Guild Wars 2

When it will be another World Linking or there will be another one?

Just because atm is like couple of good months that we dont win a match Aurora Glade. No point to put upgrades on keeps or towers no point to siege because we have only blob match so no point for doing that no point for spending gold and i make gold from gems and gems with real money. Want money solve the problem otherwise well i will just get bored probally doing nothing.

Whole game mode is yawn. Blowouts, condi meta, roaming is awful every tier, no guilds, etc.

Rambitshouse.8712:

Whole game mode is yawn. Blowouts, condi meta, roaming is awful every tier, no guilds, etc.

I’m sorry you have that opinion, random player.

I am still having great fun every day. Plenty of roaming opportunities, plenty of guilds to battle in my timezone prime hours, and plenty of allies happy to team up if need be. And the roaming (at least in T2) is pretty balanced between the amount of condi players and power players.

Maybe you’ll find a server that operates more in line with your play schedule!

Or come to NA, where the WvW players aren’t blind potatoes like EU x3

Man, dont listen to this Turk guy, i moved my 2nd account to FA and basically they have max 20 on teamspeak on primetime and its all guild members (excluding reset).

NA is dead in t2 compared to EU…. i bet in t3-t5 as well. Every EU server at least has 40+ in teamspeak at every primetime. At least EU pugs run revenants, guardians and other useful specs (+ are on ts) instead of everyone being DHs and rangers like in FA..

They have people, but 0 organisation outside guild activity. Their guilds dont even communicate with open tag and their guilds raid on eb Their comms are horrible whiners also.

NA is on way worse position than EU at the moment, their guilds dont trust pugs and even when they run open they close the squad from them. The pugs dont join teamspeak and only skirmish around. I am not sure what NA t1 looks like though, but the t1 servers are closed so you cant get in anyways.

Only thing NA has going for them is that they have lot of different guilds, but that is only because it is dead outside guild activity. Their guilds are somewhat mediocre because that, they run right comp but they’re relatively bad compared to EU guilds where all casuals/slackers just stay outside guilds because its not necessary in EU to join a guild to get some action.

But yeah, leave Aurora Glade, its a horrible server, they are doing PPT the boring way, they dont even try to win the matchups and their commanders have too much ego to lose fights and keep the spirit up. They had 2 chances to go to t1 and become a real server, but they couldn’t even bother to try. They’re eternal t5 server.

Just dont go Gunnars Hold or SFR, those are the 2 servers you want to avoid if you want to experience real WvW where you try to win both fights and ppt.

Threather.9354:

Man, dont listen to this Turk guy, i moved my 2nd account to FA and basically they have max 20 on teamspeak on primetime and its all guild members (excluding reset).

NA is dead in t2 compared to EU…. i bet in t3-t5 as well. Every EU server at least has 40+ in teamspeak at every primetime. At least EU pugs run revenants, guardians and other useful specs (+ are on ts) instead of everyone being DHs and rangers like in FA..

They have people, but 0 organisation outside guild activity. Their guilds dont even communicate with open tag and their guilds raid on eb Their comms are horrible whiners also.

NA is on way worse position than EU at the moment, their guilds dont trust pugs and even when they run open they close the squad from them. The pugs dont join teamspeak and only skirmish around. I am not sure what NA t1 looks like though, but the t1 servers are closed so you cant get in anyways.

Only thing NA has going for them is that they have lot of different guilds, but that is only because it is dead outside guild activity. Their guilds are somewhat mediocre because that, they run right comp but they’re relatively bad compared to EU guilds where all casuals/slackers just stay outside guilds because its not necessary in EU to join a guild to get some action.

But yeah, leave Aurora Glade, its a horrible server, they are doing PPT the boring way, they dont even try to win the matchups and their commanders have too much ego to lose fights and keep the spirit up. They had 2 chances to go to t1 and become a real server, but they couldn’t even bother to try. They’re eternal t5 server.

Just dont go Gunnars Hold or SFR, those are the 2 servers you want to avoid if you want to experience real WvW where you try to win both fights and ppt.

Why is NA and EU population and activity so different?

Threather.9354:

I am not sure what NA t1 looks like though

I haven’t done wvw in a long while, but I was in tc for a bit. there were lots of people in teamspeak at primetime usually. the commanders are good, don’t whine for the most part, keep the spirit alive. other guilds usually didnt cooperate with pug zerg, and the pug zergs comp was usually really bad because everyone wanted to run their “special build” or whatever, which is fine but it really hurt when we faced competent bg hammer trains. tc could be number one if pugs stopped being selfish.

