Guild Wars 2

They should not have been so specific. Now you have servers being stacked like crazy, and if you have natural loyalty to someplace… well fat lot of good it will do you to be outnumbered.

It’s frustrating since it’s basically busting many structures that are part of the point of WvW, building a community and such. I’m sure it will settle out over MONTHS but it’s a shame it was handled in such a fashion as to encourage desertion.

What would have been the alternative ? Suddenly drop the bomb and have people tied to the place they were ? Do you think this would have been a better option ?

The only thing I would have liked would have been New content first, paid transfers after. Maybe the new content will hurt servers with higher populations – so people choosing to Xfer would have been aware of.

earendil.1290:

What would have been the alternative ? Suddenly drop the bomb and have people tied to the place they were ? Do you think this would have been a better option ?

The only thing I would have liked would have been New content first, paid transfers after. Maybe the new content will hurt servers with higher populations – so people choosing to Xfer would have been aware of.

Actually it would have been very fitting to see these fair-weather players stuck on a server they don’t want to be on. It is called Karma and it would have been amusing to say the least to read all the whinging.

earendil.1290:

What would have been the alternative ? Suddenly drop the bomb and have people tied to the place they were ? Do you think this would have been a better option ?

The only thing I would have liked would have been New content first, paid transfers after. Maybe the new content will hurt servers with higher populations – so people choosing to Xfer would have been aware of.

QFT.

If ANet had handled this differently, as in to put in new content first, people would reconsider why they are transferring in the first place. The new content would mean “Oh, we should stay here because have more chances of getting it”. People are transferring because of the current meta without knowing what the new shinies are.

In essence, they are really are hurting themselves, but I do think ANet handled it poorly.

I guess this goes for the same thing with all the QQing about AoE, since it now reflects the current zerg mentality of WvW.

Stoneslammer.3650:

earendil.1290:

What would have been the alternative ? Suddenly drop the bomb and have people tied to the place they were ? Do you think this would have been a better option ?

The only thing I would have liked would have been New content first, paid transfers after. Maybe the new content will hurt servers with higher populations – so people choosing to Xfer would have been aware of.

Actually it would have been very fitting to see these fair-weather players stuck on a server they don’t want to be on. It is called Karma and it would have been amusing to say the least to read all the whinging.

I am from a server that has been hit very hard by guilds leaving and I do not agree with you calling them Fair-weathers or whatever. They are good people and friends that are trying to find a way to enjoy a stale game. If they get his by new content that punishes them I would be very sad.

So – Anet did mess this – should have given the new content before the paid transfers. Just imagine if (that’s an absurd speculation btw) they create a system where commanders receive “commanding tokens” based on the number of people / time that joined their squad. On a high WvW population server this could lead to fierce competition – the “newcomers” would have it a lot harder than on their original server where everyone knew and liked them.

Hope it’s not the case.

earendil.1290:

What would have been the alternative ? Suddenly drop the bomb and have people tied to the place they were ? Do you think this would have been a better option ?

Yes, server match-ups were mostly balanced with the exception of Kaineng. It took a couple months to become that way after the initial imbalances because of how slowly their rating system adjusts server tiers. Given how lopsided most every tier is right now, it will be at least a month until tiers are rebalanced. Guesting nullifies any excuses people could make about not being able to play with their friends, or their server being dead and not being able to find a dungeon party.

Implementing paid transfers without announcing it ahead of time would have been a terrible idea. There is a reason they waited to get guesting up before doing paid transfers. They want players to be able to play with their friends on other servers and without guesting, the only way to do that is to transfer. It wouldn’t have been fair to implement paid transfers given that guesting was supposed to be there from the start. So now they are giving players time to go back to the server they intend to stay on.

I know some of you want to see fairweathers punished, but they’re probably on a winning server anyway so they wouldn’t be punished. The only people that would get screwed over would be those using free transfers in the way Anet intended.

They were already being hounded by people who wanted to know when paid transfers were happening. Everyone already knew they intended to have paid transfers from day 1, but because guesting wasn’t ready, they opened up free transfers so that people could find their friends. Of course this would be abused in WvW. Now, what good would it do, when everyone already knows paid transfers are coming, to hide the exact date and sneak it into an update? What would be the point of that?

