Guild Wars 2

Simple thought that others have mentioned:

i.e.
If we have 3 tiers of servers. Why not make 3 alliances?

Allliance #1:
-Server in 1st tier that is usually first place
-Server in the 2nd tier that is usually second place
-Server in the third tier that is usually third place

Alliance #2:
-Server in the 1st tier that is usually second place
-Server in the 2nd tier that is usually in third place
-Server in the 3rd tier that is usually in 1st place

Alliance #3:
-Server in the 1ist tier that is usually in third place
-Server in the 2nd tier that is usually 1st place
-Server in the 3rd tier that is usaully 2nd place

Then every month (after 3-4 of the current weekly sessions) the alliances change. A final ‘worthwhile’ reward can be given at the end of each month depending on how your alliance places. As long as the reward for 1st place is good enough (maybe a 3 day-1 week boost in MF/crafting/generic stuff + boosters (or something you can only buy through gems) + a worthless title of some kind or status u can use for bragging rights.

Most people don’t have much of a connection to their servers anyways. People are always fraternizing with the enemy when I play WvW….selling out their home BL. Not enough people care about BL pride and there isn’t enough population most of the time. I don’t see any reason NOT to merge. Other than the fact that eternal is gonna be in que most of the time unless they find a way to increase player capacity….the other 3 bl will be full for once though as they were originally intended to be. I consider that a win even if they can’t increase eternal’s population limits. Besides if we have full servers most of the time it will allow for a system that makes sure we don’t have the entire maps flipping back and forth based on each server’s zerg times. Since it will be able to assign stricter limits on the number of players from each server allowed on each map.

More players for everyone’s WvW experience would allow the mode to overcome alot of it’s ‘problems’ and become something much greater than it currently is. It opens up a ton of potential for the gamemode. Especially for future features should anet decide to make any.

Because there’s a lot of people that DO care about their servers, and the communities that have been built there, and are only playing the game because of said community. And if said community was broken up, there would be a lot of people that would have no reason left to play the game at all.

Then you would be left with the same community the EotM has. None. There would just be a few groups doing their own thing. Communication and coordination would become much more difficult. Then you’d have a lot of rage flying around, because no one cares about anything other than their own enjoyment, and screw everyone else that happens to be on the same map. Which would drive more players out.

It would be a disaster. Sure, it may give the illusion that there’s a lot of people, but that illusion would be completely superficial. It’s the same as doing champ trains in PvE. Those aren’t social situations. It’s a ton of silent people who just happen to be standing next to each other at the same time. It would just create the same environment as a NY subway. Driving more players out.

Any atempts to try to recreate an actual community feeling would only create even more problems. Spies and saboteurs would be running around in overwhelming numbers, which would only ramp up paranoia and finger pointing. Creating a thoroughly toxic environment overall. Driving more players out.

Oh, and Anet wouldn’t be able to make truck loads of money from people buying gems to server hop, and they’ve proven over the years that anything that negatively affects their bottom line, even if it’s just by a couple of bucks, goes against everything they stand for.

So that’s several reasons why it would be a very bad idea to implement alliances, or a megaserver system. If you think things are empty now, removing the community element would absolutely KILL what’s left of WvW.

The issue that EBG is already full a lot of the time in mid tiers. Combining everyone would mean a 200+ queue to EBG all the time. I’ve seriously never seen an army in BLs, even when EBG had a long queue; people aren’t going to BLs while waiting for the EBG queue – they might be waiting in LA or playing in EotM, but they certainly aren’t in the BLs…

And what’s that about server pride dissipating? You wouldn’t want to say that to the face of an Ehmry Bay player, oh no. We always pay our debts. Hear us roar!

Phantom.8130:

Because there’s a lot of people that DO care about their servers, and the communities that have been built there, and are only playing the game because of said community. And if said community was broken up, there would be a lot of people that would have no reason left to play the game at all.

