Guild Wars 2

Are players whose server got merged with another still shown to enemy players as ’’[Guest server name] Invader" or are they now “[Host server name] Invader”?

have the links even been announced yet?

For EU yeah, not yet for NA. See stickied post up top.

not for NA (15 characters)

They all show host server names. I was fighting against UW players today and they all had FSP tags now. I knew them only from their guild tags so, nothing will show which smaller server they from. In every aspect, it IS merger, just it would be possible to relink servers in the future (looks very unlikely to me unless there will be massively more WvW players to create new tiers again).

FogLeg.9354:

They all show host server names. I was fighting against UW players today and they all had FSP tags now. I knew them only from their guild tags so, nothing will show which smaller server they from. In every aspect, it IS merger, just it would be possible to repair servers in the future (looks very unlikely to me unless there will be massively more WvW players to create new tiers again).

Ok, I was just curious. So in principle they are still seperate servers, but practically the guest server got swallowed up. Aww I will miss seeing Underworld and Fissure of Woe names, both used to be great servers.

well in that case, i’m also interested in knowing the answer to this question. and do you have any indication that the people on your own side are your server or the "other" server?

Gotta say it kinda hurt tonight to cap an objective and have it say FSP instad of UW :c

katz.8376:

well in that case, i’m also interested in knowing the answer to this question. and do you have any indication that the people on your own side are your server or the “other” server?

No.

dang

welp... time to create the [ET] guild.

Is there any way to figure out by looking at person in game etc if they are on host or guest server?

apparently not. this makes me very sad. i wish there was.

kitten . hope they fix it.

Chris Barrett.3280:

FogLeg.9354:

They all show host server names. I was fighting against UW players today and they all had FSP tags now. I knew them only from their guild tags so, nothing will show which smaller server they from.

Thanks for answering, FogLeg. That’s exactly correct. The biggest motivator for showing only the “host” world in enemy nameplates was to help identify enemies quicker. With only two other world names showing up in a given week, it’s easier to quickly figure out which color team they belong to. Since world linking supports any number of “guest” worlds linked to a single host, it would potentially get pretty confusing to see a big zerg of nameplates with any number of world names, and figure out the composition of one team versus another.

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

This just seems to be an attempt to kill of the ‘guest worlds’ though by relegating them to a second class of sorts who aren’t important enough to even have their name appear on the scoreboard. Using the word ‘linking’ mad it seem like each server would be on an equal footing with the partner servers but this just seems like a merge, resulting in the destruction of the ‘guest’ server. Perhaps it’s just me but this doesn’t seem like what was being proposed.

Clemy.8290:

Chris Barrett.3280:

FogLeg.9354:

They all show host server names. I was fighting against UW players today and they all had FSP tags now. I knew them only from their guild tags so, nothing will show which smaller server they from.

Thanks for answering, FogLeg. That’s exactly correct. The biggest motivator for showing only the “host” world in enemy nameplates was to help identify enemies quicker. With only two other world names showing up in a given week, it’s easier to quickly figure out which color team they belong to. Since world linking supports any number of “guest” worlds linked to a single host, it would potentially get pretty confusing to see a big zerg of nameplates with any number of world names, and figure out the composition of one team versus another.

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

This just seems to be an attempt to kill of the ‘guest worlds’ though by relegating them to a second class of sorts who aren’t important enough to even have their name appear on the scoreboard. Using the word ‘linking’ mad it seem like each server would be on an equal footing with the partner servers but this just seems like a merge, resulting in the destruction of the ‘guest’ server. Perhaps it’s just me but this doesn’t seem like what was being proposed.

I would guess they call it linking because its not a solid merge, it’s a dynamic merge which could be changed on the fly.

Clemy.8290:

Chris Barrett.3280:

FogLeg.9354:

They all show host server names. I was fighting against UW players today and they all had FSP tags now. I knew them only from their guild tags so, nothing will show which smaller server they from.

