Guild Wars 2

I am currently on the FC server and we have bobbed between tiers 6 (once), 7, and now currently 8 in WvW. When I started GW2 I neither knew which server to join and why (so I randomly joined one that was open), nor thought I would like WvW.

My sessions with WvW fall into two categories: completing WvW dailies with two other guys and zerging with my guild. I do EotM every so often, devoting one character solely to WvW (and mostly EotM), but I pretty much do WvW with my level 80 engineer or level 80 warrior.

I never have any problem getting into WvW. In fact for a long time I did not know that EotM was designed as an overflow server for when you “queue” to get into WvW. The worst week for roaming in small groups was when we recently rose to tier 6 … for one week. (All right, all right, stop laughing.) That was also our worst week for zerging with the guild. But at tiers 7 and 8 it is easy to run and get your dailies and often never even see an enemy player. The only time I see an enemy zerg is when I am in the guild zerg myself. (Zergs seem like zerg magnets.)

So, I know what being at the bottom of the WvW heap looks and feels like. What does it look and feel like at tiers 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6? Specifically:

• Do you frequently have to queue and wait in order to get into Borderland or EB? What are typical wait times?

• I suspect that the higher tiers want WvW players to join in the WvW-oriented guilds and participate in a more organized fashion and don’t take to solos and small group roamers out there doing there own thing. I suspect the higher you go, the more intense it is, sort of like how serious raiding hard content in other MMOs. Is that impression correct?

• Is everything scaled up, i.e. the size of the groups, or is it that there are just more groups?

• Are there more commanders active simultaneously? (We infrequently have two commanders on the map at one time and rarely have three or more. I have seem more commanders in a single instance of Tequatl than I have in one WvW map in our tier.)

• Do you use tools better than Teamspeak? Something that allows players to easily switch channels during gameplay so teams can have separate channels, but cross-channel communication can occur rapidly and easily? (If so, what is it?)

I have been thinking about creating a second account – if it is not against the TOS, that is – and I figured I would try a different server for that account. But not having any idea what a higher tier server is like week after week, I am still as clueless as when I started as to which tier of server would be best for what I would like to do, which is be part of an organized effort more sophisticated than “stack on me” and “start pushing now”. (No offense meant to my current guild, which is far more serious about WvW than my previous one.)

Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide me.

This differ from server to server, but to compare with FSP EU:

- Queueing at the deep end is about 30-50 man on EB, but its not that common anymore. 0 queue and 50 queue is basicly if its a commander or not there. Borders have no or low queue.

- Not really. Yes there are “hardcore” guilds but the militia is what wins matchups. Pick a class you are good at, pick a spec that doesnt rallybot constantly and you’re good to go. Of course, its pretty boring without a guild.

- Big zergs is 40-60 man, small zergs 20-30, guild raids range from 15-25. Roaming parties are rare nowadays. On a “populated” border there is usually 2 guild raids and 1 blue commander or 1+1 or just 1-2 raids. EB usually just the blue commander, few guilds raid there.

- Raid commanders yes, blue commanders no. If there are 2 blue, they generally do not stand a chance against the enemy zerg. It does still happen from time to time though, like when a borderhop commander joins a map that already has a commander.

- Webpage, forum, border spreadsheet etc. But mostly just TS… One gigantic TS for the entire server, with tons of channels. Its quite lovely.

You can easily create a second account, but you need to buy another copy of the game. Not so cheap now though (lots of people I know got a 2nd or 3rd account when it was on sale).

Thanks for the reply. That leads to follow-on questions, largely about what some of what you said meant.

• “Queuing on the deep end”? Is that another way of saying that the queue is at worst 50 players deep when trying to get on EB?

• What is considered “the militia”? Are these the havoc squads, ninja teams, and solos running around, i.e. 1-2 small parties of 5 (or less)? The third answer (“roaming parties are rare nowadays”) seems to imply it means something else.

• Are “blue commanders” Siegerazer and Siegecrusher? Or is that something else? I was not counting them, only players.

• What is a border spreadsheet. We do have a gigantic TS server for FC, with lots of channels. Usually there is only one person (the zerg commander) speaking on it, however.

