Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

No the guy who posted didn’t really know anything about the issue and admitted as much. But he still felt strongly enough to demand that Anet turn back the megaserver. He had no idea anyone liked it.

Edit: Obviously the positive responses came AFTER he felt urged to make that post.

I’ll take that example with a grain of salt. Assuming 12 posts constitutes a “mob”:

• by your own previous reckoning, many of those posts were probably the same people chiming in multiple times.
• also (I believe) by your previous statements (it could have been someone else) most of the people who hate the MegaServer have left the game by now. So it’s no wonder the poor guy felt outnumbered and picked on.

What I find interesting, is that now that the MegaServer has had plenty of time to be “tweaked” and otherwise “improved”, someone can still come in to the game cold and feel angered by the changes it has shoved down our throats. How good is a system that produces outrage as a first impression?

EDIT: I’m not aiming that question at YOU, Vayne. It seems BOTH sides of the issue agree about Cities being off the MegaServer, and that it still needs lots of work if it’s going to stay. I’m hoping ANet will see that question and ask it of themselves.

I made a wordcloud of this thread through RSS, although it only gives 1000 posts, so from about the end of April. Thought it would be interesting.

There isn’t much need to argue about RP. One of the only times ANet has really commented on it, they stated they would look into a way to help RP folks with the megaserver changes. So, they at least acknowledge RP is a large enough demographic to consider.

Vayne.8563:

You have no idea of what I know or where I’ve been, but you should probably just stop arguing. Every time you say something like people RPG because this is an MMORPG, you are asking for this kind of feedback. Don’t make statements like that, and you won’t get this type of feedback.

The same could be directed right back at you. :/
When you continually take a disrespectful tone, is it really a surprise that you may receive the same? You’re creating much of it, though not all admittedly. If you actually took some care into what you’re saying and how you say it – I imagine the same consideration would be granted towards you.

Right now though I don’t see anybody cheering you on, Vayne, except yourself. I’m not happy with myself right now because I’ve allowed myself to post completely off topic and I’m rewarding you right now. You’re enjoying all of this. * sigh *

While its hard for me to remain quiet and/or ignore rude behavior – I’m going to try my hardest to completely ignore everything you have to say from this point forward. I don’t see anything productive coming from you to suggest that I should. I’m sorry in advance if that offends you.

Vayne.8563:

Profits at this point are based on store sales, not copies sold. Rentention for new players doesn’t figure greatly into that short term, only long term.

I’m relatively sure that during the days when people were saying starting zones were dead, the retention was low. That’s how people think with MMOs. They come into the game, see no one and think wow this game is dead what’s the point.

You’re not going to see a huge advantage to this now, but as sales are run frequently, retention for those players because key to renewal. I suspect that we’re seeing numbers now that are coming out from the quarter before mega server retention actually kicked in. It’ll take months of catching up from people starting and not staying.

If you don’t stay, you can’t buy. Again, I can’t back this up with hard numbers, but I do know how the genre works. Don’t you remember all the threads about dead zones. How does that encourage people to stay?

I won’t even bother talking numbers, but i can tell you i have a pretty large sample size, many of which have played the game since release and many of which were pretty avid community members that bought gems. Most of them haven’t logged in in at least 5 days. I don’t absolutely tribute that to megaservers, but it’s not helping.

New players are also confused, i have a few friends that started playing and really didn’t get how servers work or why they are there at all, when they clearly don’t matter in the majority of the game. Retention has a lot to do with the social aspect of the game, which has been reduced. Guild recruiting is harder, since guild things like influence and participation across server still isn’t working with the megaserver. Not to mention WvW. That’s also a problem, players can’t find guilds to play with as easily and vice versa. The released it, but only half-way.

There is also, still, broken events, glitched out new content releases, massive RNG headaches, feeling like there is a lot of cash grabs on anets part and changes that don’t seem to make a lot of sense. There are far more reasons for less retention than just empty maps and even then i think that’s much less of a problem than you think it is.