Thanks for answering, FogLeg. That’s exactly correct. The biggest motivator for showing only the “host” world in enemy nameplates was to help identify enemies quicker. With only two other world names showing up in a given week, it’s easier to quickly figure out which color team they belong to. Since world linking supports any number of “guest” worlds linked to a single host, it would potentially get pretty confusing to see a big zerg of nameplates with any number of world names, and figure out the composition of one team versus another.

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

This just seems to be an attempt to kill of the ‘guest worlds’ though by relegating them to a second class of sorts who aren’t important enough to even have their name appear on the scoreboard. Using the word ‘linking’ mad it seem like each server would be on an equal footing with the partner servers but this just seems like a merge, resulting in the destruction of the ‘guest’ server. Perhaps it’s just me but this doesn’t seem like what was being proposed.

It is just you. this makes sense. but it makes things harder for verification for ts3 etc

Chris the issue is that if the server name is not listed anywhere, the server community will die. Not a big issue for lowest servers, but some of the top bronze might suffer from this. Its sort of a forced move to high tier, where you might get linked to a new server eery 3 month.

As excited as I am about World Linking, it does sadden me a bit to see that this is just a fancy term for ‘server merge’ and that 12 WvW communities are being force fed into another 12 (speaking of NA).

Server pride will be alive and perhaps even stronger for those 12 host servers that are receiving 12 respective guests, because that’s no different than receiving a big bunch of transfers. Meanwhile the 12 ‘guest servers’ are simply no more.

A quick couple of ideas to remedy this:

• Keep the [‘Original Server’ Invader] naming convention and if it’s too big a deal identifying which color is who, use a similar system as the one implemented for the Guild Hall Arena (using 3 colors).
• Instead of always displaying message ‘X server captured the objective’, be able to distinguish between ‘X/Y server captured the objective’ by using a similar system to that which is used to identify Guild Claiming Priorities.

In the near future hopefully some other more sophisticated things could be developed to calculate server rating on a ‘per server contribution’ basis rather than as the merge we have become. There are many other things that could be done and hopefully players will be providing feedback for…

There’ll have to be a good amount of work to keep alive server pride for all but I think it’d be valuable because as much as I love the game mode and will be thrilled to have my favorite WvW maps full, for me there is no longer a difference between this and EoTM.

might not work so well for EU servers, as they already have initials appended to them, but for NA servers at least... perhaps tacking on the accepted server initials to the very end of the nameplate for "guest" servers... for example... looking at me see Blackgate Silver Scout[DoD]ET or something of that nature.

As far as seeing which server “friendlies” are on – you can if you are in the same squad.
If you hover your cursor over their name in the squad interface it tells you which server they are from.
Other than that there is no real way currently to know for certain which server someone is from

katz.8376:

might not work so well for EU servers, as they already have initials appended to them, but for NA servers at least… perhaps tacking on the accepted server initials to the very end of the nameplate for “guest” servers… for example… looking at me see Blackgate Silver Scout[DoD]ET or something of that nature.

I think it’s a real shame and somewhat server “pride” killer if they don’t show anything indicating the “guest” servers.

I’m very happy to hear if ET are our buddies for the linking of worlds (I met some good players down there when I were on ET), as you’ve stated.. Something simple on the end of the nameplates would be appreciated for those servers.

ok, we all knew this was going to be a thing, so what your favorite “paired names”?

For JQ, we’re looking at Isles of Jade, Jades Isles, and last but certainly not least Jaded Janthir. Still kinda liked the T1 teasing of Black Quarry.

if you’re Blackgate, then yeah, ET is paired with you. the official links have been announced

Chris I totally understand the reluctance to make it easy to identify a player’s server. There are some practical reasons why it is necessary to have some way of doing so.

1) Many wvw guilds only allow members from their own server to join, for obvious reasons. If we can’t tell (and some players won’t know what server they are on), that will become an issue if/when server linkages change.

