Guild Wars 2

Since they closed the comments from the thread.

The original post was
“Worlds Have been re-linked
Here are the worlds for EU:
• Far Shiverpeaks
• Desolation
• Piken Square, Fissure of Woe
• Seafarer’s Rest, Ruins of Surmia
• Gandara, Underworld
• Aurora Glade, Vabbi, Whiteside Ridge
• Gunnar’s Hold, Ring of Fire, Blacktide
• Kodash
• Riverside
• Elona Reach
• Drakkar Lake, Miller’s Sound
• Abaddon’s Mouth, Dazgonur
• Jade Sea, Fort Ranik
• Augury Rock, Arborstone, Vizunah Square
• Baruch Bay”

In general relinking is a horrible idea as it ruins the social side of the game. I am from UW and already got used to people from gunnar’s hold and ring of fire, started to know the names of players, identifying people. Now we will be paired with a server I haven’t even heard of.

Edit. I am not saying it’s wrong if it will solve any issues present in wvw (which I doubt it will), I am just gonna miss some people from GH and RoF.

Same here, im from WSR. We were linked to RoF (2 times) and SFR.

And now we are playing against both in an MU. We know them and it is no fun to play against earlier allies.

Slowly I lose the fun in wvw, it is just sad

Also before relinking I didn’t have 30+ queues on wvw, so that’s something I won’t like for sure.

Add on top of that the skill lag and you pretty much got yourself a recipe on how to definitely discourage players to play wvw.

I agree. I’m in SFR and it’s quite sad to see that we are against WSR.
I really liked the players from that server, and during the past months i become friend with some of them.
I’m not really sure if i want to fight them. After all, we were playing together not more than half hour ago.

I’m from RoF and couldn’t stand being linked with GH. Not necessarily the people there but our MUs in general…and surprise same link basically… now I might just do my own “relinking”

One way to maintain friendship and to avoid fighting against each other is transferring to the same server,

hopefully we can witness population balancing at work.

Peppel.9736:

Same here, im from WSR. We were linked to RoF (2 times) and SFR.

And now we are playing against both in an MU. We know them and it is no fun to play against earlier allies.

Slowly I lose the fun in wvw, it is just sad

I was from WSR too, and made alot of friends when paired with SFR. So right after the relink, I went ahead and transferred. No more horror everytime the pairings change!

Lord of Rings.5371:

One way to maintain friendship and to avoid fighting against each other is transferring to the same server,

hopefully we can witness population balancing at work.

I don’t understand these people who “hate to fight their friends”… I’m always up to punch my buddies because I know they will fight to death and not just flee on sight of danger like 90% of the players in this game do.

And it doesn’t make us less friends.

Tbh I think they should have axed another tier. GH and AG both had a triple link last time, and still hit rock bottom (AG even harder than GH). Now they both got a very similar link and probably even more frustrated players leaving, who were hoping to get linked to a bigger server.

Peppel.9736:

Same here, im from WSR. We were linked to RoF (2 times) and SFR.

And now we are playing against both in an MU. We know them and it is no fun to play against earlier allies.

Slowly I lose the fun in wvw, it is just sad

Speak for yourself, I’m still enjoying stomping every [FIRE] person I see and throwing rams on the odd few I blocked for complete incompetence. Yes those staff 1 spamming guards who literally stand there and watch you win a “2v3” then look gormless when a 4th person shows up and ganks you. Still pressing 1 they let you die, still pressing 1 they die.

@Falan, they can’t as they would have to do something with several (3-6)servers and if you link the rest of EU BB will have no-one to karma train all night when they wake up.

When are ANET going to wake up and scrap all servers to start again with 9 new ones? (4x EU, 2x FR, 2x GER, 1x SPN)

Whole system is just trash.

So many ‘false’ servers pops. Deso gets about 25ppl on ts on a good night, yet we’re somehow ‘Full’ – even though as the match-ups suggest, we’re heading to r10 as fast as we can. Whole system relies on ‘gutting’ servers until all thats left is Pugs and casuals.
We have 3/4 guilds left (at a push).

Let us ‘sign up’ to new servers and breath new life into WvW’s dead corpse. (Also time to delete EotM)

While you’re at it, maybe release some metrics on prime-time Desert Bl populations. That’ll give us all a good laugh. Or maybe we could have portable cannons back? Or even have one of those fun event weeks where instead of golems, everyone has to play with a dragon/turtle/centaur/slug banner ^^ Or how about Char car racing for funsies?

