Guild Wars 2

Shadow.3475:

I have 6character and lvl 80-90% of them in WvW or books and onlything i do is when i login i run 1 lap in Cursed Shore and then if its like you find 4-5 orc and anchent Wood Close i log rest to take that and that give you some gold and you get from the drop on lord and rest so i make Money. Thats why i cant unerstad why some have character in Lions a ther you cant make coin.

IF it isn’t fun why do it? People play games for fun, not to have to have another job. It is already enough work running guilds, I spend the rest of my time playing wvw with them.

Notsoperky.4291:

I wonder how the metrics count the alts and afk ‘players’ on our maps? Guess they count towards our total wvw players so I guess we’ll be ‘full’.

On the other hand, that should stop any more alt accounts parking their toons and reducing our actives…unless you can still select a ‘full’ server when starting a new account?

I don’t like the idea of charging for transfers but see the necessity to stop even more bandwaggoning to the few remaining busy servers. Maybe once they iron out the kinks in the news system they can refine it a bit better, and pay people gems to transfer OFF the full servers and down to lower tier servers, with the scale meeting somewhere in the middle.

Only trouble with that is that pve’rs would take advantage of it just to collect the gems, so maybe throw in a wvw hours played restriction on it too.

It will not reduce the alt issues since enemy servers already bought a ton of alt and parked them on our server for $10 and can log them into wvw every week to make sure they clog the server.

lil devils x.6071:

The only reason my lil sis and her S.O. haven’t been playing as it is they tried to get on JQ for months and gave up since we could not play together.

Sounds to me like they didn’t care about the server and just wanted to play with you. You could have easily moved your account or made another to join them but you are so concerned with staying on a stacked server that you would rather let them quit the game.

As much as you don’t like it this is going to be a very good change for the game. If guilds decide they want to move for a change they will no longer be able to bandwagon to servers that are already stacked. They will have to move to one that actually needs people. When a large influx of new players join the game (which will likely happen as soon as HoT hits) they will help balance out the numbers even more.

WvW is more than just your T1 bubble. The more competitive servers we can get the better the game will be.

This is rolling out a week after a huge Bandwagon takes place??? Can’t help but think of this as pretty suspicious. Maybe I’ll be surprised but, right now I have no confidence that this will benefit me or those I play the game with at all.

Puck.9612:

lil devils x.6071:

The only reason my lil sis and her S.O. haven’t been playing as it is they tried to get on JQ for months and gave up since we could not play together.

Sounds to me like they didn’t care about the server and just wanted to play with you. You could have easily moved your account or made another to join them but you are so concerned with staying on a stacked server that you would rather let them quit the game.

As much as you don’t like it this is going to be a very good change for the game. If guilds decide they want to move for a change they will no longer be able to bandwagon to servers that are already stacked. They will have to move to one that actually needs people. When a large influx of new players join the game (which will likely happen as soon as HoT hits) they will help balance out the numbers even more.

WvW is more than just your T1 bubble. The more competitive servers we can get the better the game will be.

" Easily moved my account" I am to easily move one of the largest guilds( probably THE largest) on JQ to play against what? Moved my account to do what? what will there be to fight against? I want a challenge.. It would be an execution not a challenge? Not everyone even plays NA prime..

Trying to force players to play where they are unhappy never works out for a game long term. Anyone that has played many MMORPG’s knows what happens down the road when you do this. People will leave and play another game instead if they are not having fun where they are. You do not say " No one is playing with me so I will force them to" they will not do that, if they are not having fun there they will either leave the server or the game all together.

There are plenty of things that would be good for the game, this isn’t the solution however. This is how you kill the game. If you really wanted to make wvw more competitive, they would not have it server based instead let it be " guild wars" allowing for much more variety in who you fight. Instead of a week long fight have it a day and allow players to pick their " world" daily to spice it up.

OF course people care more about their family and friends and guild than a server. People > game world. Guilds go from game to game together, that is how this works. Why would my sister want to play a game with her sister without playing with her sister? yea.. that makes sense. So if you tell someone to come play with you, don’t you think they should be able to at least do so?

I have played on multiple servers.. I already did the “I am the only person on the map and solo keeps” gig. I already listened to nubs refusing to use Team speak and people who think map chat is for flaming instead of map calls. No Thank you. If a server does not have the population to support players 24/7 it should be closed if you want to create only populated worlds, no one should be forced to endure that. Sure there will be an influx of players with HoT, then it will die off again and we will be back to Sq1.

lil devils x.6071:

Puck.9612:

lil devils x.6071:

The only reason my lil sis and her S.O. haven’t been playing as it is they tried to get on JQ for months and gave up since we could not play together.

