Guild Wars 2

Results URL for those who want to check in:

https://feedback.guildwars2.com/en/results

Stupid question,

Is it always a new server you are paired with or is it possible to get same pair repeatedly?

Believe it’s RNG with some fancy math, like glicko.

So you could feesibly get relinked with the same server multiple times. Or have it vary massively each linking.

I know a lot of people are asking why even have this poll? I think it’s a good thing we having this poll because in many ways there are conflicting interests and the poll shows just that.

Some of us want easy ktrain farming, big blobs, big fights, big loot, easy wins every week. In order to do this you need to stack a server, and that’s exactly what happens with the top tier 1 servers. 3+ months favors this.

Some of us want fair matchups, prevention of server stacking and to see new faces instead of the same servers. Which monthly or sooner favors.

Personally I think that once a month is a great way to not totally alienate communities while at the same time prevent the serverstack/transfer to win mentality. I mean it will totally still be there but it will cost those people a 500gem transfer a month it will detour that mentality. If implemented the better skilled servers would climb especially when the scoring changes come.

While I liked the world linking, I don’t think this should be the end of the story, and overall, I don’t think there should be relinking.

For me the goal was to start with a much healthier population spread. I do not know if this has been properly achieved, but world linking is too coarse of a population adjustment regardless. I personally prefer stability, as it creates link between different servers and guilds. I am therefore not in favor of any new linking, except if the stats at a-net feel that one more is needed to fix the flaw of the first one.

The next solution should be at a finer level, essentially based on world transfer, but with better incentives. Something like “transferring to a lower population server (or server pair in our case) is free and gives increase WvW rewards for a short period (1 month), transferring to a higher population server cost between 800 and 2000 gems”.

A little analysis for those still weighing the options. We are currently in the 8th week of pairings. 1-1/2 months, alittle over a one month pairing option, the half way mark of a 3 month pairing and a quarter of the way through a 6 month pairing option.

Think about your matchups thus far and vote.

sionnach.5391:

TorquedSoul.8097:

Unfortunately the linking will transform the types of cultures that exists on the guest servers. They will become like roadside motels or hostels. Shady and transient.

I feel bad for those that invested their time to build those communities. They should be compensated somehow.

I’m with ya Torque. We’re trying to be optimistic about what our communities can do with this situation we are stuck with, so…..

For those of us who are permanent guests with no home to call our own, the only option I see going forward is to embrace it and make it part of our culture – on Kaineng, our guild is leaning towards rebranding us as the Party Bus since we’re already known as a great place for non-serious fight-lovin’ roamers; I guess we will just be the best traveling circus we can be! As far as ‘shady and transient’ goes, that resonates because well, we were already a little shady.

Here’s to whatever we can make of it! And to our T8 kin, best of luck and hoot hoot from Owls.

Nanesh

That’s definitely the right attitude. A little RP will go a long way in making that transient server existence bearable.

I’m hoping one turns into a mercenary/anarchy culture. I’d probably join that one or even help build it if somebody needs a hand.

Now that it is confirmed that world linking will continue and that I can be moved from host server to host server at whatever the given interval is I can now confirm that my big WvW days are over. I might pop in now and then if I see a friend in there but now that I know that I have NO home server other than whatever server is hosting what used to be my home server I really don’t feel the desire to go in. Still can’t get supplies from Citadel because I don’t really belong to Fort Aspenwood.

No I’m not whining… if this is what the majority wants then so be it ( and I do NOT believe the majority of the low tier servers want this, just the overall majority which is made up of the big servers ). As I said in another post in another forum.. this isn’t for me and now that it’s confirmed I am done with WvW… and since I don’t really like PvE much I probably won’t be in there much either. 95% WvW participation to maybe 5% in one big shot… byeeeee

HazyDaisy.4107:

A little analysis for those still weighing the options. We are currently in the 8th week of pairings. 1-1/2 months, alittle over a one month pairing option, the half way mark of a 3 month pairing and a quarter of the way through a 6 month pairing option.

Think about your matchups thus far and vote.

This is a good point. How did the new linked servers perform? Did the spread in glicko decrease? Is there a chance that the spread will decrease in the current constellation?