2) Gw2 server community voice servers often require verification that a person seeking access is on their server, so as to reduce the impact of spies and trolls. These servers will obviously need to come up with a way to allow people from their linked server to have access, but once these links change there will again need to be a way to distinguish who is from which of the linked servers.

I would suggest a means of identifying server be available that is not necessarily obvious, but is available in circumstances such as these without too much effort for guild and TS admins.

To satisfy guild admin requirements it might be handy to incorporate server into the guild panel (if it isn’t already there). For TS admin requirements, perhaps a mouseover message when someone puts a message into squad/party/whisper chat might be suitable.

Chris Barrett.3280:

Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Could you add some short visitor server letters at least? It is not needed to always show full server names everywhere, just use the tags.

Example time!

Currently you see bunch of enemies from
“Host Server Name [HS] WvW Rank [Guild Tag]”
and if you select enemy it will show
“Host Server [HS] WvW Rank Full Guild Name”.

How about you show the short tag, like this
“[HS] WvW Rank [Guild Tag]”
and only once enemy is selected it will show the full server name
“Host Server [HS] WvW Rank Full Guild Name”

Now for the visiting server, enemy would see slightly different tag
“[HS+VS] WvW Rank [Guild Tag]”
and when selected it will show their real server
“Visiting Server [HS+VS] WvW Rank Full Guild Name”

Also, in the server chat channels, maybe can you add visiting server tag after their players? So instead of team/map chat showing stuff like this:

Player1: Hi
Player2: Who are you?

It would be like this (assuming Player1 is from HS and player 2 from VS):

Player1: Hi
Player2 [VS]: Who are you?

Clemy.8290:

Chris Barrett.3280:

FogLeg.9354:

They all show host server names. I was fighting against UW players today and they all had FSP tags now. I knew them only from their guild tags so, nothing will show which smaller server they from.

Thanks for answering, FogLeg. That’s exactly correct. The biggest motivator for showing only the “host” world in enemy nameplates was to help identify enemies quicker. With only two other world names showing up in a given week, it’s easier to quickly figure out which color team they belong to. Since world linking supports any number of “guest” worlds linked to a single host, it would potentially get pretty confusing to see a big zerg of nameplates with any number of world names, and figure out the composition of one team versus another.

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

This just seems to be an attempt to kill of the ‘guest worlds’ though by relegating them to a second class of sorts who aren’t important enough to even have their name appear on the scoreboard. Using the word ‘linking’ mad it seem like each server would be on an equal footing with the partner servers but this just seems like a merge, resulting in the destruction of the ‘guest’ server. Perhaps it’s just me but this doesn’t seem like what was being proposed.

agreed – especially if their glicko wont be adjusted either as I thought I read elsewhere – total second class citizens forced into the blob mode they may not have ever wanted.

Chris Barrett.3280:

Thanks for answering, FogLeg. That’s exactly correct. The biggest motivator for showing only the “host” world in enemy nameplates was to help identify enemies quicker. With only two other world names showing up in a given week, it’s easier to quickly figure out which color team they belong to. Since world linking supports any number of “guest” worlds linked to a single host, it would potentially get pretty confusing to see a big zerg of nameplates with any number of world names, and figure out the composition of one team versus another.

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

As a player from Sanctum of Rall, I can attest that even with so few of us in WvW, we still take great pride in our server. We have a rich history and the reason for the server’s name is not forgotten. I’ve seen some close friends today truly hurt by the loss of that identity; our efforts and our very existence reduced to a small plus sign next to what feels like a “real” server.

I want to sign up for a pie eating competition with my human friend. As a charr, I can eat ten times the pies she can. I don’t want my name to be the team name, though. Our team would be signified by a SINGLE name that is not my name nor her name. The fact that we are both identified by this name and this name alone reflects the fact that everything we do is a joint effort, it’s a name we both take pride in and both give meaning to, despite the fact that I am doing 10 times the work she is. Maybe it’s only one pie at a time, bless her, but she’s still helping.