Sounds to me like they didn’t care about the server and just wanted to play with you. You could have easily moved your account or made another to join them but you are so concerned with staying on a stacked server that you would rather let them quit the game.

As much as you don’t like it this is going to be a very good change for the game. If guilds decide they want to move for a change they will no longer be able to bandwagon to servers that are already stacked. They will have to move to one that actually needs people. When a large influx of new players join the game (which will likely happen as soon as HoT hits) they will help balance out the numbers even more.

WvW is more than just your T1 bubble. The more competitive servers we can get the better the game will be.

" Easily moved my account" I am supposed to easily move one of the largest guilds on JQ to play against what? Moved my account to do what? what will there be to figth against? I want a challenge.. What are we supposed to fight there? Not everyone plays NA prime.

Trying to force players to play where they are unhappy never works out for a game long term. Anyone that has played many MMORPG’s knows what happens down the road when you do this. People will leave and play another game instead if they are not having fun where they are. you do not say " No one is playing with me I will force them to" they wont do that, if they are not having fun there they will either leave the server or the game all together.

There are plenty of things that would be good for the game, this isn’t the solution however. This is how you kill the game. If youreally wanted to make wvw more competitive, they would not have it server based instead let it be " guild wars" allowing for much more variety in who you fight. Instead of a week long fight have it a day and allow players to pick their " world" daily to spice it up.

OF course people care more about their family and friends and guild than a server. People > game world. Guilds go from game to game together, that is how this works. Why would my sister want to play a game with her sister without playing with her sister? yea.. that makes sense.

This will lead to “much more variety in who you fight”. That’s exactly what balancing out the population does. And Anet is taking the most gentile approach to achieving this.

Shiren.9532:

Samuel Loretan.8601:

This should be rolled out tomorrow.

To answer a bunch of questions that I’ve seen on this thread:

• The price to move to a server of a given population level isn’t changing. What’s changing is the way population levels are attributed to the servers.

• I won’t detail the way the new algorithm works, because I want to minimize the risk of people trying to game it. That being said, I am confident it is robust against such attempts. It’s not looking at a short period of time, and it’s looking at many aspects of the ways players are interacting with WvW to determine a server population.

• It will continue to be impossible to join or transfer to Full servers. It is possible that some servers are going to be marked as Full for a long time. While I understand this can be annoying for some, this is necessary to create a better experience for everyone.

• I agree that asking new players to chose a World before doing anything in the game is odd, now that Worlds are a WvW concept. This isn’t something we can change easily, however, but I’ll keep it in mind if an occasion arises.

• Please keep in mind that this won’t have an immediate, instantaneous effect on your WvW experience. The effect of the change will take some time to be observable from a player perspective – it should however be visible pretty quickly on my side, and I’ll make sure it’s going in the right direction.

Once this change has been deployed, I’d like to hear what you think about the population level your server now has. Specifically, I’m interested in hearing about feelings of mismatch (like “my server is marked as full, but feels really empty even at peak time”).

Thanks for the feedbacks so far! I’m glad most of you are liking this change.
— Samuel

Will it be possible for a server to do a blackout for a week and have none of their guilds log in to WvW resulting in their population dropping its full status? In the past servers have done blackouts to get people past the full status, they also participating in match fixing arrangements to lock down tiers and prevent movement between them by agreeing not to push servers that can’t/won’t defend or cap match that week. Is the system designed to avoid this kind of manipulation and match fixing?

He said it’s not looking at a short amount of time so I doubt doing a black out for a week will affect it.

Puck.9612:

lil devils x.6071:

Puck.9612:

lil devils x.6071:

The only reason my lil sis and her S.O. haven’t been playing as it is they tried to get on JQ for months and gave up since we could not play together.

Sounds to me like they didn’t care about the server and just wanted to play with you. You could have easily moved your account or made another to join them but you are so concerned with staying on a stacked server that you would rather let them quit the game.

As much as you don’t like it this is going to be a very good change for the game. If guilds decide they want to move for a change they will no longer be able to bandwagon to servers that are already stacked. They will have to move to one that actually needs people. When a large influx of new players join the game (which will likely happen as soon as HoT hits) they will help balance out the numbers even more.

WvW is more than just your T1 bubble. The more competitive servers we can get the better the game will be.

" Easily moved my account" I am supposed to easily move one of the largest guilds on JQ to play against what? Moved my account to do what? what will there be to figth against? I want a challenge.. What are we supposed to fight there? Not everyone plays NA prime.

