Guild Wars 2

*UPDATE:- Apparently there’s a WvW Poll. For FC players who I’ve contacted (and anyone else who wants to vote) please vote here:-

https://feedback.guildwars2.com/en

Hope this works*

I wanted to make a post about how my gf and I currently feel about WvW server link.
Whilst we almost never post on the forums, we feel like the server links has caused a huge amount of concern for us. Whilst we would like to speak for our server, we will not as we of course do not speak for any of them but ourselves. Saying that, I would like to encourage our server, Ferguson’s Crossing, to voice their concern on this thread if they feel the same way.
I personally have huge faith that Anet does read these sort of posts to gain some sort of feedback. Please be warned, this is a long post.

First a little bit about my gf and I:—

- One of the things we both look forward to on weekends, is to play GW2 together. AS most of you gaming nerds know, playing a game together with a loved one is like a dream come true. Anyway after a hard week at work, the weekend is often the only time we can both be as introverted as possible, interact with only each other and people whom we choose to interact with. So please bear this point in mind when I say that while we will invest and play this game at our most convenient opportunity, we are not players who can invest a lot of time on GW2 as much as some of you can.

With that being said, I would like to point out that both of us have played this game for over 2 years. We’ve had over 7,500 hours spent on this game together, the majority of which in WvW. Whilst the last 2 years there has been many changes, both good and bad…we have both chose to accept it. WvW is pretty much the “end-game” for my girlfriend and I. It offers “just the right amount” of PvP competition, without the added salty-ness from PvP. It’s not as mind-numbing as PvE and requires you to think on your feet sometimes. No disrespect to those who do enjoy those gameplays…it just doesn’t fit our enjoyment in the game. However, we feel very strongly about this change thus we have decided to make this topic.

The first point I would like to point out is the ’Culture of WvW"

In each tier, in each server, there are different cultures of WvW.

Using our opinion only, one extreme end of this spectrum is where we feel the top 3 tiers tend to be in. In these tiers, there is often what we call, a “zerg-fest”. Literally go to WvW and all you see is blobs of people. In these tiers there are often queues, particularly on reset night or on weekends, and to some people that’s okay.

We do not fit the above stereotype. In fact, it’s a huge possibility that many of us who’ve played WvW long, have moved from a similar type of culture as above.

In the other end of the extreme spectrum, the lower tiers, particularly between 7/8 tiers, the culture of WvW is more, to our mind, “relaxed”/“scattered”. That is, you could go into a borderland and find yourself and a few other friends/guildies being able to roam around and in extreme cases cap a BL on your own. For many players, they may enjoy the freedom of roaming freely but for my girlfriend and I, we like a bit more competition. Thus we do not fit this end.

Instead, we fit more between tiers 4-6 (though more on the relaxed side of the spectrum).

Before the server link, we enjoyed being able to have “just the right amount” of competition, with an atmosphere “just right” for a relaxed yet competitive gameplay.

Since the server merge, we feel that Ferguson’s Crossing has been forced into a culture that fits more of tiers 1-3. Even throughout the week, often there has been queues in EBG, and when we simply go into wvw, we lose our sense of commitment as after all, we’ve got 2 servers worth of active wvwers to take our place. Some of you may find the queues fine, but bear in mind my earliest point. Most of us only have the weekends to play. We do not want to spend our time queueing and to be quite honest, we should have the right to enter a BL when and where we wish, particularly if we moved to a server that had just the “right” culture of WvW.

Using a quick analogy, it’s like merging Anet with Blizzard and asking them to work together. With 2 communities, 2 different cultures of work merged together suddenly, it’s not going to fix whatever problem you, ANet are trying to fix. You’re not going to become best friends immediately, you’re going to have get used to the community on each side etc.

The second point I would like to point out is the ‘Population Problem’

All of us, WvWers, know that particularly in the lower tiers, there are huge population problems. Even then, in the middle tiers, we feel that we have more of a “coverage” problem, that is the problem that one server goes to “sleep” in their time zone, while the other guys “wake up”.

We feel that the WvW server link currently takes into account, mainly the population.
Suddenly putting 2 servers with similar coverage times, would simply cause the problem that we currently feel in Ferguson’s Crossing…Over-populated active players between so and so hours…to a point where it drops off to being normal.

So if the plan is for the WvW server link is to stay…please take into account when players get active and create a synergy of server merges that way, instead of putting the lowest populated server to the highest populated server and so on and so forth.

My final point, but not the least important, is the ‘Community’

Community is VERY important in WvW. The server we moved from, we had quite a negative view of many people there and decided to move.

Ferguson’s Crossing has a great community. I love how all the active wvw players support each other, play together, enjoy our jokes together and we feel like a close family, with a few unwanted cousins in between. For myself personally, I take the greatest pleasure in commanding my fellow Fergs and winning (and losing Q_Q)…
As an inside joke…I am new to WvW after all…
Why am I pointing this out?

What if an active player…or a guild of WvW players dislike the server. What if they decide to move to a different server (like our circumstances were). What if their dislike for each other means differences cannot be reconciled?
Some of us who were in that situation spent time, gems, tense emotions and feelings to find a home i.e. a server to feel comfortable in.

The danger of this server merge is currently putting two servers with active wvw players who hate each other…suddenly together again. Not only will this cause friction with just the two parties (be it individual or guilds etc.), each server will most likely look after their own and most likely cause friction with the rest.

Not to mention, there WILL be some players in each server who feel that the “inferior” server are not pulling their weight etc.

Anyway, we understand that it is likely that many of these have been said in different threads etc. We feel that our voices SHOULD be heard…regardless of many times it’s been repeated. We hope we will get many responses…and perhaps an ANet response will reassure us that even though our concerns may not change things, at least it’s been heard and seen.

Thanks for reading this essay…I mean Post!

I’m actually from Eredon Terrace, but I thought I’d post because I agree with you.

ET got lucky. Blackgate seems like a nice community, I’ve met nice people there, but zergfesting isn’t my style. I go to WvW expecting the small skirmishes I’ve come to love and being able to solo defend a keep from a mob of 5 or 6, awesome good times. Instead I see a couple groups of countless players stacking on top of each other, making a PvP experience impossible. Fights take place as massive jousting with the hope of not being caught by the enemy zerg when your zerg pulls away or else your zerg is consumed by the other in chaos. It doesn’t feel like PvP, it isn’t exciting, and it isn’t fun.

On top of that change is the fact that with so many players gameplay becomes less stable. I never needed to upgrade my computer for anything GW2 related and I’m using a Linux, so gameplay is already not as stable as it should be, but the game is still great and usually runs smooth. With the current setup for WvW I get one shot. I find one mob, I die, that’s it, game crashes. Literally game over.

The fun in WvW was taken away by meshing the servers like this. I don’t like it in spite of BG being a great community. I would really like to have the old set up back, where ET is against Anvil Rock and Isle of Janthir with the three trading off who owns the maps every night.

I have seen these threads pop up several times now and they always bother me. I do not want to insult anyone if they try to explain their feelings but it basically boils down to this:

Most of these low population dead servers were not dead some time ago. People left, stopped playing or lost interest in WvW, and while some also like to jump between servers, many do not. I never have, and have no plans to transfer. And I know many players in my low population server who feel exactly same.

The problem is, the last tiers are not fun. It is not fun to be in the dead server and it is not fun to fight one either. WvW is about having enemies and when there is none, it stops being WvW. I understand that some people may like the emptiness and lack of enemies, and yet, I strongly feel that most players prefer actual fights, actual enemies instead of NPCs.