At least for EU I can say that the current linking is very bad for some servers and does not decrease the spread. Why should such a constellation persist for 8 more weeks?

It does require some explanation of how the results will be used.
The reasonable way to me seems to take the option where:
>50% voted for that time or longer and
>50% voted for that time or shorter
Which I’m kind of expecting them to do, but it would be nice to get some information on how they will use the results.

Loosmaster.8263:

Then stop saying “You paid for it”.

I didn’t… which you would know if you bothered to read my post.

But, since you brought it up, as a matter of fact… anyone who paid for HoT likely paid, after the fact, for that map to have been created. Because without HoT that map would not exist. Unless you seriously think it was free for ArenaNet to produce said map.

It was advertised as a part of HoT, ergo it was content developed for or at the very least paid for by the expected revenue from HoT. Video games are made first and paid afterwards… before they start to turn profit.

Anyways, this exchange has ran its course, we can simply agree to disagree on the matter… however, that will not change realities of game development. Which you seem to want to be oblivious to because at the moment it happens to be convenient for your opinion.

Bowing out, as this is not even on the topic of this poll, bring it back up again when something related is being polled about next week if you feel the need to.

Crise.9401:

Loosmaster.8263:

Then stop saying “You paid for it”.

I didn’t… which you would know if you bothered to read my post.

But, since you brought it up, as a matter of fact… anyone who paid for HoT likely paid, after the fact, for that map to have been created. Because without HoT that map would not exist. Unless you seriously think it was free for ArenaNet to produce said map.

It was advertised as a part of HoT, ergo it was content developed for or at the very least paid for by the expected revenue from HoT. Video games are made first and paid afterwards… before they start to turn profit.

Anyways, this exchange has ran its course, we can simply agree to disagree on the matter… however, that will not change realities of game development. Which you seem to want to be oblivious to because at the moment it happens to be convenient for your opinion.

Bowing out, as this is not even on the topic of this poll, bring it back up again when something related is being polled about next week if you feel the need to.

“That would have been great on the last poll. Then I might be getting content back I paid for.”

Whatever floats your boat….

I don’t really post in forums so I’m gonna be brief – after reading all these comments and having voted, I only see 2-3 supporting the server re-linking or re-evaluation (however you wanna call it in this case) for over 4 or even 6 months.
As another person said in this thread, having WvW matchups changing as often as a month or 2 or even 3 is just very very unstable. This is WvW remember not EoTM. Having servers swap around so much and often can only be harmful in the end.

- No server will have stable population or at least its not guaranteed that it will have stable population in order for it to balance out the fights against the other 2 servers competing.
- People usually in WvW use ts3 and coordination gets really hard when there is new people coming in every 4 weeks. Gather, meet, have them listen etc.
- In relation to the previous one, not only its hard to coordinate, its even harder to get certain groups of people or guilds going specific times a day to cover WvW 24/7. This just means you need to know there are certain players and loyal WvW’ers who do that.
- Also, the servers you merge together may not even be half interested in WvW anyway, so the server to which they are merged to initially is left to do all the work again without having the right support.

I don’t know, these are just few of my points here but honestly I really think the 1 to 3 month options are just a bad idea. It doesn’t help stabilize things, it messes them up more.

I voted for monthly. I simply see how rapidly we’ve lost players the past month and voting accordingly. The “Beta” brought them back in but, the matches are not sustaining them. OW put the hurt to GW2 pvp/wvw too.

editing to that I’d much rather have the stability of the Teirs and matches that we had. Now that WvW’s been broken, I’m not too optimistic for it. We’re at a need for “GW3” level of broken right now.

Irene.9340:

I don’t really post in forums so I’m gonna be brief – after reading all these comments and having voted, I only see 2-3 supporting the server re-linking or re-evaluation (however you wanna call it in this case) for over 4 or even 6 months.
As another person said in this thread, having WvW matchups changing as often as a month or 2 or even 3 is just very very unstable. This is WvW remember not EoTM. Having servers swap around so much and often can only be harmful in the end.

