Guild Wars 2

Sylosi.6503:

mcl.9240:

PC gaming has always been like this: There are people who buy or build top-end systems who have higher framerates, better rendering, larger FOV, better sound (and sound localization), more accurate mice, faster texture load times, more bandwidth and lower latency, faster memory and disk access, etc. etc. etc.

And then there are people who buy mediocre or low-end systems, or just never bother upgrading their years-old machine. And they have low framerates, stuttering, high latency, dropped packets, slow rendering, slow disk and memory access, crappier sound, poor mouse tracking, and so on.

It’s true in all games.

Most of which is utterly irrelevant and untrue, outside of niches like competitve FPS (which is a very different market from a casual MMORPG like GW2), all a better PC lets me do when it comes to most games, is play with prettier graphics, have lower loading times, run multiple screens & run other software whilst playing.

Which is a very different thing from invisible opponents, I’d rather beat someone fairly than through them not being able to see me just because I have a better PC.

Nor is it simply the PC has stated, it is also the connection, people are limited to what connection they can get by where they live, as long as they meet the specified requirements, it is Anet’s duty to provide the product they paid for.

mcl.9240:

If they can’t afford it, they should understand that they can’t expect top-end performance from a low-end box. A video game is not an entitlement; performance is not welfare.

I’m sure they don’t, but then if they meet the specified requirements then they are entitled to expect it to be playable.

Slower disk and memory access coupled with a weak GPU and CPU will mean that characters in MMOs do not render in a timely manner. Particularly when there are a large number of textures involved, and particularly when some of those textures are large. Textures rely heavily on disk access speed as well as GPU memory and system RAM, both quantity and access times.

Toss in particle effects and an engine that relies more on the CPU than the GPU, and you will have a vast difference in experience between a low-end and a high-end machine. Warhammer was a good example of this: Framerates would drop through the floor in large battles unless you disabled all the particle effects, even on high-end machines. Even then, when there were a large number of players in a small area, the display would stutter, and some characters wouldn’t fully load.

You saw similar behavior in DAoC: Weaker machines simply couldn’t render everything.

In Aion, they disabled models altogether to help low-end machines.

Even in WoW (prior to the engine overhaul several years ago), you’d have some toon pop-in when areas were crowded (Ironforge was a good example).

Irrelevant? It’s absolutely relevant. Every game I just listed is a popular western MMO, and every single one had hardware-dependent performance issues, that were resolved in various ways by the various development teams.

As for your “playable” comment: Do you think WvWvW, with all its current culling problems, is “playable” now?

Nuzt.7894:

I don’t think its a case of willing to spend the money, some just cannot afford it, and GW2 being F2P is a perfect game for lower income folks. Its runs decently on low settings on lower end machines, and has no monthly fee, just because some people are not well off does not mean they should have something that makes them happy stripped from them because they are lower income.

The other issue I have found is those that can afford it, upgrade their rig and 6 months later there a new patch and they need to upgrade again, and so on and so forth.

I’ve spend a small fortune over the last 12 years upgrading for games, and while I understand that gaming companies don’t want to fall behind the times, the frequency at which many require upgrades is appauling.

If they can’t afford it, they should understand that they can’t expect top-end performance from a low-end box. A video game is not an entitlement; performance is not welfare.

Burl.9567:

mcl.9240:

Burl.9567:

Agreed. Creating a game where the “haves” have a clear advantage over the “have nots” is bad for business and bad for the game. People will just tune out and quit playing if their system wasn’t “up-to-snuff”.

Explain, please, how that’s preferable to having the entire player base suffer from invisible enemies, making both the “haves” AND “have nots” tune out and quit playing?

