Guild Wars 2

Ross Biddle.2367:

I don’t give a kitten about Red Guard, nor do I see why their opinions matter any more than even the least of any servers militia men, or a dev actually working on the game.

So they made a youtube marking their take of WvW progression. So what.

I wholeheartedly agree with these statements. I couldn’t care less about him and/or his guild, their opinions, actions et cetera.

Why on earth does ArenaNet have to ‘officially respond’?

Chewie, I sent you a reply now!

Dear all,

Nugos [Nug] is a large Russian WvWvW guild, with more than 200 members, on the Blacktide (EU) server. The guild has been around for more than 9 years. Nugos now aspires to be more than just a Russian guild: Nugos wants to internationalise! We have already recruited a few non-Russian speaking members, but we want to expand our international playerbase. That’s why we need YOU!

What we offer you is solid, organised WvWvW in the European top tiers, excellent coordination, helpful & friendly people and… last but not least: fun. Most of our members speak and/or understand English; even those who do not speak English will always do their very best to communicate.

What are the requirements?
1) You speak and understand English. If you have a basic understanding of the Russian language it would be great, but this is absolutely not required (I myself do not speak Russian).
2) You have or you will download and install Ventrilo. Being on Ventrilo is mandatory, speaking, however, is not.
3) Discipline. We follow our leaders and we obey orders in battle.
4) Be mature: you are at least 18 years old and you know how to behave well!
5) Accept Russian. Not all guild chat is in English and not all chat on Ventrilo is in English.
6) Mandatory attendance of WvW events (so you are either offline or in WvW).
7) Be respectful to other players; not just on our own server, but on other servers as well.
8) No jumping puzzles! Well, at least not when the server’s keeps and towers are in danger.

We have made a teaser video:

If you are interested in reinforcing an established guild on a solid server or if you have questions, please contact me ingame (Alasseon.3958) or via the official forums.

Regards,

Alasseon

Yavánna, Officer (International Affairs) of [Nug]

Blurring the screen or zooming in sound like excellent solutions to this problem.

RaCast.6510:

The problem with nightcapping isn’t with nightcapping. I don’t expect arenanet to tell someone they can’t play their game. The problem is that the current scoring system favors what time you play during the day. If one server’s peak hours are from 3-6 and anothers are from 6-9, and they play an even amount of time then they should be roughly evenly matched. But in this scenario the team that plays from 6-9 gets nearly 21 hours to hold positions uncontested while the other realm gets three. The issue is how the game scores. I saw another post on here about changing the scoring to reward more points if you capture something that hasn’t been flipped in a long time which would seriously help this issue.

So that is why I came up with the solution to get rid of EU/US servers, to get rid of language restrictions and make new, fully international servers.

Genev.2450:

Alasseon.3958:

@mangarrage.1062
The problem, in my opinion, is not just transfers. Or do you think some of the European servers can compete with Desolation?

Blacktide nearly did, without US presence
What made Desolation win in the end was not the Americans, but their hurried, but well done, push to organise the server to counter our daytime presence.
Not sure if we still can though, now Desolation probably got more people than during our matchup thanks to bandwagoners, and have gotten more organised and better due to experiences in T2 and now T1. (We fought them in T3, just after RUIN got in)
Was an awesome week, that

But I agree there should have been no split between regions on release.

Let’s be honest, that was not a standard situation on Blacktide. Your server currently can’t even compete with Elona’s Reach. People on European servers have to make huge sacrifices in real life to keep up with the RUIN zerg and I am fairly sure that Blacktide can’t keep that up for more than one or two subsequent weeks.

This thread is not for discussing Desolation tactics or how they won, however. For that we have plenty of other (locked) threads!

@Psy.6153
Perhaps you failed to realise that Guild Wars 2 is not just played in NA. I guess it is YOU who is out of the loop. Moreover, only six viable servers out of a possible 3 × 8 is not ‘balanced’. Denying that there are huge issues is ludicrous.

@mangarrage.1062
The problem, in my opinion, is not just transfers. Or do you think some of the European servers can compete with Desolation? Do you think the US servers that do not have Asian/Oceanic players can compete?