In my mind anet’s making a lot of mistakes, all in the name of innovation, to the point that players feel like guinea pigs. Some of that stuff really lacks focus from a player perspective. When i hear things like it could take up to 6 months to build a map, i cringe. The thought that it could take them several years to come up with more than a couple new zones is cringe worthy. Especially coming from GW, where we got expanded maps and new content almost yearly. I personally think barren maps are the least of their worries and i still speculate the megaserver has far more to do with the technical/back-end issues than funneling more people on the maps.

They also have a large majority of people totally feeling casual about the game, while they clearly are now trying to focus on more hardcore stuff, like WvW and competitive PvP. It’s stuff like that, that leave players disillusioned about where this game is even going, it seems like most people want them to focus on the popular stuff and give up on PvP. With only one mode in the PvP scene, it feels like they are tossing good money at limited, underdeveloped stuff. Those things are far more relevant to lower retention than empty zones.

Vayne.8563:

No it’s not insulting. Someone claimed that this stuff didn’t happen before, I’m claiming it did, there were plenty of posts on the forums about it. If you choose to be insulted by that, that’s fine. It’s entirely possible to forget something. I don’t see how that’s insulting. And you know, if you are insulted by it, I apologize. Because it’s not my intent to insult.

But the problems after the mega server are worse for some people. They’re not worse for me. And they’re not worse for other people either.

I’m sure there are people thrilled at having tons of people around to do content with that will never come to a forum.

First of all it is insulting, extremely. Then suggesting we are all just in a mob mentality complaining to be on the bandwagon. I take great offense to this. I don’t know who said that this stuff never happened, it wasn’t me and I didn’t notice it…. it is possible someone did and I didn’t see it but most people posting against megaservers in this thread seem to be realistic in seeing that the previous system had problems as well… but megaservers have caused many more. Sacrificing things that people loved about the game to fill server instances to the brim with seemingly random people. I personally don’t thing superfilled maps is a good thing while you do… this is a perfectly valid disagrement we can have, but that does not make your opinion better than mine.

The two benefits I see in mega servers are: Low population maps and servers now have more people on them and guesting is no longer necessary to do things with friends.

The negatives I see: Loss of server community, harder times getting into maps with friends and party members, either unable to find a different server when an event is bugged and conversely unable to get the same one when doing node harvesting, unable to tell when you are on a different megaserver from guild/server/instance mates, too many people for many events causing difficulty getting credit, languages issues on european servers, lower framerates due to more people, temples in orr almost always being done (and defend events not giving the same rewards as attack events)

Some of these are condensed down… like loss of server community encompasses stuff like: difficulty finding roleplay partners, wvw unable to recruit from mainserver when in need of more people in wvw, etc…

So I just don’t see how you can in any way possible say that megaservers when realistically compared to the old system is better. The old system needed improvement, and what they advertised megaservers as sounded great, but the reality is much different. I was very excited when I heard about megaservers… but since they rolled out it has nothing but day after day of disappointment.

Vayne.8563:

Guhracie.3419:

It’d be different if the “views” count were made up of “unique views” but I know that I have personally viewed and refreshed this thread countless times. There’s no telling how many or how few lurkers there are- if people want to be heard, they have to be willing to speak up. So far, 47 pages of posts (at least of posts that abide by the TOS) have been made. It’s significant in comparison to other threads.

I’m largely in favor of megaservers- they’ve mostly been positive for my experience, but it’s a little dishonest to act like the number of pages has no bearing on how important that thread is. This is not one or two people keeping the thread alive, either.

We’ve had other threads go dozens of pages and most of it was two people arguing.

Because some people feel the need to post to almost every negative comment about the megaserver regardless if the comment had merit or simply reflected a personal opinion.
Interesting that you point this out.

I’m not sure if this is the right forum to post this in, but I’m wondering at any possible way to track or know when temples in Orr occur?

Ever since megaserver the only way I know when a temple is up is if I go to a map and look for the uncontested waypoint. If it’s not, then I do other things and hop back into the map every now and then and pray people don’t do the defense event (which makes me feel really bad… that I want people to fail an event…. can we please address why it is that the defense events have to displace the temple events another two hours? Please make them more lucrative to do! Or, maybe if the defense is done it would only prolong an uncontested temple for another half hour or so…)

Another thing is that I try guesting to other servers in the hopes that I get put into a different megaserver shard, but because only two guest passes are allowed often I get put right back into the same map, and then the hope of getting a new map where maybe a temple event is up dies.