Trying to force players to play where they are unhappy never works out for a game long term. Anyone that has played many MMORPG’s knows what happens down the road when you do this. People will leave and play another game instead if they are not having fun where they are. you do not say " No one is playing with me I will force them to" they wont do that, if they are not having fun there they will either leave the server or the game all together.

There are plenty of things that would be good for the game, this isn’t the solution however. This is how you kill the game. If youreally wanted to make wvw more competitive, they would not have it server based instead let it be " guild wars" allowing for much more variety in who you fight. Instead of a week long fight have it a day and allow players to pick their " world" daily to spice it up.

OF course people care more about their family and friends and guild than a server. People > game world. Guilds go from game to game together, that is how this works. Why would my sister want to play a game with her sister without playing with her sister? yea.. that makes sense.

This will lead to “much more variety in who you fight”. That’s exactly what balancing out the population does. And Anet is taking the most gentile approach to achieving this.

No it doesn’t. The players who actually all know how to play already communicate with each other. The servers didn’t get stacked by accident. None of that changes as people will still coordinate and work together to play who they want. What will continue to happen is the unorganized nubs will still be on their random maps and the organized guilds will still be on theirs fighting each other. That isn’t going to change with this at all. The servers without the organized vet guilds will still be wrecked regardless, and the organized guilds will still be left fighting each other. It doesn’t matter which server they are on or move to if they are still fighting the same players.

This will just force guilds to use their alts to server hop rather than making their tours with their mains and prevent new players from having the chance to ever play on one of the better servers as the best servers will always be full.

( I also added additional info to my earlier post you quoted)

I’ve also played in every tier. I currently still have accounts in T2, T5/6. Some guilds have better drivers, some servers work better together, but the only real difference between the servers, what gives them the win at the end of the week, is numbers and coverage. If you believe anything other than that you are a fool.

Puck.9612:

I’ve also played in every tier. I currently still have accounts in T2, T5/6. Some guilds have better drivers, some servers work better together, but the only real difference between the servers, what gives them the win at the end of the week, is numbers and coverage. If you believe anything other than that you are a fool.

You should understand then having alts on multiple servers that it doesn’t matter if you are on different servers if you are fighting the same actual players that are also playing on alts.. LOL ( MANY drivers drive for multiple servers.)

Coverage is exactly what I was discussing, If a server does not have enough population to cover all time zones 24/7 it really shouldn’t exist. There are other options like allowing for more maps to play on to reduce ques and having fewer servers instead of forcing PST, OCX, SEA or EU timezone players to play on servers where they have no one to play with or against. ALL that is going to happen when those players come in to dead maps is they will get bored and find another game they can actually play with people . People do not play massively multiplayer games to solo keeps, nor should they be forced to due to caps. No matter what time you come on to play, there should be players to play with and against. If there isn’t, the system is broken and needs to be fixed. In T1 no matter what time you can play, you always have a team to play with and enemies to fight. This is how wvw should be for everyone, not just those who got on this server first. If you can only play during OCX, you should not be forced to play alone due to a broken system.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

This should be rolled out tomorrow.

To answer a bunch of questions that I’ve seen on this thread:

• The price to move to a server of a given population level isn’t changing. What’s changing is the way population levels are attributed to the servers.

• I won’t detail the way the new algorithm works, because I want to minimize the risk of people trying to game it. That being said, I am confident it is robust against such attempts. It’s not looking at a short period of time, and it’s looking at many aspects of the ways players are interacting with WvW to determine a server population.

• It will continue to be impossible to join or transfer to Full servers. It is possible that some servers are going to be marked as Full for a long time. While I understand this can be annoying for some, this is necessary to create a better experience for everyone.

• I agree that asking new players to chose a World before doing anything in the game is odd, now that Worlds are a WvW concept. This isn’t something we can change easily, however, but I’ll keep it in mind if an occasion arises.

• Please keep in mind that this won’t have an immediate, instantaneous effect on your WvW experience. The effect of the change will take some time to be observable from a player perspective – it should however be visible pretty quickly on my side, and I’ll make sure it’s going in the right direction.

Once this change has been deployed, I’d like to hear what you think about the population level your server now has. Specifically, I’m interested in hearing about feelings of mismatch (like “my server is marked as full, but feels really empty even at peak time”).

Thanks for the feedbacks so far! I’m glad most of you are liking this change.
— Samuel

Thank you for more info. This actually sounds sensible and will, over time, start to make a difference in WvW pops.

Some of you are going on and on about something you don’t even know the details about yet…. Let it play out and THEN comment?