…. #lostfaith

Byron.1902:

So many ‘false’ servers pops. Deso gets about 25ppl on ts on a good night, yet we’re somehow ‘Full’

That’s because no one uses teamspeak on Deso. Not because you don’t have people. Just ask KISS.

Byron.1902:

So many ‘false’ servers pops. Deso gets about 25ppl on ts on a good night, yet we’re somehow ‘Full’ – even though as the match-ups suggest, we’re heading to r10 as fast as we can.

And for a server thats won about 95% of skirmishes for 6 or so weeks, you’re even doing a kittenpoor job at that.

And here we go… Dzabaddon all over again. x.x

Deso is a pug server, it never had that many guilds besides 3 years ago or 5 years ago, it seems most pugs left though and only come back if it get’s linked.

That’s the problem with links though, it’s only temporary.

this ridiculous stupid linking of worlds as pathetic “pseudo solution” for population problems will only end, if ANet makes finally the neccessary step to redesign WvW into a Faction based Game Concept, because only once Anet makes finally the needed step to get rid of “Servers” as Worlds they let fight against each other, over to an server independent system of 3 Factions which get their players shared among all servers.

Only then will anet completely solve the Ppopulation problem this game has since multiple years now …

The question is only…

Should players decide, to which Faction they want to belong permanently.
Or should players get put by rotation each week into a different Faction by random?

However, the poiunt stands – Anet must get away from their outdated Server System, because as long they stay on this outdated system, they will never solve the Population Problems and continue shifting the real issue around on a scale with their senseless Server linkings only and annoy with this the playerbase only more and more each time.

Orpheal.8263:

this ridiculous stupid linking of worlds as pathetic “pseudo solution” for population problems will only end, if ANet makes finally the neccessary step to redesign WvW into a Faction based Game Concept, because only once Anet makes finally the needed step to get rid of “Servers” as Worlds they let fight against each other, over to an server independent system of 3 Factions which get their players shared among all servers.

Only then will anet completely solve the Ppopulation problem this game has since multiple years now …

The question is only…

Should players decide, to which Faction they want to belong permanently.
Or should players get put by rotation each week into a different Faction by random?

However, the poiunt stands – Anet must get away from their outdated Server System, because as long they stay on this outdated system, they will never solve the Population Problems and continue shifting the real issue around on a scale with their senseless Server linkings only and annoy with this the playerbase only more and more each time.

Faction thing could be indeed the solution. Yet the maps may be too small. WvW population needs to bleed a little more (I’m being ironic here). That’s an issue with maps : they’re currently too big to keep that many servers : some feel empty and have no action. But they’re also too small to only have 3 factions.

And I think players should decide, mostly because of the “I want to play with my friends” thing.

Orpheal.8263:

this ridiculous stupid linking of worlds as pathetic “pseudo solution” for population problems will only end, if ANet makes finally the neccessary step to redesign WvW into a Faction based Game Concept, because only once Anet makes finally the needed step to get rid of “Servers” as Worlds they let fight against each other, over to an server independent system of 3 Factions which get their players shared among all servers.

Only then will anet completely solve the Ppopulation problem this game has since multiple years now …

The question is only…

Should players decide, to which Faction they want to belong permanently.
Or should players get put by rotation each week into a different Faction by random?

However, the poiunt stands – Anet must get away from their outdated Server System, because as long they stay on this outdated system, they will never solve the Population Problems and continue shifting the real issue around on a scale with their senseless Server linkings only and annoy with this the playerbase only more and more each time.

Or maaaaybe they should restrict server changes to once every half year? The main problem of the population is that so many bandwagoners are kittening up all MUs.

Links need to stop, WvW needs a reboot, cut EU down to 12 servers and lets get it on.

I would have wanted to see Desolation continue to be linked with Vabbi.

Without any linked server Desolation will be enjoying outnumbered till it drops to its proper tier. I hope it won’t take 7 weeks, like it took last time.

I don’t know the queue situation on other servers, but I think the “full” status currently is a BAD joke. Desolation is classified as “full”, yet at Friday reset we had queue just to 1 map (about 30-40 queue to EBG), while being outnumbered on home border. Yesterday evening prime time basically the same. 7 player queue to EBG and outnumbered on 2-3 other maps at same time. The EBG queue popped quick and then we had a “massive” 2 player queue to home border and outnumbered “buff” at EBG.