I’m not sure why I need to explain human nature here. When one side has an advantage that the other can’t achieve, they will quit. The culling isn’t bad to the point of unplayable either. Quit making it out into this huge issue. I have it happen maybe twice a week where I walk into a zerg (and sometimes through it). I can cough up the silver for now…

I’m happy you believe you have so little trouble with culling. Many other people view the current culling situation as making WvWvW unplayable. When you can’t see the enemy you’re standing in the midst of, when you can’t even see an enemy from the wall to target them with abilities or siege weapons, the game is, in my opinion, unplayable. Lots of other people agree, and have in fact quit the game, or at least quit trying to play WvWvW, with culling in its current state.

Given that WvWvW was a centerpiece of GW2, and that the game was touted to be the spiritual successor of DAoC, whose protracted success was due almost entirely to their own version of WvWvW, leaving WvWvW in this state since launch is driving players away.

If they won’t turn off culling, they should reduce the WvWvW population caps back down to launch levels. The queues won’t be as bad since the playerbase has dropped off significantly since launch (that’s not a dig against GW2; it’s a natural occurrence in all games post-launch), and the cap at launch at least minimized the impact of culling for everyone.

Burl.9567:

mcl.9240:

Just turn off culling. If you didn’t pay the price to have a decent machine and/or connection, you pay the price in-game due to poor performance. This has been a simple fact of PC gaming for as long as there have been PC games that were capable of taxing the systems they ran on.

If you want everyone to have an identical gaming experience, then everyone needs to have identical hardware. That’s one reason why consoles exist. If you want a console experience, lobby ANet to create an MMO for consoles.

So you want ANet to essentially exclude a large portion of the gaming population from participating in WvW (face it most of the people that play are casual) so you can look at pretty graphics? Bad business decision. I’m not saying it doesn’t need to get fixed, but this definitely isn’t the long term solution either. A slider for the short term would be OK, but long term this would destroy WvW.

No, I want ANet to allow those with min-spec computers to continue experiencing what we’re all being forced to experience now (invisible enemy forces in WvWvW), while allowing those with better machines to have the choice to see the enemies and play the game as it was originally intended to be played.

You’re making an unfounded assumption (“a large portion of the gaming population”) about how many people have machines that can’t handle rendering the enemy forces currently invisible due to culling. Culling is implemented to cater to the minimum spec required for this game. Go look at the min-spec for this game: That’s a computer that’s 3-5 years old, with no upgrades. The min-spec CPU is almost 6 years old, and the min-spec graphics card is 7 years old. Are you seriously arguing that a “large portion of the gaming population” is running on hardware that old? I sincerely doubt it.

I’d wager a very SMALL portion of the GW2 playerbase is using hardware that old. And if they are, that’s their choice, and part of that choice is being aware that most games are going to suffer performance-wise on that equipment.

I’ll say it again: There has ALWAYS been a schism in the PC gaming world between those willing to spend the money to have a top-end machine, and those unwilling to do so. Those willing to spend the money get better performance than those who aren’t. It’s a simple fact of life in PC gaming. Always has been. Always will be.

Burl.9567:

Agreed. Creating a game where the “haves” have a clear advantage over the “have nots” is bad for business and bad for the game. People will just tune out and quit playing if their system wasn’t “up-to-snuff”.

Explain, please, how that’s preferable to having the entire player base suffer from invisible enemies, making both the “haves” AND “have nots” tune out and quit playing?

Sylosi.6503:

elderan.2638:

Habib: The consensus here is pretty clear, since many people are suggesting essentially the same thing: that culling should be placed in settings where the user can control it. Those who have bandwidth or rendering issues can simply leave culling on and have the exact same performance they get now. Those who have systems that can handle the increased bandwidth/rendering would have the option to turn off culling completely. If this is at all possible, please consider implementing this.

No thanks, my system is way above min specs, but giving me and anyone else the option to turn it off and thereby creating a two tier PvP system with those that can see other players and those that can’t, is simply a bad idea. (nor for that matter would it necessarily solve the issues)

PC gaming has always been like this: There are people who buy or build top-end systems who have higher framerates, better rendering, larger FOV, better sound (and sound localization), more accurate mice, faster texture load times, more bandwidth and lower latency, faster memory and disk access, etc. etc. etc.