- No server will have stable population or at least its not guaranteed that it will have stable population in order for it to balance out the fights against the other 2 servers competing.
- People usually in WvW use ts3 and coordination gets really hard when there is new people coming in every 4 weeks. Gather, meet, have them listen etc.
- In relation to the previous one, not only its hard to coordinate, its even harder to get certain groups of people or guilds going specific times a day to cover WvW 24/7. This just means you need to know there are certain players and loyal WvW’ers who do that.
- Also, the servers you merge together may not even be half interested in WvW anyway, so the server to which they are merged to initially is left to do all the work again without having the right support.

I don’t know, these are just few of my points here but honestly I really think the 1 to 3 month options are just a bad idea. It doesn’t help stabilize things, it messes them up more.

Honestly, at this point stable is overrated.
Switching links up more often will help retain server identity for the smaller servers and add more variety to the match ups. As of right now the largest thread on the first page is people kittening that they are sitting out of WvW this week because the match up is stale and they already know who will win in each tier.
If we can get fresh match ups more often it will help keep people interested in playing.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This poll does not require a 75% supermajority vote. If a poll requires 75% approval, the poll question will explicitly state that.

Glad to see you say that. Monthly is clearly the best option overall.

I’m wondering what happens if the poll shows different preferences for EU and NA, as both regions performed very differently in the past as far as match diversity is concerned.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Irene.9340:

I don’t really post in forums so I’m gonna be brief – after reading all these comments and having voted, I only see 2-3 supporting the server re-linking or re-evaluation (however you wanna call it in this case) for over 4 or even 6 months.
As another person said in this thread, having WvW matchups changing as often as a month or 2 or even 3 is just very very unstable. This is WvW remember not EoTM. Having servers swap around so much and often can only be harmful in the end.

- No server will have stable population or at least its not guaranteed that it will have stable population in order for it to balance out the fights against the other 2 servers competing.
- People usually in WvW use ts3 and coordination gets really hard when there is new people coming in every 4 weeks. Gather, meet, have them listen etc.
- In relation to the previous one, not only its hard to coordinate, its even harder to get certain groups of people or guilds going specific times a day to cover WvW 24/7. This just means you need to know there are certain players and loyal WvW’ers who do that.
- Also, the servers you merge together may not even be half interested in WvW anyway, so the server to which they are merged to initially is left to do all the work again without having the right support.

I don’t know, these are just few of my points here but honestly I really think the 1 to 3 month options are just a bad idea. It doesn’t help stabilize things, it messes them up more.

Honestly, at this point stable is overrated.
Switching links up more often will help retain server identity for the smaller servers and add more variety to the match ups. As of right now the largest thread on the first page is people kittening that they are sitting out of WvW this week because the match up is stale and they already know who will win in each tier.
If we can get fresh match ups more often it will help keep people interested in playing.

How can switching links more often retain server identity for the smaller servers??? We already don’t have a server identity as it is… now you think that moving us from host to host will give us more of an identity? I have already mostly lost interest in WvW because my server, Borlis Pass, is simply a hosted server and as such is subject to moving at the next server link switch. Right now I could switch to a ‘host’ server but then I will have moved away from the people I’ve played with for years. Yes I still get to play with my peeps that I enjoy … but now if/when I do it’s simply for a bit of fun with them, and NOT for any sort of server gain, other than to help out the host of the term.

HazyDaisy.4107:

We are currently in the 8th week of pairings. 1-1/2 months, alittle over a one month pairing option, the half way mark of a 3 month pairing and a quarter of the way through a 6 month pairing option.

This is why I voted for every other month. A month is too short and three months is far too long. Goldilocks said it best.

Zenith.6403:

Such un-interesting poll. Can’t you people there at Anet decide these things for yourself? Ask us for grand directions, not some server mixing micromanagement schedule.

What a kitten bag comment. Like your daily routine of trolling forums and playing video games made for ages 12 and rabid masterbation to goat porn is so important. to answer a question that directly affects game play is beneath you? Shut the kitten up

Loosmaster.8263:

“That would have been great on the last poll. Then I might be getting content back I paid for.”

Whatever floats your boat….

Only I never said that… check your reading glasses buddy.