But with server alliances the community isn’t broken up.

Phantom.8130:

Because there’s a lot of people that DO care about their servers, and the communities that have been built there, and are only playing the game because of said community. And if said community was broken up, there would be a lot of people that would have no reason left to play the game at all.

Well I don’t think the lower tier servers will share your sentiments. You might get a little more sympathy from mid tier. But your basically advocating for the top tier. Which is fine, your opinion is still valid and noteworthy. Just it’s the needs of the few over the needs of the many.

We could always have each Bl keep their tags so they are differentiable from their allies and enemies alike. I mean it would possibly lead to alot of elitism though from the higher tier servers, picking on the lower tier server in their alliance. So I think that should be an optional thing that people can enable if they really want to show BL pride. That would make everyone happy. Anyone who doesn’t want their Bl known while they are running around, doesn’t have to have it visible.

The fact so many clans and people change servers just to get the better WvW experience is proof enough that ‘BL pride’ is a learned behaviour. Meaning with an alliance system, people would just as easily develop ‘alliance pride’ for lack of a better term.

I would even argue that for alot of BL, this kind of alliance system would help create ‘BL pride’. It would give good wvw guilds and players from the lower tier/population servers really good PR.

I mean picture a WvW where you are fighting alongside your ‘normal’ fellow members in a large scale keep siege. The enemy maguuma reinforcement zerg has been routed and is being fought in the valley by your allies from the shiverpeaks. Your guild from ‘crystal desert’ (for the sake of argument) is leading the assault on the enemy keep, which is protected by elite guild squads from ‘ehmry bay’. Out of nowhere a band of enemy ‘darkhaven’ decloak from the rear and start hammering against your flank. Your stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the fringe of falling apart and being wiped out, your allies from the Jade quarry show up and flank the darkhaven horde. They quickly setup ballistas from the hilltop and start laying heavey fire on the DH ranks, creating chaos in their ranks. Allowing you time and an opening to reorganize and charge through, destroying the Darkhaven center ranks, leaving the rest a confused and disoriented rabble. A bloodbath ensues and bodies starting piling all around you. Darkhaven is wiped. You and Jade quarry start cheering, and proceed to attack the enemy keep together. Just as you are about to bring down the keep wall, you learn that your allies from the shiverpeaks are in trouble in the valley, so you send yourself along with two squads of guildies to help. Help arrives in time and shiverpeaks are able to hold the line. The shiverpeaks thanks you for your help and you all cheer and glout together. But then suddenly flames and arrows rain down on your positions, the shiverpeaks commander standing next to you is set on fire and downed. You look up to see an elite and highly organized guild you never heard of from ‘eredon terrace’ standing on the cliff above your position. They come out of nowhere and start jumping down from the surrounding cliffs. The shiverpeaks general is immediately killed by the concussive force of a warrior that jumps down from the cliff followed by the rest of the enemy group. You immediately jump back and issue orders to your outnumbered and disoriented guildies to form up. You move to the shiverpeaks Teamspeak and take over command of both groups. But it’s too late! The enemy is already ontop of the disoriented shiverpeaks players. They start laying waste to the shiverpeaks and your guild parties. Stuck in a valley and surrounded by natural barriers, the battle is quickly decided. The last victim/survivor of your alliance (from shiverpeaks lets say), gets to his feet and he shouts “Who are you!?!?! How..HOW! WE are the elites of shiverpeakss! You are NOBODY! You will DI—-”. The leader of the eredon terrace guild plants his guild’s flag through the guy’s heart. After taking a brief moment to reflect on the battlefield and the bodies of the fallen, the eredon commander gets a call that the guild group from Ehmry Bay is on the edge of being wiped out at their keep by your Crystal Desert forces. Then we close the cinematic with a retracting camera shot from above, showing battles occuring all over the map with squads large and small fighting all over. That zooms out until the entire Borderlands map is visible with fire and explosive effects occurring at the fortification icons.. And that will be Gw2’s new PR trailer

Srsly though, if anet does it right, it won’t detract from BL pride. It will create situations like above where Bl’s have an even better chance of making a name for themselves. You will be 1 of 9 borderlands fighting. You will NOT be a group of random people fighting 2 other groups of random people This is a chance to make a name for your guild, and your borderland.