Yah it’s frustrating for WvWers, but that’s no reason to go suggesting useless alternatives that wouldn’t really change anything. The rankings have literally always been broken, with servers jumping all over the board. Only the top tiers have remained relatively stable, because those are the full servers that are difficult to transfer to. Hiding a date would not have changed this in any meaningful way. It probably would have caused an uproar, actually.

I don’t know how they could have done it better, its just one mistake layered on another after another, but it does show in my mind that Anet really doesn’t factor the concerns of its wvwers into any of its decision making processes. I hate it because I really enjoy GW2, so I’m a sucker and stick around despite that, but sooner or later they are going to trample on my enjoyment one too many times.

It was a mistake for it to last more than a few weeks after release. The announcement 100% killed isle of janthir. Many of us were happy to continue fighting then the announcement hit guilds had a snowball effect of leaving the server. I don’t expect it to ever recover.

Desterion.6407:

It was a mistake for it to last more than a few weeks after release. The announcement 100% killed isle of janthir. Many of us were happy to continue fighting then the announcement hit guilds had a snowball effect of leaving the server. I don’t expect it to ever recover.

This also killed SBI here. I think we’re in the same boat.

one thing people need to remember that being in a lower tier doesn’t mean less fun. infact the opposite is true for many people. you just have to get around the 2-3 weeks of uneven matchups as the server moving to its proper tier.

just look at hod and ET, even matchups are the best.

I’ve watched other longstanding mmos quietly implement new policies only to have massive payer backlash …. And subsequent exodus.

For example. SOE decided to eliminate the ability to pay for a monthly sub with its in-house equivalent of gems. They just one night turned that feature off. The outrage was massive, so much so that they reinstated the ability for a short time. Only they initially didn’t say how short a time it would be. More outrage. They finally gave a definitive end date but by that time so many players were kittened off that, coupled with the sale of its EU licensing …. They just left and never came back. The game suffered because the company failed to be transparent to the people supporting it.

While it may be tough to watch the fallout of this announcement … I’m glad they gave people the information and gave them enough time to formulate an opinion and decide what was best for them.

wads.5730:

one thing people need to remember that being in a lower tier doesn’t mean less fun. infact the opposite is true for many people. you just have to get around the 2-3 weeks of uneven matchups as the server moving to its proper tier.

just look at hod and ET, even matchups are the best.

Having to wait a month to regain a balanced matchup is a terrible thing considering how long this game has been out already.

Having a server shake-up is bad. Having it settle after a month only to have another bombshell announcement cause a new shake-up is even worse. Yes, leaving the announcement till the feature hit live would have been a good thing.

Transfers would still happen, but they would do so in a more gradual manner allowing affected servers a smoother transition into appropriate tiers. How long did ET and HoD take to settle in their current tiers?

The WvW populations of entire servers are affected in a negative way. Eventually things will smooth out. Eventually.

One month to (yet again) balance tiers in a 4 1/2 month old game.

I think the biggest issue was they announced it in too short a time-frame. A LOT of Guilds are just trying to find a good home because they do not want to stay where they are. If given more time, perhaps they would have gone to several places and spread out more, some might have even gone back to their original Server! All in all…I think that maybe the best way to deal with it would have been allowing something like daily Transfers until the 28th, or pushing the date back a couple weeks to allow people to figure out what they want.

hmm
1. If i want to play with my friends, y in the first place i choose another server? Is not like there’s no way to get in touch outside of a MMO :P
2. Highly doubt any of the servers is in such a dire condition that players are not able to find someone to party/dungoen with. Just requires the will to ask/type in chat instead of waiting passively for an invite (my server isn’t a big one btw).

Server change, imo, was a mistake (like in every game), a free one was even worse (xpecially considering the game has a server Vs server PvP feature), and i agree with this thread, announcing it ahead of time was even worse, at least from a WvW point of view.

“Ehi kitten i’ve been playin this game for 2 months, but only now i realized my friends play in another server!bad ANET that forces me to pay to play with them!”
or
“I wait for 2 hours for a party invite but nothing happens! Bad ANET that forces me to pay to be flooded by invites!” :P

I actually find this server scramble odd. Given all the transferring that has been going on for the past 3-4 months, are the people who are doing an 11 o’clock transfer now so certain that the server they are moving to is going to be the right one for them? If they haven’t been able to find one to their liking in 4 months, what makes them think they are doing so now?

What this thread is really doing is chastising Anet for not accounting enough for the stupidity of people.

And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.