And while you are explaining here how much you enjoy being in dead server, try, even for a moment, to think about all those players who have quit the game because only reason to play – WvW is so stupidly boring they can’t be bothered anymore. I know many players trying this changed WvW right now after being away from the game, and many more just planning to return. Countless players have left the game because there is nothing to do in WvW, because scores do not matter, because winning or losing the match is same result.

Now, after years of waiting, we have a chance to fix these problems. And you guys, instead of being happy too about the gamemode we all love so much, start to complain against any improvements. It just blows my mind. It really does. Just because you want something, everyone else has to suffer too. It’s just extremely selfish.

And on top of that all, you do not even propose any other solutions. You just complain that all the change is bad and try to lie about how everyone loved their dead servers. No, everyone hated it! Everyone suffered for a long time and many left in the end. Again, there are obviously small number of players used to empty server matches, but it does not make you more special then many more players who actually want to fight and want to have meaningful matches and want to see enemies more then once a week. What exactly do you wish Anet would do? Nothing? Just keep the system going on for many more years until there is only you and 2 more players left in whole WvW?

what i think is that its high time to transfer to et, ar, or ioj to get in on that t1 action for a measly 500 gems.

but really, just transfer to et and stack the kitten out of bg some more.

Sorry your experience has changed in a way you negatively view it.

Let me give you some perspective from “the other side” as it were.

Once. I was tier 3, crystal desert. It was ok, but suddenly we lostost of our guilds and population. Yaks bend and dragon brand had more than twice our population.

So I moved to Tier 1. This was fun but I didn’t really feel like always being in a blob. So I moved to tier 2, fort aspenwood. It was perfect for awhile….and then once again many Fa guilds left for a higher tier server and for MONTHS fort aspenwood wvw population has been half of the other servers it was paired with.

So while I see you might like roaming, and it’s a shame you fee that’s now gone. Truth is the majority of the wvw population(which is in the top 4 tiers), were so imbalanced population wise that this was desperately needed.

Wvw feels normal again for me.

Here is my suggestion, with alot of players coming back to wvw there needs to be t5 and/or t6 back, therefore you spread the population out a bit more and people who enjoy less blob fights can go to t5/6 instead of being forced in to a tier they dont want to be in.

The way anet has also linked the server isnt fun for people, they have linked servers who both struggle with off hours coverage and think they will do well with other better paired servers.

I would like to see them link 8,7,6 tiers together, therefor we keep the blob fights in t1.2.3 and 4.5.6 can become what others enjoy.

And we also have less of a dead server issue. In my option this would fix alot of the issues

Fogleg, the problem isn’t that we “like it dead.” The problem is some of us can’t play anymore and our server wasn’t dead. ET had a low pop, sure, but every time I went into battlegrounds there was at least one team running around and five guilds that have nightly events. It wasn’t “dead,” it was low pop. It was manageable. Fights were focused, we could actually name our opponents and use that for communication in chat. Our best example being “Gandalf,” a dragonhunter who had a wizard’kitten and really knew how to play. Now we don’t have that. We have massive zergs that get stuck fighting eachother until my game crashes so I never get to take a camp, tower, keep, and I can completely give up any hope of ever taking the castle.

Sure, you might be happier with how it is now, but I’m not and I’m not the only one. So the disappointment and dislike will be voiced. Making it free to transfer to a more active server so you can have your zergs and leave the low pop servers alone would be much more preferable. Or, although it would require more work on Anet’s part, make a few servers intended to be low pop so the people who prefer the slower (and yet much faster) pace of WvW can have that.

First off, congrats for being able to play with your gf. Your story/journey reads almost exactly like mine. I get to play with my Fiance, we both chose SF as our home, been in wvw for 2.5 years, came to love almost all our teammates, took the move up to T5 as it came and didn’t mind losing, but we’re both really wary of going any higher because of population and the fact that some of our most dedicated people stopped playing when we rose above certain tiers. T5/T6 was perfect in our minds. The pairing we got, shocked me at first, it really was the last one I expected. Culture wise, the people of NSP for the most part have been accepting and not toxic. It’s really like the first day of school, you flock to those you know and maybe male some new friends along the way. But, in my head, I definately had a different picture of this server.

Population wise, on its Best and worst day I simply couldn’t believe there was ever a time people found that fun.

I sympathize with the roamers that came from T7/T8, but I’m thankful my server wasn’t or hasn’t yet been paired with a higher server.

For me, after learning how to play and finding my grove, it was never about coverage or winning, sure it was nice to, and if my teammates wanted a push, of course Id help, but moving up the ranks, pushing for T2? Wasnt top priority to me personally. I enjoyed leisurely roams, capping towers with 2 people, the thrill of being spotted by 5 enemies and engaging in 5v2s. I haven’t had any of that this week.

Each person enjoys certain things, while I would like to see a variety of options for wvwvw play that is not what has drawn this post.

When posters use the words “everyone XX” they are almost certainly lying. How do I know this, they have neither asked me or paid attention to what I do in game.

next

Please when you post, stick to personal opinion, it is very likely we do not speak for everyone, it is very likely we do not represent everyone. I feel this because I have not asked everyone for their opinion, and very very few have asked me for mine.

Yes the game feels different after the linking. I would give it some time but many have noted differences both positive and negative.

Good luck, I hope you can find the enjoyment necessary for you to stay in this game.

Auredur.3192:

I would really like to have the old set up back, where ET is against Anvil Rock and Isle of Janthir with the three trading off who owns the maps every night.

What time zone out of curiosity? I swear every time I logged on, AR was almost always outnumbered. Part of the problem was our WvW guilds leaving; coverage was another I’m sure. (Nothing like logging in and seeing that your server doesn’t exist anywhere on any of the maps). At this point, I’m waiting to see what Anet is going to do with the links to see if it is even worth trying to move to where I can at least run the WvW guild missions with my guild. Their server is locked and transferring to the “guest” guild is a waste if in 3 months it is linked to a different server.

Thank you all for posting.
Please allow me to reiterate, clarify and respond to some of you.

elkirin.8534:

Each person enjoys certain things, while I would like to see a variety of options for wvwvw play that is not what has drawn this post.

When posters use the words “everyone XX” they are almost certainly lying. How do I know this, they have neither asked me or paid attention to what I do in game.

next

Please when you post, stick to personal opinion, it is very likely we do not speak for everyone, it is very likely we do not represent everyone. I feel this because I have not asked everyone for their opinion, and very very few have asked me for mine.

Yes the game feels different after the linking. I would give it some time but many have noted differences both positive and negative.

Good luck, I hope you can find the enjoyment necessary for you to stay in this game.

I would first like to point out that you are correct.
Many posters DO attempt to include the population into their argument when in fact, all of us would likely not have had an input unless you’ve made a post.
With that being said, I would like to point out this sentence:-
Whilst we would like to speak for our server, we will not as we of course do not speak for any of them but ourselves.

This thread is literally the thoughts of my girlfriend and I. As such, where we both have had an agreement, I have used “we” meaning only my girlfriend and I. Again we do not speak for anybody for ourselves, even for our server. With that being said we HAVE had input from other players from OUR server (some have posted too) and we decided to make this post simply as a way to add our voice to an issue that we feel is too large to be quiet on.

With that being said, I will respond to Fogleg.