Now, I understand that temple events shouldn’t always be happening because they’re really loot heavy, and constant uncontested temples would mean that they aren’t as special or I guess it could mess with the economy, but it has become such a chore to even try to do the events that it simply isn’t worth it. I miss the days of doing temple runs with my server, or being able to use an API so that I could level my other characters and be alerted when a temple event pops.

Now, if I’m not constantly hopping in an out, I end up missing half the event or the event entirely. When that happens, I have to wait two hours until it happens again (assuming no one defends the temple. If that happens, it’s another four hours…. I don’t have that much time to play!)

Does anyone have any tips on what servers to guest to that usually place you in different shards? Is there any genius that’s been able to make a tracker yet for Orr?
Please help me, I’m desperate for tips! :P

I hope this isn’t completely off topic for this forum, but I figured it would help to show how much megaservers has ruined Orr for me.
I get that there’s more people, but that’s another issue I actually have with it. Enemies die so quickly because of massive zerging for temple events – or most events across all maps, for that matter – that the hardest part of an event is tagging an enemy.
The only viable weapons to use are AOE skills, and if you’re not a guardian or a staff necro, or a very quick elementalist, good luck looting anything.

46 pages later…

My experience of the megaserver, from it’s introduction, to now(also from an RP point of view):

1) A MAJOR influx of trolls/griefers/and generally negative folk

2) I only land in the same instance as my guild/friends about 50% of the time

3) I specifically joined an RP heavy server to avoid names like Xx Ipwnnubsx Xx, now they are everywhere.

4) I wander around not recognizing a single person. Community is gone. You can still talk and add friends.. but, that brings us back to point 2).

5) If you’re having a large guild event such as bounty/RP/general PvE, you have to waste at least 10-20 minutes having to make sure everyone is in the same instance, organizing the taxi’s etc etc. And that’s BEFORE organizing the actual events.

6) As an active RPer (Well, not so much now, thanks to the megaserver) I would enjoy walking around towns and seeing the crowded streets. Players literally gave life to the cities. Not to mention the years of building friendships and communities, lost. Now we’re all spread out and parts that were once full of life are now ghost towns. Welcome to Divinity’s Reach, Population: Tumbleweed.

7) Major cities are also affected by the megaserver. Why? See point 6).

8) Whenever there is a world boss event, the lag(both fps and ping) is unbearable and the scaling is through the roof.

9) People who complained about low pop. servers had the best part of a year of free transfers to go over to a Very High server. Server merges to combine all Medium-High servers would’ve worked just as fine.

10) Server based community websites are now no longer relevant. Thats a yearly £60-100 worth of domain hosting lost.

All in all, the megasever has caused more damage than what Anet thought would be a fix. Don’t fix what isn’t broke.

No one can honestly sit back and accept the megaserver as an improvement. If you do, Anet has already won, and will be inspired to continue adding ridiculous updates such this in the near future.

Wow. Just… wow!

I stumbled across an old GW2 news article entitled Introducing the Megaserver System and just about choked to death reading the opening lines. It reads:

We’re down to the last major feature to announce in our upcoming April 15 Feature Pack, and it’s a pretty huge one: we’re making it easier to play with your friends on every PvE map, regardless of home world! By restructuring the relationship between players and worlds, we’re changing our server system to connect you with the people who will best benefit your social experience in PvE.

What exactly does that mean? We’ll get to the technical explanation in a moment, but it means that you’re more likely to be placed on a map that has more of your friends and guildmates, people who speak the same language as you, and more people that you regularly see. It means that maps will have more players adventuring in them to provide you with the best possible PvE experience.

From personal experience as well as the (so far) 46 pages of player input, I’d say this is pretty much the opposite of what the Megaserver has done.

Sure, the final sentence is mostly true… maps do have more players adventuring in them. But whether or not that gives us the best possible PVE experience is entirely subjective. For me, I prefer less population. That’s why I chose a lower population server in the first place.

As for the rest of what the Megaserver is supposed to do (place you on a map with more of your friends and Guildmates, and people who speak the same language as you), almost all the comments I see here complain that has been ruined by the Megaserver.