@Nut.4713

Even though I myself don’t care so much about the total score, I know quite a few others do. In addition to this, one has to realise that the total score is a combination of all the partial scores.

It would be insane to deny that there are huge balance issues.

PART 2

The Underlying Problem
It is safe to conclude that separating US and EU doesn’t work. The US servers are dominated (in essence) by Oceanic and Asian players and the EU servers will (from now on) be dominated by at least one huge American guild. The current situation is an excellent example of the so-called snowball effect. The problem is, as one can clearly see by analysing the data of all tiers, that this snowball is now rapidly turning into a huge avalanche. Consequence would be that WvW becomes a lonely, barren place. I will repeat this again (probably ad nauseam): people don’t want to play WvW if it is not fun! This is not rocket science and was already discussed several times in the WvW forums. One only has to look at the thread about the Desolation/Far Shiverpeaks/Kodash match-up.

ArenaNet now decided to put a 7 day cooldown on servers transfers. In my opinion, even a 7 day cooldown on server transfers is unlikely to solve the current issue.

The Solution
The solution to the entire problem is rather simple and straightforward. What has to be done is ‘re-creating WvW’. That means new servers without regional indications and without language restrictions. I’ve read somewhere that all servers are based in the US anyway (!) so ping will not be an issue. Moreover, various people have already switched region and they also report that there are no (significant) issues. After creating new, fully international servers, transfers should be limited to once per month (if not more).

To facilitate the entire process, ArenaNet could put a clear deadline (December 1st would work), reveal the new server names, make separate forum sections for all those new servers and let the players sort it out.
Is there no alternative? Well, an alternative would be to merge all existing servers, so one US server gets merged with one EU server. The issue with this, however, is that there are more EU servers than there are US servers. Another potential solution would be region-locking. I guess this requires little to no explanation. I do want to note that an Asian/Oceanic tier is then a necessity.

The French, Germans and Spanish
But hey, what about those poor Germans, Spanish and French players? Well, German, Spanish and French players can just communicate with each other, coordinate and find a suitable server by themselves. It really is not that difficult! To give an example: one only has to look at the huge amount of Russians (quite a few don’t speak English either): these Russian players also coordinated and subsequently created vast Russian populations on certain servers. Why wouldn’t the Germans, Spanish and French players be able to do so as well? Hell, the Russians are even ‘internationalising’ some of their guilds!

It is, as Same.4687 states in his post, perhaps an “outrageous solution” but I think it is in the end the only viable solution.

Oh, and ArenaNet, please fix culling as soon as possible!

The current scores are a clear indication that something is fundamentally wrong (http://mos.millenium.org/matchups) with WvW – not only in the EU, not only in the US, but in both regions. A solution has to be found before it completely spins out of control and no-one will join WvW anymore.

An Analysis of the Various Tiers
Tier 1 EU: Yes, Vizunah Square is still nr. 1, but they will not be able to keep it up for a very long time. There is, eventually, no competing against the huge American horde that is called RUIN.
Tier 2 EU: Elona Reach is the clear winner: no-one will even come close. Fortunately, this is not because of non-Europeans but because of pure skill and dedication (real-life sacrifice, even). Still, it’s nightcapping paradise.
Tier 3 EU: Surprisingly perhaps the most balanced tier of all European tiers.
Tier 4 EU: The Spanish server will undoubtedly win due to probably South American nightcapping influences.
Tier 5 EU: There seems to be little to no competition. The gap between nr. 1 on the one hand and nrs. 2 and 3 on the other hand is huge.
Tier 6 EU: There still is a little bit of competition between nr. 1 and nr. 2.
Tier 7 EU: Same as Tier 5.
Tier 8 EU: Two servers are still competing.
Tier 9 EU: Looking at the score, there is probably only one WvW server active in this tier…

Tier 1 US: Seems to be a nicely balanced and fun tier. All servers could (purely in theory) still win.
Tier 2 US: Sea of Sorrows against… erh… no-one? Insane imbalance.
Tier 3 US: Basically the same as Tier 2, but now it’s Sanctum of Rall that completely dominates.
Tier 4 US: No real competition here.
Tier 5 US: Ridiculous imbalance.
Tier 6 US: No real competition here either.
Tier 7 US: All servers seem to be doing all right.
Tier 8 US: Devona’s Rest will clearly win this tier.

