Guild Wars 2

Why charge for the transfer in the first place? This would help direct the flow of transfers towards the worlds that need players, rather than upwards. The way it is now if someone is willing to open their wallet to transfer worlds then they might as well throw in a couple more $$ to get onto a “good” server.

If there were free options instead that would make a big difference. Guilds that wanted to move but don’t want to ask all 50 of their members to shell out cash now have an obvious option. Groups of friends that were simply caught on separate worlds and want to WvW together now have an obvious choice of worlds to congregate on. Players who wanted to get off the overcrowded T1-2 servers now have that $$ barrier removed.

Why should Anet deny the players this capability to balance the server populations for them and make WvW more even? So they can make a few more bucks?

No, they shouldn’t. I don’t know if you were around for the whole Kaineng thing, but free transfers to low pop servers is a very bad idea.

Kaineng. ’Nuff said.

wait wait wait…because kaineng got more people and rose in rank this is a bad thing?

Or because it was getting bandwagoning?

We are talking about Free server transfers to balance it out. once a server is no longer the bottom say 3 servers in population… the free transfers stop and a new bottom 3 begins.

Not the same thing at all. Unless you are referencing something completely different.

I know the kaineng thing was an issue, but its really only happened once in almost a year. I don’t think it would be as big an issue as we think.

Kaineg 2012
Never forget

Please god no.. I like it here in T9 on FoW..

I wouldn’t mind a few more people coming into ET to make us a bit more competitive (especially during the crazier hours), but I’d like to retain some semblance of that “small town” feel that we have here. Open up free transfers and things MIGHT get out of hand in a hurry. Lots of us here don’t necessarily want to shoot straight up the tiers, however tiers are actually defined now, but I think we could appreciate having a few more bodies.

I do not think they should. Because what you get on free transfers is people with nothing invested. So if they show up, don’t mesh well with the community, then they just hop to another server….Or worse drama builds, and everyone suffers.

I think the best method is the one we have now, which is that if people DO want to transfer they have to come up with the “jack” to make that happen. Which means, at some level, they at least have something invested in the transfer.

It is best (again in my opinion), to let lower tiers learn to work with what they have, rather than give them mass transfers, and then if/when said transfers move one, those servers plummet even farther since they were relying on a false sense of security.

Can I ask, whats the Kaineg thing?

displacedTitan.6897:

Can I ask, whats the Kaineg thing?

A failed attempt by several T1-3 guilds to bring a server in T8 up to T1 and become the new #1 server. They ran into the TC/FA wall in T2

I doubt anyone will do it again though (didn’t happen the last time they made transfers to low tier servers free). It’s so much easier to just stack onto a server already in T1 to become the new champion.

Kaineng aside, as soon as they allowed it last time you had guilds movin from tier 8 to tier 7 (such as Mend). I don’t really know if any of the low WvW population servers were helped by this last time. I think just about all of the higher tier guilds ended up moving back eventually.

styx.7294:

Kaineng aside, as soon as they allowed it last time you had guilds movin from tier 8 to tier 7 (such as Mend). I don’t really know if any of the low WvW population servers were helped by this last time. I think just about all of the higher tier guilds ended up moving back eventually.

Spot on…All the movement will actually be from 8’s to 7’s or something along those lines….And all those savior guilds that came down last time, realized it is just as easy to get zerged by 50 people on T8 as it is on T1, it just doesn’t happen 24/7 on T8 like it does on T1. They also realized you are more likley to attract PUGs to your group when there are less people per capita on the map.

King Amadaeus.8619:

I do not think they should. Because what you get on free transfers is people with nothing invested. So if they show up, don’t mesh well with the community, then they just hop to another server….Or worse drama builds, and everyone suffers.

Before transfer cost i never saw this ever and the server i had the most fun on was actually vabbi one of the lowest ranked ones. I have been to several servers. The community on every server I’ve been to was great except for vizunah square which i was only on 3 days because i didn’t understand anything.
You don’t have to mesh well with the community to follow a commander and kill enemy players.

tom.7468:

King Amadaeus.8619:

I do not think they should. Because what you get on free transfers is people with nothing invested. So if they show up, don’t mesh well with the community, then they just hop to another server….Or worse drama builds, and everyone suffers.

Before transfer cost i never saw this ever and the server i had the most fun on was actually vabbi one of the lowest ranked ones. I have been to several servers. The community on every server I’ve been to was great except for vizunah square which i was only on 3 days because i didn’t understand anything.
You don’t have to mesh well with the community to follow a commander and kill enemy players.

Can’t speak to the Euro side of things, but I know on NA, T8 had a few “high-tier” guilds move down to them, and they all lasted on average about a month, maybe 2…This was in large part (from what I have been told) due to the fact that they wanted to run “alone” with only their guild(s), and in the end did not mesh well with the overall community.