I believe I understand the technical reasons for it being difficult to represent both the host world and the guest world. But if you ask me, that’s overthinking it. The linked teams are completely new entities, they are not one single world. The issue is not that players from both servers cannot have their own server names shown; it’s that the name of one server with its own culture and own identity is now being forced on another server, also with its own culture and identity that is different.

ArenaNet, you seem to care greatly about making sure servers stay together as a family, to be with the friends and those they care about. This is a great thing. So I beg you, please consider the fact that identity really matters here. But the fix does not have to be a complex one. Ask around, and see how many people would prefer to be called “Red Silver Scout [SOS]” instead of bearing the name of a server they do not belong to, and may not even like (even if they are willing to work with them). Also consider that some guilds have their server name in their guild name.

A single name can unify us if it is one we can share, and both take equal pride in. It does not have to be MY name, but if you call me something I am not, I will never be at peace.

Honor to Old Roar Rall, and thank you for reading,
Azerys

Looks like it is time for a revision of WvW naming. Might as well take this chance to ask for a reduction in WvW names anyways. Getting sick of watching the huge roadsigns over every person.

Liked the base idea of Azerys, how about something like this: "Blue Knight BP [Guil]" or "Red Raider SoR [Guil]" or "Green Legend ET [Guil]" etc ?

(This would require a slight change to the WXP naming system, removing the bronze, silver, gold, mithril etc, and stretching the other titles out to cover the same bases).

And using color to signify the alliance, so all read enemies start with "red" which is the most important info, to identify which opponent/alliance you’re fighting against.

Open for ideas, just looked like the cleanest idea from top of my head. Clear and concise into, without more clutter than it needs.

You really need to rework this system ArenaNet. I’m from FA myself but it really sucks to see the smaller servers lose their identity.

I honestly don’t see how it would be hard to keep track of four servers instead of two.

Every Server has a (community invented) 2-4 letter Tag, e.g. JQ, BG, SFR, Deso, ER, …

How about showing enemy player-names as follows:

[Color] [Rank Title] [Server – Guild Tag]

For example:

Blue Gold-Invador [ER – iN]

Chris Barrett.3280:

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

Leave the care bear kitten in PvE where it belongs. Friction and tribalism helps fuel pvp. It creates competition among your friends and rivalries with your enemies.

Change the names like players suggested. Red platinum invader Mag, or combine the names so 1 server isn’t being shafted. Anvil Yak.

Its been a ton of fun. I Know its the first day and things will settle down but how things were before clearly wsnt working. So many new people in WvW!

Puck.9612:

Chris Barrett.3280:

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

Anvil Yak.

Vabbilation.

Chris Barrett.3280:

FogLeg.9354:

They all show host server names. I was fighting against UW players today and they all had FSP tags now. I knew them only from their guild tags so, nothing will show which smaller server they from.

Thanks for answering, FogLeg. That’s exactly correct. The biggest motivator for showing only the “host” world in enemy nameplates was to help identify enemies quicker. With only two other world names showing up in a given week, it’s easier to quickly figure out which color team they belong to. Since world linking supports any number of “guest” worlds linked to a single host, it would potentially get pretty confusing to see a big zerg of nameplates with any number of world names, and figure out the composition of one team versus another.

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

Thank you for the extensive answer!

I agree that it would start to get a bit confusing as to who belongs with who when there’s multiple server names. And I also agree that it is probably better to have people united between the host and guest servers.

However, I personally have always taken some pride in guild first, server second. Vabbi for example has long been a roamer paradise. FoW and UW for example are also known for their roaming and small guilds. Would be sad to just see that disintegrate into the ‘mighty zergs of the high tiers’.