Seriously Arenanet? A full server should be able to fill at least 3 maps on a regular basis, otherwise it is NOT anywhere near full. Arenanet refuses to give WvWvW players better rewards (ascended, backpiece, fractal materials etc) and is trying to cover up the failing of this game mode by artificially lowering the population status numbers to ridiculous lows.

I remember the time when there was a queue to all 4 maps and that queue could last 2 hours, not 2 minutes….

If other “full” servers are in same situation as Deso, then I see just one alternative:
merge a LOT of servers permanently and reduce the total number of servers to 9-12. The current situation where the game mode is full/half empty most of the time is NOT fun for most players. 8 weeks of these low numbers is going to bleed yet more players.

Deniara Devious.3948:

I would have wanted to see Desolation continue to be linked with Vabbi.

Without any linked server Desolation will be enjoying outnumbered till it drops to its proper tier. I hope it won’t take 7 weeks, like it took last time.

I am glad Vabbi is unlinked from deso. It was just boring in the end. No one from deso on tag, rallybots all over the place. Deso got to many bad players who just wanna get carried because it was rank 1 in ladder and put no effort in winning some fights.

WvW has already died long ago due to poor management imo, and would like Anet to provide feedback on the way forward, and how they plan to resurrect an important part of the game. I don’t care for opinions give me some facts.

Anet just needs to change something about their system. The linking is a good idea, but the execution is quite poor.

For example: when deso is linked they’re top server for 6 weeks, now they’re unlinked they’re T5 material in top tier for 6 weeks. It’s somewhat difficult to put this into perspective to other server because people will always start mentioning quality/nightcapping etc. etc. (which I believe is a different issue: It’s difficult to find perfect 24/7 balance in any RvR game).
My point is simple: the linking system has some flaws, is too decisive and creates mainly instability.

I believe Anet should either change the linking periods to shorter times, or actually start merging some servers…

Hmm this thread must be lies people usually say EU is good and perfect while NA is junk and stupid.. EU not sound so good can’t be true.

EU is fine, apart from fact that X servers wanna fight and dont give a rats kitten about PPT, while other servers wanna PPT and avoid fights like a plague.

the non international servers dont really wanna fight and they should get linked with international servers.. so freaking boring having jade sea and abadon mounth or w/e server name is..
AM people if u dont hit em fast enough all way point away. yay i play WvW to WP if kitten hits the fan instead of trying to fight.
JS you never see them cus they will hop on w/e map has no resistance.

right now our server alone(fsp)
has more kills together then
AM + JS together so imagine how much fun these match ups are no1 wants to fight all they wanna do is go from tower/keep to next karma train

reddie: yeah ofc eu is fine, thats why so many eu players are complaining or just stopped playing.

Get your facts right, EU is broken and Serverlinking is one of the reasons why it is.

Actually id like to get few things straight:
1) t5 EU has had more kills than t4, t3,t2, it’s not dead there, its actually more alive than most of the EU servers, they just dont play outside daytime (which means daytime is even more active). Removing the servers is not the solution, because that would mean there would be multiple overstacked server with bad players.

2) The reason WvW is dying is because the players/commanders are getting worse.
Players getting worse might be due to HoT skillcap, which is hard for people to even break thro the average level in skills/gear, but yeah. But I think it might be due to disinterest to the gamemode itself so people still use their PvE gears (which were fine before HoT)
Commanders are getting worse due to guilds disbanding, guild leads not leading open raids etc etc, people not interested in joining guilds. The best balance would be if the players would be as good as the commanders, so the commander wouldn’t feel despair from everyone dying too fast and the players would actually follow the commander instead of afk at spawn
(there’s a few EU servers known for this, mostly national and deso/gandara)

3) people dont want to win anymore
The game has been going on for like 4-5 years(?), People who are on lower servers, know that it would take too much effort to even climb 1 or 2 tiers, so there’s no point. So PPT is neglected thus less PPT groups to fight. People are not used to PPT so they log out/afk after 1-2 towers. New commanders wont have a chance to get better because ALL good commanders have done a lot of ppt at some point.

Big text with a lot of things, necessary fixes would be most likely:

1) No linkings, make permanent servers with 1000 gem transfers to t3-4, 500 to t5 , lock t1 and t2. (this means all ppters stack to t1 and they get lower qualityfights, fightservers to t3 to allow transfers)

2) Remove empty desert border, it still doesnt have enough kills to varrant keeping it as WvW is dying.

3) Add ascended armor and make the max obtainspeed require PPT to remove the PPK mentality. Maybe way to do it would be to having amount of tokens to buy it limited separately from both PPT and kills so people have to PPT and kills things to get ascended armor faster, but they will still get it half as fast without another.

