Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of complaints over free transfers so I decided to make this post. The main post that motivated me to write this was one about a guy saying this game would fail like another game did because his server dropped from #3 to #4 and he talked about the significant difference in competition due to the population decrease that took place after they dropped to fight 2 new teams. I felt compelled to make a post for people viewing these forums for the first time so that they are not led astray by misguided and uninformed posts.

Why do we have free transfers?
Free Transfers are in place to give players enough time to balance out the servers themselves. When people play a game for the first time (especially an MMO) they generally tend to follow the herd to only a few servers. Why? Because guilds that know each other from other games will pick out a server in advance…then move there together…..and their friends of friends will follow suit. Over time people begin to realize that the que times are horrible and that the server is way over crowded so they slowly migrate to other servers. ANET knew this in advance which is why they chose not to lock you into a server….so that you and your friends have a chance to decide on which server best suited your needs and made the game the most enjoyable for you. It’s in ANET’s best interest to keep the servers balanced…because if people are not enjoying the game because they feel like they’re locked into a losing server…then they will just quit.

Will servers always have free transfers?
NO! ANET makes its money off of offering services to it’s players…but ANET is also smart enough to realize that players have a very short attention span and if they feel like they’re “locked in” to a bad situation they will simply quit before giving the game a chance to grow and evolve. It also gives you a chance to see what it’s like to play on a High pop server and a Low pop server before making your selection.

Why would ANET wait on offering paid server transfers? It would make WvW more competitive.
I can’t speak for ANET but the most logical reason for hesitation on paid server transfers is that not every server has even close to the same size population. Right now if a guild from the #1 rated server in the world transferred to the last place server in the world they would have ZERO benefit for doing that outside of being able to que up at the same time. I’ve also heard that when “guilds” transfer servers they lose some things that they had built up on the server they were on…which causes guilds to be hesitant on transferring. I believe that ANET is currently working on a way to make moving to a low populated server more appealing for guilds on very large pop servers.

What do you get for WvW anyway?
In terms of the 1 week battle? Bragging rights. Our server populations still have a lot of hedging to do before incentives are put in place for the dominant teams. If there were major incentives people would never want to be the underdog…..they’d just server transfer and cash in. ANET realizes that which is why transitioning from free server transfers to paid server transfers is a process. However once that process is in place…you will see more incentives in WvW and more balanced matches on every server.

Sorry, but the reason for server transfers were never intended for WvW balance. (in fact they do exactly the opposite)

In fact it has almost nothing to do with WvW. Here is the real reason as stated by a-net before release. Say i buy guild wars and join server 1, I then find out that my friend also bought it and he started his character on server 2 (eventually we can guest to the serve and PvE toghether but that isn’t implemented yet) so to fix this issue and allowing us to play with our friends we got free server transfers.

Balance in WvW is done by everyone staying put. When people move it completely ruins the scoring system that is supposed to match equally populated/skilled servers against each other. When people move this ruins weeks of data that they have been aggregating to make these matches “Fair and Fun”.

Originally a-net had even said that switching servers would lock you out from the current weeks WvW match (if you switched to the server you were up against).

Personally, I don’t care if the transfers are free or cost $1,000.

I just want them to lock out WvW for the current match after a transfer.

Kaines favorite point for transferring he didnt put in was being bullied out of the server.

The free server transfer system in place right now does not work and cannot work due to the basic human nature of people. Anytime they beat, in most game they cry or claim so and so class is op, well this game they just move and they will keep moving until they dont get beat.
That is what we are seeing
People arent trying out servers to see what suits them best, they are moving to servers that are successful.
Do you think it was coincidence that HOD ranked 1 and also had the highest population?
You allow people too much room they ruin games plain and simple.

Now I read the post you refer to as well, and Most of the post was shameful and ignorant tbh.
But same fate as Warhammer is amusing considering the issue with this game and that aren’t even close to similar but considering the tone and words that person decided to use in his post, I’m not surprised at trying to make a shallow comparison

the games based around fun, if people have fun in the biggest zerg and are willing to wait in a 60 minute + que, then let them.