I would maybe think about buying the expansion if there was a free transfer weekend or something, the thought of buying the expansion to find myself on a dead wvw server and not only having to grind for the gear I didn’t finish but also for transfer fee… ugg. PvP where did you go?
If NA is smart, it’ll take this opportunity to emulate EU and spread out for the fights — not the blue ribbon (which is meaningless now).
Just because Anet made 24 NA worlds at launch doesn’t mean it’s the correct division of players for today’s game population. People like fights of varying volumes of players. For me, fights are the most fun with high volume and full maps. So going to a higher Tier is better. If you like smaller scale then you can go a bit lower tiered. Spreading out evenly will more than likely make a lack luster experience for most. This change of taking into account the actual game modes population will help players find the experience they prefer.
But because World versus World is the only game mode to which worlds apply these days, we have developed a better model that exclusively uses WvW data to determine population levels and transfer costs.
Nice… speaking of which is the “Guest” button even doing anything these days, if so what…
If NA is smart, it’ll take this opportunity to emulate EU and spread out for the fights — not the blue ribbon (which is meaningless now).
Just because Anet made 24 NA worlds at launch doesn’t mean it’s the correct division of players for today’s game population. People like fights of varying volumes of players. For me, fights are the most fun with high volume and full maps. So going to a higher Tier is better. If you like smaller scale then you can go a bit lower tiered. Spreading out evenly will more than likely make a lack luster experience for most. This change of taking into account the actual game modes population will help players find the experience they prefer.
It’s actually a fantastic way to ensure guilds stick together by giving them something to focus on/do. If you are facing new enemy servers each week, you get to face different guilds and test out your stuff vs them. That constant rotation, because of a close glicko (which would take a couple months to achieve in NA, but is doable), means more variety in matches and more challenges … which ultimately leads to improvement in skill.
I completely understand about liking massive scale fights. They can be fun, and they are not the cup of tea of everyone. But as a guild, if I was looking at maintaining a future and a robust roster on GW2, I’d look to move to a different server — if only to present more challenges for my guildmates. And I’d coordinate with other big guilds to make sure we all spread out so those challenges continued each week.
Whether your server is 1st or 8th spot, it doesn’t really matter much anymore. What matters is keeping your guild (and you) engaged.
I would maybe think about buying the expansion if there was a free transfer weekend or something, the thought of buying the expansion to find myself on a dead wvw server and not only having to grind for the gear I didn’t finish but also for transfer fee… ugg. PvP where did you go?
This only affects WvW populations, the PVE and PVP population may still be high and if not its tide to Megaservers.
Will there be a period of free or very low cost transfers to allow for a slight rebalance of population etc?
Will there be any free transfers, for example to the bottom 3 servers?
There is no plan to change the price per population tier at the moment. We’ll be looking closely at how players are moving/joining World, however. The goal is a better balance, but not a too sudden disruption either.
good to hear, thank you for taking the time to do this right instead of rushing something out.
Thank You. About Time. A little to late for DB as this was the exact cause of 200 people leaving DB for HOD, to get away from the full status. We still have the full status on DB making it a pain to recruit. Hopefully this will help.
How do you think this will impact the already dying servers? When the higher tier servers open up, do you expect our lower tier servers to lose even more? The 5 people left on the T8 servers are surely already considering transfer. If they had their pick without any caps, what would be someone’s incentive to stay and keep those last few servers with any PPT at all? Would having the T8 people transfer be beneficial to the game?
I can see how this is good, but I can also see how it could easily help already thriving servers, but could hurt the ones struggling the most.
Barricka
Leader of [GIT] Git Off My Lawn Devona’s Rest
A good suggestion for dying (low-tier) servers is to merge their population & name the new server into something different.
A LOT of Korean MMO’s are known to merge clusters/servers when population gets too low for any competition to be held there. Doing this will give lower tier players new match-ups and establish new camaraderie for the WvW environment.
When the higher tier servers open up, do you expect our lower tier servers to lose even more?
When a server has large queues during X timezone, it will most likely stay “full”. There is no guarantee that this change is going to open up higher tier servers.
Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast
It’s a nice idea but i honestly can’t see how this helps unpopulated wvw servers.
With the new system it will be even more obvious what the “best” wvw servers are and winning team joiners will join them no matter the cost.
Merging servers alongside with this change would make things better i think. At least when talking about population.
I would expect some of the higher tier servers that are “very high” now to go “full” also, if they maintain pricing then “very high” 1800 gems, “high” 1000 gems, and “medium” 500 gems. We should see a fair number of medium servers in the T4-T6 and at 500 gems that might be an interesting place to go for some larger guilds…
World population is visible on the labels on the World Selection and Transfer screen. It determines whether you can transfer to a world and, if you can, how much the transfer will cost. These measures historically have been set based on aggregate population levels around all game modes. But because World versus World is the only game mode to which worlds apply these days, we have developed a better model that exclusively uses WvW data to determine population levels and transfer costs.
We will be rolling out the new model soon and some shifts in the population levels should be expected. We’ll continue to monitor the situation, and we’ll make all adjustments we deem necessary to improve the WvW experience. As always, your feedback is very welcome.
Thank You. About Time. A little to late for DB as this was the exact cause of 200 people leaving DB for HOD, to get away from the full status. We still have the full status on DB making it a pain to recruit. Hopefully this will help.