Or you know, if your happy just fighting the same 2 other borderlands each week. By all means, continue to advocate against change. Keep the majority of servers from experiencing the kind of pride and experiences you seem to be enjoying. Just don’t complain when everyone starts server hopping. Unless your server is one of the top 3, you too will become a victim of server hopping and your bl pride will…probably have a ‘name change’.

Cerby.1069:

Phantom.8130:

Because there’s a lot of people that DO care about their servers, and the communities that have been built there, and are only playing the game because of said community. And if said community was broken up, there would be a lot of people that would have no reason left to play the game at all.

Well I don’t think the lower tier servers will share your sentiments. You might get a little more sympathy from mid tier. But your basically advocating for the top tier. Which is fine, your opinion is still valid and noteworthy. Just it’s the needs of the few over the needs of the many.

We could always have each Bl keep their tags so they are differentiable from their allies and enemies alike. I mean it would possibly lead to alot of elitism though from the higher tier servers, picking on the lower tier server in their alliance. So I think that should be an optional thing that people can enable if they really want to show BL pride. That would make everyone happy. Anyone who doesn’t want their Bl known while they are running around, doesn’t have to have it visible.

The fact so many clans and people change servers just to get the better WvW experience is proof enough that ‘BL pride’ is a learned behaviour. Meaning with an alliance system, people would just as easily develop ‘alliance pride’ for lack of a better term.

I would even argue that for alot of BL, this kind of alliance system would help create ‘BL pride’. It would give good wvw guilds and players from the lower tier servers really good PR.

I mean picture a WvW where you are fighting alongside your normal fellow members in a large scale keep siege. The enemy maguuma reinforcement zerg has been routed and is being fought in the valley by your allies from the shiverpeaks. Your guild from ‘crystal desert’ is leading the assault on the enemy keep, which is protected by elite guild squads from ‘ehmry bay’. Out of nowhere a band of enemy ‘darkhaven’ decloak from the rear and start hammering against your flank. Your stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the fringe of falling apart and being wiped out, your allies from the Jade quarry show up and flank the darkhaven horde. They quickly setup ballistas from the hilltop and start laying heavey fire on the DH ranks, creating chaos in their ranks. Allowing you time and an opening to reorganize and charge throug, destroying the Darkhaven center ranks, leaving the rest a confused and disoriented rabble. A bloodbath ensues and bodies starting piling all around you. Darkhaven is wiped. You and Jade quarry start cheering and proceed to attack the enemy keep together. Just as you are about to bring down the keep wall, you learn that your allies from the shiverpeaks are in trouble, so you send yourself along with two squads of guildies to help. Help arrives in time and shiverpeaks are able to hold the line. The shiverpeaks thanks you for your help and you all cheer and glout together. But then suddenly flames and arrows rain down on your positions, the shiverpeaks commander standing next to you is set on fire and downed. You look up to see an elite and highly organized guild you never heard of from ‘eredon terrace’. They come out of nowhere and start jumping down from the surrounding cliffs. The shiverpeaks general is immediately killed by the concussive force of a warrior that jumps down from the cliff followed by the rest of the enemy group. They start laying waste to the shiverpeaks and your 2 parties. The battle is quickly decided. The last victim/survive of your alliance (from shiverpeaks lets say), gets to his feet and he shouts “Who are you!?!?! How..HOW! WE are the elites of shiverpeakss! You are NOBODY! You will DI—-”. The leader of the eredon terrace guild plants his guild’s flag through the guy’s heart. After taking a moment to reflect on the battlefield and the bodies of the fallen, the eredon commander gets a call that the guild group from Ehmry Bay is on the edge of being wiped out at their keep by your Crystal Desert forces. Then we close the cinematic with a retracting camera shot from above, showing battles occuring all over the map with squads large and small fighting all over. That zooms out until the entire Borderlands map is visible with fire and explosive effects occurring at the fortification icons.. And that will be Gw2’s new PR trailer

