Guild Wars 2

Here’s my take: We need two things to increase the likelihood that a large population of gamers will somewhat acceptably (in their minds) distribute themselves across the available servers: carrots/sticks and information. I’ll start with information.

Information
Adjust Server “ratings” to two different metrics vs the single one now (Full, High, Med, etc., whatever it is, I’ve been on SoR since 3-day head start so not sure exactly what they are), the two ratings should work like this:

1. Closed/Open – this will tell you if you can transfer to a server or not. For a med/high pop server, you may have “closed” during peak hours but be able to transfer during off hours, but for the truly “Full” servers, you simply won’t be able to transfer. Pretty straight forward, take “Full” and make it closed, take everything else and make it “Open.” Part 1 done, nothing has changed, so…

2. Assign a rating system for each server based on four classifications of population: Full, High, Medium, Low. This would need to be based on a formula that can standardize all server pops across time zones and rank servers by an unbiased, 24hr population rating. This is not the server population at a particular point in time but rather an average population over a period of time placed into 1 of 4 classifications.

It would be incredibly helpful if we could get a graph showing the servers’ population peaks and lulls by time (idk, pick GMT, keep it hourly) for a specific period (i.e., the past week). An example of how this would be helpful: Oceanic guild is keen to WvW and is considering two servers with Med pop ratings. A quick look at the population peaks and lulls shows Server A peaks during “typical” playing hours in their time zone while Server B peaks during “typical” playing hours for the Western US. This will be, imo, helpful in determining which server the guild chooses.

So there are the two classifications that provide some basic information allowing a more informed transfer decision (Assuming rankings and current scores are still available), which leads to the incentives. Or in this case, really just adding a dis-incentive (the stick).

Carrots/Sticks
This is pretty straight forward. Instead of GEMs, use time as a stick and leave the current carrots in place (in general, I see two main carrots: Winning Server or Reduced Queue Times).

The stick is simple, transfer to a low pop server, 0 wait time to get into WvW. Transfer to a med pop server, 48hr cool-down (the timing I’m not sure of here, maybe only 24hrs?). Transfer to a high pop server, 168hr cool-down (i.e., the same length as the current matches, yes, transfer cool down will probably cost you some time in two matches if you got to a high pop server).

There would be 0 cool down for PvE, sPvP no matter what population server you transfer to. The cool down would only apply to WvW. So there’s my shot at beating this horse, whether he’s dead or not…

This seems simple on internet paper, but my guess is it’s a bit more difficult in execution. If this went in to place at the next matchup, there would be lots of bad matches (i.e., just like there will be at the next server reset), on the other hand, I think there would be some light at the end of the tunnel…

No thoughts, opinions… nobody?