And ask the Role Playing community if the Megaserver allows you to connect “with the people who will best benefit your social experience in PvE”. Or if it makes it “easier to play with your friends on every PvE map”. Does it really make sense to anyone that mixing people together at random will allow us to see “more people that you regularly see” than when we were all on the same map every day?

Guild Wars 2 has a good PR department. The article makes the Megaserver sound like a great idea. Most people want most of the things they said it would bring. But obviously, it hasn’t delivered.

ladybutter.5280:

Sigh… I really tried. I really tried to like the megaserver. I kept an open mind about it and tried not to be so negative and actually play on it.

But no, ever since the megaserver came, I noticed that I lost all sense of belonging. When I zone in to a map, the people I see are strangers. Gone are the days where I know the people who idle around a specific area, LA for example, in my server, there was this girl who just stands there 24/7 carrying a spikefruit (I won’t mention her name but I know a lot know her). While I don’t talk much in map and say chat, it gives a sense of familiarity when I know the people talking there.

Now there’s no place to see familiar faces other than wvw. I’m a wvw pug and I must say, it’s difficult now to discuss wvw matches outside the BLs because it doesn’t make any sense, outside wvw, you don’t belong to any server. Not to mention it’s quite difficult to call on your server to arms.

I tried to see the advantages, there are people now in mid level maps. However, that was the end to it. I thought that if there are more people then map completion wouldn’t be so boring. But no, what happened was, the people I usually bump in to are the people who will ignore you and just forge ahead. They won’t talk and won’t even ress you when you’re helping them fight something. When you ress them, they won’t even say thanks or whatever. It didn’t happen much back then when there was no megaserver, because you both know you’re in the same server, and most likely will see each other again whether in wvw, high level maps or world events.

Now, because of the anonymity brought by the MS, it’s like everyone has a free ticket to be a jerk.

I tried guesting to another server, if it will alleviate my frustrations. But nope, it doesn’t work. Guesting is pointless. Before, if I want to chill and RP, I’ll guest to TC. If I want to immerse myself, I’ll guest to low pop servers. But now? Sigh.

My suggestion, I would like to have the option to be in a megaserver or not. I played AION before, and they have this fast track server and the normal server. Aside from that, they even have channels in each zone that you can switch to. Is that possible here?

I really tried MS, but I guess it’s not for me. I know some like it, that’s why I wouldn’t suggest to remove it completely. Just an option for those of us who would like the server communities back.

Please ANET

I agree so much with this. “Community” isn’t a list of friends and phone numbers. Community is also the lady that jogs by each morning and waves at me. I wave back, but we have never spoken. It is fixtures, familiarity, a sense of being “home”. I can’t even bear going to the game cities now, it is like being dropped off a bus in an city you have never been to, alone. I live now in whatever zone I log off in, and do my business in WvW.

As far as low level zones go, ugh. I deleted my sole asura and rerolled Norn. (take that, Eternal Alchemy). It’s just awful in Wayfarer. I don’t make it to DEs I see on the minimap in time. You have to basically stand and wait for one, and hope you get a chunk. Tried Maw and got no credit for any phase cept shaman, everything evaporated. Even the Ram for Joffe was half dead before I got to it… and I started the event.

I used the birthday thing so.. I’m level 20 with MC greens. I can barely get a piece of anything. I feel bad for actual low levels.

Saddest is the people that don’t know. An old friend logged in, and I was filling her in on changes, as well as “whining” about the megamerge. She said.. I dunno, I’ve never seen Borliss Pass this active. Had to explain to her that Borliss Pass doesnt exist anymore.

Sigh… I really tried. I really tried to like the megaserver. I kept an open mind about it and tried not to be so negative and actually play on it.

But no, ever since the megaserver came, I noticed that I lost all sense of belonging. When I zone in to a map, the people I see are strangers. Gone are the days where I know the people who idle around a specific area, LA for example, in my server, there was this girl who just stands there 24/7 carrying a spikefruit (I won’t mention her name but I know a lot know her). While I don’t talk much in map and say chat, it gives a sense of familiarity when I know the people talking there.