Server Links happen at the last friday of each even month (The only exception so far was December’s Re-link which were postponed 1 week due holidays). So I’m assuming the next will be at February 24th.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Threather.9354:

I am not sure what NA t1 looks like though

I haven’t done wvw in a long while, but I was in tc for a bit. there were lots of people in teamspeak at primetime usually. the commanders are good, don’t whine for the most part, keep the spirit alive. other guilds usually didnt cooperate with pug zerg, and the pug zergs comp was usually really bad because everyone wanted to run their “special build” or whatever, which is fine but it really hurt when we faced competent bg hammer trains. tc could be number one if pugs stopped being selfish.

You nailed it the pugs just get 1 pushed sooo fast. Don’t even think its their builds really, except maybe they can’t handle cleansing Condi’s.

Made the 1600 gems and moved from mag to TC hoping maybe people would try to make 3 decent servers out of this game. Of course all the guilds left, probably because of the rallybot pugs.

Not sure what to do now people just refuse to learn the game, its very discouraging.

World linking is flawed, unfortunately.
No one will bother, trying to climbing up with a Low ranked server, they would rather be on a linked server, in T1 or T2 in the EU at least.

Just look at the people who were on Vabbi before, unfortunately the Tier isn’t viable for many players.

displayname.8315:

Made the 1600 gems and moved from mag to TC hoping maybe people would try to make 3 decent servers out of this game. Of course all the guilds left, probably because of the rallybot pugs.

Not sure what to do now people just refuse to learn the game, its very discouraging.

that’s too bad, I wish I coulda warned ya earlier. tc has the numbers and some good people but something about the server itself attracts really stubborn people that refuse to adapt or cooperate at all whatsoever. I’m guessing some of them are just disillusioned vets that are trolo’ing around, but not many. imo its these people that ruin wvw the most. population wouldn’t matter to me, not even if I lost 100 battles in a row, if I knew that everyone was giving their all and the fights were good.

Threather.9354:

Man, dont listen to this Turk guy, i moved my 2nd account to FA and basically they have max 20 on teamspeak on primetime and its all guild members (excluding reset).

NA is dead in t2 compared to EU…. i bet in t3-t5 as well. Every EU server at least has 40+ in teamspeak at every primetime. At least EU pugs run revenants, guardians and other useful specs (+ are on ts) instead of everyone being DHs and rangers like in FA..

They have people, but 0 organisation outside guild activity. Their guilds dont even communicate with open tag and their guilds raid on eb Their comms are horrible whiners also.

NA is on way worse position than EU at the moment, their guilds dont trust pugs and even when they run open they close the squad from them. The pugs dont join teamspeak and only skirmish around. I am not sure what NA t1 looks like though, but the t1 servers are closed so you cant get in anyways.

Only thing NA has going for them is that they have lot of different guilds, but that is only because it is dead outside guild activity. Their guilds are somewhat mediocre because that, they run right comp but they’re relatively bad compared to EU guilds where all casuals/slackers just stay outside guilds because its not necessary in EU to join a guild to get some action.

But yeah, leave Aurora Glade, its a horrible server, they are doing PPT the boring way, they dont even try to win the matchups and their commanders have too much ego to lose fights and keep the spirit up. They had 2 chances to go to t1 and become a real server, but they couldn’t even bother to try. They’re eternal t5 server.

Just dont go Gunnars Hold or SFR, those are the 2 servers you want to avoid if you want to experience real WvW where you try to win both fights and ppt.

He showed his cliche FA attitude in his post. You’re not known/belong to a guild on FA you will get treated like trash, just the way they are. You’ll see the FA spokesperson come on here soon telling everyone how great FA is, don’t worry. She can’t resist

Stand The Wall.6987:

displayname.8315:

Made the 1600 gems and moved from mag to TC hoping maybe people would try to make 3 decent servers out of this game. Of course all the guilds left, probably because of the rallybot pugs.

Not sure what to do now people just refuse to learn the game, its very discouraging.

that’s too bad, I wish I coulda warned ya earlier. tc has the numbers and some good people but something about the server itself attracts really stubborn people that refuse to adapt or cooperate at all whatsoever. I’m guessing some of them are just disillusioned vets that are trolo’ing around, but not many. imo its these people that ruin wvw the most. population wouldn’t matter to me, not even if I lost 100 battles in a row, if I knew that everyone was giving their all and the fights were good.

Guess I’ll go back to using link servers that’s the last time I invest in a expensive server. Would be cool to link up with FA and take on mag/BG, but they don’t want T1 probably couldn’t handle the skill anyway.