And then there are people who buy mediocre or low-end systems, or just never bother upgrading their years-old machine. And they have low framerates, stuttering, high latency, dropped packets, slow rendering, slow disk and memory access, crappier sound, poor mouse tracking, and so on.

It’s true in all games.

And it wouldn’t be a “two-tier” situation. It’d be a spectrum: some would be able to render everything all the time, some would be able to render most things most of the time, some would render some things some of the time, and some would have trouble rendering even a handful of things all the time.

I’d MUCH rather be able to take advantage of the machine I intentionally spent thousands of dollars building by hand, from scratch for the sole purpose of getting the best possible performance out of games, than be artificially prevented from getting even playable performance out of a game (a game recently voted Best of 2012 by several outlets) because the developers refuse to remove that artificial hindrance until even the barest minimum-spec machine is capable of rendering everything all the time.

Just turn off culling. If you didn’t pay the price to have a decent machine and/or connection, you pay the price in-game due to poor performance. This has been a simple fact of PC gaming for as long as there have been PC games that were capable of taxing the systems they ran on.

If you want everyone to have an identical gaming experience, then everyone needs to have identical hardware. That’s one reason why consoles exist. If you want a console experience, lobby ANet to create an MMO for consoles.

@Tool.3749: It affects everyone. People with machines that match yours have culling problems.

Ohai.8346:

You win you move up, you lose you move down.

Whats so difficult about having that system than this glicko thing?

Because you have to take into account what the people above and below you do, and how well and how often they’ve done it. Not to mention how well and how often your server’s won.

And how often and how badly each server loses.

That’s why it’s a points-based rating system. It was designed to stabilize. If you want to move to another bracket, win often enough by enough points that you beat the server above you (and hope they have a horrible losing streak). If you want to move down, lose abysmally, consistently, until your score is lower than the server below you, and hope they do really well.

The problem with moving up or down one spot based on win or loss is that it doesn’t allow for quick movement across multiple slots. And it’ll allow for too much volatility due to the nature of the game. You’d always have servers changing brackets in positions 1 and 3 of each bracket after things “settled” in that system (for a very loose value of settling, since a system like that never really does).

It’s amusing: Shortly after launch, everyone complained about the horrible mismatches and how much movement there was between brackets. The entire point of the rating system was to eventually settle on stable brackets. Now that it’s done that, people are complaining about the lack of inter-bracket volatility.

There were those that cautioned people to be patient, give the system time to work, and they’d see that eventually the system would settle into a stable state, with the same matchups week after week. Many didn’t believe it’d happen.

Well, it did happen. Just as it was supposed to. Why is this a problem? In any bracket, there will always be two losers. In a system of stabilized matches, chances are it’ll be the same two losers every match, until the winner gets worse or one of the losers gets better.

That’s hardly a surprise.

Scarn.6810:

This is a great look into actual software development that most developers don’t really let the end user see.

For all of those claiming “I have a good machine, let me use it!” they have an obligation to abide by the minimum specs they sold the game with. Similarly, if they let the high end users turn culling off, then you are essentially paying real money to gain an unfair advantage, which is completely against the entire goal of normalization in this game.

It may seem like a long time, but 3-4 months to fix an issue that requires optimizing the engine to this extent is blazingly fast work. If they manage to pull it off by February, it will be quite an accomplishment.

They also have an obligation to anyone who bought the game to make WvWvW playable. Culling, as things stand today, makes WvWvW essentially unplayable.

Which would you rather have: No one being able to render most enemies most of the time, or many if not most people being able to render most enemies most of the time? I know I’d prefer the latter. So would a great many other people.

If you want equal performance for every customer, consoles exist to serve that purpose. The PC market, is, has been, and always will be about people spending money to get better performance. Suggesting this is unfair is disingenuous at worst, and shows a lack of understanding of the PC gaming market and its evolution at best.