There will always of course be exceptions, but just because what you perceive to be the idea of the game is to " follow a commander and kill enemy players", does not mean that these people will think the same.

When Anet opened up free transfers to T8 it didn’t work out as well as I had hoped. Honestly guilds came down and took people away later. (Including yours truly.) I don’t feel like T8 retained very many people.

I agree with Savannah that people need to really want to come to lower tiers and invest some gems to make it worthwhile. You need to sell lower tiers as honestly as possible. WvW can feel like a ghost town. I remember a time when Katz and I were the only two people on home BL. You can take 5 people and ninja hills.

Avatar of Belle.9623:

When Anet opened up free transfers to T8 it didn’t work out as well as I had hoped. Honestly guilds came down and took people away later. (Including yours truly.) I don’t feel like T8 retained very many people.

I agree with Savannah that people need to really want to come to lower tiers and invest some gems to make it worthwhile. You need to sell lower tiers as honestly as possible. WvW can feel like a ghost town. I remember a time when Katz and I were the only two people on home BL. You can take 5 people and ninja hills.

You fell into my trap..

Sadly, I don’t think there is really anything ANet can do to bring people “back down” to T6-8 servers. The population imbalances are far too great for them to provide transfers to/from because population isn’t solely WvW based and leaving the populations up to the players has resulted in insane “stacking wars” in T1-1.5 (TC). Not to mention that people feel like they are “winning” WvW by being in “T1”, which technically doesn’t exist but we are stuck in this mindset.

Server merger or reduce number of WvW servers is the way I think they can start to redistribute the population. Imagine SBI/CD/EB with the added numbers of servers like ET/FC/SF. The bottom servers actually have people to play with and the higher servers get added coverage…

King Amadaeus.8619:

tom.7468:

King Amadaeus.8619:

I do not think they should. Because what you get on free transfers is people with nothing invested. So if they show up, don’t mesh well with the community, then they just hop to another server….Or worse drama builds, and everyone suffers.

Before transfer cost i never saw this ever and the server i had the most fun on was actually vabbi one of the lowest ranked ones. I have been to several servers. The community on every server I’ve been to was great except for vizunah square which i was only on 3 days because i didn’t understand anything.
You don’t have to mesh well with the community to follow a commander and kill enemy players.

Can’t speak to the Euro side of things, but I know on NA, T8 had a few “high-tier” guilds move down to them, and they all lasted on average about a month, maybe 2…This was in large part (from what I have been told) due to the fact that they wanted to run “alone” with only their guild(s), and in the end did not mesh well with the overall community.

There will always of course be exceptions, but just because what you perceive to be the idea of the game is to " follow a commander and kill enemy players", does not mean that these people will think the same.

I disagree with why the high tiers left. It’s not because of how they got along with the community. It’s because T8 was a much different kind of WvW and they didn’t find it as challenging or fun. At least that was my personal experience.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Imagine SBI/CD/EB with the added numbers of servers like ET/FC/SF. The bottom servers actually have people to play with and the higher servers get added coverage…

Added coverage…..you must be joking. T8 didn’t have coverage the last time I was there. If you wanted to play with a 5-10 man group in the middle of the night you could pvdoor entire borderlands with almost no opposition. You’d get more players during NA prime though.

I’m interested to see how they will open up China and if China will get its own servers. If they are added to the current servers will they go to NA or EU?

Avatar of Belle.9623:

LilMcGinley.3890:

Imagine SBI/CD/EB with the added numbers of servers like ET/FC/SF. The bottom servers actually have people to play with and the higher servers get added coverage…

Added coverage…..you must be joking. T8 didn’t have coverage the last time I was there. If you wanted to play with a 5-10 man group in the middle of the night you could pvdoor entire borderlands with almost no opposition. You’d get more players during NA prime.

I’m interested to see how they will open up China and if China will get its own servers. If they are added to the current servers will they go to NA or EU?

SF/FC have some decent NA coverage, ET is the outlier here of course. Extra people is extra people and with any server merger, you’d get the people who say “oh there aren’t enough people to fight with here” now going “hey I have people to fight with now” coming back to WvW that they left for PvE pastures.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Avatar of Belle.9623:

LilMcGinley.3890:

Imagine SBI/CD/EB with the added numbers of servers like ET/FC/SF. The bottom servers actually have people to play with and the higher servers get added coverage…

Added coverage…..you must be joking. T8 didn’t have coverage the last time I was there. If you wanted to play with a 5-10 man group in the middle of the night you could pvdoor entire borderlands with almost no opposition. You’d get more players during NA prime.