TC and JQ not good enough either… hmm not much to chose from.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The next world link is February 24th.

You should merge the top 3 servers into Red, and the rest of the world divided into the other two. Then we’ll have an epic WvW. Balance would be achieved!

Not to mention the lag…

Highly doubt you see much queue problems on all 4 maps. Unless your one of the people who refuses to play on borderlands shouldn’t be a problem.

That said one single tier is probably not the way to go. Maybe 2 tiers, 3 at the most.

I still miss the 8 tiers. In server linking the blobs got bigger and the small groups…mostly disappeared.

Rambitshouse.8712:

Threather.9354:

Man, dont listen to this Turk guy, i moved my 2nd account to FA and basically they have max 20 on teamspeak on primetime and its all guild members (excluding reset).

NA is dead in t2 compared to EU…. i bet in t3-t5 as well. Every EU server at least has 40+ in teamspeak at every primetime. At least EU pugs run revenants, guardians and other useful specs (+ are on ts) instead of everyone being DHs and rangers like in FA..

They have people, but 0 organisation outside guild activity. Their guilds dont even communicate with open tag and their guilds raid on eb Their comms are horrible whiners also.

NA is on way worse position than EU at the moment, their guilds dont trust pugs and even when they run open they close the squad from them. The pugs dont join teamspeak and only skirmish around. I am not sure what NA t1 looks like though, but the t1 servers are closed so you cant get in anyways.

Only thing NA has going for them is that they have lot of different guilds, but that is only because it is dead outside guild activity. Their guilds are somewhat mediocre because that, they run right comp but they’re relatively bad compared to EU guilds where all casuals/slackers just stay outside guilds because its not necessary in EU to join a guild to get some action.

But yeah, leave Aurora Glade, its a horrible server, they are doing PPT the boring way, they dont even try to win the matchups and their commanders have too much ego to lose fights and keep the spirit up. They had 2 chances to go to t1 and become a real server, but they couldn’t even bother to try. They’re eternal t5 server.

Just dont go Gunnars Hold or SFR, those are the 2 servers you want to avoid if you want to experience real WvW where you try to win both fights and ppt.

He showed his cliche FA attitude in his post. You’re not known/belong to a guild on FA you will get treated like trash, just the way they are. You’ll see the FA spokesperson come on here soon telling everyone how great FA is, don’t worry. She can’t resist

Not sure how you got that. Pretty much stated the opposite with “plenty of allies to team up with.”

But OK, it’s obvious you’ve been thoroughly tushy troubled once, and it seems to have stuck with you all this time. I’d still help you out in the borderlands if I saw you in need of assistance, even if you are this salty towards a whole server.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The next world link is February 24th.

You all previously mentioned shortening the links to 1 month, any news on that?

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

I still miss the 8 tiers. In server linking the blobs got bigger and the small groups…mostly disappeared.

It has little to do with linking. Everything about HoT killed all incentive to play with small groups. Literally, every single facet of small-group gameplay was systematically either removed or destroyed.

The linking just exacerbates the problem because the few dedicated groups that run in the name of a server (this is way fewer than you think; most small-scale groups have extensive legacies of transferring to get better fights) are given even less of a reason to bother.

I see small groups but they seem too busy ganking and running from fights to do what your talking about.

Could you elaborate on what incentives are lost? The +5 supply? If they are at all serious should have that buff by now.

You see those groups because the actual small-scale scene is dead and what’s left are mostly just ganking scumbags who think their 5v1’s are great play. Most of the organized small-scale scene strictly left the game with HoT. It’s why numbers were down even before links.

Since you’re really asking for examples, though:

- Terrible small-group game/profession balance made small-scale combat itself just not fun.

- HoT gear powercreep.

- DBL prohibiting small-group effectiveness due to slow flips and favoring defense.

- Time-based auto-upgrades negating havoc effort (it’s back to yaks but still problematic for taking towers with small groups due to free supply without consequence favoring defenders).

- Extra bonuses to defense via guild buffs to stacked or PvE guilds.

- Siege effectiveness changes favoring larger groups/hurting smaller ones.

- Nerfs to guild siege.

- Watchtower effect reducing need for distributed networks of players enforcing bigger blobs and preventing small groups from slowly contesting and flipping objectives.

- The cost of scribing/ +5 supply being locked behind 3-5k gold.

- Sentry area reveal increasing map traversal speed or denying free movement from blobs/other larger groups.

- Boon buffs/amplification.