FogLeg.9354:

I have seen these threads pop up several times now and they always bother me. I do not want to insult anyone if they try to explain their feelings but it basically boils down to this:

Most of these low population dead servers were not dead some time ago. People left, stopped playing or lost interest in WvW, and while some also like to jump between servers, many do not. I never have, and have no plans to transfer. And I know many players in my low population server who feel exactly same.

The problem is, the last tiers are not fun. It is not fun to be in the dead server and it is not fun to fight one either. WvW is about having enemies and when there is none, it stops being WvW. I understand that some people may like the emptiness and lack of enemies, and yet, I strongly feel that most players prefer actual fights, actual enemies instead of NPCs.

And while you are explaining here how much you enjoy being in dead server, try, even for a moment, to think about all those players who have quit the game because only reason to play – WvW is so stupidly boring they can’t be bothered anymore. I know many players trying this changed WvW right now after being away from the game, and many more just planning to return. Countless players have left the game because there is nothing to do in WvW, because scores do not matter, because winning or losing the match is same result.

Now, after years of waiting, we have a chance to fix these problems. And you guys, instead of being happy too about the gamemode we all love so much, start to complain against any improvements. It just blows my mind. It really does. Just because you want something, everyone else has to suffer too. It’s just extremely selfish.

And on top of that all, you do not even propose any other solutions. You just complain that all the change is bad and try to lie about how everyone loved their dead servers. No, everyone hated it! Everyone suffered for a long time and many left in the end. Again, there are obviously small number of players used to empty server matches, but it does not make you more special then many more players who actually want to fight and want to have meaningful matches and want to see enemies more then once a week. What exactly do you wish Anet would do? Nothing? Just keep the system going on for many more years until there is only you and 2 more players left in whole WvW?

As above, I would like to point out things that I agree with and any issues that I have:-

Agreement 1) You are correct many of the “dead” servers were not dead a while ago. We have seen the drops in some servers who were in the top 3-4 tiers in WvW season 1 and now pretty much, like we call it, “dead”.

Agreement 2) With that said, I agree with you and I also posted that my gf and I do not enjoy playing on your end of the spectrum…it simply does not offer enough player vs player competition. Which brings me to the next point.

Disagreement 3 Here is where we differ. I disagree with your point, especially where you say that we enjoy playing on a “dead” server.
As I’ve posted before, we don’t enjoy that side of the spectrum.
Ferguson’s Crossings, is simply not a “dead” server. We have an active WvW population, with a good community to back it up.
However, I do not dispute the fact that in my opinion, we have a “coverage” problem, rather than a “population” problem, however they are quite interlinked.

- If we were to get an increase in population, but an increase in time zones where most of us players are asleep, then it’s fine. The increase in population is focused on the faults that servers like us have.
- Currently, the server merge has just forced an increase in ACTIVE population, forcing 2 servers with 2 active WvW players to participate and fight for the same queues etc. Whilst it may also help coverage undoubtedly, a solution such as “high server paired with low server”, is in our opinion = too simple and too generalised.

In my humble opinion, I feel that even tiers 7-8 differ quite vastly from tiers 4-6.

Disagreement 4) I disagree with the fact that we’re simply being selfish, wanting everyone to suffer, and against ANY improvements.

a) Change and “Improvements”, yes I would love it if it was always beneficial to everyone. However using an analogy, it’s like this:-

Analogy 1 Currently, in the UK, the medical profession is having a strike. Both “improvements” offered by both the medical profession and the government are totally different. On one side, the medical profession claims the government has offered an unfair deal…on the government side, it is a “fair” deal which brings improvement.

With this quick analogy, I hope I already show that improvement depends simply on your judgement of the situation. As such, may I point that you have also pointed out that many similar threads have propped up. Surely this shows that the server merge HAS caused issues. I don’t think that you can speak for every person in the lower tiers or “dead” servers that this server merge is a good idea.

b)I myself can’t offer any solutions, yes. This is because, I don’t know what is realistic, what is possible, what can be done in the time allocated, what resource is allocated etc.
I can offer a ton of solutions but none which may actually be realistically implemented. Furthermore, there are thousands of players in this game, who will undoubtedly be more in tune with the game. I leave my faith to them to suggest things…and only hope that they listen.

Thanks to everyone else who posted.
Please encourage everyone in your server who dislikes the server merge to voice it on the forums

P.S is there a way to include a poll? I’ve seen it done before but not sure how haha.

I think you need to create new thread to include poll. Not completely sure tho..

FogLeg.9354:

I think you need to create new thread to include poll. Not completely sure tho..

Anet is reading these threads on our views and are going to be running a poll themselves.

ET had a visitor from Anet in our WvW because of these types of threads. One of my Guild Leaders had a nice long discussion. They are taking our views into consideration and again will be running a poll.

As such, may I point that you have also pointed out that many similar threads have propped up. Surely this shows that the server merge HAS caused issues. I don’t think that you can speak for every person in the lower tiers or “dead” servers that this server merge is a good idea.

Absolutely. Linking has issues. Some links could be changed for example, I am sure.

I am not trying to speak for everyone, and yet, I have seen so many happy players in the WvW during this beta, none of them btw ever posting in forums, that I feel their excitement and enjoyment should not be overlooked either.

Also, people usually do not bother to post about stuff they like. They commonly only come to forum to complain about things they do not like (well, for example, you). Is the 10 unhappy players posting against the linking a sign that idea is bad? Or perhaps we should consider hundreds and thousands of players logging into WvW every day, playing it for many hours straight, never even considering to complain about the change?

FogLeg.9354:

As such, may I point that you have also pointed out that many similar threads have propped up. Surely this shows that the server merge HAS caused issues. I don’t think that you can speak for every person in the lower tiers or “dead” servers that this server merge is a good idea.

Absolutely. Linking has issues. Some links could be changed for example, I am sure.

I am not trying to speak for everyone, and yet, I have seen so many happy players in the WvW during this beta, none of them btw ever posting in forums, that I feel their excitement and enjoyment should not be overlooked either.

Also, people usually do not bother to post about stuff they like. They commonly only come to forum to complain about things they do not like (well, for example, you). Is the 10 unhappy players posting against the linking a sign that idea is bad? Or perhaps we should consider hundreds and thousands of players logging into WvW every day, playing it for many hours straight, never even considering to complain about the change?

I understand your point of view.
In this case, I would argue that we stand on opposite side of the spectrum, both eager for improvements but unsure of the results. On your side, it feels that this is A GOOD THING, as you’ve said yourself that there are happy WvW players. On my side, however…I can say my gf and I aren’t happy…other WvW players on my server are unhappy as well.
However, neither of us know the extent of how happy or unhappy we are. Hence, I AM encourage others to try and make their voices heard.

And you are correct. People don’t often post about things they like. However…there are also people like us…who don’t post about things we don’t like.
Take for example:-

1) The Desert Borderlands – We hated it. Yet we didn’t post anything about it. Why? Perhaps other people loved it. If not, they’ll voice it in forums themselves…voices who are capable of being heard and aren’t afraid of being heard. Don’t forget…we’re introverts so we don’t like bringing attention to ourselves or causing trouble…thus we stayed quiet.
If the WvW community loved it, the DBLs would’ve stayed as it is.
As such, the WvW community HAS spoken and the Alpine BLs are coming back (yay)

2) The Waypoints – Before it changed back to having all 3 WPs in our BLs etc…we only had one. We hated that too. Yet we stayed quiet for the reasons above.