I’m interested to see how they will open up China and if China will get its own servers. If they are added to the current servers will they go to NA or EU?

SF/FC have some decent NA coverage, ET is the outlier here of course. Extra people is extra people and with any server merger, you’d get the people who say “oh there aren’t enough people to fight with here” now going “hey I have people to fight with now” coming back to WvW that they left for PvE pastures.

I’m going to have to agree with you there, being a SF player since launch. It’s quite unfair for the small servers now thakittens random matching. We’re too big/skilled as a server for FC and ET but we’re not near big enough to last in higher tiers since a lot left to higher tier servers. I feel server merging in wvw would solve a lot of issues. Then we would always have someone to play with. There’s no good feeling in a random match up for us when you hop in to defend and it’s not your prime time to be on for your server. You’re out numbered 5-1 easily if not more and there’s nothing even an AC army can do.

AngelsNDemons.8564:

. We’re too big/skilled as a server for FC and ET but we’re not near big enough to last in higher tiers since a lot left to higher tier servers.

I gotta get some chest thumping in now. I would disagree with the “too skilled” comment. I’ll be nice and and say skill is about even across every tier. Some tiers are more organized. However numbers trump skill in WvW (unfortunately).

Avatar of Belle.9623:

King Amadaeus.8619:

tom.7468:

King Amadaeus.8619:

I do not think they should. Because what you get on free transfers is people with nothing invested. So if they show up, don’t mesh well with the community, then they just hop to another server….Or worse drama builds, and everyone suffers.

Before transfer cost i never saw this ever and the server i had the most fun on was actually vabbi one of the lowest ranked ones. I have been to several servers. The community on every server I’ve been to was great except for vizunah square which i was only on 3 days because i didn’t understand anything.
You don’t have to mesh well with the community to follow a commander and kill enemy players.

Can’t speak to the Euro side of things, but I know on NA, T8 had a few “high-tier” guilds move down to them, and they all lasted on average about a month, maybe 2…This was in large part (from what I have been told) due to the fact that they wanted to run “alone” with only their guild(s), and in the end did not mesh well with the overall community.

There will always of course be exceptions, but just because what you perceive to be the idea of the game is to " follow a commander and kill enemy players", does not mean that these people will think the same.

I disagree with why the high tiers left. It’s not because of how they got along with the community. It’s because T8 was a much different kind of WvW and they didn’t find it as challenging or fun. At least that was my personal experience.

I was just operating on what I was told, I was not there (had long since been on SF by then), and until this past week SF has yet to receive any of these higher tier guild groups. I do remember that VK said up front they weren’t staying.

King Amadaeus.8619:

Avatar of Belle.9623:

King Amadaeus.8619:

tom.7468:

King Amadaeus.8619:

I do not think they should. Because what you get on free transfers is people with nothing invested. So if they show up, don’t mesh well with the community, then they just hop to another server….Or worse drama builds, and everyone suffers.

Before transfer cost i never saw this ever and the server i had the most fun on was actually vabbi one of the lowest ranked ones. I have been to several servers. The community on every server I’ve been to was great except for vizunah square which i was only on 3 days because i didn’t understand anything.
You don’t have to mesh well with the community to follow a commander and kill enemy players.

Can’t speak to the Euro side of things, but I know on NA, T8 had a few “high-tier” guilds move down to them, and they all lasted on average about a month, maybe 2…This was in large part (from what I have been told) due to the fact that they wanted to run “alone” with only their guild(s), and in the end did not mesh well with the overall community.

There will always of course be exceptions, but just because what you perceive to be the idea of the game is to " follow a commander and kill enemy players", does not mean that these people will think the same.

I disagree with why the high tiers left. It’s not because of how they got along with the community. It’s because T8 was a much different kind of WvW and they didn’t find it as challenging or fun. At least that was my personal experience.

I was just operating on what I was told, I was not there (had long since been on SF by then), and until this past week SF has yet to receive any of these higher tier guild groups. I do remember that VK said up front they weren’t staying.

As the current leader of a guild that went from T1 to T8 and the same guild Belle is in… We left because we could rarely fight when WE wanted to, it was always dictated by the larger zerg. Killing a group of 30-40 with 15-20 only lasted two times and then they brought 80. It wasn’t fun for us to have to dodge ‘map zergs’ of 80 people to find decent fights. It was fun for a while but the downhill came fast and people started to leave the game because it wasn’t enjoyable to them anymore.

We left ET with 10 people still playing, came in with 30. Currently we have 6 still enjoying GW2.