Srsly though, if anet does it right, it won’t detract from BL pride. It will create situations like above where Bl’s have an even better chance of making a name for themselves. You will be 1 of 9 borderlands fighting. You will NOT be a group of random people fighting 2 other groups of random people This is a chance to make a name for your guild, and your borderland.

Or you know, if your happy just fighting the same 2 other borderlands each week. By all means, continue to advocate against change. Keep the majority of servers from experiencing the kind of pride and experiences you seem to be enjoying.

The main issue with your suggestion (and the cinematic) is population limits per map. That many organized groups (and battles) means quite a few people, and even EBG doesn’t seem to allow for battles quite that impressive. It’s not the kind of idea that I would say is terrible (it actually happens in Edge of the Mists already), but while some people might be happy to fight alongside each other, I’m sure others would be less inclined to enjoy it. The issue is that Anet will need to improve their servers and map populations first.

But if you’re happy enough to merge everyone into three big alliances, and you don’t have a high server loyalty… you could always join the high or mid tiers yourself. If everyone in lower tiers feels the same way, and they all move up to mid tier, we’d have mid tier moving up in numbers and scores until they could probably compete with high tiers.

Then again, who knows? Maybe that kind of thing – but modified – is part of the upcoming WvW update?

Cerby.1069:

snip

I’m on TC. We worked out kitten off to cultivate the community we have there. I’ve seen first hand what happens when large chunks of several servers are suddenly thrust together. We had that happen. Twice. There’s a lot of tension. Cultures clash. People that enjoyed the culture and identity that was originally cultivated get increasingly frustrated watching it fade away, and then they end up fading away. Bad blood ensues, because every server thinks that their way is the right way. However, their way is only the right way for their particular server, their particular culture, their particular identity.

While is sounds great on paper, and believe me I had a similar idea a few years back when the seasons were happening, it doesn’t go nearly as well in practice. Unless you’re talking about just making one GIANT WvW, where every server has their own map, and is all involved in the same single match. Then identities can still remain unique.

However, that still doesn’t change the other issues I raised. Communication and coordination would still be difficult. Spying would still be rampant. Elitism would be very present. And Anet would never do anything that would impact their profits. And that last one is the ONLY thing that really matters, in all honesty. Anet and NCSoft have proven over the years that the ONLY thing they care about is money. We’re not people to them. We’re numbers with wallets. They couldn’t care less about our enjoyment of the game, or even the quality of the game. They care about getting out money. Nothing more. They do PR spin to try to trick people into thinking they care, but their actions consistently prove that it’s ONLY about money. Unless you can figure out a way to monetize an alliance or megaserver system, and make it more profitable than what the current transfers are bringing in, it’s never going to happen.

Edit in response to your edit: And there’s been a massive amount of guilds server hopping since Anet made transfers free shortly after launch. EVERY server has already been deeply affected by it. It’s not “something that might start happening”. It’s something that’s already been happening left and right for 3 years.

Phantom.8130:

snip

Your belief that Anet is a money-grubbing developer who doesn’t give a kitten about ever changing WvW, is very convenient for your argument to resist change of any kind. I’m going to dream though. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt for the sake of the future. I’m going to offer them ways to bring everyone the same level of experiences you seem to be enjoying in your server. By all means, advocate for people to simply server hop to servers like your own or the top tier servers. The bottleneck effect will kill many servers and whatever pride they currently have. It will fill the population limits of many servers and lfg or coordination of any kind will become even more frustrating, keeping each server isolated (“server is full” you can’t join).