Yeah, I bought ikitten0 when it was on sale last. I did not have the foresight to buy two copies, which is what is holding me back from doing it now.

Thanks again for the response.

Yes
Militia is the Pvx pugs who come to help, but do others things than wvw.
Blue is the common commander tag for open groups. Red, yellow, and purple are often some form scout, guild, defender commander – color varies by server.
No clue on spreadsheet unless this is how they track where the forces are spread out for reset.

On Piken (5°, T2) we generally only have queue on EB, sometimes small queue on BL, but nothing too long.
As say before it’s generally 1 blue tag on EB and 1 on home BL. The other BL are generally with closed guild raid.
If you only want to play on EB you will need to wait sometimes (maximum 30/40 queue on EB, but nothing on other BL).
The main difference between first server and last one is the off peak population. I have play on Arborstone, and generally there was 1 or 2 people during the day on the home BL, and maybe 5 on EB… There is nothing interesting to do with that…. And generally no ennemy at all on home BL….
If you play only on prime time with the zerg, and don’t want to play PPT or to see upgraded keep then you can stay where you are. But if you want to play off peak time then I think you need to go in the top 6 server (T1/T2). T3 begin to be dead too at off peak..

Liston.9708:

No clue on spreadsheet unless this is how they track where the forces are spread out for reset.

Not just for reset, for every day. When you got a big server with multiple large guilds that raid daily, you want to spread them out. Dont want 5 30 man guilds trying to cram into one border , not fun for anyone.

Militia is pretty much everyone thats not raiding. Just a fancy name for your average WvW player

I was in FC for a bit. My guild decided that they wanted to go to a lower tier server and have more impact. The problem I faced in FC as a commander was it was dead by 11PM Eastern. I stayed on longer with our guildies and tried to recruit and build a stronger server but what happened was that too many times FC was outnumbered so people got used to foresaking EB and turtling up in the BL. That was hard for us to come into a lower tier server and not see a decent zerg running around EB. We would upgrade and scout and defend towers when on IOJ which got as high as 6th before we moved. We would spend reset upgrading our corner so we had a good base.

FC has some great people on it but only because the population at the time was lower many would jump to pve or just disappear. There is a lot more activity in the top servers depending on the matchup. T1 is always something but T2 FA and SOS are having problems with the blobby YB so its dead too often for my liking so I go to my alts.

I think you mean the TS channel that has all the different guild spots available if they ever got on and used them. In other servers you will see the guilds using their TS in their spot but when I was on FC it was mostly the EB channel we used since not as many came on.

As a Darkhaven player (t5):

-Queues are rareish, maybe 1-2 queues on reset with a solid amount of people in each of the other non queued BLs. Outside of reset queues are rare, though they occasionally pop up in EB or Dh BL.

-Speaking from my experience on Dh (shooting from t6 to t3 in our initial climb a few months ago), yes WvW gets more serious the higher up you go. People generally do not try to force you to do something you don’t want to. People won’t get mad at you if you’re a solo roamer or anything like that. People generally just let you be on your own, though you’ll get the occasional command to “build this” or “rally to x com”.

-There are both more groups and larger groups. Generally eb gets bigger while BL gets more individual groups. EB tends to be one main blob with maybe 1-2 guild group around from each server. However, in BL, if a high priority target is up for grabs, the groups will tend to rally there (often in 3 way fights) and blob up.

-Yes, higher up generally means more tags. On reset, on all maps, Dh will have like 10-15 probably, not including separate tags for certain guild groups (e.g. certain guild groups run separate tags in the same group for driver/pick team leader etc…). Still though sometimes it’s just 1, sometimes it’s 2 or 3. And the higher up you go, the more tagless groups are running around (generally these are roamers/fights purist guilds).

-In regards to communication it’s still generally just TS, though the TS of higher tier servers tend to have more organization/bells & whistles.

Thanks Jethro for that response, especially about the problems with FC and other lower tier servers. What you are saying is what we are seeing. I am west coast so I stay on a little later, but we could roll a guild zerg around, capture a lot of stuff, but by next morning it would have all turned back if we were T7. (Not so in T8, indicating they have as little a night crew as we have.)