Of course, these are only SOME of the problems we had issues with. And I’d like to think that our tastes are not so unique from others but are actually more in line with the common WvW players.

As I’ve stated before, this post is my first post on this forum. It is however, because my gf and I feel that this is a HUGE problem. WvW is our end-game, and we’ve yet to enjoy ourselves in the new “community”. We’ve also experienced some…undesired comments which has reminded us of the server we’ve left before.
If it results in us leaving then so be it…but whilst we still have a voice and would like to raise that voice, we have posted here as result.

May I quickly quote another user who’s posted here as well:-

HazyDaisy.4107:

First off, congrats for being able to play with your gf. Your story/journey reads almost exactly like mine. I get to play with my Fiance, we both chose SF as our home, been in wvw for 2.5 years, came to love almost all our teammates, took the move up to T5 as it came and didn’t mind losing, but we’re both really wary of going any higher because of population and the fact that some of our most dedicated people stopped playing when we rose above certain tiers. T5/T6 was perfect in our minds. The pairing we got, shocked me at first, it really was the last one I expected. Culture wise, the people of NSP for the most part have been accepting and not toxic. It’s really like the first day of school, you flock to those you know and maybe male some new friends along the way. But, in my head, I definately had a different picture of this server.

Population wise, on its Best and worst day I simply couldn’t believe there was ever a time people found that fun.

I sympathize with the roamers that came from T7/T8, but I’m thankful my server wasn’t or hasn’t yet been paired with a higher server.

For me, after learning how to play and finding my grove, it was never about coverage or winning, sure it was nice to, and if my teammates wanted a push, of course Id help, but moving up the ranks, pushing for T2? Wasnt top priority to me personally. I enjoyed leisurely roams, capping towers with 2 people, the thrill of being spotted by 5 enemies and engaging in 5v2s. I haven’t had any of that this week.

Please note the last few sentences. If many of us are only beginning to post, even if it’s to just criticise in the forums, to raise our voices about this issue…our posts really should be taken into account Fog. Regardless of how often we post on forums.

Yeah, I think the changes have been good for the WvW and I will continue to fight for these changes (they can be improved or changed obviously). Sure, no change can please everyone same way, but in this case I strongly believe it is improving whole WvW, and it is not only about me.

I still would like to hear how you would fix the WvW without linking the servers. Even if it is just a vague idea.

I just wanted to add that the OP’s experience after the linking is by no means limited to players from the lower-tier servers. On Yak’s Bend there have been plenty of rumbles of discontent in map and team chat about the loss of freedom to roam, about the now obligatory and ubiquitous nature of blob v blob combat, and in general about the way the massively increased populations have severely curtailed player choice. It may well have been like this in T1 a year or more back – people say it was. It was not, however, anything like this over the last few months and it’s not unequivocally accepted as an improvement.

ANet used to be famous for an iterative development process, where changes were made continually until an optimum result was reached. World linking looks like it’s at the start of that process, not the end. I hope we can end up with a version that encourages a wide range of play-styles not just the current blobfest.

After all is said and done, as usual there’s a lot more said than done. Ain’t that the way

In previous posts in other forums here I have deferred to the majority, hoping that this makes most people happy. I’ve seen posts from people saying that the minority should sit back and basically stop whining because this is the way most people want it. But consider this… Although the lower tiers contain the lower number of players I’m pretty sure that those numbers are still good decent number of people that actually bring some good money into the ANet bank account. Sure, it’s all good to cater to the majority and do what they want but at the end of all of this if GW2 loses a bunch of WvW players (and possible players period) because it remains basically ‘blob city’ what has really been the “win”?

A lot of talk has been around ‘play style’. Play style means a LOT to some people. I actually like to get into a zerg/blob once in a rare while and just pound the heck out of each other. But most of the time I really like just working with a group of people I know “digging” into keeps and towers and hopefully having some fun small scale fights here and there. It’s not all about that silly pvd people talk about. It’s really about NOT being in a situation where you are running into huge blobs all the time. I started this game on Borlis Pass in Sept. 2012 and got into WvW early the next year. I love the play style and the people, and as much as I enjoy a lot of the people I’m meeting in FA I am sorely missing the way things were. I will never get used to being steamrolled by a blob when I’m roaming.. that I don’t understand. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been with one of my groups and seen a single person maybe capping for dailies etc and left him/her alone. Then of course there are days when that person isn’t so lucky depending on the situation. But if you see what I’m saying.. it’s small scale and I like that. I’m in the minority and not wanting to dictate GW2 wide policy.. I just don’t want my play style to be taken away. People at the ‘low’ levels are there because, believe it or not, most of us like it.

FogLeg.9354:

Yeah, I think the changes have been good for the WvW and I will continue to fight for these changes (they can be improved or changed obviously). Sure, no change can please everyone same way, but in this case I strongly believe it is improving whole WvW, and it is not only about me.

I still would like to hear how you would fix the WvW without linking the servers. Even if it is just a vague idea.

Honestly, any idea I come up, I’ve also put down because there’s so many things that could go wrong.
What I do disagree on is the SUDDEN merge within itself.
With complete disregard of my reasons above (see first post), no choice, no communication was given as to whether or not we wanted a merge or if we wanted to be merged with our current matched servers.

It’s like suddenly having two countries merged as one country, together and expecting them to work equally well, with equal opportunities etc. From Macedonian Empire to the fall of the Great British Empire to the current European Union, when a stronger (in this instance more populated server) consumes the weaker ones (i.e. the lower populations), their independent communities will be lost.
Some may enjoy the larger communities, some may not…but we don’t have a choice in this matter when in all honesty, we really should have.

Thank you all for posting. Please continue to encourage people to voice their opinions, both who agree with the server merge and disagree with the merge on the forums…

It seems roaming would still work with the servers linked on the BLs if they were more open…seems like the Desert BL map still has way too many chokepoints and blind spots that force roamers and zergs to come into contact more often, often by surprise, which isn’t fun for the roamers. I haven’t had the opportunity to play on the ABL yet since I started just before HoT came out and didn’t get into WvW until the DBLs were in effect.

I think I agree with the OP. Further I would postulate that if you needed to do this in some dynamic way I wouldn’t have gone this route at all. I think if you are going to destroy continuity I would have killed the servers and hard merged to even out population. Then capped the transfers for a set time. Say one month to allow for a cooling off period. This doesn’t fix the fact that there are those willing to move to win though. They don’t want a even fight they want to win. And there is nothing wrong with that its just life.

I think you may energize the game more by allowing server rankings to be based on multifaceted scoring. Sure WvW ranks but also PvE and PvP rankings. Allowing you to choose the game mode you like best while still helping your server. You could view the scores based on game mode or overall. Then just allow for track progression for all three games modes and walk away. After a few months figure out what has drawn people and what reenergizes the community. Does Anet really read these?? Oh well if they do someone tell Gaile I said Hi and I miss her from GW1. It was having chats

Best wishes all!

I too enjoy playing in smaller groups and roaming on my own. It is nice to have more people to play with but there must be some way to balance the population so that we can still be effective alone or in smaller groups. I agree it would be nice to have more coverage throughout the day/night. I really enjoy the small community feel of FC. Everyone knows everyone, like a small town. Now we have been moved to a big city. It is exciting and different but overwhelming too.