Then the majority of players (should they want to try or play WvW) will all have to move eventually and ‘assimilate?’ into new server ‘cultures’. But as long as your server and its pride…and ‘culture’, for some reason exempt from changes from mass immigration, remain, I guess that’s a win.

Anyways let’s stop plugging the thread and wait for others to give their opinion. I think we understand eachothers positions fairly clearly.

Cerby.1069:

Phantom.8130:

snip

Your belief that Anet is a money-grubbing developer who doesn’t give a kitten about ever changing WvW, is very convenient for your argument to resist change of any kind. I’m going to dream though. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt for the sake of the future. I’m going to offer them ways to bring everyone the same level of experiences you seem to be enjoying in your server. By all means, advocate for people to simply server hop to servers like your own or the top tier servers. The bottleneck effect will kill many servers and whatever pride they currently have. It will fill the population limits of many servers and lfg or coordination of any kind will become even more frustrating, keeping each server isolated (“server is full” you can’t join).

Then the majority of players (should they want to try or play WvW) will all have to move eventually and ‘assimilate?’ into new server ‘cultures’. But as long as your server and its pride…and ‘culture’, for some reason exempt from changes from mass immigration, remain, I guess that’s a win.

Anyways let’s stop plugging the thread and wait for others to give their opinion. I think we understand eachothers positions fairly clearly.

Dude. I checked your posting history. You got the game at launch, then left until the expansion came out. You have no idea what the current state of affairs are. Check my history. I’ve made countless suggestions for change and am currently working in one of the threads to redesign the Borderlands map into something people will actually want to play. I’ve been here a long time, and know the lay of the land. You should learn the reality of the situation you’re stepping into, and cut the rhetoric. The fact that you need to pull out numerous strawmen arguments to try to discredit me, and discredit what is universally accepted as common knowledge these days, and the fact that you’re acting like things that were commonplace in 2012 “may eventually happen” means that you need to take a step back and actually learn what the current state of affairs REALLY are. No amount of snarkiness is going to rewrite 3 years of history.

Look. The lower tiers have already been abandoned by nearly everyone that wanted out by mid 2013. The bulk of the people left there are there because they want to be there. They don’t like blob fights, and prefer things to be small scale. They’ve stated that countless times on these forums. You don’t speak for them. They speak for themselves. And have done so countless times while you were away. I suggest to step back, take some time to really learn what all has been going on while you weren’t here, and then come back with educated opinions about things. Because just trying to paint me out to be some big bad guy, because I’m actually aware of the situation, isn’t going to cut it.

A server = a collection of guilds and players

An alliance = a collection of guilds and players…. with another name

Having played on all tiers and currently residing in the middle, I agree with the OP’s perspective, though I don’t think implementation of such matchmaking should be based on just score, nor do I think the matchups should change so slowly.

Phantom raises good points. Communications issues would be pretty difficult to deal with if nothing else were to change. To create this kind of environment, WvW would need some substantial system changes. Matchmaking would still need to be decided by individual server performance on various metrics; total score, number of kills/deaths, objective flips, number of orange swords activated, population density graphing by time, PPT by time,, population heat-mapping, etc. Then an algorithm needs to be devised to try and optimize this and create a “balanced” match-up for color assignments. This way, if there’s a massive disparity globally, it can be resolved, instead of just +/- one tier.

There would need to be a server chat tab made available, server-only and guild-only commander tags, and various other things to try and cut down on communication conflicts.

Size is definitely another concern. We’d need much bigger map coverage/zones. These are other obstacles to account for differences is preferred playstyle.

That said, most of the people in the low tiers don’t necessarily like or dislike it. Most hardcore WvW players in the low tiers either jumped ship to other servers, or have since quit. The lowest of the low are so dead right now you might as well be playing slow PvE, which is why nobody goes into WvW despite the server PvE populations being reasonably high still.

