who taunted us in Lion’s Arch before the megaserver

Pugs. That’s how Ft. Aspenwood win that first season in Silver.

Every one of us who knew the maps, who knew the drill, would make map calls on every single map, not just Lion’s Arch, and just as any loyal people will, they rallied to the defense of their server.

Hard fought against the likes of Yak’s Bend and Stormbluff Isle as well as others, the hot and heavy fighting became a passion for many players who saw, not just a “reward” at the end of the season, but also the growth of a community of real players who could and would, for better or worse, get to know one another on the way to a victory or a loss at the end of the season.

Ft. Aspenwood won. But after it won, it fell apart, hard.

Many of us, disenchanted with leaders leaving, guild dissolving and moving to other servers to join friends, scattered to the four winds, so to speak, and looked forward to the next tournament.

I went on to the Henge of Denravi, and again pugs made up most of those who won the tournament. It was fun but stressful for many.

Again not many stayed after the season, but the servers were shaking out and moving around, even some who had been very successful had sunk to strange depths.

After Henge, I moved a couple more times looking for that “community” that had been so important in so many weeks of winning on any WvW server.

So I hit the forums and started reading about Yak’s Bend.

The leaders seemed connected to one another, communicative and fiercely loyal, not unlike many servers, but there was a tone and a determination about Yak’s Bend that seemed different.

So after being on two winners for two tournaments so far, I moved to Yak’s Bend.

September 12, 2014 and continuing through October 10, 2014.

The hardest fight I’ve ever seen for a win was pulled out by Yak’s Bend.

Did some leave after we won that last WvW season that Anet allowed us to have? You BET!

Did the good one’s leave?

No.

That was the difference.

Trolls left.

Disgruntled left.

Spies left.

But the core was only getting stronger.

The move from Silver to Gold was a fight against not only being double-teamed constantly, it was also a constant fight against siege trolls and more , all of whom were determined to see us lose by any means possible.

Fast forward to now – we’re still being double teamed only this time in Gold and by two servers who freely walk amongst each other’s keeps without a shot being fired.

The kind of loyalty I see on Yak’s Bend, the fierce determination we have as Yak’s would be gone in New York Minute if the servers were removed.

Servers matter.

Server loyalty is something many of us have waited for, for years. A specific place to call “home” even if we don’t have even a hovel to decorate in any game mode, it’s our home.

I’ve heard rumor after rumor after rumor that WvW will be disassembled and the servers will go away.

If you want WvW to become the worst game mode of all, by all means remove the servers.

If I can’t call others to my cause, my server and my game suffers, the megaserver is a mistake that should never have been made as far as WvW is concerned, we needed our cities intact and secure, what we have now is nothing like the WvW of old where a map call could and would excite the new and the old players alike to a rally point when things were getting tight and tough.

This in my opinion is why the transition to a mega server wouldnt be that big of an issue. Do i like having a home server? sure i do. I loved being on Anvil Rock and talking trash to FC and ET back in the day in T8 or the big server matchups against GOM in Season 2. But that was a long time ago and Anet has gone out of their way to destroy server community when they megaservered PvE. Guild recruitment became a lot harder. Those map call outs you speak of no longer exist outside of WvW. Yes, you see some people from your server in Lions Arch but no one talks about WvW. They havent done a new wvw season, the whole idea of “server identity or server pride” has faded tremendously. The trash talk between servers has diminished greatly, sure people still hate YB because of siege or hate JQ because we blob or w/e but it’s nothing close to what it used it. The amount of guilds that actually hold loyalty to a server has diminished as well, nowadays guilds go wherever there’s action. I realise there are people who take great pride and put in a lot of work into their server, but lets face it… anet killed most of that a long time ago.

For server loyalty you need a bit of everything to stay there. I still like my first server ioj, but I didn’t regret to leave him for having more allies around during my timezone (eu on a na server), but I’m still missing the people there. I could write a big wall of text, but server identity comes to me with the fun and time you are on it. Breaking already existing long grown structures with a whole new system is a too high risk. Maybe a WoW-system with a flexible realmpool of servers is not so a bad idea. Servers could have still their old name but more variety of foes.