• Unlink the worlds
• Allow free transfers from the bottom tiers for those who want to play with more people
• Label the server activity levels accurately to not kitten over new players since T8 servers aren’t “medium”
• Those who want low tier play can happily stay there

Hi, I am from Darkhaven and tonight we have a server meeting at 9pm est. So I would really appreciate if you and your gf join us during the server meeting because those some of the issues I personally will be talking about

CrimeMaker.8612:

Hi, I am from Darkhaven and tonight we have a server meeting at 9pm est. So I would really appreciate if you and your gf join us during the server meeting because those some of the issues I personally will be talking about

I can only say that I will attempt to attend…as it will be 2am for us in the UK
Thanks for the invitiation.

If you’d like, please feel free to pm me in the forums or in-game

Thanks

gennyt.3428:

• Unlink the worlds
• Allow free transfers from the bottom tiers for those who want to play with more people
• Label the server activity levels accurately to not kitten over new players since T8 servers aren’t “medium”
• Those who want low tier play can happily stay there

BAM! omg this is truly the answer… They want to charge us to move around… unless they move us themselves… Yes remove the stupid fees and people will settle where they really want to be without it costing them money every time they need to get more experience in order to realize what it is they want after all.

I know, I know… people will just move around in big groups to stack servers for fun etc etc… so the free movement has to be limited to a certain timeframe…

… and leave me in my low tier doing what I do because I really really don’t want to be on a big server… I will say it again though.. I love some of the people I’ve met in FA so NO problem with them… just gimme my small troll groups back… lol… ( well the groups are still here… just getting flattened now and then by steamrollers.. :P )

smashie.3074:

CrimeMaker.8612:

Hi, I am from Darkhaven and tonight we have a server meeting at 9pm est. So I would really appreciate if you and your gf join us during the server meeting because those some of the issues I personally will be talking about

I can only say that I will attempt to attend…as it will be 2am for us in the UK
Thanks for the invitiation.

If you’d like, please feel free to pm me in the forums or in-game

Thanks

Sure, if I see you online I will personally let you know about the things we talked about that if you aren’t on to attend the meeting.

I am really glad someone from FC voiced some of these concerns. It is disappointing that every time an individual player expresses concerns over the merger (calling it linking is a sham), they are shouted down under the auspices that they are alone in their concern. To be honest, the toxicity of the WvW forum too often eliminates meaningful conversation between the players and the devs.

We are not a whole bunch of isolated individuals unhappy with the loss of our community. We are a community unhappy with the loss of our identity. I have seen some posts claiming server identity is a non-issue. I wonder if those players would sing the same tune if BG or TC were merged into FC, and carried FC’s name into combat. Server identity matters regardless of your tier. FC has a very active WvW community, regularly running server specific events. We have several guilds who are active every night, and a number of players (including OP) who put in work during the day. We are a very active “dead” server. “Dead” is a term that is, unfortunately, being used by players who want every server to be packed. Small unit tactics have their place as well, and FC has embraced that.

I wish the devs would take some time to consider what kind of players stay in WvW night after night on low tier servers. They don’t do it because they cannot afford a few gems. They do it because it best suits the way they love to play the game. I would like to believe that Arenanet wants people to play the game in an assortment of ways, all of them enjoying it. So the reason they would try to make everyone Tier 1 is beyond me.

There are an incredible number of options at Arenaet’s disposal. The idea mentioned several times in several posts of simply marking a few servers as “low pop” or some variation thereof is so easy, and functional. Some of us like low pop. It would have negligible impact on the high Tier servers, and I don’t think it would actually impact Arenanet’s bottom line.

If they are determined to merge, blow them all up. Every one. If server loyalty and server identity don’t matter, it should be easy. In fact, it could be written into the lore of the game (imagine “Upheaval of the Mists” as a LS3 installment) and blamed on some upcoming villain (Palawa Joko?). Note the additional benefit of tying lore to WvW, if you really want PvE folks to take an interest in WvW. While I personally oppose this concept, the developmental opportunities with this plan are immense (without changing fundamental WvW mechanics).

If linking is really what they intended, and not a full blown merger (as currently exists), why not create the opportunity for the two linked servers to go to each other’s maps without forcing them? Most people don’t enjoy being forced to do things during their leisure time. This would run the risk of turning ET into “BG overflow” (example), but at least it puts control back in the players hands. It would require the addition of some sort of additional portal mechanism, but I think player investment may be worth that.

Again, so many options that do not explicitly marginalize a significant number of players. Some people can downplay how many players were slighted, but at the end of the day 50% of the servers were basically told they were not relevant. I think Arenanet can do better than that.

I am mostly ok with stuff Fates Intertwined posted, but again, common mistake of trying to increase the value of individual opinion by claiming to be representing group of people:

“We are not a whole bunch of isolated individuals unhappy with the loss of our community. We are a community unhappy with the loss of our identity. "

Thing is, it is you who is unhappy. At best it is you and couple of your buddies. Or some members of your guild. Or few people constantly repeating same thing on map chat.

I can quarantee it is not everyone in your server. Unless you have already completed extensive analysis of whole population of your server pre- and after-linking system. Which I doubt because analysing large amount of data takes time and you only had 1 week to complete it.

In reality, some players in your server are happy and some are unhappy. Just like it was before the linking. There is no way everyone feels exactly same about everything. And please, please, don’t attempt to even talk about how other servers feel about the change.

I recommend to take a look at OP again. If you would also start your personal comment with words “how my gf and I currently feel”, then all would be fine. But now it sounds you either do not actually know what you are talking about or you lie.

So the topic is: “Our thoughts on the current week…”

After running this past week up until tonight I was still not that pleased with all this change, loss of identity so to speak, and play style. Then I met up with a few people tonight who regularly run in MY time zone as a guild group. Great bunch of people. For the first time all week I had a very fun night. I was online longer tonight and IN WvW than I have been all week.. Actually I think I was on longer tonight than I was the last 5 days put together, ( in WvW ). I have now joined one of the FA guilds. If ANet decides after the 3 month period that they are going to move BP away from FA to another spot then I will simply do a server switch and stay here. I’m not about to be moved around like a picture on the wall to satisfy somebody’s idea of ‘balanced’ play.

So my thoughts are this. I don’t like the forced merge. I don’t like the idea that they will probably move BP somewhere else. But I do like the people I’ve met, and I am now enjoying the game play that this guild does… and I will stay here and continue to enjoy it if ANet moves BP elsewhere. I really think that if they do move the low servers around again ( by force ) they will start to either lose people, or those people will just say NO and switch to one of the servers of their choice. At that time ANet will start having balancing issues … what? say it isn’t so.. haha… I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.

Why you think they will relink servers every 3 months? As far I understood the comment in Reddit, Anet was imply saying they could possibly do it, if things change enough. It does not mean they will.

Same way the whole server linking is currently in beta. It could be ended too if it fails.

FogLeg.9354:

I am mostly ok with stuff Fates Intertwined posted, but again, common mistake of trying to increase the value of individual opinion by claiming to be representing group of people:

“We are not a whole bunch of isolated individuals unhappy with the loss of our community. We are a community unhappy with the loss of our identity. "

Thing is, it is you who is unhappy. At best it is you and couple of your buddies. Or some members of your guild. Or few people constantly repeating same thing on map chat.

I can quarantee it is not everyone in your server. Unless you have already completed extensive analysis of whole population of your server pre- and after-linking system. Which I doubt because analysing large amount of data takes time and you only had 1 week to complete it.

In reality, some players in your server are happy and some are unhappy. Just like it was before the linking. There is no way everyone feels exactly same about everything. And please, please, don’t attempt to even talk about how other servers feel about the change.