Jq-bg-TC all have gone off of full within the last week at times – doubt that is changing. For all we know all servers will have a lower count than present by culling out the pve only. This count will take some time to accumulate the #s of people playing wvw I gather.

I “think” the only change is some servers going from full to high, some high to medium, some medium to low, and some remaining full over time, but that is a guess……

Takes what 5-15min a day and am on SFR ro sometime its queue so then better to run around get coin then just site wait.

lil devils x.6071:

Shadow.3475:

I have 6character and lvl 80-90% of them in WvW or books and onlything i do is when i login i run 1 lap in Cursed Shore and then if its like you find 4-5 orc and anchent Wood Close i log rest to take that and that give you some gold and you get from the drop on lord and rest so i make Money. Thats why i cant unerstad why some have character in Lions a ther you cant make coin.

IF it isn’t fun why do it? People play games for fun, not to have to have another job. It is already enough work running guilds, I spend the rest of my time playing wvw with them.

rhoiyds.4289:

I am Australian and joined GW2 two years ago, and my stupid, uneducated self chose EU servers instead of NA because I truly didn’t even know the difference.

I played for the first year and a half without regretting this decision, and I now have 6 level 80 characters, a legendary weapon and a large amount of achievements I am very proud of.

Transfering to a very high pop server (ie max cost) is about 1/6th the cost of a legendary.

Priorities mate.

If transfering is your only goal, the thing you work for every day, it may take a couple of months to get the funds if you are slow. But its way cheaper than making a legendary.

The real money → gem cost for transfering is ridiculous I know. Anet are literally leeching money on impatient people that play WvW. But the gold cost is… not really that bad. People need to realize that the most important use for gold isnt that legendary crap or ascended gold sink for almost no improvement at all compared to the exotic for 1% of the cost, its actually getting the quality of life things that cost gems. Character slots, inventory slots, bank slots and yes, transfer fees. If Anet still get enough cash to survive on what people could have used gold on, its actually a very good economic model. It lets people choose between dedicated playing or paying for less time spent. GW2 has incredibly rabid players with thousands upon thousands of hours so yeah…

TL;DR
They arent forcing you to give them money

Shadow.3475:

Takes what 5-15min a day and am on SFR ro sometime its queue so then better to run around get coin then just site wait.

lil devils x.6071:

Shadow.3475:

I have 6character and lvl 80-90% of them in WvW or books and onlything i do is when i login i run 1 lap in Cursed Shore and then if its like you find 4-5 orc and anchent Wood Close i log rest to take that and that give you some gold and you get from the drop on lord and rest so i make Money. Thats why i cant unerstad why some have character in Lions a ther you cant make coin.

IF it isn’t fun why do it? People play games for fun, not to have to have another job. It is already enough work running guilds, I spend the rest of my time playing wvw with them.

Thanks, but No thanks. I would rather buy gold then open maps. I start to feel like I am suffocating after about 10 seconds in PVE and feel like I need to run back to a full loot no safe zones pvp game or justr set me on fire and that would be more enjoyable . I never just sit in ques and I am on JQ, have no problem getting into wvw when I need to.

Dawdler.8521:

rhoiyds.4289:

I am Australian and joined GW2 two years ago, and my stupid, uneducated self chose EU servers instead of NA because I truly didn’t even know the difference.

I played for the first year and a half without regretting this decision, and I now have 6 level 80 characters, a legendary weapon and a large amount of achievements I am very proud of.

Transfering to a very high pop server (ie max cost) is about 1/6th the cost of a legendary.

Priorities mate.

If transfering is your only goal, the thing you work for every day, it may take a couple of months to get the funds if you are slow. But its way cheaper than making a legendary.

The real money -> gem cost for transfering is ridiculous I know. Anet are literally leeching money on impatient people that play WvW. But the gold cost is… not really that bad. People need to realize that the most important use for gold isnt that legendary crap or ascended gold sink for almost no improvement at all compared to the exotic for 1% of the cost, its actually getting the quality of life things that cost gems. Character slots, inventory slots, bank slots and yes, transfer fees. If Anet still get enough cash to survive on what people could have used gold on, its actually a very good economic model. It lets people choose between dedicated playing or paying for less time spent. GW2 has incredibly rabid players with thousands upon thousands of hours so yeah…

TL;DR
They arent forcing you to give them money

If he is an Aussie player, chances are he will not even be able to get to a server where he can actually have players to play with or against in NA if they are going to be locking them . Only the top servers have players to play with 24/7. Outside of NA prime most NA servers are ghost towns so he would be transferring to NA servers to play alone.

