Guild Wars 2

I’m playing in a bronze tier world, and most of the time WvW is empty. I’ve been reading that the new WvW maps will be bigger than the current borderlands map, and thinking about our low population, my comment would be, “well that sucks”. I’ve been thinking about this, can we have world alliances in WvW so that the population of less populated worlds will be consolidated? For example, an alliance between two bronze tier worlds and one silver tier world can be made, or an alliance between two silver tier worlds and one gold tier world can be made, or maybe one bronze and one silver and one gold tier world alliance. I know lore wise, the worlds exist separately and in parallel, but what if the worlds of Old Draenor and New Draenor unite as one (j/k, I’m a lore fanatic)?

We’ve asked a lot about server mergers to counter the fact that wvw population is extremely low on lower tier servers.
An alliance system could be interesting but how would it work?
Allied servers could enter each-others wvw maps?

Yeah, only allied servers can enter their respective “alliance battle” maps. But I’m thinking only the lowest 6 of the bronze tier worlds and the lowest 3 of the silver tier worlds could unite, the rest will have normal match-ups. But then again it will mess up the rankings, and there will be other things as well that can mess up, but sometimes you have to wriggle the bee hive to get to the honey, if you know what I mean. ^^;;

Definitely.

maybe A massive merger of lower tier servers then.

There are some different options/ideas on how a Alliance system could work.

(1) Permanently glue 2 or more servers together, for example NA rank 19+24. (Main problem is that this will feel way to much like server merges for some)

(2) A shifting Alliance, where the servers teaming together can vary each week. (Main problem is communication and teamwork, "do we give them access to our TS, or will we fight against them next week?")

(3) A Semi-Alliance system, making use of the MegaServer system. Where servers are designated by teams through the tiers, and lower servers can function as "overflow" servers for the higher servers with queue’s etc. This could also be modified to use Dynamically adjusting map limits, so for offtime hours, if one server has a lot of players they might be shifted to another match-up that are outnumbered instead.

(Main problem with this, is that a lot of people might get shifted away from their own guilds/friends etc, and get annoyed that they don’t get to fight for their own server and leave.)

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On the whole, I don’t think an Alliance system have to be all that bad, but I think there are other things that can and should be done first to fix other core problems that I think is needed to keep a population playing in this game. Otherwise you’re just delaying the core problem.

Speculation from my side:

The three things I believe would do the most good to the core system is a complete redesign of the Points system (throw out PPT), Dynamic Map Limiter to make the system self adjust to the number of players, And a removal of HomeBL system so they can use multiple different maps instead of 3 copies of the same (as a part of the Dynamic Map Limiter).

Won’t work, they are afraid of servers or people ganging up on others or again misused. There really isn’t a way to solve the issue other than limit the number of people on a map and reduce the contest duration.

They could create alliances much like guilds and let you be a member of 5 but only rep one a week or at a time. Then tie controlling ruins to make gates open on the other servers requesting help and/or additional resources. This would make the ruins and BL’s a hot spot and worth playing in while promoting alliances and help to those under populated.

Portal only opens while ruins are in your control. Closes once lost or contested. Higher ppt or population at the time can’t open portal but 2nd and 3rd can. Could tie death not allowing you back in so must use another portal. Can limit the time allowed in so you have a specific window, or bust, player base to defend and/or take.

At the moment they are not doing much if anything in regards to WvW – it is just a dead format of play in this game. That is why we are seeing things like golem rush where all it is is a ktraing, easy rank gains, and loot.

The real issue when it comes to any form of server merger or alliance with the current scoring system is that there are not enough off-peak players to go around. TBH t1 doesn’t even have enough off peak players to go around.

The result would be queues during peak times but would exacerbate the problems associated with “night capping”.

I dont assume to know the solution to this but I feel that this is the major issue because no matter how populated your prime time is the majority of score a server(or alliance) gains is from off peak hours.

Peak hours I would say are roughly from 7:00pm-1:00AM local time relative to the physical servers(EU, NA). So if the matches are competitive with the 3 teams pulling roughly 240 PPT each during prime time, the off peak players playing for the other 18 hours and ticking 400+ PPT would still determine the match winner.