Thrashbarg.9820:

mcl.9240:

You’ve solved #1, you’re in the middle of fixing #2, and #3 …well, frankly, at some point you have to tell the people with the bottom-end machines that they simply can’t expect the same performance as people willing to spend $2000+ on a good gaming rig.

In short, setting your criteria to completely fixing #3 before removing culling is basically saying, “We’ll never remove culling”. If you want an equal experience for all players, develop for consoles. PCs vary in spec. People spend more because they want and expect better performance than those who spend $300 on a generic, low-end PC.

I don’t mean to sound bitter in this post, merely realistic. You have to have some point at which the low-end, min-spec performance is “good enough” and realize that people with better machines are going to get a better experience. That is, after all, the entire point of having a better machine.

From what I read in Habib’s post, that’s exactly what they are doing. Making sure the min spec users will have a basic playable experience, as you say “good enough”. No doubt higher end machines will play better.

Quality software development takes time. If they have relatively new programmers (to the project) there is a learning curve which adds time. It sounds like they are working on a solution for the majority of players, which is good, not sure how you could read it otherwise.

How I can read it otherwise is this: Habib says he wants the min-spec machines to be able to render everyone, all the time.

Today, we have a situation where nobody is rendering everyone, all the time.

I’m suggesting that the cut-off for declaring the disabling of culling to be “the majority of players are rendering almost everyone, almost all the time”, which is a distinct improvement over today’s performance — indeed, it’s orders of magnitude better than what we have today — rather than “every single player’s machine, no matter how weak, is rendering everything all the time”.

I’m okay with the min-spec machines, and those on the lower end of the spec spectrum, having trouble with rendering most of the friendlies and enemies. Let them suffer with what we are expected to play with today, which is the vast majority of enemies not rendering at all. Let those willing to spend the money to have a more powerful machine reap the benefits of so doing and render everything, or almost everything, most of the time.

I suspect many other people are okay with that as well. Habib and his team are bending over backwards for the min-spec crowd, and we’ve yet to even see statistics demonstrating that the min-spec crowd make up more than a tiny percentage of players.

I’d much rather have the majority of players able to play WvWvW with better rendering than we have today, with culling off, than have them artificially hamstrung by leaving culling in place until the engine’s been so completely overhauled that even the min-spec PC has no trouble rendering anything with a full map of zerg v. zerg.

You’ve solved #1, you’re in the middle of fixing #2, and #3 …well, frankly, at some point you have to tell the people with the bottom-end machines that they simply can’t expect the same performance as people willing to spend $2000+ on a good gaming rig.

In short, setting your criteria to completely fixing #3 before removing culling is basically saying, “We’ll never remove culling”. If you want an equal experience for all players, develop for consoles. PCs vary in spec. People spend more because they want and expect better performance than those who spend $300 on a generic, low-end PC.

I don’t mean to sound bitter in this post, merely realistic. You have to have some point at which the low-end, min-spec performance is “good enough” and realize that people with better machines are going to get a better experience. That is, after all, the entire point of having a better machine.

Culling, plain and simple. I haven’t played GW2 at all since November. I primarily bought it for WvWvW, and the culling problem has made it essentially unplayable. Until it’s fixed, I just can’t enjoy the game.

Yukishiro.8792:

Also your comment about culling always being in the game just does not ring true from those of us with experience in the beta. If you really think nothing is changed it is probably worth looking a bit closer because it sure feels like something changed on the user end. I remember playing in the BWEs and seeing many, many more people onscreen than I see in post-launch wvwvw. I can’t tell you with 100% certainty I never got attacked by culled enemies but it certainly didn’t feel like it does now.

This. It was most definitely NOT in the BWEs, and not in the game the first few days of launch. It has nothing to do with “shiny” or “new”. There were TONS of people in WvWvW then, and there was no culling. It specifically and most decisively started occurring just after the patch on 8/31.