As someone who has bounced around in the lowest tiers for quite a while, I don’t give any truck with the small town homeyness others have mentioned. The gap between the bottom 3 tiers and the rest is just so major, when ever we get matched with a world 5 tiers above us it’s almost comical, until close to the end of the week, when the high tier world gets bored and shows up less so that you can again start to roam without chancing 40+ man zergs at every intersection.

Rather than permanent transfers, I would like to see the bottom 4 tiers made into a free-for-all zone, where anyone from higher tiers can guest, and maybe make the guesting choice last a bit longer, like a week perhaps. It might introduce some more spying issues, but I don’t think the competition at that level is really that sophisticated or the prize involved worth getting worked up about. I rather doubt it would change overall rankings much, but it ought to interject some more balance and fun for all involved.

I have no idea how to manage the rewards, except that perhaps those guesting might just be happy to be farming badges.

Cacti Eleven.9135:

I don’t know if you were around for the whole Kaineng thing, but free transfers to low pop servers is a very bad idea.

I was on Ferguson when it happened. In the short term we got our ***es kicked for a week, but the population was better redistributed, a server was lifted out of poverty and from what I hear they are in good shape now despite the drama they had in the beginning. Transfers can cause pain early on but help even everything out in the long run. And large guilds are not as serious about WvW like they were in 2012 especially with Anet’s negligence of the format, I doubt there will be so many mass migrations like we saw in the past when the game was new and these guilds were trying to establish themselves.

King Amadaeus.8619:

I do not think they should. Because what you get on free transfers is people with nothing invested. So if they show up, don’t mesh well with the community, then they just hop to another server….Or worse drama builds, and everyone suffers.

Investment might make a player more serious about the game, but throwing money around doesn’t solved personality conflicts. And with your logic we should be charged gems for joining new guilds since they represent the pinnacle of community investment (and drama) in these MMO games.

I am generally in the same camp as the OP, and suggested something similar myself in a matchup thread that once again found my server against FoW and Vabbi.

“…Perhaps something like free transfers to low population servers would help, or better yet the price of transfer could scale with the location of the transfer. Cheap as chips to go and buoy up the numbers of Vabbi, or a massive whopping cost if you feel like running in a T1 blob.”

I understand where you’re coming from, those people who’ve talked about the gold price as an investment and the lack thereof contribuing to lack of commitment to a server, but really, those who have that much gold to spend that they jump around all the time are not exactly showing a whole ton of commitment already are they?

This is why I think price scaling is the way to go. This would introduce a new factor into the decision of where to transfer. Just like at your supermarket, do you pay more for a top brand, or do you just want the product at the lowest price? Or somewhere in the middle? Small servers would benefit becuase little guilds that aren’t loaded but want a change of community could make an economic choice to transfer cheaply.

The best part with scaling is that it can change depending on how many people go to a server. Why have a static cost? The gem/gold markets fluctuate all the time? Why not have the price of server transfers fluid and dependant upon server population? This would go a lot of the way towards preventing another Kaineng-stlye event. If too many people transfer to one server, the price skyrockets!

You all make good points, but the one thing I can tell you:

I have played in lower tiers predominantly, NSP, ET, SF…I have alt accounts on BG and JQ…Again, the resounding agreement from the majority of lower tier players is that:“we do not want your free transfers”.

If you come here, come because you want to be here, not because you can “take a vacation” from the zergs of T1/2/3….

That is why most of us are against free transfers, and the other major reason is the aforementioned issue of T8s, going to T7s, which in effect further demolishes the T8 servers.

Skyeyes.4935:

I am generally in the same camp as the OP, and suggested something similar myself in a matchup thread that once again found my server against FoW and Vabbi.

“…Perhaps something like free transfers to low population servers would help, or better yet the price of transfer could scale with the location of the transfer. Cheap as chips to go and buoy up the numbers of Vabbi, or a massive whopping cost if you feel like running in a T1 blob.”

I understand where you’re coming from, those people who’ve talked about the gold price as an investment and the lack thereof contribuing to lack of commitment to a server, but really, those who have that much gold to spend that they jump around all the time are not exactly showing a whole ton of commitment already are they?

This is why I think price scaling is the way to go. This would introduce a new factor into the decision of where to transfer. Just like at your supermarket, do you pay more for a top brand, or do you just want the product at the lowest price? Or somewhere in the middle? Small servers would benefit becuase little guilds that aren’t loaded but want a change of community could make an economic choice to transfer cheaply.

The best part with scaling is that it can change depending on how many people go to a server. Why have a static cost? The gem/gold markets fluctuate all the time? Why not have the price of server transfers fluid and dependant upon server population? This would go a lot of the way towards preventing another Kaineng-stlye event. If too many people transfer to one server, the price skyrockets!

Transfer costs already scale with world population (though not WvW population, which I think is fair).