Now there’s no place to see familiar faces other than wvw. I’m a wvw pug and I must say, it’s difficult now to discuss wvw matches outside the BLs because it doesn’t make any sense, outside wvw, you don’t belong to any server. Not to mention it’s quite difficult to call on your server to arms.

I tried to see the advantages, there are people now in mid level maps. However, that was the end to it. I thought that if there are more people then map completion wouldn’t be so boring. But no, what happened was, the people I usually bump in to are the people who will ignore you and just forge ahead. They won’t talk and won’t even ress you when you’re helping them fight something. When you ress them, they won’t even say thanks or whatever. It didn’t happen much back then when there was no megaserver, because you both know you’re in the same server, and most likely will see each other again whether in wvw, high level maps or world events.

Now, because of the anonymity brought by the MS, it’s like everyone has a free ticket to be a jerk.

I tried guesting to another server, if it will alleviate my frustrations. But nope, it doesn’t work. Guesting is pointless. Before, if I want to chill and RP, I’ll guest to TC. If I want to immerse myself, I’ll guest to low pop servers. But now? Sigh.

My suggestion, I would like to have the option to be in a megaserver or not. I played AION before, and they have this fast track server and the normal server. Aside from that, they even have channels in each zone that you can switch to. Is that possible here?

I really tried MS, but I guess it’s not for me. I know some like it, that’s why I wouldn’t suggest to remove it completely. Just an option for those of us who would like the server communities back.

Please ANET

Vayne.8563:

But there is harm. What if the people who opt for the main servers don’t get enough people on their main servers to make it worth it?

Then that would prove megaservers weren’t popular and that Anet had made a mistake.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

From my perspective the Mega Merge was done to proactively avoid traditional server mergers and give the illusion of a populated game to new consumers, as well as easing the new player experience with populated zones.

In that, it could be said it was very much a success. If that is indeed what the Megamerge was intended to do, Anet has really no incentive to roll it back or change it.

I think the pro and con sides were kicked around internally and measures were taken to present the merge as a game enhancement with full awareness and downplaying/silence upon the many negative aspects. I think they felt the importance of merging outweighed alienation of a substantial segment of current consumers.

Not a first. The core of SOEs NGE was exactly that, a calculated risk that new acct aquisition would outpace loss of current consumers they knew they would upset. Smaller scale, same calculated risk and acceptance of current consumer losses in favor of new acct purchase and retention.

Those of us that feel the game lost too much are simply the numbers the spreadsheets deemed acceptable loss. As such I feel nothing will change. We were written off long ago.

You hit the nail on the head. In my opinion traditional server mergers would have been way better but doesn’t look good on the quarterlies so some dink in a suit pushed this through with out a care to the consequences. Its obvious that the updates that have come in have all been for manipulating the metrics to have nice bar graphs on the quarterly stock meetings. The problem is that since its all been about the metrics.

WvW has dwindling numbers, lets create a new map and make it the best place for grinding out xp and skill points plus make the gold and karma rewards decent, now metric shows an increase in the amount of people in wvw.

Metric shows people aren’t playing in certain areas and people complain about not enough content/things to do so lets update traits to force people in to more areas and do things they do not want to as its cheaper than actually creating content. Metric now shows players in more areas of the game and we didn’t waste resources on creating new content.

Dwindling numbers are causing a loss in gem purchases, lets nerf all loot and gold income and add more gold sinks one of which we will tie to traits so if people don’t want to go to areas we are herding them to for traits they can buy them with gold but they will also need skill points so we can get them grinding skill points in EOTM. Metrics now show gem store sales are up.

Servers are going empty and some maps are deserted but if we merge servers people will say we are failing and it will hurt quarterly stock meeting. Come up with new idea of megaserver which is the exact same thing as a server merge except instead of merging 2-3 servers together you merge them all. Metric now shows all maps have players and there is no more home servers so nobody can complain about “their server” being empty.

Everything they do is to fudge the metrics for the quarterly graphs. The funny thing is that all these are symptoms of something else.

Vayne.8563:

Your right it has impacted dynamic events. There are 1500 event in this game and maybe 30 are affected negatively and even that is an opinion. that means 1470 aren’t affected negatively and are often affected positively.