If possible, there should be some way of distinguishing between the two servers, so the identity doesn’t just disappear and the low tier servers aren’t simply a ‘buffer’ or ‘reinforcement’ of the high tier server.

Also, this is my only concern for the moment. This situation is a lot better than the previous situation where some servers barely could muster forces.

Well, while I can see that this server linking might turn out well for many servers that had problems filling the maps… loosing the identity of your server? Nope. Not good in my opinion, hopefully you’ll change that. Because I know many people that did not transfer server to a different one, because they wanted to fight for the server that had been their home for a long time. Now these servers are just going to be some extension of the host ones…

Well I have been thinking, what if the guest server players just unite themselves in one guild? That way they can still see who’s from their server community, and there doesn’t need to be a way to distinguish the players from the developer’s side.

Please can we see both server names in the Borderlands selection – I keep looking for mine and having to remember who I’m linked with… I know I’d get used to it but seeing my server name on a BL join button is part of maintaining some form of Server Identity.

Any official feedback on whether this would be possible and when would be good. Hopefully it can be done and put in place within a week or two?

I don’t know if it is the sort of thing you are looking for but when I open the WvW window there is a “+” symbol next to “Desolation” (circled in the pic).
When I hover the mouse cursor over that line an image pops up (as shown in the pic) which says “Desolation +, Desolation*, Vabbi”.
I assume this is the same for all linked servers.

Sirendor.1394:

Well I have been thinking, what if the guest server players just unite themselves in one guild? That way they can still see who’s from their server community, and there doesn’t need to be a way to distinguish the players from the developer’s side.

Maybe the guilds don’t get along
Maybe the guilds just spent a kitten ton of gold and had to grind endless hours of PvE to get their guild upgrades
Maybe they shouldn’t have to come up with a work around to keep their community identities after spending the past 4 years fighting for their server.

It is the same on all links, thank you.

What I would like to see though is my server name on the WvW join screen where I select the borderlands, so it says “Jade Quarry & Isle of Janthir” or even “JQ / IoJ”.

What I get now is “Jade Quarry” and on some screens “Jade Quarry+”. I don’t mind this mostly but if we can’t see the uplinked server names then it’s not going to help us retain our server identity.

I don’t think that the server-links will change too often, but if there is any intention to change them at any point in the future then there should be some help to keep identities. Whether this works out will then depend on players not on Anet.

I would like to say that JQ have been very welcoming for us (thanks!) and they’ve been good to work with. However, home is home you know? and for me that means IoJ. So it would be good to see the name openly rather than only as a hidden item.

I guess the problem comes if the selection button displays a world server name only, and I’d rather not rename servers yet. But if it can be done on mouse over then it should be possible to overlay a different layer even if it’s as tacky as clicking this new overlay button triggers a click-activation on the button underneath (poor structure I know but a quick fix perhaps).

Well, I guess that is what betas are for, and there is certainly enough space on that screen at least to display all server names involved.
Hopefully Anet will take note – they certainly had devs running on the borderlands after reset – one ran in and killed a spark when I was capping an air keep shrine yesterday evening.

Chris already posted on very similar thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-linking-and-names/first#post6114044

I personally think getting rid of the low tier servers and merging people into the other servers would be better than linking worlds together. Least then you are all part of the same server

World pride could be boosted by having a World Emblem competition.

World Emblems could be the default flag for towers where the majority of participants were from that world (or if someone from a specific world claims the objective for the world, rather than a guild).

Just some random thoughts.

Chris Barrett.3280:

dank.3680:

I would guess they call it linking because its not a solid merge, it’s a dynamic merge which could be changed on the fly.

Yep, this is exactly why “linking” is a good term for this feature. On the tech side, we could change world links every week with the WvW reset. Different links, more links, no links, anything. Players are still always on their original home worlds.

We don’t currently intend to change world links that frequently because of the logistical issues it would cause for players. Voice communication setup, commanders new to one-another working together, and so on.