The most diehard wvw players are loyal to the gamemode, not a particular server. Any anger felt by any particular player that is caused by conversion to a megaserver, will quickly disappear when said player finds he is suddenly surrounded by MANY more friends to play with.

Don’t despair if YB goes away. I’m sure many of your current YB friends will join you on the megaserver and together you can continue to operate arrow carts 24/7.

Players who wants to keep the server system has to take one thing into consideration that is the

new guild upgrade system

which is the most important update to GW2 because it represents the developer’s philosophy of its core revenue stream of the product for the future after free to play. It is built around the pressure of guild activities and it will be protected at all costs and molding other parts of the game around it. Revenue from server transfer has declined because anyone can make a new free account at an open server under free play.

So the key to save the server system is how can it be rebuild around the core guild system.

Players are complaining because right now WvW is sort of like ..

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/tim-cook-on-new-iphone-6s-battery-case-i-wouldnt-call-it-the-hump.1943619/page-13

@Lord of Rings

Holy Cow!

Guess somebody figured out how to extend their Home WiFi.

Telling lower tier servers that “WvW would be fun if you were better at recruiting” isn’t the solution to the problems found in the current system.

Some people (specifically those that transferred to the top tier servers) may not like the idea of a system in which existing servers are paired together on colored megaserver teams (similar, but not identical, to EOTM), but it is probably the best solution for long term health and competition in World vs World. The current model only encourages erosion – players interested in wvw either migrating to the same 2-3 servers or simply leaving – neither of which is good for the game.

Blaeys.3102:

Telling lower tier servers that “WvW would be fun if you were better at recruiting” isn’t the solution to the problems found in the current system.

i dont think people are telling them to recruit better. the way the ppt system is designed, it will always encourage server stacking thus creating an inbalance of populations, and unless your server gets bandwagoned it’s very hard to overcome it. megaservers would prevent server stacking as you would possibly get paired with a different server every week, creating different matchups, and hopefully balanced ones. we are already able to track coverage of all the servers, anet for sure has accurate numbers of each server, im sure they could make an algorithm to create balanced matchups each week. but it’s all in anet’s hands at this point

I started on Devonas Rest, went to JQ for map completion and Season 1 hit. Learned a lot there then transferred back down to DR before S2 and still here. Is that server loyalty?

I started on Anvil Rock. Granted, I’m not a primary wvw player, but I did some. When I finally got motivated to finish my world completion (back when WvW was still required), I absolutely couldn’t do it because my server was dead last in the tiers. Because all of the wvw guilds decided to transfer elsewhere.

Since I wanted to do a bit more wvw, I opted to transfer to a mid-tiered wvw server that would also allow me to finish my world completion. So I chose Devona’s Rest, which at the time was like tier 4. Got my world completion….and watched a significant chunk of the wvw guilds server hop. Where is DR now? Oh right….in the kittening bottom tier.

Server loyalty. Ha.

Wvw server loyalty is almost dead. Wvw itself is almost dead.

It’s a handful of you on the boards, wearing homemade BG #1 t-shirts, trying to rally 10 loyal soldiers while the rest of the troops either quit the war and went home or went to the other side…

Reminds me of that movie Braveheart, but this version only has a handful of soldiers to hear the inspirational speech…

The phrase “a day late and a dollar short” come to mind as well…

This is hilarious, a bandwagoner trying to pretend he has server loyalty

Zetsumei.4975:

This is hilarious, a bandwagoner trying to pretend he has server loyalty

Haha yup, totally missed that for some reason…

I’ve been on FA for most of my time, a brief jump to DB for season 2 gold league, and OP certainly has a different view then what I experienced. Maybe OP plays a different time zone then I do.

PopeUrban.2578:

That’s all well and good for the chosen few that sit in the upper echelons of the leaderboard. What about the rest of us?

What about the people that log in to WvW and are lucky to see five enemies all day?

What about their inability to transfer to a higher pop WvW server? What about what happens to people when their server empties out for the week because of tier population imbalances?

I am not sure what you mean by inability to transfer. There’s only one server that’s impossible to transfer to. You can transfer to a high activity server which is about 160 gold?

Yes, I understand that might mean some EOTM or PvE. And WvW rewards suck. That should change. But that’s not an inability to. It’s still an active choice.