Yeah, i’m hoping that it helps as well. DB hasn’t exactly been the best to do any kind of WvW stuff on lately lol.
please monitor this when you implement and don’t be afraid to lower caps right away so balance is acheived… otherwise overstacking will lead to lots of queues etc
Yes, oddly, I live in EST zone (NA) and I find my ping better on my EU account than my NA account for some reason. I have no idea why.
Time Warner.
But seriously, I live on the West Coast and have to use a VPN into New York to get playable EU pings because routing across the continental US sucks for some reason. Get packet loss even.
Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast
Yes, oddly, I live in EST zone (NA) and I find my ping better on my EU account than my NA account for some reason. I have no idea why.
My ping is at ~25 from EU on EU (or rather ~50 in game as the game counts back and forth)
I think it was around 150+ last time I have been to NA – I don’t really want that again ;)
Will there be a period of free or very low cost transfers to allow for a slight rebalance of population etc?
Will there be any free transfers, for example to the bottom 3 servers?
There is no plan to change the price per population tier at the moment. We’ll be looking closely at how players are moving/joining World, however. The goal is a better balance, but not a too sudden disruption either.
We certainly can’t have guilds moving around, disrupting things too suddenly. Sudden disruptions are reserved for when Anet wants to turn World v World into Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots for a week.
We certainly can’t have guilds moving around, disrupting things too suddenly. Sudden disruptions are reserved for when Anet wants to turn World v World into Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots for a week.
Do you seriously compare a single week (that after said week is over will in no way or form effect the game mode) with 10 guilds suddenly joining another server?
Moving servers does tend to have much more long-term effects after all.
World population is visible on the labels on the World Selection and Transfer screen. It determines whether you can transfer to a world and, if you can, how much the transfer will cost. These measures historically have been set based on aggregate population levels around all game modes. But because World versus World is the only game mode to which worlds apply these days, we have developed a better model that exclusively uses WvW data to determine population levels and transfer costs.
We will be rolling out the new model soon and some shifts in the population levels should be expected. We’ll continue to monitor the situation, and we’ll make all adjustments we deem necessary to improve the WvW experience. As always, your feedback is very welcome.
See you in the Mists,
— Samuel
Hello Samuel
It is indeed great to hear, however, some questions arise in my mind with this announcement. It took you only how long since the very first CDI in which this was mentioned to finally see this as part of the improvement in this situation ?
And why and how did it take so long ?
Are we looking at another few years before transfer costs are determined / adjusted per servers WvWvW population levels ?
As long as Anet doesn’t intend on making every server equivalent in terms on WvW population then I don’t think there’s a problem. There’s only so many people that care about WvW and trying to force them to spread out between all servers is never going to work. The people that care more for WvW will always gravitate toward the top servers.
It is all fun and games until you log on one day and get the message, ’300 people from (Insert your Server name here) have already logged in and claimed this as their home Server. Please Select a new server from the list of Available Servers.
[Sane]-Order of the Insane Disorder
Melanessa-Necromancer Cymaniel-Scrapper
Minikata-Guardian Shadyne-Elementalist -FA-
It is all fun and games until you log on one day and get the message, ’300 people from (Insert your Server name here) have already logged in and claimed this as their home Server. Please Select a new server from the list of Available Servers.
anet_samuel 45 points 6 hours ago
Just to clarify: the changes that are coming are on which population level each server has. The transfer price per population level (Medium, High, Very High, etc.) will stay the same.
EzJester 19 points 6 hours ago
I think I’m re-confused. What determines population for a server is going to be WvW data ONLY now (which may cause some servers to change population tiers.). The price to move to each population tier is unchanged. Right?
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anet_samuel 25 points 6 hours ago
Correct.
[–]Lksaar[Nix] on MS/[FNG] on YB 6 points 6 hours ago
Will this be a weekly average or changes based on how many ppl are currently playing/logged in?
anet_samuel 25 points 6 hours ago
The new method isn’t based on players currently playing or logged in. It looks at the active WvW population over a period of time.
[–]Lksaar[Nix] on MS/[FNG] on YB 5 points 6 hours ago
Is thatperiod of time timezone agnostic (a whole day?) or even matchup agnostic (more than a week?)
anet_samuel 29 points 6 hours ago
It looks at a period long enough to smooth out rapidly changing artifacts like timezones or matchups.
[–]SmellySushi 1 point 4 hours ago
What happens when a server “blackout” or “Hibernates” for an extended period of time to stack more players onto it?
anet_samuel 10 points 3 hours ago
Some servers will get their population level increased, some will have it decrease. I don’t want to get into too many details before the change is release, because I don’t want to trigger mass-migrations now. People can be weird.
No, EotM won’t be counted towards WvW. I don’t think it’s the same experience, and you can always enter it since it can have as many instances as needed, so there’s really not that same population problem as in “core” WvW.
Take the opportunity to close the bottom dozen ‘servers’ by offering them a choice of new homes in the next tiers up- that’s the fastest way to get more balance in the servers, as currently there are too many servers for a game mode that has been allowed to wither away for so long.
Whilst this minor change is welcome, a lot more actual work is required on wvw to make it an attractive game mode and to swing the participation numbers up.
Take the opportunity to close the bottom dozen ‘servers’ by offering them a choice of new homes in the next tiers up- that’s the fastest way to get more balance in the servers, as currently there are too many servers for a game mode that has been allowed to wither away for so long.
Whilst this minor change is welcome, a lot more actual work is required on wvw to make it an attractive game mode and to swing the participation numbers up.
Why not close the top dozen servers? Seeing as they have the most players? Stop trying to close my server lol