4) Remove half of the keep claim buff, nerf fortified gates, reduce shield gen bubble duration. Make siege do 100% more damage to other siege, because you already buffed siege hp by 100%, but you didnt do this. This is to reduce Siegebunkering and the “defending bonus”. Because the 400 stat + 25% Movement speed buff is worth more than difference between exotic-ascended. With presence of the keep its twice as much.

I tried to explain everything to the detail that everyone will understand the point but obviously the words are limited. Anet cant do much about people being bad or not wanting to win but they can solve most of the things like this.

Of course I could write a wall of text about how to fix class balance and other stuff., but yeah those i will save to another day or maybe dev will whisper me or something.

Vavume.8065:

Links need to stop, WvW needs a reboot, cut EU down to 12 servers and lets get it on.

T5 actually has blobs. Terrible blobs but blobs nonetheless. And only during prime time, dead all other times.

Bet anet makes good money off transfers, so linking is a success.

Linking servers is stupid. People just bandwagon around after every linking making the linked servers now half empty as half the people leave to bandwagon elsewhere.

Heather.4823:

Linking servers is stupid. People just bandwagon around after every linking making the linked servers now half empty as half the people leave to bandwagon elsewhere.

Without linking people just bandwagon around to whatever the top servers are.

It is almost as if the moment you make it possible for people to transfer to the “winning” group, they do.

PS: before you say “no transfers”, remember that people will purchase new accounts and/or delete all characters in order to effect this transfer, if necessary.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Heather.4823:

Linking servers is stupid. People just bandwagon around after every linking making the linked servers now half empty as half the people leave to bandwagon elsewhere.

Without linking people just bandwagon around to whatever the top servers are.

It is almost as if the moment you make it possible for people to transfer to the “winning” group, they do.

PS: before you say “no transfers”, remember that people will purchase new accounts and/or delete all characters in order to effect this transfer, if necessary.

Before the linking it cost a lot more gems for people to play T1 so they didn’t move as much. Now they just bandwagon to the linked server for 500 gems…

Putting prices of transfers up or limiting how often you can transfer a year might help

They should set the price to linked server to be same as the host server. Same goes with if host is full, linked sever should also be set as full.
I guess the idea was to even out players also to the linked server for some future change to how many servers there should be (or something), but reality became something else, just a cheap way of getting to a host server.

Heather.4823:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Heather.4823:

Linking servers is stupid. People just bandwagon around after every linking making the linked servers now half empty as half the people leave to bandwagon elsewhere.

Without linking people just bandwagon around to whatever the top servers are.

It is almost as if the moment you make it possible for people to transfer to the “winning” group, they do.

PS: before you say “no transfers”, remember that people will purchase new accounts and/or delete all characters in order to effect this transfer, if necessary.

Before the linking it cost a lot more gems for people to play T1 so they didn’t move as much. Now they just bandwagon to the linked server for 500 gems…

Putting prices of transfers up or limiting how often you can transfer a year might help

FWIW, WoW tried a range of approaches to this problem for both PvP, and for raiding. None of them worked, simply because people were willing to literally reroll to get to the desired server, if that was what it took.

It’s not a technical problem, it’s a people problem. Raise the gem price enough, people will be willing to buy a new account for the server. Make that not work, they will delete characters and reroll on the new server.

Can’t solve people problems like this with technology — you can either rebuild the technology so the problem literally cannot exist (eg: eliminate anything larger than a capped size guild allocated to a team in WvW, where that cap is much lower than the WvW population limit), or changing people (eg: make them believe that struggle is fun, or more rewarding, than stomping victory without challenge.)

I’d hold out more hope for redefining WvW away from the “world” part and into some approximation of a non-selectable clustering myself. Sure, it’s still somewhat abusable, but if you can’t control more than one percent of the allocation by picking which guild you are in or whatevs, that’s … better.

When you get two servers that they outnumber you on every map and anything you do is useless, that makes you think twice to play wvw or even gw2.

The linkings are totally unfair, in one month SFR had been linked with servers that triple our population, Riverside and now Abaddons and Piken Square. Come on, T1 – T2 servers in population vs us that a few weeks ago we were in t12! it is really unacceptable, unfair and totally overwhelming when you get these competition.

I dont like playing to get frustrated or angry, I play to have fun and that is not happening when you dont have people enough to fight them.