I was really hoping that the pairing was a temporary solution to the problem. If the servers change frequently, it will be difficult to build good relationships, good tactics, good cooridination. between servers. We’ll always be in that awkward, ineffective “dating” stage. I realize it would be good for gem sales because the people that don’t want to have to work to get stuff done or build something solid, will always find a way to buy gems to transfer and keep the numbers on their side, but I think it’s a bad decision for WvW in general and could do more harm than good in the long run. If pairing is required because Anet has more servers than players, leave the pairings as they are. Let us have a chance to find which one fits us as guilds or individuals and let them build from there. Give two days of free transfers and let everyone figure out where they want to stay. Then the cards can lay where they fall (we can call the “free” transfer even for the cost of the expansion :P )

After 6 months of trying to keep our server alive after hot came out, our guild finally transferred up. As many guilds have. We wanted more fights, slightly even fights and different match ups. Going months on end with completely outrageous match ups ruined our home. Relinking has solved this problem so we have moved back home to be able to fight along side our friends again. I believe a lot of guilds are doing the same thing which is evening out the population.
With 1 month re links we can finally get to rebuild our community. No more stale match ups , no more server stacking. No more mass exodus. 3 months seems too long to be linked with a host you don’t like. It’s too long to be stuck in last place or first place. 1 month gives everyone a chance to win or lose.

I dont find any of the options interesting because in my mind any quicker linking absolutely require a change in server identites to show players on both pairs ingame. We cannot have a monthly change that rip apart a diffuse and mixed server blob. We would get bursts of toxic and confused players every month. It would be incredibly unfriendly to new WvW players, which would be bad because we need everyone. If pairs are kept distinct and separate so everyone knows where they stand it will however be OK.

Just wanted to talk about how the poll was different from the other ones and hopefully give a little bit of feedback

The “benefits of short links/benefits of long links” segment of the poll was really good to see, more information never hurts. I didn’t work through the mental arithmetic to see if the assertions stacked up, but you guys have thought about it for longer than I have so I think it’s probably fair to say you guys have a better idea of it. I hope you guys go into this level of detail for the other polls, especially the planned upcoming one for DBL removal/DBL:ABL ratios.

I expect this won’t be a supermajority poll considering the nature of the poll and its results. I hope you guys go with a simple biggest number wins, maybe with a little bit of weighting added towards your (ANet’s) preferred option. This seems like a system that would be relatively easy to adjust.

On the actual results of the poll; interesting that so many people picked 1-month. My pick was 2-month but this is ultimately something that I don’t really mind. It does mean that people will get to play with a very broad field of players very quickly, which is really cool. I hope the MM systems are robust enough to support this rate of change, though.

Most want balanced matches first to make good fights, and linking more frequently can get us closer to that goal faster.

WvW is not complex, doesn’t require more than a week to understand what’s going on and we don’t need to drag months out with relationship building to function together.

Your guilds may care about each other’s, but randoms really don’t. All the randoms want to know is that you know you stuff and don’t need all sorts of hand holding.

If the devs could go back in time to change wvw they would have made a 3 realm/faction experience, not this headache of juggling 51 servers.

The problem with this Poll is that you have to seperate EU and NA again. For me, an EU Player there is only one answer and this is: Check it monthly.
BUT if you are able to make a good setup where some servers get recked (like Abbadon) and others dominate every matchup (Deso+Vabbi) I would be fine with once a Quartal or even once every 6 months.

Short: Intervall depends of quality of the linking. Fair linking → less frequently; unfair linking → more frequently

Balthazzarr.1349:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Irene.9340:

I don’t really post in forums so I’m gonna be brief – after reading all these comments and having voted, I only see 2-3 supporting the server re-linking or re-evaluation (however you wanna call it in this case) for over 4 or even 6 months.
As another person said in this thread, having WvW matchups changing as often as a month or 2 or even 3 is just very very unstable. This is WvW remember not EoTM. Having servers swap around so much and often can only be harmful in the end.

- No server will have stable population or at least its not guaranteed that it will have stable population in order for it to balance out the fights against the other 2 servers competing.
- People usually in WvW use ts3 and coordination gets really hard when there is new people coming in every 4 weeks. Gather, meet, have them listen etc.
- In relation to the previous one, not only its hard to coordinate, its even harder to get certain groups of people or guilds going specific times a day to cover WvW 24/7. This just means you need to know there are certain players and loyal WvW’ers who do that.
- Also, the servers you merge together may not even be half interested in WvW anyway, so the server to which they are merged to initially is left to do all the work again without having the right support.