What about the fact that removing servers does not dismantle communities. Communities choosing to dismantle themselves does

If you need the game to tell you who is on your team, then your team isn’t as strong as you thought it was.

There’s official, and there’s unofficial. While it is true a community will outlive a game probably, there’s a difference between one designated from the game, and one that is arbitrarily designed— you can make up anything from the later. It doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing.

This is the equivalent of having a building where a group meets, and removing the building against their will, claiming the building is meaningless. Yea, the group can function without the location. Doesn’t mean it’ll be the same.

WvW might seem fine from the perpective of the top. I used to run on TC, and it looked fine from that vantage point.

However, more than half of all servers don’t have the ability to fight competitive WvW matches, and exhorbitant server transfer fees shouldn’t be a permanent requirement for guilds to reorganize in to and out of larger armies.

It’s easy to forget how horrible WvW is as a game mode when you’re not at the top. This is unlike any other part of the game. Even in complete noob tier pvp you are still getting good matches. Even in completely screwed PvE maps you still have events adjusted to solo.

When there isn’t a population that is roughly equivalent for all teams involved there is no WvW and the current server model does not support, and can not support enough teams to make that happen due to the effect of server stacking and basic human desire to win

That being said, it’s fairly true that the developers have failed half the tiers at least and it’s probably true that we can’t support all the servers that exist currently. I probably do not think advice like “recruit” is going to really help matters when the ability to do so is quite crippled already.

the problem is many of those homes are EMPTY. people love community when there are actual people to inhabit them. btw this isnt about hot, wvw was falling apart before then.

I think players are more on to community or guild loyalty than server loyalty at this point. Too many servers have already been destroyed by players moving away, and sometimes multiple guilds will move together to another server because they like playing with each other. Just like what we saw when some T1 guilds moved to YB to ride them to T1.

Megaserver tech definitely hurt recruitment and defense call outs for wvw, which is why they should have left LA as a server based city and not put every single zone on megaserver.

The eotm system could work, it’s just a matter of whether or Anet wants to put the work into making it work properly. What they need to provide is something else to rally behind instead of server identities made by the players. Besides guilds, players need a bigger purpose to rally behind, the other games that do this actually make it a war with distinct sides, which GW2 just makes it a war with servers.

I’ll use examples that they could use, world of warcraft alliance and horde sides. Both sides are distinct, they have lore to back it up, and there are players who are fiercely loyal to either side. Warhammer online, also 2 distinct sides that players were fiercely loyal to. Remember Dark age of camelot? the game that wvw was insipred by, same concept with 3 sides. Same thing another game called Planetside features, 3 distinct sides in lore to fight behind.

What Anet needs to do is create 3 new alliances, let’s just use this as a quick example say Durmand Priory, Order of Whispers, and the Vigil. There’s a lot of lore in game to back it up, there’s distinction between all 3 sides that players can support and rally behind, the rewards for them could also be unique as well.

Let’s take it further and use the Gods as sides instead:
6 gods that players are matched to from their character creation, Balthazar Dwayna Grenth Kormir Lyssa Melandru. (Option to change one time upon implementation).
So basically 6 separate pools of players (instead of 24-27 servers).
3 sides of 2 gods alliances, so 2 gods randomly matched into alliances every week.
You want to transfer? pay 1800 gems to transfer and get a prayer book back piece as a blessing to your new god, lol.
Offer new wvw season rewards with art/fashion that match the sides you’re playing for, such as the lyssa balthazar and dwayna outfits.

What we don’t need is 3 faceless sides, green blue red to fight for, or the stupidity of putting all the green ranked servers (usually the top server of the tier) player pools together. Nor do we need player made mercenary alliances filled with 3 guilds and 300 players to fill maps for a week.

@OP. What a joke. Granted, your post is written nicely, but you’re delusional.

You transfer servers multiple times and you honestly think server loyalty or pride has anything to do with YB being where it is now? You have no clue. It was because multiple guilds transferred to YB while the other guilds in T2 transferred to T3. If you were on YB before fall this year, then you could just coast along for the ride.

Wake up to the reality of what’s really been going on.

atheria.2837:

Fast forward to now – we’re still being double teamed only this time in Gold and by two servers who freely walk amongst each other’s keeps without a shot being fired.

Oh please, this is not happening.

