Hello, I recently joined GW2 with my fiance and I would like to share my experience regarding this topic. I have only been playing for a month, so I obviously do not know all the intricate details of this issue, but I do have what I have seen and new player experiences should be especially important for the longevity of the game.
Upon starting, we joined Vabbi. There are people on this server, but it seems that most of the time they are all either in Lions Arch, or Queensdale farming champions. I think we hit 40-50 when this WvW Season began, but since then not so much.
In our borderlands, we are persistently outnumbered, and leaving the citadel in force results in us being wiped out by forces 3-4 times out size. We simply cannot gain any momentum or force or have any fun in this area. We can take the occasional camp/tower and once or twice I have seen us take a keep for a few minutes, but if we encounter our opponents, we die. Chat tends to be full of “stack” and various strategies, but it does nothing in a 20 vs 60 fight.
In Eternal Battlegrounds, things are a bit better and it seems to be the focus of our attention. Vabbi Overlook is held by us sometimes, and we tend to wander around trying to hold on to our 33% of the map. In the first week of the season we even managed to do some very memorable attacks beyond this. None of the attempts I was a part of worked, but it was fun. Since then, other than one or two keep defences that we managed it has been as one sided as our borderlands, with enemy zergs 3-4x our number ripping us apart.
I really enjoy WvW, even in this state, but week on week its getting harder to do anything. Me and my fiance have even been trying to do the jumping puzzles, but they are swarming with enemies too.
This issue goes beyond WvW, it is extremely difficult to do the world events due to lack of people. I have never seen the Scarlett invasion event go past the first wave, and many of the other world bosses I have yet to experience. I did see one coordinated group going through them the other day however, and we managed to take down Jormag, something I have previously tried to solo a few times as that zone (along with all the other none-queensdale zones) are just devoid of life.
Why is this?
I believe the recent free transfers to other medium population servers screwed us. I have heard (again, in queensdale only) chat of guilds losing their key members, all of which went to Ruins of Surmia to get a better WvW experience. It feels like I have joined this game and been directed to a sinking ship of a server (when we joined there were only 2 mediums listed, Vabbi and Whiteside Ridge). I do wonder why transfers were not specifically for the servers that needed the infusion of players. If queues exist on the larger servers, it seems logical people would want to escape them. Instead it appears to me that all the serious players went to the same few servers, leaving the rest of us without a chance. Its not that we cant be competitive, its that we cannot even learn to be.
Vabbi WvW is full of friendly and helpful people. We have fun losing, however few of us there may be. But I dont think I can keep playing like this for long, we are missing out on a lot of WvW. Its not a war, its us running around in circles retaking 4 towers and 2 resources camps, then being killed by a ton of enemies and then losing our keep.
For those who say that we simply need to get better/coordinated, people are doing that and have been since I started. Theres a server teamspeak, forum, website, but none of these fix the issue of manpower. While the other servers have full forces on all 4 maps, we cant even put up a fight on 1. Its clear as day we do not stand a chance and that is not going to change, so why would people bother coming to WvW?
I believe the focus has to be on making us more competitive – making it easier for us to stand up to such odds. I had one idea about upgrades. We do not seem to have them a lot of the time. They take time to build and we simply dont hold on to anything for time. During the first week we had Vabbi Overlook built up a lot and that really helped, we had a base to strike out from, and when it was attacked everyone rallied around to defend it. It seemed that it meant something to us as a community, a symbol of our resistance. Then night fell, and it would all be lost during the night, and people gave up.
Proposal: Give worlds in our position some upgrades that affect the few points we own. It may help morale and raise player participation if we can hold on to our small corner of WvW and get back into our lost fights a bit easier. For example, if our keeps always had waypoints available, even when contested, our 20 players would be able to slow down the 60 players outside the gate a bit easier. Is it unfair? Yes. Thats why we need some help.
Other than that, please just open up free transfers to the servers that actually need it in future.