- Profession/gear design tweaked into no-risk, no-penalty builds forcing numbers games/denying most out-play win potential due to the nature of builds.

- Worsening server lag out of consequence for large blob fights occurring elsewhere due to the HoT powercreep and for reasons above causing lost skirmishes where effective skill use is critical.

… the list just keeps going on and on.

Links just exacerbate these issues but give the appearance WvW is healthier than it is. Really, though, server loyalty means far less than so many give it credit for. I mean, look at all the issues rising around match manipulation/transfers in T1 today. People just move where the grass is greener and always have and will. Links themselves aren’t the cause of the omniblob problem; omniblobs exist because the 20+ players running organized small-scale on a map before are no longer playing for the reasons above, and the only ones left who play WvW are zerglings looking to ktrain/PvD for lootbags, which lets the comm on a queued map get another 20 followers instead of people going to run havoc and the likes.

Which of course makes the lag worse and makes small-scale groups even less effective and less-interested in playing the game.

People transferred constantly before linking. Blobs got bigger because of HoT killing off small group efficacy in every way possible.

World linking just doesn’t work. WvW always had an inherent and structural problem with population imbalance since the beginning. Some say, we should do away with servers entirely and implement a guild alliance system of sorts.

Also, a critical problem that drove players away is simply profession balance and OP elite specs. It drove me away from wvw for a while. Thanks to HoT, large groups are just infinitely more powerful than before. Small groups don’t even have a chance. Fights aren’t as fun as before. Nobody wants to be condi’d and kited to death.

Imo. We need to merge some servers. Might help address in game lag too.

Interesting discussion. I believe a contributing reason to why the NA servers are in such a worse state compared to their EU counterparts is because the play times with high activity are spread out.

The EU servers are so curated in that the vast majority of action takes place during or near EU prime. There’s no guessing game of when you need to log on to get a slice of the action. Players and guilds that run during what’s considered “offhours” on an EU server find themselves alone and many have eventually found their way over to the NA servers. Players on NA servers on the other hand come from a much more diverse pool of time zones. Even looking at just the United States, you have four different time zones in the contiguous 48 states (six if including all 50). This is simply too much ground to cover, and when factors like these build off of a negative sentiment towards HoT, perceived lack of support for WvW, and minimal communication, it’s no wonder such a stark contrast exists.

In my view pairing servers together was and still is but a temporary Band-Aid to the declining WvW population. I think the forced lockout of transfers to “stacked” servers is doing a good job of firmly pressuring NA players to distribute themselves more evenly, and I also think skill balance is in a better spot that many people would like to give ArenaNet credit for (this coming from one of the biggest advocates of Mesmer boon sharing!).

Alas, what the NA WvW scene needs more than anything right now is the room to focus. Identify certain hours where guilds from east and west coast and all in between can come together and play. Create or designate existing servers as Asia/Oceanic regions (even if they’re physically located in the same server cluster as NA) so those players can do the same. Healthy and consistent competition is the way forward here, and if the NA player base are unable to foster it themselves, I look to ArenaNet to build that lattice for us so we can grow.

FOKOZUYNEN.8206:

When it will be another World Linking or there will be another one?

Just because atm is like couple of good months that we dont win a match Aurora Glade. No point to put upgrades on keeps or towers no point to siege because we have only blob match so no point for doing that no point for spending gold and i make gold from gems and gems with real money. Want money solve the problem otherwise well i will just get bored probally doing nothing.

Anet should stop all links and let the servers fall where they may.

It’s been long enough for this failed experiment.

WvW is the only mode of play where things are taken from us (tourneys, choices of servers, smooth gameplay) and ignored compared to the rest of the game.

Skill lag or something far worse is now happening on a regular basis.

Colors of camps can be wrong and often are.

Icons go missing until a restart – and sometimes that doesn’t fix any of the above.

Scores are misreported per client, one sees a wrong score yet another standing next to them sees the score normally.

DeceiverX.8361:

You see those groups because the actual small-scale scene is dead and what’s left are mostly just ganking scumbags who think their 5v1’s are great play. Most of the organized small-scale scene strictly left the game with HoT. It’s why numbers were down even before links.

Since you’re really asking for examples, though:

Snip………

Most of your list seems to be about no-skill players unable to handle a fight. I don’t even have HoT and do OK with the custom builds I make. 1v1 is still plenty of fun, even number fights are good if you have PvP’ers involved.

It really comes down to “do you have rallybots on your team?”. I don’t know about +5 supply costing 5000 gold maybe someone else could weigh in on that. Its PPT stuff and don’t really care about it.