Server pride is really just arbitrary at this point with megaservers. Half of the people you see out of WvW are going to be on other servers, and the only “reliable” people you’ll find are your own server-members, which you’ll notice stick with you time and time again as matches change.

I’m in Silver tier and I agree with Phantom’s first post.

Set up alliances and you’ll lose the bulk of your servers defenders.

People like the server role because of the community built around it.

Alliances relies too much on cliques and will turn many, many people off.

I suggest that they re-brand WvW.

Current WvW = Classic WvW – Server based & Uses Old Alpine BL

EotM = New WvW – Megaserver/Alliance based & Uses New Desert BL or EotM Map

I think the main problem is that you started with the topic as “why not?” rather than “why?”

As for the server pride thing, I am not sure whether or not people care for it or not, but I think that would require a bit more than just personal opinion and anecdotes.

Personally, I think the game has enough adequate tools for people merge servers on their own especially with so many servers being open; I just don’t think forcing a decision on behalf of people is that great of an idea. And if the lower tiers are as dead as some claim, wouldn’t that really just be a drop in the bucket?

I also don’t see why allowing people in the lowest tiers free or heavily discounted servers wouldn’t achieve a similar effect. In that case, anyone that doesn’t transfer is there by choice. Then again, personally, if I felt like moving myself, I wouldn’t really see that 400 gold as much of a barrier if I really cared.

Forcing changes on people is often a bad thing, even with good intentions. I’m sure someone at Arenanet thought it’d be a good idea to make the desert borderlands and keep it that way, and well….

I disagree, Jayne. I think the attitude was relevant a while ago before megaservers and when communities were larger, but at this point, when you start as a new player, you have no idea what server you’re on or what those communities entail.

On the converse to your statements, I would argue that you’d see fewer guild transfers based on ditching for greener pastures. Unless there’s a good community reason for the guilds to move to another server, there wouldn’t be much of a reason to switch. Yea, some could try and stacks the odds to win for a week, but if matchmaking is a smarter system (as I mentioned above), and more responsive than it is now, it’s unlikely the matchup would stay that way. And if a guild to move away is so substantial to impact a server negatively, that guild spent tons of money to move one way or another. Either the guild itself can’t sustain the lifestyle, or many of its players won’t be able to pay out of pocket to do so, fragmenting the guild, and creating new communities for the abandoned members to join in turn. Guilds will take hits from this, and then learn not to move frequently.

And if a prominent guild does still leave, at least WvW doesn’t become dead; the server sees a population loss but can still maintain its fighting presence by being helped by the rest of the servers. This way, the remaining WvW community has some cover while it tries to re-establish itself rather than just getting demoralized and spiraling until a crash.

I was on SoR at launch. So I’ve been there. If you’re not familiar, SoR was the best server for WvW in the game before the free transfer opportunities. It had a massive guild fallout, though, which devastated WvW presence and leadership for the server, creating a period of dead/no WvW activity, slowly leading it down to T8. It hasn’t recovered well since. Had there been other presence maintaining the maps for a little while during recuperation, the server would probably be doing well enough for itself, still.

This way, servers end up a bit more stable in regards to their prominent guilds and communities, and transfers become more about communities themselves than winning the PPT war or getting fights.

It also lets new players to GW2 hop into the game and get the best experience for WvW. I’ll be honest and say that a lot of WvW players are not or were not recently new, and a lot of them started playing when populations were generally higher. Think of yourself joining the game for the first time for this cool thing called WvW. You select a random server because they’re all labeled as having good populations (and most of the upper ones are full), try it out, and… nothing. There’s nobody there. That experience is probably alienating a large portion of potential WvW’ers, and probably part of the reason why we’re a small percentage of the player population in general. Given more opportunity to have new people get better WvW experiences, the format would likely be growing or maintaining it population instead of shrinking.

