This is my personal observation on the current situation on Gandara WvW, which may not have anything to do with how things truly are.
Gandara has always been a very pug reliant server, with many regulars working hard daily and as a high pop server, having lots of PvE focused players hopping in throughout the day. When our WvW guilds start their events, it marks the beginning of our server’s primetime and the WvW population reaches quickly reaches its peak. Usually guild groups (mostly 10-25 people) roam on their own and work on different objectives. Pugs would be flipping camps, spotting, tag along with guild groups or follow a separate commander if one was present.
The largest factor dropping our WvW population seems to be the playstyle in higher tiers, where there are fewer but bigger groups roaming around, which in turn cause the skill lag, culling and performance issues in the fights. The biggest issue still is the 2-10 second delay on skill usage in the largest of fights, usually combined with getting steamrolled by an enemy massively outnumbering you which pretty much drains the fun out of the fights. The skill lag issues are just way too common compared to lower tiers and our guilds would rather not hold hands to fight the larger sized groups, because those just result in slideshow fights. However, the skill lag issue might be a screw-up on anets part, as many other servers have reported having it increased, even though the size of the fights has not.
Imo the zerg size ain’t as bad on Piken as it was on Kodash, but what seems to happen instead is that one guild engages a fight with enemy and another joins in a few moments later. Most Piken guilds already have larger numbers than we have, but atleast it’s not blobbing into a single unit and I guess one can’t blame guilds from cooperating with each other. It’s not like these interventions ever happen with our guilds as well.
Another issue are the so-called “fair weather players”, that keep on playing as long as things are going well. Commanders that successfully cap a lot of stuff or win many battles gain a lot of following, but many times when things aren’t going that well, the people following him or the commander himself may suddenly disappear, causing more of the pugs to leave. Prime example on this is EB on tier 4, which would have a queue way before primetime. We held SM most of the time and there would almost always be 1-2 commanders flipping towers that were trebbed from SM. In tier 3 our towers were constantly flipped by Kodash and AR zergs and suddenly outmanned buff was a common sight, sometimes even during prime. Occasionally a commander would show up to retake the towers, but they were quick to disappear once we should have defended the recapped towers. There are of course the WvW regulars and good commanders that keep on playing regardless of outcome so props to them. In tier 4 when we were constantly steamrolling our opposition during primetime (400+ potential score), there would be queues on 2-4 maps (mostly 2-15mins). Now outmanned buff is a common sight, our potential points are lower than usual during prime and we are lucky if we have a queue to a single map.
Some of the Piken WvW guilds start few hours before prime, resulting in all of the borderlands quickly turning green. Almost none of our guilds during this time have numbers to match up the ones from Piken and trying to cap anything usually results in getting rolled over by a guild group as it’s hard to put a fight with pugs of similiar or lesser numbers against organized groups. This also recudes the morale and fun factor of people playing during this time, as there is pretty much nothing to do against them. Of course holding all the objectives on the map leaves white sword / enemy group hunting the only activity to do, which obivously attract multiple guild groups on the scene when attacking an objective. Funnily enough, we did this against AG/RS and suddenly being on the receiving end is not that fun for many.
Of course there is still the recent patch that added some PvE content or made them more appealing, but the population reduction from that should affect every server.
TL;DR: Too big zergs or already bigger guild groups cooperating with each other cause performance and currently, severe skill lag issues during fights which make it less fun for our guilds (and just in general) to play. Also, not doing well greatly reduces the amount of pugs and commanders present. But most important issue: skill lag.
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