Still trying to figure out how the OP’s suggestion of moving to a more populated server if you don’t enjoy the WvW experience (or lack thereof) on your own server is any different than having a Megaserver…if everyone who wants to play WvW zergs to one of the 3 T1 servers, don’t we just end up with a WvW Megaserver anyway?

Server loyalty mattered to me after the first mass exodus of guilds from WSR…

Server loyalty took a hit when the second mass exodus of guilds took WSR from mid bronze to second to bottom and a barren wasteland…

Server loyalty can go shove itself up [explicative] after the third exodus leaving you nothing to do but solo keeps and flip a border on your own because you are the only one in the entire map.

The WvW system needs a drastic shake up to fix core issues between peak and off peak times, ability to actually play with your friends who may not be on your server and to make it less of a k train. I don’t want an EotM style megaserver but there is merit to the idea of filling up otherwise empty maps or closing empty maps which is what mega server is also about.

@ OP

Really? Your GW2 life story? Here’s the reality. You are playing with people right now who are not on their original servers, I’d say most people who even still bother with WvWvW at this point have transferred at least once to play with their friends or find more player activity (funny how that measures up so poorly next to server pride) so this mantra won’t make that any less true. Delusion and quite possibly, hypocrisy. And the worst thing Anet can do is actually entertain it. We don’t even know what the developer plans are and people are losing their kitten, it’s embarrassing. If WvWvW becomes balanced, fun, rewarding and attractive to players who’ll form new connections and keep old ones at the cost of losing a handful of unreasonable, unadaptable players, I say bring it on.

First, I agree with OP, would like to get that out of the way. But for the people that are disagreeing, I’d like to ask a few questions.

How is it that you envision faction/alliance WvW?

If all servers are merged in to 3 alliances, alliance 1, 2 and 3, that would certainly mean WvW would feel more active. I’m sure they would increase the map Q’s to accommodate for the higher population.

However, no matter how much they increase the map Q, it won’t be enough. They can’t just make it limitless either. I’d be willing to bet every map would be Q’d all hours of every day even if the map limit was 200 people. And if that were the case, the lag would be insane. Could you imagine SMC fights with 600 people?

Alright, let’s say that’s not the case… Then how about they make map shards? Every time one is full, they create another, like in PvE or EotM.

We all know how well that works, right? … R.. Right?

There would be a lot of imbalance going on from poor shard management and it would be a lot like EotM where it’s incredibly rare that all sides are evenly matched. There would constantly be one side steamrolling the other because a new shard hasn’t opened up for other people to join on their side yet while the other two sides have multiple shards.

And imagine how annoying it’d be trying to taxi your guild in to the right shard…

Okay, let’s say that’s not the case either and it’s all just randomized. No one is on a server, everyone is just a pawn and they’re placed on a random alliance every week (excluding guilds because I’m sure they wouldn’t be stupid enough to break up guilds).

Any sense of “home” or community you have is definitely gone. There’s no alliance pride because you’re on a different one with different people every week. You have your guild, if you’re in one (not everyone is or their guild isn’t terribly active or even the majority of their guild prefer to do PvP/PvE instead) and that’s it. Some people would be okay with that because they don’t socialize within their servers community but I’m sure they’d quickly come to the conclusion that it’s a problem whether they like it or not. You would recognize people, maybe even their habits, and it would feel a lot like spying. You would also have a lot of people leaving your guild because larger guilds don’t often socialize with each other on a very personal level. Guilds would deflate a lot because they would be the new “community” to replace servers and bandwagoning would take on a new form.

So take your pick.

Because to me, none of those sound appealing. Maybe instanced WvW could be okay for a few weeks but I guarantee that any of these options would become stale incredibly fast. They might make for more active WvW but the community would be gone or even angrier than they are right now.

The one alliance that might work is retaining servers and each match combines server X + y + z vs a+ b + c… Server identity is retained and you play with and against new peeps each week.

I love YB but I’ve slept with every server and its mother in the past.

Remove servers, scrap WvW and let it die respectfully.

It’s been killed so many times, it needs something new, and we need to stop holding onto a game mode we once loved 3 years ago, it’s not that game anymore, let it die.

I want mega-server, for the simple reason: It is able to provide full-maps where I can fight 24/7 and not only for 2h a day.