I remember the first WvW meeting I attended on the FC TS and the issue of the week was that we need people to sign up for holding down the fort during non-prime hours, otherwise we would never rank up. Seems like they were right.

So how did the higher tier servers originally get so much activity compared to the lower tier servers? Were they the original servers in GW2 and the others got added later (with occasional guilds changing servers mixing things up)? Or they were slightly better or the same at the start and people gravitated there as they had slightly more action (as I started without knowing / understanding the game and went in FC as my friends were there)?

Say one of the lower tier servers were to get ‘coverage’ in the off hours (even slightly). Would that move them up in tiers that much or are the top Tier servers guilds that much stronger? I wouldn’t mind doing like Jethro said and fixing up / reinforcing / defending forts and taking it more serious but didn’t want to join the other servers and can’t get on.

Arminius.7052:

Say one of the lower tier servers were to get ‘coverage’ in the off hours (even slightly). Would that move them up in tiers that much or are the top Tier servers guilds that much stronger? I wouldn’t mind doing like Jethro said and fixing up / reinforcing / defending forts and taking it more serious but didn’t want to join the other servers and can’t get on.

Oh it would move them up alright. In about… a year or so. The way glicko works is basicly showering “good” servers with so much points you cant dethrone them even if you win a matchup while at the same time digging “bad” servers into kitten so deep they cant get out of. Thats why many people just sigh and give up low tiers.

This is why I always advocate a migration upwards rather than down. Leave the lower tier in the hole. Have fun instead. You dont have go to top tier, just pick any server thats high or above. Maybe it sound harsh to people dedicated to low tier servers, but its just the reality of the tier system and the natural progression of the server populations. Maybe someday the top tier servers become low tier… I would still recommed the same unless the entire WvW system change.

If you enjoy solo roaming, stay out of T1/2, at least in EU. I’ve been a solo roamer for 2.5 years and ever since we hit gold it’s been kitten. FSP, Deso, now even Piken…their solo roamer equals 5 guys (with at least one condi thief) coming in under Refuge to 5v1 you and emote.

Arminius.7052:

So how did the higher tier servers originally get so much activity compared to the lower tier servers? Were they the original servers in GW2 and the others got added later (with occasional guilds changing servers mixing things up)? Or they were slightly better or the same at the start and people gravitated there as they had slightly more action (as I started without knowing / understanding the game and went in FC as my friends were there)?

The simple answer is ‘by chance’. There was no way for people to spread out at launch. You basically picked a server that had an awesome name or one that your community had decided was “your” server (in EU we had a lot of discussion about which server which country would pick as their unofficial home. FSP, for example, got a lot of Scandinavians and Dutchies). So what happened is that naturally the populations got imbalanced right from the start and some servers never really got off the ground. It was anyone’s guess how stacked a server was that early.

The second major problem was one that very recently got fixed: The distinction between pve and wvw in world population. As I said above, at launch people joined server based on community, not balance. This, of couse, also applied to pve. So what happened is that while some servers got a high wvw population, others saw a massive pve one. This made servers near or totally full all thanks to pve, so no matter how much people wanted to join or transfer to it for wvw, they simply couldn’t!

As time has moved on and the general population of the game has declined, people have started to congregate more and more on fewer and fewer servers, leaving those unfortunate lower ones to basically bleed out. That leaves us pretty much where we are today.

With that said, this is not a good time to judge the state of servers. The expansion is upon us and we’re in a sort of limbo where people are taking breaks as they wait for a release, and we have no idea what will happen when it does release. The recent change to how server population is calculated is the obvious first step in a plan by Anet to create a more balanced playing field in anticipation for the likely population boom following the release of HoT. New and returning players have no other choice but to populate the lower servers, boosting their population, while the ‘full’ status prevents the top servers from getting stacked even further.

If you’re not in a hurry for moving you honestly should wait until after the HoT release. The top 3 tiers are, IMO, in a terrible state of health and I would think twice before moving a guild there – especially if it is the guilds first move.

If you are a single player I would also avoid these tiers for the time being. A lot of things have happened recently in T1/T2 that is causing a trickle down effect of issues.