I recommend to take a look at OP again. If you would also start your personal comment with words “how my gf and I currently feel”, then all would be fine. But now it sounds you either do not actually know what you are talking about or you lie.

I’m afraid I don’t agree with everything you’ve said on there either.
Let me point them out individually, including ones I agree with.

1) Research
You’re right. We haven’t got the tools, time, patience to carry out the extensive research you would like to us to show you.
However, one must stick to his principles, and if you’d like us to show you “our results” so to speak, then it’s only fair that we also ask you to show YOUR results and hold you to that point. However, I don’t think we’ll be seen as unreasonable if we don’t.

2) The use of “we”
I think Anet and the rest of the community will still understand Fate’s message without being misguided by the use of “we”.

As such may I point out that we also stated that we are a close community, almost like family and that Fate also clearly stated that “we are not a bunch of isolated individuals.”
After all it is logical to think that in a server of our size, we active WvW players will see & read about people’s thoughts, via our guilds, map chat etc. With that said, we are such a close community that when any of us speak out in public, each and everyone of us will have the backing from each other. So rest assured, the use of “we”, in FC will pretty much represent a large majority of us.

However, I feel that you, Fog, will continue to disagree with the use of “we”, without us being able to show you results/proof that we can speak for a significant majority of FC and prove that they are unhappy.. That is in my mind, unrealistic. However, as an alternative way, I personally will continue to convince people to post as sign of proof as I’m sure Fate will.

May I also point out that we (my gf and I) didn’t speak for the server at first simply because we were simply setting an example and wanting people to criticise our set of clear reasons for why the server merge isn’t good, instead of having our use of grammar being an obstacle.

3) Double Standards
Whilst this may feel like a slight personal dig, I would like to point out several double standards in your arguments.

3a)I’ve already talked about the need for results being provided by both sides of the argument, that is if you’d like us to create extensive results etc. so I won’t go back into that.

3b) You stated and I quote:-

“please, please, don’t attempt to even talk about how other servers feel about the change.”

I find it quite hypocritical that you attempted to stop us from talking about how other servers feel when you quite happily stated and I quote:-

“I can quarantee it is not everyone in your server. "

You, yourself, have literally tried to speak for “happy” WvW players in Ferguson’s Crossing…a server you do not reside in and a server you are attempting to speak for…and then say we shouldn’t do the exact same thing.

Anyway, I hope you’ll slowly find that the voices of those against the server merge will come to light eventually.

Please all continue to post your thoughts about the server merge, both good and bad.

I personally would like to add another criticism to the server merge:-

Commanding
As seen in my first post, I take great pleasure in commanding fellow Fergs in WvW.
However, I’ve come up with another problem, caused by the server merge.

When attempting to hold a guild run on the weekends, as we usually do, we could ALL enter any borderland which we desire to enter to.
Since the forced merge, we’ve actually had to say “we can’t enter EBG because of the queues…and we can’t enter that BL because of the queues”.
This has forced myself and others in the guild to stick to ONE borderland.

Instead of being able to move to a borderland we see fit, the server merge has forced us to be quite restricted.

Sorry, I thought you was posting in attempt to create discussion and eventually improve the game, not just to show how right you are and how wrong everyone else is, even without the tools, time, patience to prove your claims.

I was wrong.

Sorry, I thought you was posting in attempt to create discussion and eventually improve the game, not just to show how right you are and how wrong everyone else is, even without the tools, time, patience to prove your claims.
I was wrong.

To me, the issue here is that you seem to be trying to discount our viable concerns on the premise that we are only an isolate few in our server who are upset. Your posts indicate that, since we cannot prove that this change has been perceived as negative by most people, our arguments are invalid. You are perfectly within your right to say that you like the change; I can see where you’re coming from, even though I disagree with you. However, please do not try to bolster your opinion by trying to invalidate ours.

It is not just a few people in our community who are upset – it is nearly, if not entirely, all of our members. Have we conducted a census of people’s opinions? No. But we have discussed the issue both in game and in TS, and the opinion has been universal among members of the FC WvW community, and therefore Fates is absolutely capable of speaking about how our community feels about the merges. Please don’t attempt to discredit our concerns by trying to make it seem like there are only a few people upset by the changes, and that most people are happy with them. While I can’t speak for other servers, I do know that this is not the case for FC, and that our community as a whole is unhappy with the merges.

If it will make you happier, however, I will stick to telling you my fiance and my feelings on the issue, humbly hoping that you will agree that I am accurately representing his feelings, as I have managed to poll at least him on this.

Community

Over the past two years of playing Guild Wars, we have greatly enjoyed playing WvW with FC because of the amazing community. I’ve met a ton of really wonderful people by playing WvW with them, and I love being able to get on, know pretty much everyone on the map, meet a few new people, and have a good time hanging out in TS. I like that we have a small server because it makes it easy to get to know everyone really well. With this change, we don’t even get the opportunity to get to know the people on our merged server (DH), because we’ll just be changing servers again in three months and have to start all over again. This makes it impossible for us to even try to adapt to the new changes.

Server Identity and Competition

FC has always been a small server, and as far as winning in WvW has gone, we’ve had our ups and downs, but I’ve never been tempted to leave, not even when we were losing in T8 for months on end. I like the community, I like the play style, and it was awesome to see us climbing up the ranks. Now we don’t even have a glicko score; there’s no feeling of accomplishment to see FC gain points, and no real incentive to try to win. I’ve seen a lot of people claiming that “server identity” either doesn’t or shouldn’t exist, but it really does mean a lot to me and enhances our experience of the game. I love WvW because of the game mode, but the competition was a huge part of it for me, and now that doesn’t exist.

Play Style

Then there’s the huge change in play styles: with FC and DH merged, our population has essentially been elevated to a T1 server, and means that the way we have been playing WvW for two years has completely changed. FC has several WvW guilds which tend to run in groups of 20 or under – on very rare occasions, we can pull larger groups, but even then, it’s only when multiple guilds run together. We love running with small groups; it feels like like we’re making a difference. We love having a low pop server, where the two of us could go out and flip a tower without being run over by a zerg – maybe meet a few roamers from the other server and have a good fight. Now, in order to be effective, all of FCs guilds basically need to run together to stand up against the huge groups that being part of a higher pop server demands. I like running in a big zerg on occasion, but it’s really the smaller groups that I’m more interested in – being able to just get on with my fiance, grab a few friends, and actually make a difference for our server.

This is the play style that I enjoy playing; if I wanted to play the way T1 servers do, I would have transferred there a long time ago. We stayed on FC because we love the community, we love fighting for our server, and we love the play style. All of these things have been irreparably changed or completely taken away by the server merges. While I can only explicitly write for myself, I know that a lot of people on both FC and other low pop servers feel the same way.

FogLeg.9354:

The problem is, the last tiers are not fun. It is not fun to be in the dead server and it is not fun to fight one either. WvW is about having enemies and when there is none, it stops being WvW. I understand that some people may like the emptiness and lack of enemies, and yet, I strongly feel that most players prefer actual fights, actual enemies instead of NPCs.

At least to me there’s a big difference between wanting more enemies to fight and having 80-man blobs on at all times. Maybe I’ll get used to it but so far it’s too big of a change for me.

packupthesun.3801:

This is the play style that I enjoy playing; if I wanted to play the way T1 servers do, I would have transferred there a long time ago. We stayed on FC because we love the community, we love fighting for our server, and we love the play style. All of these things have been irreparably changed or completely taken away by the server merges. While I can only explicitly write for myself, I know that a lot of people on both FC and other low pop servers feel the same way.