Well the good thing is that Blackgate should be coming off full with this change, so yay for that

God kitten Blackgate’s PvE reputation from before megaservers were put in place haha

Reverence.6915:

Well the good thing is that Blackgate should be coming off full with this change, so yay for that

God kitten Blackgate’s PvE reputation from before megaservers were put in place haha

I doubt anyone in T2 or T1 will be coming off full, even losing the guilds BG just did. Remember you are still competing with the populations of ET and DR…
If I were to guess all of T2 up will most likely be locked. Remember those coming in to do dailies all count against you as well.

Reikou.7068:

Said this many times before.

Transferring to a server with a population lower than your own should be free.

Transferring to a server with a population higher than your own should be prohibitively expensive.

The goal is server balance. Who cares about “implosions” or whatever. Those will only be temporary.

That’s an intriguing idea. It would, however, allow for stacking right after the announcement of a tournament, which would be terrible. So I’d recommend the following variation:

• To high-pop server: painful cost.
• To mid-pop: about the same as a character slot or three.
• To low-pop: free, however subsequent transfers within 4-5 weeks would cost the same as moving to a high-pop.
• Add to this: if you transfer from a high-pop to a low pop, you get a couple of birthday boosters.

This prevents bandwagoning while at the same time encouraging folks to move to lower pop servers.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Reikou.7068:

Said this many times before.

Transferring to a server with a population lower than your own should be free.

Transferring to a server with a population higher than your own should be prohibitively expensive.

The goal is server balance. Who cares about “implosions” or whatever. Those will only be temporary.

That’s an intriguing idea. It would, however, allow for stacking right after the announcement of a tournament, which would be terrible. So I’d recommend the following variation:

• To high-pop server: painful cost.
• To mid-pop: about the same as a character slot or three.
• To low-pop: free, however subsequent transfers within 4-5 weeks would cost the same as moving to a high-pop.
• Add to this: if you transfer from a high-pop to a low pop, you get a couple of birthday boosters.

This prevents bandwagoning while at the same time encouraging folks to move to lower pop servers.

That really doesn’t solve anything tbh, When money isn’t an issue for some all it does is restrict the poor. Sometimes guilds are paid more than 80,000 gold to transfer… All you do by raising costs is punish the poor servers and make it even more pay to win than it is already. Creating further divide between the " haves and the have not’s".

correct me if i’m wrong, changes that are mentioned in this thread are coming today, right? Tuesday, because when dev was writing “tomorrow” it was tuesday in east europe

(so and the lag changes coming too)

Hvaran.6327:

correct me if i’m wrong, changes that are mentioned in this thread are coming today, right? Tuesday, because when dev was writing “tomorrow” it was tuesday in east europe

(so and the lag changes coming too)

Patches are always on a tuesday (unless its a follow up patch because the tuesday patch broke something). Usually around 18:00 CET in my experience, give or take an hour or two.

Nice one

/15 chars

There are currently no WvW population less than “medium” on any server (both EU and NA).

Guess as is well with the WvW populations, lowest tier got lots of people.

Ok bandwagoners transfer now. It’s cheap.

Wow…I’ve transferred to a lower tier server for some roaming action – for about a month – and now I’m unable to get back on my original server? I don’t think a server like piken is dropping in population soon.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

• It will continue to be impossible to join or transfer to Full servers. It is possible that some servers are going to be marked as Full for a long time. While I understand this can be annoying for some, this is necessary to create a better experience for everyone.

Could you please elaborate on this point? .. what defines a Full server ? Is it a server that has reached the maximum number of players total because of hardware limitations that include BOTH WvW and PVE players? Or is the the determination of the Full server SOLELY based on this new algorithm that reflects pure WvW population and has no relation to the PVE (those that don’t wvw at all) population on the server?

This is an important distincation for T1 servers. As we’re all currently full, if pve population is included in the determination of FULL status , then our server population in WvW will not benefit from the new system as others might.

Please note i’m not asking for the algorithm here.. just an understanding if PVE population is included in the FULL status determination cause it affects HARDWARE limitations.

Hope this question makes sense .. looking forward to hearing from you

Amazing job by the way ! i know this will benefit WvW in general !

seeing that it was mentioned that some server pop will increase while some will decrease…

i assume that not the highest pop server is used as the base reference. so, in a way, it is attempting to direct people off to the lower tier by limiting the higher tier server.

if that is the case, it will take awhile before it show the effects.

And RIP.