I also want a fixed team I can identify with, and a scoring system that makes sense to fight for.

The current server-WvW does not give me anything of this.
- scoring is only off-time PvD
- maps are to empty to find enemies to fight 90% of the time (22 of 24 hours)
- servers identification is devasted by marouding guilds and wtj (a kind of grasshopper-plague)

An alliance system combined with mega-server could be a better WvW and that ANet is working on this now since a year, gives some hope that the result will be better than the current EotM and WvW. But we have to wait to see and find out …

Very good writing, thanks for it! I could not agree the OP more.

Why does everyone feel compelled to give their annotated, multi-volume personal gaming history to make their point? This could have been a paragraph, kitten .

The only thing having servers does is implement server loyalty and nothing more.

What megaservers do is open up a vastly larger amounts of players and guilds to fight. Ends the empty dead maps. Removes the ques. Ultimately will make for much larger communities.

Everything you see right now with a server can be done with a megaserver EXCEPT being handcuffed to one server in the name of loyalty.

umm what? OP’s post reads like one of those feel good news stories that make people feel all warm and tingly inside.

You obviously have no idea about the “politics” in T1 that lead to YB becoming a T1 server. I don’t even think you realize why HoD rose up the ranks so fast. You seem to be confusing your own server loyalty with bailing on your current server and banwagoning onto another.

I never got these posts that make WvW out to be this game mode that force people to connect on such an emotional level. I’ve been on AR, DB, SoS, IoJ, FA, and TC and honestly it’s all pretty much the same. Sure you’ve got different people, different guilds and different voices, but it takes less than 2 weeks to get to know the regulars and their guilds. There isn’t a server that has players that are inherently more loyal and dedicated.

So many people seem to think WvW is a game mode with so much depth that it would require a huge amount of teamwork to get anything done. If you want to feel that sense of camaraderie or feel like you went into the trenches with a bunch of strangers and came out with brothers go play EVE or some other MMO focused solely on open world PvP with more risk involved.
I loved WvW, it’s what I played the most after spending the first six months of release doing PvE. WvW made me quit PvE and only play SPvP, and WvW but people need to stop trying to make it seem like they are a small cog in some gigantic machine when infact that machine is not that big.

As for that server loyalty of yours, that you seem to hypocritically value so much, all it would take is for a few guilds to come into a disagreement. Soon enough tensions rise and the ones that feel like outsiders will leave for another server.

Your post is too long, most people don’t care about your life story and what is with you being overly dramatic with so many of your statements.

This post is not indicative of me being in favour of or against megaservers for WvW.

PopeUrban.2578:

That’s all well and good for the chosen few that sit in the upper echelons of the leaderboard. What about the rest of us?

What about the people that log in to WvW and are lucky to see five enemies all day?

What about their inability to transfer to a higher pop WvW server? What about what happens to people when their server empties out for the week because of tier population imbalances?

What about the fact that removing servers does not dismantle communities. Communities choosing to dismantle themselves does

If you need the game to tell you who is on your team, then your team isn’t as strong as you thought it was.

WvW might seem fine from the perpective of the top. I used to run on TC, and it looked fine from that vantage point.

However, more than half of all servers don’t have the ability to fight competitive WvW matches, and exhorbitant server transfer fees shouldn’t be a permanent requirement for guilds to reorganize in to and out of larger armies.

It’s easy to forget how horrible WvW is as a game mode when you’re not at the top. This is unlike any other part of the game. Even in complete noob tier pvp you are still getting good matches. Even in completely screwed PvE maps you still have events adjusted to solo.

When there isn’t a population that is roughly equivalent for all teams involved there is no WvW and the current server model does not support, and can not support enough teams to make that happen due to the effect of server stacking and basic human desire to win

Okay so merge the low end servers. Then all is good again, no? Bottom line is we have way too many servers for the number of players we have.

DeadlySynz.3471:

The only thing having servers does is implement server loyalty and nothing more.

What megaservers do is open up a vastly larger amounts of players and guilds to fight. Ends the empty dead maps. Removes the ques. Ultimately will make for much larger communities.

Everything you see right now with a server can be done with a megaserver EXCEPT being handcuffed to one server in the name of loyalty.

Lol. You’re one of those idiots that can’t think about consequences, aren’t you.