I don’t know, these are just few of my points here but honestly I really think the 1 to 3 month options are just a bad idea. It doesn’t help stabilize things, it messes them up more.

Honestly, at this point stable is overrated.
Switching links up more often will help retain server identity for the smaller servers and add more variety to the match ups. As of right now the largest thread on the first page is people kittening that they are sitting out of WvW this week because the match up is stale and they already know who will win in each tier.
If we can get fresh match ups more often it will help keep people interested in playing.

How can switching links more often retain server identity for the smaller servers??? We already don’t have a server identity as it is… now you think that moving us from host to host will give us more of an identity? I have already mostly lost interest in WvW because my server, Borlis Pass, is simply a hosted server and as such is subject to moving at the next server link switch. Right now I could switch to a ‘host’ server but then I will have moved away from the people I’ve played with for years. Yes I still get to play with my peeps that I enjoy … but now if/when I do it’s simply for a bit of fun with them, and NOT for any sort of server gain, other than to help out the host of the term.

Because you’re more likely to focus on working with your own server mates rather than the host. It will be a partnership instead of the smaller server being absorbed.

With the 3 month rotation people start sharing ts and cross server guilds start forming because 3 months is a long kittening time.

But if it does switch to monthly anet has to give back the smaller servers tags. They can’t keep treating this like a merger.

Jim Hunter.6821:

But if it does switch to monthly anet has to give back the smaller servers tags. They can’t keep treating this like a merger.

i got the impression that they wanted to do this anyway, they just can’t put it as a high priority because they’ve got other stuff to do

Sarrs.4831:

Jim Hunter.6821:

But if it does switch to monthly anet has to give back the smaller servers tags. They can’t keep treating this like a merger.

i got the impression that they wanted to do this anyway, they just can’t put it as a high priority because they’ve got other stuff to do

They should make time, IMO maintaining server identity is clearly what a lot of players want.

Is it about reevaluting match-ups or linked worlds?

zemiacsik.4590:

Is it about reevaluting match-ups or linked worlds?

Neither, its about the duration of linked worlds.

According to the poll results, server linking would be reevaluated every month.

What about the people who migrated to our linked server so that they could join our guild because our current server is “full”? Are they supposed to pay for a migration every month?

Earix.5684:

According to the poll results, server linking would be reevaluated every month.

What about the people who migrated to our linked server so that they could join our guild because our current server is “full”? Are they supposed to pay for a migration every month?

A monthly reevaluation is not equal to new links each month. It can mean no new links at all, two new links or new links for all. It depends how the link servers perform. If they come close together regarding Glicko, there is no need to change something. If servers drift away they need new links.

Miko.4158:

bit of an odd one, quarterly or every 4 months/? how about perm or not at all as an option. Tier matching and server identity I think could also do with a poll.
still thanks for asking! I voted ( am losing , I think its quite hard to get a decent cross server communication/respect- not looking forward to the swap)

I don’t see anything odd tbh, the options are basically 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6 months. Relinking every 5 months is skipped for an obvious reason because you can’t divide 12 by 5. As for permanent linking, that would be equivalent to server merging, and I’m fairly sure the opposition to that would be quite great. Not to mention it won’t actually help solve the problem they are trying to solve.

Earix.5684:

According to the poll results, server linking would be reevaluated every month.

What about the people who migrated to our linked server so that they could join our guild because our current server is “full”? Are they supposed to pay for a migration every month?

Yes, its 150 gold which isn’t much. The system isn’t meant for players to hop from world to world following the host world.

The poll trend is clear, people want to re-balance matchups sooner rather than later. This minimizes the impacts of bad blood between allies and helps the smaller servers retain some identity.

Every month seems unrealistic in the long term if anything else of import is to be achieved at a decent speed.

The monthly option is leading, but there’s actually more votes for same or longer duration links. Think we’re more likely to see a compromise on this one (either 2 or 3 months).

Personally my main reasons for favouring a shorter linking duration are discouraging bandwagoning and reducing the likelihood of tier locking. Both are already causing problems in NA servers.