Our guild has around 15/20-30 people onto Black Gate. It’s slowly been opening up as people have been transferring off (the new YB bandwagon). Over time we’ve been getting people in by camping the transfer screen for a few hours. Understand these people are slowly coming back to the game after not playing at release and want to just come check out the game with their friends. However now it seems that’s pretty much never gonna work anymore because BlackGate is active enough in WvW that it’ll never open up. This leaves majority of us on the server with few people off who can never participate. Before there was at least hope they’d get in, now it sounds like it’s basically non-existent. Asking us to transfer 15 people off to play with 5 others is ridiculous.

Dislike this decision immensely.

So the wording on the original timing of the dev post has completely screwed me. It was mentioned that the changes will be done “tomorrow”, would’ve been a lot better if you had actually said a particular time with timezone included. I’m an EU player and 11 hours ago (when the post was originally made) it was the same date as 11 hours later, whereas obviously in the US this is not the case. Now I’m locked out of my home server with possibly a very long wait since my server (FSP) along with 7 others are all marked as full. I converted gems immediately after reading the post and was planning on transferring tonight after talking to my guild leader about it but apparently I didn’t even have enough time for that. I don’t understand how you can give people so little notice (11 hours and then without a clearly stated time) and expect everyone to have read about the changes and prepared the necessary costs to transfer servers. Two of my fellow guildmates are in the same position, and we all find ourselves unable to transfer back to be with our guild for what could possibly be a very long time. It is very common for WvW guilds to take breaks from the game, and their members will have scattered across gold silver and bronze leagues as they change servers to play with old friends or just slack/roam, so I am sure that we are not the only ones caught out by this
change.

What I am really hoping will happen is that these changes are retracted and more time be given for players to prepare the necessary gold/gems to transfer, or just change the population statuses back to how it was before in an one week “grace period”.

Another thing nobody foresaw, 8/9 EU gold league servers are currently classed as “full”. Trust me when I tell you this is completely wrong. Most gold league servers cannot manage even a decent night/early morning crew.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

A “Full” server is a server with a number of Active WvW Players (as defined by the algorithm) above a certain threshold. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations, or PvE players.

The “Full” threshold is slightly different than the other ones because it doesn’t have an upper limit. So some servers can be just slightly above the threshold and marked “Full”, and some other servers might be well over it, and also marked “Full”, even though their populations aren’t really balanced.

The intent is that since you can’t join or transfer to a “Full” server, their populations are going to diminish over time, until eventually they reach “Very High” again. At this point, all “Full” servers are going to be balanced. This won’t be right away, though, since we’re not kicking anyone out of their servers.

Any answer about the fact that there are no low/very low servers?
I mean it would mean less $$ for Anet as lower transfer costs, but still, it’s quagganing in my eyes.

It’s a bad idea and not healthy for the game to lock people out of some of the most active, and FUN, WvW servers. Currently I also can’t bring friends into the game because they won’t be able to play with me on the server I’m on (and no I’m not switching off a server I’m comfortable and used to).

I thought the idea of queues for maps already control the amount of players that can be playing on a map at each given time. Hard locking population control is just bad for the game, it’s a MMORPG, people like to play together, and they like to play on populated servers. It also hurts the guilds that can use fresh blood but now they know there are none coming in.

Ok first step in the right direction but if you really want people to move from the T1 severs, why dont you let them transfer for a decent price. As I have stated in the german forum, over 20€ or 350 gold for transing from SFR/deso/piken/fsp TO a T4/T5/T6 server is still a bad joke.

I know you want to earn some money, but please give me a chance to transfer from SFR to a german server. I wont spend 20€ on a transfer and the overpriced 40€ for HoT.
Have already request a free transfer per support ticket, but since little employees of Anet don’t have any power and don’t want to get in trouble they didn’t follow my wish.

Summary: Good idea, bad realization

ImperialWL.7138:

So the wording on the original timing of the dev post has completely screwed me. It was mentioned that the changes will be done “tomorrow”, would’ve been a lot better if you had actually said a particular time with timezone included. I’m an EU player and 11 hours ago (when the post was originally made) it was the same date as 11 hours later, whereas obviously in the US this is not the case. Now I’m locked out of my home server with possibly a very long wait since my server (FSP) along with 7 others are all marked as full. I converted gems immediately after reading the post and was planning on transferring tonight after talking to my guild leader about it but apparently I didn’t even have enough time for that. I don’t understand how you can give people so little notice (11 hours and then without a clearly stated time) and expect everyone to have read about the changes and prepared the necessary costs to transfer servers. Two of my fellow guildmates are in the same position, and we all find ourselves unable to transfer back to be with our guild for what could possibly be a very long time. It is very common for WvW guilds to take breaks from the game, and their members will have scattered across gold silver and bronze leagues as they change servers to play with old friends or just slack/roam, so I am sure that we are not the only ones caught out by this
change.

