Guild Wars 2

Ins.7139:

Connection failed if try to log in for everyone?

That is expected – the login will start working when the test starts.

Hi!

We investigated and noticed there was an issue with the client that you could download on the account website. We now have fixed this issue, but you will have to re-download the executable from the account website, and replace the one you downloaded beforehand.

Please let me know if you’re getting normal speeds with the latest executable.

Population levels aren’t used to determine matchups – ratings are. Some randomization on the ratings is happening to introduce some variance in the matchups, but if there is a rather large gap in the ratings, that randomization might not be enough to create diverse matchups.

The goal of this change is to make the population spread out better, which will in turn make the ratings get closer, which will result in both more interesting matchups, and more variability as well. This will take some time to happen.

A “Full” server is a server with a number of Active WvW Players (as defined by the algorithm) above a certain threshold. It has nothing to do with hardware limitations, or PvE players.

The “Full” threshold is slightly different than the other ones because it doesn’t have an upper limit. So some servers can be just slightly above the threshold and marked “Full”, and some other servers might be well over it, and also marked “Full”, even though their populations aren’t really balanced.

The intent is that since you can’t join or transfer to a “Full” server, their populations are going to diminish over time, until eventually they reach “Very High” again. At this point, all “Full” servers are going to be balanced. This won’t be right away, though, since we’re not kicking anyone out of their servers.

Those changes are now live.

This should be rolled out tomorrow.

To answer a bunch of questions that I’ve seen on this thread:

• The price to move to a server of a given population level isn’t changing. What’s changing is the way population levels are attributed to the servers.

• I won’t detail the way the new algorithm works, because I want to minimize the risk of people trying to game it. That being said, I am confident it is robust against such attempts. It’s not looking at a short period of time, and it’s looking at many aspects of the ways players are interacting with WvW to determine a server population.

• It will continue to be impossible to join or transfer to Full servers. It is possible that some servers are going to be marked as Full for a long time. While I understand this can be annoying for some, this is necessary to create a better experience for everyone.

• I agree that asking new players to chose a World before doing anything in the game is odd, now that Worlds are a WvW concept. This isn’t something we can change easily, however, but I’ll keep it in mind if an occasion arises.

• Please keep in mind that this won’t have an immediate, instantaneous effect on your WvW experience. The effect of the change will take some time to be observable from a player perspective – it should however be visible pretty quickly on my side, and I’ll make sure it’s going in the right direction.

Once this change has been deployed, I’d like to hear what you think about the population level your server now has. Specifically, I’m interested in hearing about feelings of mismatch (like “my server is marked as full, but feels really empty even at peak time”).

Thanks for the feedbacks so far! I’m glad most of you are liking this change.
— Samuel

apharma.3741:

Will there be a period of free or very low cost transfers to allow for a slight rebalance of population etc?

Will there be any free transfers, for example to the bottom 3 servers?

There is no plan to change the price per population tier at the moment. We’ll be looking closely at how players are moving/joining World, however. The goal is a better balance, but not a too sudden disruption either.

Yeah, thanks for letting us know on Twitch.

Everything should be fixed for everyone now.

Hi everyone!

We’ve seen today more PvP activity than ever and that caused some friction on our servers. We’ve deployed a fix soon after discovering what was wrong, but the previous issue might have put some of you in a weird state which prevents you from getting in queue correctly.

The symptom of that state is that you’ll see an “Exit the PvP lobby” button next to an “Unranked arena” queue panel with no other information on it.

For now, I believe that this state can be resolved by disconnecting (entirely closing the client) for at least 10 minutes. Doing so clears up some internal state bound to your account, and should allow you to re-enter queue.

I’m still investigating, so please let me know if this didn’t help!

I believe asuran hydro-engineers are currently investigating this issue. Something having to do with the migration pattern of the Mystic salmon (which makes its way up the fabric of reality each year, as you probably know).

Thankfully, as you’ve seen, despite its invisibility, the water supply still exists, so there’s no risk of drought. For now.

Hi!

You should read this blog post. Things have evolved since then, but the general design is still relevant: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-megaserver-system/

I always add “We have cookies” in there. It seems to work well!

Hi guys,

The current setting is to close the map one hour after the call for volunteers. When this happens, everyone still there gets redirected to another map copy.

I understand that this one hour period might be frustrating to some players. I’ll be discussing the option of increasing that time to something longer with the team.

Thanks for bringing that up.

Hey guys,

I’ll be playing with the [RAID] guild on Vizunah Square [FR]. It’s awesome to see such an overwhelming response to this project, and I’m looking forward to fight (with) you in the field.

Hello!

Here’s some clarification, as I understand that this whole thing is quite complicated to grasp.

• The roll-out plan ultimately include all maps in the open world, including the cities. The speed at which we’ll roll out the system will depends on how the system performs versus our expectations, but the goal is to ultimately cover the whole open world.

• The roll-out is done on a per-map basis. Once a map uses the MegaServer system, it uses it for all Worlds (that is the point of the MegaServer system). The “map population” I am referring to is the average population on the map across all Worlds.

Thanks for your comments!
— Samuel

Hello!

WvW bonuses belonging to your Home World are applied to your character when you are in a MegaServer map. It is also possible for you to see your world’s WvW statistics and queues in those maps.

There are no situation in which you would benefit from another World’s bonuses. You need to earn your benefits.

Hi everyone!

First of all, thank you for your overwhelming involvement in commenting this feature. It has been very exciting for me to work on, and I am glad and proud that this excitement is shared by a lot of you!

As Colin mentioned, a lot of your concerns are to be addressed in the upcoming blog posts. I also wanted to answer some of the questions that I’ve seen on this thread.

How does the system know which language I want to use?
The system uses the language spoken in your home world (or your guested world, if you’re guesting). It doesn’t use the language of your client. It is done this way so there is no conflict of priorities between the home world and the language in the algorithm (as both are always aligned), and because in my mind, when you’ve picked your home world, you’ve picked the community you want to play with. And while you may want to set your client to a different language (because you’re better at it, or because you want to learn it), you still want to play with people from that community.

Will this system breaks existing communities?
The whole goal of this new system is to enhance the in-game social environment. We completely get that the community of your home world is important to you, and this is why MegaServers takes that into account. But I also think that with this tool, we can go further. While home world communities are important, they are also very abstract. Choosing which home world to pick is a difficult task, even more difficult when you’re playing the game for the first time, because more often than not, you don’t know what the differences are between each of those worlds. Also, home worlds communities can be quite unbalanced, population wise.

With MegaServers, the idea is to start taking into account more meaningful data to create communities. People you’re playing with, people sharing your interests or your goals, … We want to try to create this “town-like” feeling, in which while there are a lot of different people, you are also encountering the same ones frequently enough to be able to establish meaningful relationships.

This is one of the long term goals for this new system. On April 15th, we’re introducing the core elements that makes it possible, and in this configuration, the home world you’ve picked is very important. And for the other informal communities, we will monitor and adapt the system accordingly.

Once again, thank you for your comments, questions and involvement in this process! I’ll keep an eye on this thread as much as my tight schedule allows me to.
— Samuel Loretan