I remember it clearly, because it was just before you opened these forums, and my post on the problem starting was one of the very first made: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/BUG-Mobs-and-players-suddenly-appearing-pop-in/page/1

That was over two months ago. You can insist that it’s always been in the game, and that may be the case. However, if it was always in the game, then something in the 8/31 patch created the current problem with it.

That’s the bit that concerns me: When the game launched, culling wasn’t present. It was introduced in the first week or so after launch. I.e., it was put in intentionally. And it could be taken out. But it’s not being taken out. It’s being left in and modified instead.

They can’t put a slider in or disable it for certain computers because it’s not a client-side feature. It’s a change they made to the server-side code.

To be honest, I’ve mostly stopped playing due to this. I really enjoy GW2, and WvWvW is why I bought the game. But after weeks and weeks of dying repeatedly to enemy I can’t even see, running into areas only to wind up dead and then see the enemy materialize around me, and being unable to effectively fight at range or with siege weapons because I can’t see who I’m supposed to be targeting, I’ve given up.

I go back every now and then because I miss it, but I quickly get frustrated again and log back out. It’s just not fun running in to cap a tower or something thinking the lord room is empty, only to have the entire group killed because there were 30 or so enemy stacked in there and we couldn’t even see them until it was far too late.

One thing I definitely wanted since beta was a cat pet, particularly after seeing the models running around LA. I support this wholeheartedly.

You do realize that asking for a High NA-population, low Oceanic population server to transfer to is contradictory to your stated dislike of losing, don’t you?

Sunshine.3452:

The transfer window.. where it clearly has a gem icon :P

I wouldn’t know that; I’ve never transferred. Nor do I intend to (and no, I’m not on a top, or winning server. We routinely lose, often by 100,000-200,000 points).

Godmoney.2048:

mcl.9240:

Fun. The reason is to keep doing it is because it’s fun.

So If I extend your logic then getting camped at your keeps spawn is fun? I’m just trying to be clear about this.

If approached with the right attitude, yes. Please bear in mind that when I use the word “fun”, I do not mean to say “winning”, unlike many people who toss the word about on this subforum. The two are not synonyms, nor are they interchangeable.

It’s entirely possible to have fun without winning.

Fun. The reason is to keep doing it is because it’s fun.

I’m sorry…where did you read that transfers would be done for anything other than cash money?

You can have “fun” without “winning”. Also, the two are not the same word.

Banono.4597:

Am I the only one who hates Reddit’s format? Makes trying to glance over things almost impossible.

Nope. I’ve always boggled at the fact that it’s so popular. It’s like mid-90’s forum design never improved, and became hugely popular. I can’t stand to use the site, even though it occasionally has good content. It’s ridiculously difficult to navigate and hard on the eyes.

Yes, it’s fun. No, I’m not on a winning server. Fun is what you make of it, not something that’s handed to you. If you insist on getting all worked up over the score, you’re preventing yourself from having fun.

If they’re not in any order, they shouldn’t be numbered.

But yes, please post the raw counts. A link to a page containing the URLs for every post containing each request would also be nice.

Should be quick and trivial for you since you’ve already done the work.

Since you’ve read every forum post and rank-ordered the top 15 requests, could you please post the raw counts for the rank ordering? Statistics is fun.

Scorpio Shirica.1286:

TC and Crystal Desert really got along in our match up thread…. TC and Black Gate are really getting along. What is it with TC buddying up with their upper tier enemies?

Simple. Mutual respect.

Please define what you mean by a “close match”. Do you mean a 100,000 point deficit between your server and the winning one, or a 20,000 point deficit?

Ral.5326:

mcl.9240:

Malpractis.4653:

No, it’s not a completely recoverable deficit. What you are seeing is a battle that took place during the weekend; where more players were willing to stay up and combat the night domination. It is now monday night, and last night VS gained over 20k points. Tomorrow, they will be ahead another 20-30k points, and it will go from there. The weekend is the ONLY time we can hold a candle score wise, and that time has passed.