I don’t attack DBL as a solo roamer/fights zerger but will defend it when on red team, its gotten a lot better.

Other than that you seem upset about lag and greater numbers having an advantage, this is nothing new and not an HoT issue.

Your first sentence said it all.. people just want EZ wins, or run around in a K-train like they do in PvE. They get mad and quit if they die… not many want to actually wage war and improve.

You asked why, I gave you the reasons, coming from someone who solely played WvW for small-scale fighting for several years. And doing “OK” in a 1v1 on a core spec (undefined with different viability measures per profession and based on its opponents) is very different from performing in small groups of < 10. I do “well” on a core signet D/D + S/D thief which is arguably one of the worst builds in the game bytoday’s standards, and you know why? Because the skilled small-group play just isn’t here. Most “roamers” these days are/were second-or-third-rate players who got huge power spikes that lowered the skill floor for their professions with HoT and think they’re amazing now that they’re also winning some fights because the real competition got up and left.

And unless you want to disagree with an overwhelming majority of the top-tier players in the game, HoT’s profession content is poorly-designed and not fun to participate in. Toker himself wrote a lengthy thread on these very forums which essentially stated that he doesn’t actually enjoy the game because of it and only plays for the money at this point. And I would be very interested in seeing you beat out the top players in the world and call them rallybots, just saying.

The thing was, small-scale used to not be a numbers game. Hell, even large-scale wasn’t a numbers game – go look up guild Red Guard WvW videos – they win frequently when outnumbered two or three to one. Arguably at one point more mechanical skill was involved while skirmishing in WvW than in sPvP (obviously missing the macro game element that sPvP has which pretty much defines good players from poor ones there with a very different meta and strategy foreign to manny WvW players). An organized group of five running off-meta builds could take on ten or more if they were good and coordinated. I had numerous encounters with my old guild in which we fought groups of 15 or more and won with no more than six, and I still played my terrible off-meta thief build in a group in which nobody ran even close to the meta.

What’s left of WvW wants easy wins. Rewards got half-decent. Legendaries are locked behind reward tracks for the GoB to help entice PvE players who really just don’t care about the mode to play. My guild, like many other small-scale guilds has transferred down tiers numerous times – I’ve been on almost every server on NA at this point – just to keep the fights even-numbered and interesting. There was often an esteem where the lower-tier (T3-T6) servers had better players just because the existence of blobs was negligible outside of reset and that the bulk majority of players in the lower tiers ran smaller, skilled organized groups. This is why Mag still is riding the whole “skilled-play” hype years later in T1 with a weird obsession with KDR even though it’s really no longer why the server built a reputation; it was the best small-scale server some years ago with a profound K:DR in its early years from good players, and intentionally kept itself locked in T3 and under to keep the fights good. It could have pushed to T2 and maybe even with momentum T1 multiple times, but it didn’t, because the bulk if its players didn’t want to move up and fight ktrains and be associated with the blobbiness of the high tiers, because while 5 can kill 10 semi-organized ones or 15 disorganized ones, 5 can’t kill 30 organized players. A lot of the people on Mag currently are second-rate wannabes trying desperately to live in the shadows of their predecessors, and this transformation has been slowly happening for a bit over two years where some originals got bored and left to greener pastures, bringing out the toxicity and trolliness of many there, or bringing other such players to the server.

The lag is caused by blobs and largely also from HoT enabling skills which flood requests to the server like mini-DDOS’s every time a massive fight happens. Without a buffer of small groups not participating in blobs, more procs bounce off each other all at the same time. Queues didn’t get increased, populations are lower than ever, and the blobs at times are no bigger than how they were in T1 years ago when the lag lasted only a few seconds. This explanation was also provided some years ago on reddit by a game programmer who said the small spikes T1 was experiencing weren’t fixable without profession review as a consequence; and it’s just been exacerbated since the expansion.

^
Just a couple points want to respond to..

The “top players in the world” of course aren’t rallybots.

Small scale is/was a numbers game when your talking about equal skill. Winning fights against 3x your numbers? That’s called farming newbies. Take gvg for example, its around 15 – 20 equal fights. I’d like to see a gvg go 20 v 50 equal skill, see how quick they die.

I personally don’t notice lag unless its large groups from all 3 servers all fighting at once. More a 150-250 player map cap issue.

I’d love it if they blew up the servers and encouraged lower map caps but its usually a playable game at least. Anyways we agree people don’t play wvw for the battles much anymore. Way less willing to learn true wvw player vs player.