That’s why it’s not an easy fix, and it’d need a lot of careful planning and refinement to matchmaking to pull off. But I suspect this is really the only way to revitalize WvW for the future. Adding in gimmicks or rewards will just make it a theme-park experience that eventually causes the current players to churn and new ones to not join.

I want to kill other server players.. Not alliance with them. Most hate me anyways after trolling the forums so why would I want to fight next to any of them :P

Alliances will just bring every server troll and backseat commanders together on one map. I can see it now. Map chat would be pretty much equal to the toxic chat that happens now in pvp.

Sorry but I’m against any form of alliance because I’ve seen so many people come to my server, realize we don’t play the same way they do and they turn around to trash talk us.

Keep pushing for alliances.. It will just become EoTM.

If you’re from YB, and this trash talk occurred about a year ago, but sorry not sorry, it’s deserved. As of now, I have no idea.

Blatantly unfun “fighting” them when I was in T2/T3. :P

I kinda agree with the OP. There’s about 3 servers that actually plays as a community. All Other play more or less casual. In fact it’s imbalance cuz you can get 1 out of 3 on the low servers to actually play serious as the other 2 plays more or less meh…

Splitting into 3 mega groups instead of all these low playing servers might save WvW. Depends on the night battle as well & other problems WvW have. But having lots of ppl on all sides cant hurt.

How many of you pro-wvw-mega server posters in this thread actively defend for your entire wvw time?

I think this is key.

The spate of threads like these also feels like social engineering, in preparation for Anet’s “Big Announcement.”

Jayne.9251:

How many of you pro-wvw-mega server posters in this thread actively defend for your entire wvw time?

I think this is key.

The spate of threads like these also feels like social engineering, in preparation for Anet’s “Big Announcement.”

It is the key. & that’s the point. Lots of ppl are not into defending there server for lots of reasons. witch in turn leave WvW servers lacking players to defend. You cant force players to play. Reason why i say Op’s makes a good point on merging servers. I say into 3 mega groups would help.

Why not use the Desert Borderlands in EotM?

It already uses the Megaserver & Alliance system already.

Vieux P.1238:

Jayne.9251:

How many of you pro-wvw-mega server posters in this thread actively defend for your entire wvw time?

I think this is key.

The spate of threads like these also feels like social engineering, in preparation for Anet’s “Big Announcement.”

It is the key. & that’s the point. Lots of ppl are not into defending there server for lots of reasons. witch in turn leave WvW servers lacking players to defend. You cant force players to play. Reason why i say Op’s makes a good point on merging servers. I say into 3 mega groups would help.

I would love to hear how mega groups would solve the core problems in WvW. Stack onto 1 group to dominate the other two and pvd in the off hours. This would be almost the exact same situation we have now but we would be forced to fight with more randoms.

Vieux P.1238:

Jayne.9251:

How many of you pro-wvw-mega server posters in this thread actively defend for your entire wvw time?

I think this is key.

The spate of threads like these also feels like social engineering, in preparation for Anet’s “Big Announcement.”

It is the key. & that’s the point. Lots of ppl are not into defending there server for lots of reasons. witch in turn leave WvW servers lacking players to defend. You cant force players to play. Reason why i say Op’s makes a good point on merging servers. I say into 3 mega groups would help.

Beg to differ. Some of your server’s die-hard veterans, the ones that show up if you’re winning or losing, are your defenders.

Mega server them and they’ll just stop playing. And then you’ll get a giant ktrain group indistinguishable from your pve maps.

There’s a reason why people care about wvw. Mega server it and you’ll eliminate that attachment.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

Vieux P.1238:

Jayne.9251:

How many of you pro-wvw-mega server posters in this thread actively defend for your entire wvw time?

I think this is key.

The spate of threads like these also feels like social engineering, in preparation for Anet’s “Big Announcement.”

It is the key. & that’s the point. Lots of ppl are not into defending there server for lots of reasons. witch in turn leave WvW servers lacking players to defend. You cant force players to play. Reason why i say Op’s makes a good point on merging servers. I say into 3 mega groups would help.