I was addressing the OP’s screenshot. In that screenshot, both the losing servers have completely recoverable deficits. The only reason they wouldn’t be recoverable is defeatist attitudes of the players on those two servers.

Quitters never win.

Yeah its clear the loosing side has quit and is not trying, that’s why they are dominating the current score.

You have no idea what you’re talking about.

I was clearly addressing the person who thought I was addressing them rather than the OP when I stated:

“The only reason they wouldn’t be recoverable is defeatist attitudes of the players on those two servers.”

As English may not be your first language, allow me to explain: That statement says that IF people on those two servers think that isn’t a recoverable deficit, it’s because they have defeatist attitudes.

If English is your first language, I’d appreciate it greatly if you read more closely before responding, since your response to my post completely missed the point.

IsilZha.3608:

Man, when I got on last night (TC) the only map where we even had anything, Eternal Battlegrounds, had a long queue. The Borderlands had no queue, but were all awful and pointless to even go in.

I tried to do something for 20-30 minutes, but just outside our only spawn zone were 15+ BG players, just camping there. At /most/ there were 7-8 TC players around, most of them too scared to venture out to any location when there was an opening. Had a few openings and only ever had 1 other TC player go out with me, and we would quickly get mobbed by 8+ at any location we attempted to take.

It was awfully boring…

Then go grab some friends, get them in that map with you, and punch a hole through their lines and get back on the map.

Malpractis.4653:

No, it’s not a completely recoverable deficit. What you are seeing is a battle that took place during the weekend; where more players were willing to stay up and combat the night domination. It is now monday night, and last night VS gained over 20k points. Tomorrow, they will be ahead another 20-30k points, and it will go from there. The weekend is the ONLY time we can hold a candle score wise, and that time has passed.

I was addressing the OP’s screenshot. In that screenshot, both the losing servers have completely recoverable deficits. The only reason they wouldn’t be recoverable is defeatist attitudes of the players on those two servers.

Quitters never win.

OP, that looks like a good, close match.

If you’re holding that up as some example of horrible imbalance, then frankly I pity you and your server, and any other server that sees a score that close and, if they’re not the winning server, just gives up.

That’s a completely recoverable deficit and would look to me like one heck of a good week-long fight.

Here’s a simple one: The Tier 2 Asuran cultural armor and weapon vendor in Rata Sum is selling Sylvari weapons and armor.

The T2 cultural weapon I bought for my Asura Elementalist is Sylvari. This makes me a sad quaggan…er, asura.

aetherseed.5609:

For WvW? That person is logging out before you can stomp them to save on repair costs and so you don’t get loot. Usually common when there’s no queue.

I do it all the time.

That’s… well, I wouldn’t be very proud of that, myself. You got killed. Take your punishment.

Yeah. If there’s one problem with TC, it’s that without a good commander on the field, the folks in WvWvW seem at a loss as to what they should be doing.

Trock Bronze.9625:

Twinbros- your attitude is not a welcome one on our server, obviously as everyone disagrees with you. If you have to win to have fun then please, transfer while it is free.

I have to agree. TC is not a server where people win at any cost, nor one where they ragequit when we’re not holding a clear lead. TC tries harder. TC doesn’t give up. TC just keeps coming.

“Better to wait 2 hours to get into a wining WvW that has equal player ratio then insta Q into another that has you 1v10. The only thing keeping me on TC is the possibility of good RP, haven’t found a guild yet though that meets the RP im lookin for. Giving it a few more weeks but if a good RP group can’t be found then off to Jade Quarry I go”

Have fun with that.

Seriously, good luck. I think most of TC would rather have people in WvWvW that enjoy the fight rather than people who just want easy wins.

