In order to tackle the subject of server links, I’d like to take a step back and pose a question to help frame the discussion. Why do players play WvW and what keeps them coming back? Once we tackle this big picture “WHY” we can move on and worry about the finer details like game and game mode mechanics, concepts of fairness, etc.
Some people play for the sense of thrill, the excitement of an intimate fight, large or small. Others are playing because of the community, whether that’s coming from the guild that they’re in or the server that they’re on. There are also those that play to win, either through the point totals at the end of the week or the outcomes of each individual organized scrimmage or duel. Lastly, you have people that play WvW because of the rewards, namely the Daily rewards and Gift of Battle.
These groups are: for-the-fights, community-driven, play-to-win, and rewards-driven. They are themselves multifaceted in both polarity and intensity, and most definitely not mutually exclusive. The implementation of linked servers benefited and hindered these groups differently, but how so?
I often hear that the for-the-fights crowd benefited from having more players squeezed into the same matchup. Servers that were formerly described as ghost towns would now get a taste of the action that they had longed for. However, things aren’t so cut and dry. Being for-the-fights isn’t reserved for liking large-scale 30+v30+ engagements. We as a community don’t hear very much about the solo roamer who walked with two heavy loot bags after getting ambushed at a camp. You rarely hear the tales of the organized roaming teams winning five versus seven, eight, ten, and so on. More common are the laments of the self-described “fight” guilds fielding 20-odd players in open field and their frustration of always getting “a—jammed” or “blobbed” down by the map zerg of the hour. I think it is to fair to say that for these players, the influx of players and elimination of many matchup tiers made the possibility of having clean engagements and winning outnumbered fights more difficult- before you factor in arguments about post-HoT skill balance and the like.
Community-driven players are a diverse bunch as well. You’ve probably heard of the term “server loyalty” before—previously as mark of praise and now a self-contained sardonic joke. Whether it was intended or not the implementation of linked servers knocked down the support pillars of each community that was slowly erased. It removed any incentive for the scouts, roamers, and defenders, sometimes playfully referred to as the “homeland moms” to keep participating. Your server now existed in name only, and each cycle of relinks only diluted the familiar names you remember. On the flip side, if your community was the guild that you played with then links probably had little or no effect in this regard. In fact some guilds took advantage of this system to get in favorable matchups and drive their poaching and recruitment of players. To be quite honest I don’t really hear about this disparity in winners and losers talked about very much. I suppose it wouldn’t be as discouraging if the doomed servers weren’t home to predominately smaller and medium sized communities that rely on each other even more.
Partially because of time constraints and because they weren’t significantly impacted by server links; the last two groups, the play-to-win and rewards-driven players can be covered together. When I say play-to-win I’m talking about folks in the upper-end GvG guilds, the server leaders and organizers that take after buying guilds and managing communities, or the aficionados of siege play who use every tool at their disposal to achieve victory. Aside inflated numbers of players and the syncopated nature of relinks, nothing else here is drastically different post-links that hasn’t already been covered. The same applies to folks hopping into WvW for rewards. The zergs that they run with might be larger, but it goes both ways. And once those dailies are out of the way—out they leave, as fast as they came!
Understanding the underlying motivations driving WvW players has helped me defog my picture of the situation. The server links produced distinct winners and losers. These winners tended to be players on more populated servers that weren’t at risk of closure and large guilds that gained from the escalation in combat sizes. Their guild centric mindsets benefited from easier recruiting via links. The losers were the sentenced players on servers about to be erased and those players that enjoyed roaming and medium/small size engagements. The unaffected were the PvXers and the resident “elites” of each mid/upper tier server.
Is there any surprise that the feedback that ArenaNet surely received and factored in to their decisions benefited the aforementioned parties? Is there any surprise the discord between the parties rarely intersect meaningfully on the subject?