One being the WvW population thing… it is either not working properly or is just not implemented yet. There was a mass exodous from T2 of guilds (primarily to T3/T4/T5) (24 I believe and counting) and yet the servers are not changing population. One may view this to be that they were stacked to begin with, but for the population not to change at all is just indicative of it not working.

HoT will bring Guild Halls and Guild Halls theoretically will allow guilds to GvG and invite other guilds to GvG in their halls. This would possibly mean a re-balancing of T3 where the GvG guilds currently are, and a re-distribution. This is, of course, speculative and not for certain. T2 is a wasteland at the moment and T1 is still riddled with a lot of internal issues related to interserver politics. If you’re really worried about dead times, check out coveragewars2.com (I believe that’s the address) and check out the server’s high and low times to find a place that ultimately would fit with your desires. But, again I warn you, any transfer made now may need to be made again when HoT hits. The state of WvW and the server’s healths are very much uncertain right now.

Angel.6085:

If you’re not in a hurry for moving you honestly should wait until after the HoT release. The top 3 tiers are, IMO, in a terrible state of health and I would think twice before moving a guild there – especially if it is the guilds first move.

T3 once again has the closest match up out of any of the servers and still has a nice buffer between T2 and T4. I’m sure it won’t last forever thanks to the T2 implosion but T3 is very healthy at the moment.

splatticus.1278:

Arminius.7052:

So how did the higher tier servers originally get so much activity compared to the lower tier servers? Were they the original servers in GW2 and the others got added later (with occasional guilds changing servers mixing things up)? Or they were slightly better or the same at the start and people gravitated there as they had slightly more action (as I started without knowing / understanding the game and went in FC as my friends were there)?

The simple answer is ‘by chance’. There was no way for people to spread out at launch. You basically picked a server that had an awesome name or one that your community had decided was “your” server (in EU we had a lot of discussion about which server which country would pick as their unofficial home. FSP, for example, got a lot of Scandinavians and Dutchies). So what happened is that naturally the populations got imbalanced right from the start and some servers never really got off the ground. It was anyone’s guess how stacked a server was that early.

The second major problem was one that very recently got fixed: The distinction between pve and wvw in world population. As I said above, at launch people joined server based on community, not balance. This, of couse, also applied to pve. So what happened is that while some servers got a high wvw population, others saw a massive pve one. This made servers near or totally full all thanks to pve, so no matter how much people wanted to join or transfer to it for wvw, they simply couldn’t!

As time has moved on and the general population of the game has declined, people have started to congregate more and more on fewer and fewer servers, leaving those unfortunate lower ones to basically bleed out. That leaves us pretty much where we are today.

With that said, this is not a good time to judge the state of servers. The expansion is upon us and we’re in a sort of limbo where people are taking breaks as they wait for a release, and we have no idea what will happen when it does release. The recent change to how server population is calculated is the obvious first step in a plan by Anet to create a more balanced playing field in anticipation for the likely population boom following the release of HoT. New and returning players have no other choice but to populate the lower servers, boosting their population, while the ‘full’ status prevents the top servers from getting stacked even further.

You forgot “Seasons” and free transfers. Also, new players might not have a choice other than to play WvWvW on currently low pop servers but WvWvW’s lopsided nature will no doubt chase many away rather quickly unless major changes are made (new map won’t work miracles).

What’s WvW like? Dead unless your side has a Blue Dorito up.

Speaking from the (current) 1st ranked server on EU, there’s nothing going on unless someone decides to lead.

Guilds are dying left right and center.

Puck.9612:

Angel.6085:

If you’re not in a hurry for moving you honestly should wait until after the HoT release. The top 3 tiers are, IMO, in a terrible state of health and I would think twice before moving a guild there – especially if it is the guilds first move.

T3 once again has the closest match up out of any of the servers and still has a nice buffer between T2 and T4. I’m sure it won’t last forever thanks to the T2 implosion but T3 is very healthy at the moment.

I don’t think it will last as you long as you may think – certainly not long enough to spend gems…. Fa just went very high and SOS high to show what is happening…… HOD is also within RNG range now (<10%)…..