So while it may by some perspective feel more like a destructive merge right now, when world links change you’ll continue to be with your closest allies on your home world.

This was a recent suggestion I made for nameplates…

“Nameplates in PvP

Player nameplates- Please finally use acronyms for server names and a small icon for rank. Please? The unnecessarily long red nameplate is very visually distracting from opponent animations and skill effects, and very often the screen is just flooded with red names and red circles… Players want to see and react to what the other player is doing, not to have a screen full of red clutter to sort through.

“Pet” nameplates- Pets, minions and yes, illusions and clones, should just have an icon, no nameplate. There has to be a quick visual differentiation between players and their “pets” among the mobs of players.

NPC nameplates- Use a different color font.

*Doing these will also help these who suffer from color blindness."

Ok, so now that we have linked worlds I would like to add to the above just for players…

Friendly Players

Toggle options for those that want to “blend in” and those that want to coordinate with their server mates. Examples using Hedge of Denravi and Ehmry Bay

Toggle option 1- Standard setting

(HoD) Player Name (Guild Acronym) (Rank Icon)

(EB) Player Name (Guild Acronym) (Rank Icon)

Toggle option 2-

Player Name (Guild Acronym) (Rank Icon)

Toggle option 2 with guild tag off-

Player Name (Rank Icon)

Enemy Nameplates

Example using Northern Shiverpeaks and Sorrow’s Furnace.

Standard setting-

(NS) (Rank Icon)

(SF) (Rank Icon)

Standard setting with guild tag on-

(NS) (Guild Acronym) (Rank Icon)

Rank Icons

I would like to see rectangular shaped icons denoting each of the 7 ranks. The shape would separate the look from the spvp icon.

This might be a simple thing which can be handled in the coding..

Can we have the Borderlands renamed to match the players home server?

It can be a simple UI change, but have it work as a variable.

Something about going to WvW as my home server being Borlis Pass, and defending the FA borderlands doesn’t give me much server pride.

or maybe remove the server name and just called it “Your Borderlands”.

And when your server captures an objective.. have it say “Your Realm has captured XYZ”

I think this is a good idea and likely will help with the server abduction feelings.

As Whiteside Ridge player, the shock was real the first few times seeing “Ring of Fire captured x” when we took something. RoF was our main opposing server for the past 2 months and now the game says we are RoF. Not that I want our alliance to change, but I do want to retain my server identity. I don’t like being reminded again and again we are something like mercenaries for the host server.

Besides server loyalty I also have guild loyalty. Getting everyone in our server into one guild is not an option. I do like to see some changes, in the UI for example to start with. They may seem small, but they matter. Instead of “Ring of Fire captured x” I want to see “Whiteside Ridge captured x” for those of us that are on Whiteside Ridge. Same goes for renaming “Ring of Fire borderland” and all other area names (like our entrance to green/blue border or the EB keep). Make me feel like a whole lotta people just transferred to my server, instead of letting the game tell me my server doesn’t even exist. Even the API made us change our online WvW matchup scoring to that of RoF. If you can’t differentiate area names etc. for servers, please call them by the server color instead of name. You can keep enemy names as it is now to make it easier to distinguish 2 enemy groups fighting eachother. I dont really care if it’s a Drakkar Lake or Miller’s Sound guild for example. I’m also ok with seeing our allies (RoF) without the RoF tag.

It would also be nice to have some sort of progression for the guest server, but that will be harder to implement I guess. I’m not sure how the server population caps work now. Maybe something to make transfers to guest servers more likely so that in time, they could become host worlds. Dunno, also less important for me, as it seems we’ll be permanently linked from now on unless this beta testing fails.

I mean no disrespect to our Ring of Fire allies, it’s great to fight alongside you. I just want to retain my server identity.

tl;dr
Make me feel like players transferred to my (guest) server by making the UI pretend we are still on our old server (area/border names, server captured objective messages etc).

R.I.P. Guild/server pride.