Odd since I waited in queue for almost two hours on TC, and finally got into FA BL at 2130 server.

This should be a good one. Really looking forward to seeing TC shine, win or lose.

Vexus.5423:

Before the latest patch, we were having lag spikes, where you’d attempt to cast something, and it wouldn’t happen for 3-4 seconds. Or when you auto-attack it wouldn’t be instant, it would delay quite a bit. You couldn’t time anything during those times. It was happening when large battles were happening during US primetime. No lag now; even the recent ‘invisibility’ videos on YouTube; there are no rubberbanding players. You can’t see the graphic, but people are fighting, spells are being cast correctly, and everyone moves smoothly around the field.

And thanks for reading / commenting. I just want to spread awareness that although it is a problem and needs some kind of fix, it is also the reason for the smooth as butter gameplay we experience every night.

Er, no. Before this patch, YOU may have been having lag spikes, but the generic, all-encompassing “we” weren’t. Clearly, this was neither the cause nor the cure.

SevenSigma.7462:

mcl.9240:

The thread was moved after I made that post. Not awkward at all.

It was a joke, of course it was moved. But now you’ve made it awkward. Geez.

Did I? Or did you? /stare
/me backs away very slowly.
/me stares harder.
/me shuts door, keeping an eye on SevenSigma.

SevenSigma.7462:

mcl.9240:

This is the WvWvW forum, not the Suggestions forum.

Well, this is awkward.

The thread was moved after I made that post. Not awkward at all.

I’m waiting for people from competing server to transfer servers and get the Commander title and run around the maps, intentionally leading mindless zergs all around while actively working against the server’s strategy.

I’ve also been tempted to buy the title, hop into WvWvW, and start complaining about people following me everywhere.

This is GW2, not DAoC2. Please stop making requests to turn it into a DAoC clone.

If you absolutely must, at least use the proper forum. This is the WvWvW forum, not the Suggestions forum.

tarnin.1690:

Like i said to the others in another DAoC thread, you will be gone soon due to lack of something to do. Most of them are gone. You gen4 fast fooders need to just stick to wow. It’s the game for you. If it too “grindy” for you then go play a console game.

That’s hilarious. I’m probably old enough to be your father. I was playing video games before you could even pronounce the words.

DAoC is a different game. This is GW2. No matter how much you hold your breath and stomp your feet, they’re not going to turn it into DAoC 2 for you.

willwill.9318:

Haelindiel who are you going to fight with when everyone quits? Titan alliance already quit and most of it already quit the game, it’s just boring. No reason to continue. No progression = no people. I give it another month. I’m already finding better things to do.

People who need a virtual participation trophy every few days/weeks/months to continue playing a game aren’t any great loss.

I’d much rather have fewer people in WvWvW when the people there want to be there because they enjoy WvWvW, not because they’re grinding for some reward.

^^^ That.

It’s not about ranking. It’s about beating whoever we’re matched against at the time. We’ll worry about the next match when it’s time for the next match.

We try hard and we have fun. We don’t give up. That’s what it’s all about.

And let’s not forget that mentions of server alliances get spoken of with about the same amount of distaste as finding half a worm in a half-eaten apple.

My machine has 16GB of RAM. And three SATA3 SSDs. And a Sparkle Calibre GTX580.

I see the problem within about 10 minutes.

Even if they are running with 32GB of RAM on their test systems (which, in the case of development systems might be the case, but definitely not in QA, where they’d want to test on a range of hardware approximating end-user systems), it would’ve shown up well within the test window you described, particularly if they bothered to simulate the majority of a map population in one area (akin to a zerg-on-zerg battle). Which they would, since that’s a typical worst-case scenario, and automated testing of this type wouldn’t just be compliance and functional, but also performance and stress testing of exactly this sort.

The problem might be as simple as: nobody watches the automated tests as they run; they just examine the numeric results (or pass-fail status) of the test results, which likely wouldn’t indicate a lack of character model rendering.