Get used to it. I really doubt if we’re going to see low pop wvw anytime soon again, at least not until people start leaving the game again down the road.

And I too, can use highly scientific(sarcasm) methods for stating that I have talked to lots of other players, and my T8 server is absolutely loving the numbers in wvw, again. Sure, the ques take some getting used to, but there are now actually lots of people playing in wvw, again!

WvW was never meant to be some semi deserted area where a few people could just casually roam around looking for small battles to engage in. WvW is about all out war, and large groups of players engaging each other while havoc and smaller groups try to create chaos on the edges.

I am truly sorry you miss the days of deserted wvw(remember, I come from a T8 server, so I know what it was like out there before this patch). I am sorry you miss being able to have tiny group battles with the time to converse and hobknob with your community about what a beautiful day it is in Eternal Battlegrounds.

I have a feeling that your attitude about it all is most likely in the minority. If it wasn’t, wvw wouldn’t currently be going gung ho, with ques, and players wanting to go at it so bad that they’re gnashing their teeth.

And if Anet truly wanted WvW to appeal to a portion of the player base that just wanted small little encounters, single roaming, and small group battles…..they would have just created EB and been done with it. No reason to put all that effort into the borderlands or edge of the mists.

Oh yea, that’s right…..remember the original reason for EotM? It was to provide a wvw area that players could be in while waiting to get through the ques for EB and the borderlands. That was back when wvw was actually alive, like it is now, again.

Frankly, I have no desire to go back to the wvw ghost town that Kaineng had become.
I now love being on Kaineng and having some real battles, fights, and an actual war to participate in as a player. I sure hope Anet continues in the direction that they are currently on with wvw.

Teon.5168:

packupthesun.3801:

This is the play style that I enjoy playing; if I wanted to play the way T1 servers do, I would have transferred there a long time ago. We stayed on FC because we love the community, we love fighting for our server, and we love the play style. All of these things have been irreparably changed or completely taken away by the server merges. While I can only explicitly write for myself, I know that a lot of people on both FC and other low pop servers feel the same way.

Get used to it. I really doubt if we’re going to see low pop wvw anytime soon again, at least not until people start leaving the game again down the road.

And I too, can use highly scientific(sarcasm) methods for stating that I have talked to lots of other players, and my T8 server is absolutely loving the numbers in wvw, again. Sure, the ques take some getting used to, but there are now actually lots of people playing in wvw, again!

WvW was never meant to be some semi deserted area where a few people could just casually roam around looking for small battles to engage in. WvW is about all out war, and large groups of players engaging each other while havoc and smaller groups try to create chaos on the edges.

I am truly sorry you miss the days of deserted wvw(remember, I come from a T8 server, so I know what it was like out there before this patch). I am sorry you miss being able to have tiny group battles with the time to converse and hobknob with your community about what a beautiful day it is in Eternal Battlegrounds.

I have a feeling that your attitude about it all is most likely in the minority. If it wasn’t, wvw wouldn’t currently be going gung ho, with ques, and players wanting to go at it so bad that they’re gnashing their teeth.

And if Anet truly wanted WvW to appeal to a portion of the player base that just wanted small little encounters, single roaming, and small group battles…..they would have just created EB and been done with it. No reason to put all that effort into the borderlands or edge of the mists.

Oh yea, that’s right…..remember the original reason for EotM? It was to provide a wvw area that players could be in while waiting to get through the ques for EB and the borderlands. That was back when wvw was actually alive, like it is now, again.

Frankly, I have no desire to go back to the wvw ghost town that Kaineng had become.
I now love being on Kaineng and having some real battles, fights, and an actual war to participate in as a player. I sure hope Anet continues in the direction that they are currently on with wvw.

If you’re enjoying the new server merge and there are many WvW players in your server enjoying it too, then that’s great news.

However, allow me to state this point first.

1) I firmly believe that WvW is whatever each individual server wanted it to be, and not what it was intended for.
For example, the internet was probably intended to help facilitate communication between computers etc. but we, society, has shaped the internet to what it is now, be it good and bad.

What I’m trying to point out is that, your server, will most likely have a different culture, different community to what FC will have.
I have no doubt in my mind that given the choice, some lower tier servers will desire a different type of culture of WvW and thus accept their loss of identity, their community, their culture of WvW, to be part of another culture that better fits their taste. After all, on a smaller scale, that’s why many individuals and guilds transfer from different servers to another. If that’s the case, good luck to them and all the best.

However, the forced server merge of every server, has forced FC (and I can only speak for myself and our server) to lose all those attributes that are important to us.

*2) I would also like to point out that the more likely reason for the increase in queues is simply this:-

Before the server merge, there were 2 seperate active WvW populations, sharing 2 different queue slots, in 2 seperate servers. Both were able to go and play on a BL of their own choosing without worrying about queues.

After the server merge, the same 2 active WvW population, now share 1 queue, in one server.

Even if the queue were increased slightly, it would have to increase by a large amount to accommodate everyone.

3) While I’m sure those in FC will appreciate your desire to not go back to the ghost town of Kainneng, I’m sure you can also appreciate that our desires are different to yours and that we will attempt to voice our concerns on here

Thanks for posting on here though and please continue to do so. It helps bring perspectives and not cause a one sided argument.

I thought the changes were good as a whole for wvw.

The downside is the lower tier servers lose their identity.

I think anet should focus on getting rid of the blob mentality by readjusting score values for capturing keeps/towers and increasing the incentive for players to fight in the borderlands.

Creating a hard cap on boon duration when grouped with 40+ in a certain radius would be a huge step to reducing the huge advantage large groups have against smaller groups.

I know mag likes to run all revs and stack 40s of resistence

Yeah this is an unfortunate problem with server linking. Speaking as a member of Dh, I’m glad to have been paired with FC (as I have way too many friends on it), but it is sad that both of our playstyles really got destroyed by server linking itself. People aren’t realizing that t4/3 servers didn’t necessarily want to have the pop of t1/2 servers either lol, it’s not even just the low tiers. A lot of us enjoy it, granted, but a lot of us don’t too.

Tier 4 had a very balanced, casual, active playstyle. There were zerg fights during NA/EU, some during SEA, and roaming during OCX. It wasn’t completely dead, it had a nice balance. Currently, tier 4 has almost as many kills as t1 had pre server linking. That’s certainly not what a lot of lower tiers want, but that’s not necessarily what higher tier players want either. It’s all become so incredibly blobby. I have mixed feelings on it overall myself, but just wanted to share with people imo that the problem isn’t only for lower tier servers.

Keep in mind that in 3 months, when the pairings of servers are changed, the dynamics of your particular wvw may change, as well.

smashie.3074:

If you’re enjoying the new server merge and there are many WvW players in your server enjoying it too, then that’s great news.

However, allow me to state this point first.

1) I firmly believe that WvW is whatever each individual server wanted it to be, and not what it was intended for.
For example, the internet was probably intended to help facilitate communication between computers etc. but we, society, has shaped the internet to what it is now, be it good and bad. That is a really odd comparison, imo. Comparing something as broad and constantly evolving as the internet, to something as narrow, and, up until recently, pretty much ignored by a certain game company….but also created by that gaming company with a certain vision……well, the comparison leaves me scratching my head. It is called World versus World and not Small Village versus Small Village for a reason. I am glad you like the largely unoccupied wvw lands of the lower tiers, but if you have had any experience with older games and wvw/rvr(Dark Age of Camelot comes to mind), you would know that abandoned wvw areas are not the intent of a successful wvw environment.