Something has to be done for sure! we had great ideas on this thread, I hope anet gets them into consideration.

just my 2ct: GET RID OF SERVERLINKING. it hurts..

@Threather I was in WSR which has consistently before linking been bronze, highest we got was fighting GH and RoF when GH lost KISS and cared so little for ppt they plummeted.

We had a regular WvW population and a lot of us liked it because there weren’t huge zerg fights. When an objective was tagged you had plenty of time to get there and defend a lot of the time and usually unless massively outnumbered nothing was lost till the final player died.

Honestly if the scoring changes had come before linking most of the small servers would have been fine for the 40 people who still played on them.

aiinseinn.5914:

just my 2ct: GET RID OF SERVERLINKING. it hurts..

What would you replace it with, then?

SlippyCheeze.5483:

aiinseinn.5914:

just my 2ct: GET RID OF SERVERLINKING. it hurts..

What would you replace it with, then?

Just delete some servers and move some players into a single server.
No need to make it complicated.

XgamerXgodX.9617:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

aiinseinn.5914:

just my 2ct: GET RID OF SERVERLINKING. it hurts..

What would you replace it with, then?

Just delete some servers and move some players into a single server.
No need to make it complicated.

Isn’t that the same as linking the servers?

Offair.2563:

Bet anet makes good money off transfers, so linking is a success.

They gave you an overhaul LOL

Jeknar.6184:

XgamerXgodX.9617:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

aiinseinn.5914:

just my 2ct: GET RID OF SERVERLINKING. it hurts..

What would you replace it with, then?

Just delete some servers and move some players into a single server.
No need to make it complicated.

Isn’t that the same as linking the servers?

Well, yes. For every practical purpose. Except that it is unchangeable. Plus, doesn’t stop transfers, so you just get a smaller number of less balanced servers.

Though, without a statement of which of the many problems caused by people they were trying to solve with this, we can only guess if it would solve that one individual issue in isolation, regardless of the other effects.

OK so my questions is, what are the chances of top 3 now FULL servers (FSP, Piken Square, Riverside) opening again in future linkup? Or are they overstacked already? Because basicly they will always be tier 1 matchups and have currently on them a very big number of former ‘bandwagoners’ that have stopped moving around smaller servers and have settled there for a long time. And there is very little competition for them outside the tier 1 matchup, so it is THE place for any serious WvW player to be in, but it is closed for transfer.

How does ArenaNet plane to solve this? Or have they not even thought about it.

IF YOU WANT to create a competitive enviroment for all or most of the players, just delete on or two bottom tiers and create such big linkups of all medium servers that they actually represent a serious WvW population and challenge the top 3 servers . Because matchups in lower tiers are just sad compared to higher tier and make look like YOUR game is dying but it is actually very alive, but you HAVE TO transfer higher and of course PAY GEMS.

Think about your game ArenaNet …

You are thinking with only you self in mind. You are an EB player and only want to run in big blobs. That is what is fun for you.
I almost never go to EB and prefer the small scale. So I have no need at all to be on a full/overstacked server. Lots of action for me in lower tiers.
And do you really think the “bandwagoners” have settled? Just need the smallest thing to trigger the flood to start again. Piken for example are now a linked server. Next time they won’t be and maybe won’t be as dominating when not and then there probably will be a new flavour of the month server.

Honestly I don’t like EB at all, it’s full of kitten s and random noobs and 3-way Stonemist fights with skill lag of 10 seconds and it is usually not enjoyable. If I can choose I usually go borderlands, alpine of course, where a big server vs server can happen without any skill lag or random rallybots kitten ing around. And yes, game was mostly designed to huddle into big groups and have big fights, if you wanna small scale go play PVP I guess your 5 vs 5 is ideal then. But it is true then in EB most of the time you can find a big group to fight with, so yes – most people go there. In primetime, I rather choose alpine before EB any time of day.

Lower tiers are slowly dying and will be dead in less then six months if no changes happen. Compared to higher tier, when a new player comes, he thinks this game mode is dead.

Thought you liked it since you spend most of your time there
Ah that old argument, was designed around big blobs. Skill lag when it happens talks against that though…
I remember when blobbing was seen as something bad, but that changed. My point was only to inform that not all players want the same thing.
I do agree that international servers like AG and GH are doomed (can’t say anything about national servers) and it’s sadly no turning back since majority of ppl want to be on the overstacked server and want to be carried by others.

I imagine Deso being linked to FoW next, Piken is overstacked, linking servers is such a mess.