I would love to hear how mega groups would solve the core problems in WvW. Stack onto 1 group to dominate the other two and pvd in the off hours. This would be almost the exact same situation we have now but we would be forced to fight with more randoms.

Hey 1 thing at a time. We always was forced to fight randoms. Nothing new!!! As for stacks or zergs, there always will be. But your saying if we do join all servers into 3 mega servers it would still be the same result where 1 server focus on playing & dominating. As for the other 2 are just casually playing. Well that’s the hole point of mega WvW servers. To make sure anoth players on each sides plays. To be honest, there’s not really any true solution. even 3 mega servers might not solve the problem. We might consider to settle for 2 mega groups.

Why not do both?

I personally don’t want an alliance or megaserver situation but I understand why it’s being suggested. So why not:

1. Keep EotM – it servers it’s purpose.
2. Keep EB as a central map for all 3 servers in a match up.
3. Restore Alpine (or new simple map) as server home borderlands (three maps just as normal).
4. Use Desert map with it’s current waypoint ownership for colour alliance play (with three maps, one for each colour alliance).

Everyone gets a chance to choose. See how it goes, and review after 3 months…

bloodletting wolf.2837:

I would love to hear how mega groups would solve the core problems in WvW. Stack onto 1 group to dominate the other two and pvd in the off hours. This would be almost the exact same situation we have now but we would be forced to fight with more randoms.

Well that’s the thing. There are so many core problems. The argument that full WvW servers only makes the issues ‘worse’ is representative of very fundamental flaws in the gamemode. Regardless though this thread is being kept on the issue of giving every server an equal WvW experience/opportunity and keep the population of all WvW servers high and healthy. The other problems can be fluently discussed in one of the other many threads.

Cerby.1069:

bloodletting wolf.2837:

I would love to hear how mega groups would solve the core problems in WvW. Stack onto 1 group to dominate the other two and pvd in the off hours. This would be almost the exact same situation we have now but we would be forced to fight with more randoms.

Well that’s the thing. There are so many core problems. The argument that full WvW servers only makes the issues ‘worse’ is representative of very fundamental flaws in the gamemode. Regardless though this thread is being kept on the issue of giving every server an equal WvW experience/opportunity and keep the population of all WvW servers high and healthy. The other problems can be fluently discussed in one of the other many threads.

I hate to break it to you but there will never be an equal WvW experience/opportunity for all servers or alliances even if it was changed to the sort of system you want.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

I hate to break it to you but there will never be an equal WvW experience/opportunity for all servers or alliances even if it was changed to the sort of system you want.

Why would there not be an equal experience/opportunity if everyone played on the same servers? Why? Explain that! Because of the current problems? That’s my point, they can be fixed/changed to accommodate higher populations. And by higher populations I mean the current population limits on every Wvw server. There’s no dire need to increase those although it would be of benefit.

So what? WvW is doomed to the current state? And the lower the population the less the problems? That’s the argument you have presented as far as I can tell. I don’t like repeating myself, but like I said this thread is about fixing 1 issue from which you can form a sound foundation to build and form/mold the rest of WvW onto.

There are no cheap fixes for WvW at this point, you must realize that. There needs to be overhauls. THis is the easiest overhaul to solve the server differential/population problems. Unless you can think of a better one, by all means enlighten me, that’s what this discussion is all about.

No thanks.
GFY

I read the OP’s suggestion on how to select the alliances the first week.

How do we move alliances or re-select the alliance members in the following week?

I take it some sort of “retention of old server rating” system would have to happen?

Are you proposing something like “servers fight for a selected map(EBG?) only each week, alliances fight for maps 1-X each week?”

I am very interested in the mechanics of the suggestion as a total removal of the existing servers may shed a few tragics like myself but may end up in the survival of wvw as a game mode.

For myself if SoS goes so likely do I but the game is more important, I can find others.