What I am really hoping will happen is that these changes are retracted and more time be given for players to prepare the necessary gold/gems to transfer, or just change the population statuses back to how it was before in an one week “grace period”.

Patches are basically always on Tuesdays. Why would they suddenly patch this in on a Wednesday?

We have known about this change coming since Friday. And we also know that the vast majority of the patches comes on Tuesday. You have had plenty of time. It is not ArenaNets fault that you decide to do things at the very last second.

What are the new transfer fees?

gavyne.6847:

It’s a bad idea and not healthy for the game to lock people out of some of the most active, and FUN, WvW servers. Currently I also can’t bring friends into the game because they won’t be able to play with me on the server I’m on (and no I’m not switching off a server I’m comfortable and used to).

I thought the idea of queues for maps already control the amount of players that can be playing on a map at each given time. Hard locking population control is just bad for the game, it’s a MMORPG, people like to play together, and they like to play on populated servers. It also hurts the guilds that can use fresh blood but now they know there are none coming in.

This is exactly what they’re trying to fix. By closing off the highest population servers, we’re forced to fill other servers and increase their population, resulting in a better experience for all players. Unfortunately, that is bad news for people like yourself who stacked in the top 5. Players have been asking for a WvW population balance for a long time… The only way to get it is to not allow players to move to full servers.

X T D.6458:

What are the new transfer fees?

Medium – 500 gems
High – 1000 gems
Very High – 1800 gems

Thought they said they would base fees on the new populations, guess I read wrong

rhapsody.3615:

This is exactly what they’re trying to fix. By closing off the highest population servers, we’re forced to fill other servers and increase their population, resulting in a better experience for all players. Unfortunately, that is bad news for people like yourself who stacked in the top 5. Players have been asking for a WvW population balance for a long time… The only way to get it is to not allow players to move to full servers.

I understand what they’re trying to do, but the best way to really accomplish this is by having less WvW server choices. There’s simply too many servers to choose from, and locking people out of top 5 servers is not magically going to fill all these servers marked as “medium”.

I just think they’re doing it the wrong way, and forcing players to transfer only loses people. I’ve seen too many guilds break apart or are a shadow of their former self after transfers to lower pop tiers. Enticing people to move to “high” or “very high” servers would be the better idea. There’s just not enough players to fill the big list of servers marked as “medium” right now, and we all know most of them are really low populated.

lordkrall.7241:

ImperialWL.7138:

So the wording on the original timing of the dev post has completely screwed me. It was mentioned that the changes will be done “tomorrow”, would’ve been a lot better if you had actually said a particular time with timezone included. I’m an EU player and 11 hours ago (when the post was originally made) it was the same date as 11 hours later, whereas obviously in the US this is not the case. Now I’m locked out of my home server with possibly a very long wait since my server (FSP) along with 7 others are all marked as full. I converted gems immediately after reading the post and was planning on transferring tonight after talking to my guild leader about it but apparently I didn’t even have enough time for that. I don’t understand how you can give people so little notice (11 hours and then without a clearly stated time) and expect everyone to have read about the changes and prepared the necessary costs to transfer servers. Two of my fellow guildmates are in the same position, and we all find ourselves unable to transfer back to be with our guild for what could possibly be a very long time. It is very common for WvW guilds to take breaks from the game, and their members will have scattered across gold silver and bronze leagues as they change servers to play with old friends or just slack/roam, so I am sure that we are not the only ones caught out by this
change.

What I am really hoping will happen is that these changes are retracted and more time be given for players to prepare the necessary gold/gems to transfer, or just change the population statuses back to how it was before in an one week “grace period”.

Patches are basically always on Tuesdays. Why would they suddenly patch this in on a Wednesday?

We have known about this change coming since Friday. And we also know that the vast majority of the patches comes on Tuesday. You have had plenty of time. It is not ArenaNets fault that you decide to do things at the very last second.

I didn’t decide to do things at the last minute, because I honestly just read about the changes today and immediately got gems. The fact remains the wording on the dev note was ambiguous at best, for such an important change as in locking out 8/9 gold league servers a properly stated time should’ve been given, unless it’s ArenaNet’s decision to mess people up intentionally with vaguely worded messages; and yes patches are usually on Tuesday, but they are not always at the same time are they? I recall some patches not coming through until early Wednesday morning EU time, so you cannot really say it is my fault for not second guessing the time of the patch.