What I’m trying to point out is that, your server, will most likely have a different culture, different community to what FC will have. I have no doubt in my mind that given the choice, some lower tier servers will desire a different type of culture of WvW and thus accept their loss of identity, their community, their culture of WvW, to be part of another culture that better fits their taste. After all, on a smaller scale, that’s why many individuals and guilds transfer from different servers to another. If that’s the case, good luck to them and all the best.

However, the forced server merge of every server, has forced FC (and I can only speak for myself and our server) to lose all those attributes that are important to us.I wouldn’t dare speak seriously for my entire server….that would just be delusional and hopelessly arrogant for me to do so. I speak of those wvw members that I knew on Kaineng, and how they are now feeling. Most like the changes, some do not.

*2) I would also like to point out that the more likely reason for the increase in queues is simply this:-

Before the server merge, there were 2 seperate active WvW populations, sharing 2 different queue slots, in 2 seperate servers. Both were able to go and play on a BL of their own choosing without worrying about queues.Not entirely true. It might be true of the lower tiered servers before the patch, but if you had ever spent any time on Tier 1, Tier 2, and even Tier 3, pre patch, you would know that ques are a way of life, especially on reset night. That is why the ques were no big deal to people like myself who had played on higher tiered servers. It did not surprise me that a few from the lower tiers practically went into convulsions when they saw ques. Believe me, you’ll get used to it. Especially since the que waits have already decreased.

After the server merge, the same 2 active WvW population, now share 1 queue, in one server.

Even if the queue were increased slightly, it would have to increase by a large amount to accommodate everyone.

3) While I’m sure those in FC will appreciate your desire to not go back to the ghost town of Kainneng, I’m sure you can also appreciate that our desires are different to yours and that we will attempt to voice our concerns on hereYou and your buddies want to play a different sort of wvw than me and my buddies want to. Nothing wrong with that. Just don’t be shocked if Anet doesn’t go for making a small level, low pop wvw server. They might, and it would be cool if they did, imo, for those that don’t want a standard style of wvw. I am just saying don’t be surprised if that doesn’t happen. This game makes money by having more people play it…..so more people playing = better profits and more funds that can be put back into the game development. But certainly nothing wrong with you giving Anet your comments on it all.

Thanks for posting on here though and please continue to do so. It helps bring perspectives and not cause a one sided argument.

My comments in bold

FogLeg.9354:

Why you think they will relink servers every 3 months? As far I understood the comment in Reddit, Anet was imply saying they could possibly do it, if things change enough. It does not mean they will.

Same way the whole server linking is currently in beta. It could be ended too if it fails.

I didn’t say they would.. I said if they did… and 3 months was the timeframe yapped about here and there. BETA is a word that has little meaning these days… even TEST is funny… most software, like microsoft operating systems.. is in public TEST for the next year after release. Anyway, we will see what happens after the dust clears….

At some point “linking” will have to become merging. We have low tier servers that pay or get donations to help pay for low tier server Team Speak. These do not get used now due to everybody jumping on the larger server TS servers.

At what point are we supposed to let these small TS servers just die? Are we going to go back after the Beta? Are we going to link with another server and have to obtain all their TS info again and get their server admins to grant permissions anew? Will they trust us on their TS since maybe the next round we will be enemies?

Problem is, the small tier servers just don’t have any answers as to what the future truly holds for us. Large servers have no worries, there would be no possibility of their getting dismantled and losing their name.

Just another piece of the identity loss of small servers.

BUT, I won’t leave with complete negativity. Although the Big Zerg playstyle sin’t something I want to do all the time, the occasional rolling ball of decimation is sort of fun for about an hour a week.

Also a shout out again to Black Gate for being a friendly host server.

Dae.

I really hope we don’t have to get used to linking. I am going to talk about pve for a minute, I know this is a discussion about wvw so don’t jump on me just yet please. Before the megaserver FC was really quiet in pve. The skill points were challening alone and you had to ask in map chat for help or wait until a busier time to have help. Around reset time Bonbonnie would do a world boss run. we could jump from map to map and kill the world bosses. it was a lot of fun.

Then came the megaserver and all of that went away. now the skill points were done for you practically. All of the Temples in Cursed Shores etc stay clear for the most part.

So players wanted harder content because now the maps were too easy. So now we are back to begging for help in the HOT maps to get the skill points.

I can’t imagine what it will be like when they bring back the Alpine bl if linking is still in existence. It will be an easier map with a ton of players.

Please don’t turn wvw into a megaserver type of atmosphere. I know you can’t please everyone all the time. There are small town people and big ciy people. I liked being able to play wvw in a small town. I don’t mind visiting a big city but I don’t want to live there.

I have come up with another problem of the server merge:-

Computer Specifications

Due to the population increases in WvW, there is obviously more zergs around to fight.
Recently, when I commanded, with my darling playing beside me, we were fighting zerg after zerg after zerg.
As this repeated throughout the night, my gf noted that her laptop was getting hotter and hotter…to the point it overheated and the laptop completely shut off.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened amongst huge zergs, as we’ve noticed it before when she tried to join in with Dragon Stand and her laptop couldn’t handle the zergs. I have thus, bought her an external fan, which have worked wonders but the recent WvW server merge have now also created this problem.

Now, we personally can’t afford a new laptop/pc and, I can only imagine that not many people in the WvW community will simply get up and buy new gear to play GW2. Furthermore, it feels a bit like a slap in the face to those people who have invested in GW2 (time, gold, gems or money) for such a long time, or even a short time, to find out that they have to upgrade. I can only imagine how it feels to those people bought a minimum spec. laptop/pc just to play GW2.

Before the server merge (and when we chose to enter a lower tier server so as to match OUR computer specifications), the individual server could accommodate to our needs (r.e. see first post for more detail)and computer specifications so we could both still enjoy WvW…
Now since the server merge, it has only created another problem amongst other problems as I have stated.

I not sure if it would be the majority of the populations concerned but if it were where the majority of the populations in tier 1 and tier 8 did not want server link then the 2 tiers should not be linked and should be left as is. By this mean 2 problems would be solve. One would be reducing queue times in stacked servers in tier 1, and two would be allowing tier 8 servers be accommodative to roamers.

Another solution could be EOTM as it was conceived to be an outlet for queue maps and Obsidian Sanctum for solo roamers but OS needed to be opened out to an out door feel and enlarged to be proper map.

Another solution could be part of PvP instead of being as a stand alone Esport could be inter grated into the PvE environment with a smooth game play transition. This is to accommodated the WvW roamers and solo players.

IDK…

Some of the server pairings are incredibly dubious. My experiences so far;

• Gunnar’s Hold+Fissure of Woe is numerically abysmal -GH never had good numbers and FoW has nearly no WvW players on it,
• Far ShiverPeaks don’t need to be paired with anybody and they’ve got a very active UnderWorld on their side,
• Augury Rock+Fort Ranik seem to be the equal of BB, so I guess that’s the bar we’re all trying to reach.

Gliding activities and perma gliding activities as it is are pretty much a roamer and solo affair so if gliding, up draughts, and dust devils were introduce it should make roaming easier when avoiding zergs. In fact gliding, up draughts, and dust devils are like cliffs to roamers but with out causing the negativity to zergs that cliff does.