Now, out of a total of 17 tiers, there only seems to be a handful of Tiers where there is still a bit of competition. I realise that the competition element is perhaps not the most important element for every single human being, but one has to realise that for the majority of the players it probably is, especially since it’s linked to other essential aspects of computer gaming.

Nightcapping
Nightcapping creates such an insane imbalance that it’s no longer any fun to play on certain servers. I’ve experienced the nightcapping drama myself (week after week after week) and I can assure you that it is not fun to play if you are completely outnumbered and if you don’t even have one single keep for several hours. In such a situation, more and more people are leaving WvW.

However, nightcapping will never be eliminated from the game by ArenaNet. Is that a bad decision? Perhaps not. Because nightcapping is ‘allowed’, other solutions have to be found because WvW is 24/7 (but it currently is a few hours of WvW and many hours of PvD). After reading Same.4687’s post in another thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/WvW-T1-will-only-be-english-speaking-servers), I have come to the conclusion that his solution is probably the best.

END OF PART 1

Offski, I fully agree: last night the fighting in and around Garrison (FS Borderlands) was absolutely epic. Great job on defending Garrison against Far Shiverpeaks for such a long time! This, really, is what WvW is mostly about (and what WvW should be about).

Now, there are a few delusional people on these forums who keep comparing this game with war. I strongly suggest those people seek professional help… Computer games are only about one single thing: having fun. War, on the other hand, has nothing to do with having fun (at least not from a common European perspective) so stop making idiotic comparisons.

Very well, now please tell me: who thinks it’s fun to enter WvW and find that all maps are completely covered in Blue – and that’s not all – everything is fully upgraded and fully stocked with supplies and (last but not least) defended by a huge amount of (players and) siege weapons as well? Actually, the main question here is: is it really fun to take everything in the middle of the night, FULLY upgrade it and wait? Does it truly make you feel better? Do you really think you are dominating? Please note that these are rhetorical questions.

For some bizarre reason RUIN thinks it will have competition in Europe. I can tell you now that it’s not going to happen anytime soon (if at all). What I can also tell you is that you will beat all the tier 1 servers. Congratulations and have fun being the ‘number 1 PvD server’. There are, admittedly, a few ‘nightcapping’ servers in Europe, but they can’t field the amount of players RUIN can so they can, unfortunately (!), probably never truly compete. In addition to this, many European servers are currently working on forming their own nightcrews. However, these nightcrews will never consist of hundreds of players. Ask yourselves this: why would huge American guilds (with literally hundreds of players) even want to move to European servers only to fight RUIN?

I think it’s absolutely hilarious that some Desolation players tell everyone to adapt to the new situation. Are these Desolation players completely out of their minds? Once again: it’s perhaps doable to get 24/7 server coverage by European players (and we are working on that), but the European servers can never compete with the sheer size of one huge American horde. Adapting, therefore, is impossible unless something really strange happens to the European servers. What is maybe even more hilarious (and above all pathetic) is that RUIN apparently wasn’t able to adapt to the ‘normal’ situation on the American servers.

I feel even more sorry for the Germans servers and – to a lesser extent – the French servers. They seem to have some great guilds and some great players and they deserve to be in the upper Tiers, but they can never ever compete with semi-American servers.

Some people will say that Far Shiverpeaks players are whining. Even if they are, can you blame them? As stated before, gaming is supposed to be fun, and the current situation is all but fun. Even playing against Vizunah Square (one of the ‘notorious’ nightcapping servers) was frustrating but still fun in the end. More and more people will start to realise this during the upcoming weeks (hopefully even some smart Desolation players). For now all we can do is hope that the number 1 PvD server will quickly move to and stay in Tier 1. RUIN will get bored eventually and hopefully move on. Perhaps people like DavidMonthen will then finally realise that it’s so much more fun for everyone to compete on a more even level.

Anyway, thanks for RUINing WvW on the European servers. Have fun ‘dominating’ in PvD.