X T D.6458:

Thought they said they would base fees on the new populations, guess I read wrong

I am rather sure that they said that the fees would be the same as they were before and that the change would only effect how the levels were calculated.

Samuel Loretan.8601:

A “Full” server is a server with a number of Active WvW Players (as defined by the algorithm) above a certain threshold. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations, or PvE players.

The “Full” threshold is slightly different than the other ones because it doesn’t have an upper limit. So some servers can be just slightly above the threshold and marked “Full”, and some other servers might be well over it, and also marked “Full”, even though their populations aren’t really balanced.

The intent is that since you can’t join or transfer to a “Full” server, their populations are going to diminish over time, until eventually they reach “Very High” again. At this point, all “Full” servers are going to be balanced. This won’t be right away, though, since we’re not kicking anyone out of their servers.

Very well put and a good plan indeed. Thanks for the prompt response.

I know this should be discussed somewhere else but would the idea of a little bit lower transfer rates for players transferring OUT of FULL servers be considered to help build the momentum towards balancing the servers ?

X T D.6458:

Thought they said they would base fees on the new populations, guess I read wrong

From the first page of this thread:
“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.”

The funny thing about this change is: I wanted to take a break from my server because of all those bandwagoners joining the last few weeks and now I’m locked out because of them.

I guess I have some really bad timing and it’s just one person but I’ve spent several hundred bucks on this game because I like it. First I transfer to a lower tier server for roaming => golem rush event => wvw dead and now this change. Am I paying anet for slaps right into my face? xD

gavyne.6847:

It’s a bad idea and not healthy for the game to lock people out of some of the most active, and FUN, WvW servers.

By far the most damaging thing ever to WvW was the lenghty free transfers that completely clumped all the wvw players into a very small pool of servers.

ImperialWL.7138:

I didn’t decide to do things at the last minute, because I honestly just read about the changes today and immediately got gems. The fact remains the wording on the dev note was ambiguous at best, for such an important change as in locking out 8/9 gold league servers a properly stated time should’ve been given, unless it’s ArenaNet’s decision to mess people up intentionally with vaguely worded messages; and yes patches are usually on Tuesday, but they are not always at the same time are they? I recall some patches not coming through until early Wednesday morning EU time, so you cannot really say it is my fault for not second guessing the time of the patch.

So… they should basically make a list with the date for every country in the world? ArenaNet is a company based in the US. It is very likely that when they are talking about todays or tomorrow they are talking about their time, not some random time elsewhere in the world.

They never have a set time for patches, so they can’t really give a stated time.

Wednesday, EU time (but that is extremely unusual, as far as I can recall it have only really happened once or twice) is rather irrelevant. The time/day for patches is always in ArenaNets time, unless something else is stated.

Terrahero.9358:

gavyne.6847:

It’s a bad idea and not healthy for the game to lock people out of some of the most active, and FUN, WvW servers.

By far the most damaging thing ever to WvW was the lenghty free transfers that completely clumped all the wvw players into a very small pool of servers.

This.

It’s an awesome change, albeit late.

gavyne.6847:

rhapsody.3615:

This is exactly what they’re trying to fix. By closing off the highest population servers, we’re forced to fill other servers and increase their population, resulting in a better experience for all players. Unfortunately, that is bad news for people like yourself who stacked in the top 5. Players have been asking for a WvW population balance for a long time… The only way to get it is to not allow players to move to full servers.

I understand what they’re trying to do, but the best way to really accomplish this is by having less WvW server choices. There’s simply too many servers to choose from, and locking people out of top 5 servers is not magically going to fill all these servers marked as “medium”.

I just think they’re doing it the wrong way, and forcing players to transfer only loses people. I’ve seen too many guilds break apart or are a shadow of their former self after transfers to lower pop tiers. Enticing people to move to “high” or “very high” servers would be the better idea. There’s just not enough players to fill the big list of servers marked as “medium” right now, and we all know most of them are really low populated.

I’m assuming they want to try whatever they can before admitting that they need to merge a few servers. Plus you have people on the lower tiers who like it there and do not want a larger population. Whatever they do cannot possibly make every single player happy. But yeah, we have quite a few Medium servers (some should be classified as Low, but it’s only the first day. I’m not even sure that they have a “Low” classification).

That’s not to say I don’t sympathize with your situation. I have only a handful of friends that I regularly play with. One recently moved to Blackgate and found a guild. 2 or 3 of us were going to follow, but that’s not a possibility now.

Overall I’m happy with this, and the fact that Anet is trying something.