Tyler, in order to help us decide, can you tell us a bit more about :

Benefits to updating links less often:

• The WvW team spends less time rebalancing world links, and spends more time building or improving other WvW features.

If the relinking would be every month, what proportion of the time of the team would it take ? 1% ? 10 % I know it’s not easy to tell, but we need to know if it’s significantly high enough to have a adverse effect on WvW evolution.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This poll does not require a 75% supermajority vote. If a poll requires 75% approval, the poll question will explicitly state that.

What factors go into determining when a supermajority Poll is used?

Would you also consider posting this information along with the Poll to help folks put some perspective on the Poll that they are voting on.

Diku.2546:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This poll does not require a 75% supermajority vote. If a poll requires 75% approval, the poll question will explicitly state that.

What factors go into determining when a supermajority Poll is used?

75% of Anet devs probably had to agree to use it, but only 74% agreed so it was a stalemate.

I’d like to mention for the people who were asking for server merges, just imagine if they had done full server merges instead of links in the first place. And the populations were the same as it is today, would you have liked where it ended up?

Links at least gave them the opportunity to see how the population would play out after the first linking.

Hypothetically, if 1 month is 34%, 4 month is 33%, and 6 month is 33% then would it make sense to choose 1 month? Two thirds of the population preferred at least 4 months would be the counter.

An accumulated average of all votes is the logical choice.

I find it odd because it assumes and doesn’t ask if people want server linking or not. Anet just admitted that was an issue with the alpine/dessert question, so why do the same again. Especially if there’s room given the number of what I would consider the same option. To other guest servers, it’s name change time! the happy happy hardcore of ours have started rolling characters or name contracting their mains to have their Server in it. Love it . we shall not fade …

Miko.4158:

I find it odd because it assumes and doesn’t ask if people want server linking or not. Anet just admitted that was an issue with the alpine/dessert question, so why do the same again. Especially if there’s room given the number of what I would consider the same option. To other guest servers, it’s name change time! the happy happy hardcore of ours have started rolling characters or name contracting their mains to have their Server in it. Love it . we shall not fade …

I see someone missed the may 21st poll on linking, which the majority voted yes for.

Miko.4158:

I find it odd because it assumes and doesn’t ask if people want server linking or not.

They asked that in a prior poll and the Yes-to-linking vote won with 80% or more.

I still think linking is flawed and I think the poll wording was flawed (polling on a yes/no question is biased towards yes), but ANet has asked this question and people responded.

Yes , I said yes on the grounds it was beta and was going to be looked at properly.
Switching from 1/4’s to 3 months wasn’t what I had in mind. Server tiers, identity and play style need looking at. If that’s not going to happen I’d vote no to it all….
I also don’t recall a vote on mergers, just linking? given the number of questions in this, I think they could have got a better spread of questions.

Miko.4158:

Yes , I said yes on the grounds it was beta and was going to be looked at properly.
Switching from 1/4’s to 3 months wasn’t what I had in mind. Server tiers, identity and play style need looking at. If that’s not going to happen I’d vote no to it all….
I also don’t recall a vote on mergers, just linking? given the number of questions in this, I think they could have got a better spread of questions.

I don’t know what you mean by “Switching from 1/4’s to 3 months wasn’t what I had in mind.”

The WvW team has communicated, on several occasions, that their original plan was to re-evaluate world links approximately every 3 months (i.e. 4x per year)

The question was on keeping/rejecting world linking was not perfect, but it was very clear.

The week of April 19th we released World Linking and Reward changes in WvW. Since the release we’ve seen an increase in WvW population and participation and we believe we’re moving in the right direction. We’re here today to ask if you think that World Linking is a positive improvement to the game. As before, we’re looking for 75% of the population voting “Yes” or “No” to agree that World Linking should remain a feature.

Do you believe that the WvW World Linking should be a Guild Wars 2 feature?

It’s sort of a textbook example of positive biasing “Since the release we’ve seen an increase in WvW population and participation and we believe we’re moving in the right direction” plus asking a yes/no question (which is weighted towards yes, as I mentioned above).

Regardless of that, I can’t see how you could have any doubts about what you were voting for or against in that.