It is nearly all events that have been affected because each map has been Megaserved and now has too many people on it. Too many people doing each event the majority, were all you need do is press 1, or do an AOE in the hope to tag the enemy. There is no skill involved any more. No need to dodge, heal or buff/debuff. Also were did you get the figure from? My personal experience is it’s happening on every map I’ve been to, and a hell of a lot of other people, if this thread is anything to go by.

I’m STILL thinking far more people are advantaged by this system and disadvantaged.

I mean for every person who says the meta events are worse, I know someone who’s happy that the bosses go down fast so they can do other stuff.

But that wasn’t how they made the game to be played, only using 1 or 2 attacks and do nothing else other than run around trying to tag to get gold, or auto attack a boss. It seems like they wanted to get rid of the zergs, though now, it seems that nearly every map with every event is a mini zerg, or a mega megaserver zerg on boss fights.

Even the maps as a whole have changed. Take Kessex Hills for example, the enemy are always pushed back into their own bases, as soon as the next event starts, (where they try to take ground) they are sent back, you won’t see the missions that happen in other places, like in the small human town (I’ve forgotten the name of it, its in the north west) or many others. And if you’re a beginner, you wont even know that that could happen. It’s the same with the boss timers now, you (as a noobie) do an event chain get to the end where the boss fight is meant to be, and it just ends, without a satisfactory ending, you might not know there was meant to be a boss fight, so you move on, and the majority will never return to that map.

People are losing out on whole (mini) story parts, I don’t think that is an advantage. Beginners aren’t learning to play well with their toons because events now are a face roll. The only advantage I hear people mention is that there is more people in maps now, (to me, and a lot of others it’s too many) IMO the disadvantages outweigh the one advantage.

Also the megaserver mapchat cannot be ‘tweaked’ or fixed for the Euro servers. What is the solution? Turn off foreign people? That’ll help map coordination, that will help foster a sense of community. Let each country have its own server? They won’t do that because that would be how it was before the megaserver and the maps would be less populated. I really don’t see a fix for it.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure what you want them to say. First you identify problems, then you try to find solutions to problems. They you try to implement the solutions. There’s nothing to say until they actually figure out the best way to go forward from this point. It doesn’t take a day or two. It takes time.

I know what I want them to say.

For all we know they may not see the problems that are being described in this thread as issues that need fixing. I want them to acknowledge the issues as they see them.

Tweaking / refining the algorithm is fine, dandy and definitely needed but the problems with the megaserver, (from the point of view of some of the posters in this thread) go well beyond a better matching algorithm.

I want some acknowledgement that the good things the megaserver brought came at a cost, it isn’t all sunshine and roses. Or some reasoning that the good things the megaserver brought are worth the sacrifices made and that the problems being brought to light in this thread either are directly being worked on or that they aren’t really issues from their point of view.

I want to know that just about 3 months of feedback isn’t being ignored. Because that is the perception that silence gives. Ignore it, they’ll get used to it kind of mentality.

A generic we’re working on it could mean anything from algorithm refinement to hardware perfomance. They may not be working on what the perceived problems are.
It is just to vague.

There isn’t a solution. I don’t know how they thought building a game mode that pits servers against each other and then lumping them together would be a good idea, even remotely. If the big concern was the early game population, then lump those maps together. It’s now a giant wound they are trying to cover with a band-aid.

Our participation within our server community is so low, that in fact, we’ve been bleeding players, even with the release of new content. It’s such a drastic change, so impacting and widespread, that they are actually losing players because of it. I’m sorry but that’s simply unacceptable to remain hush-hush about any intent or direction to fix things are, this should be the utmost priority. And in all seriousness, i don’t think people would be fully satisfied unless the system went back to how it was before.

Right now i think it’s really justified to feel like second class citizens, because, well, China.

Vayne.8563:

They’ve said they’re working to fine tune the mega servers. They said it’s only the beginning and they’ll continue to monitor and adjust. What exactly what you want them to add to that.

It’s been said before, but they need to explicitly identify the issues that they’re “tuning” because they haven’t made it clear at all whether any of our concerns are things they want to consider. Tuning the current system as it is isn’t going to satisfy most of the people that have posted to these threads because the system itself wasn’t designed to satisfy the needs that were brought up during the announcement. What we NEED is some clarity. When people are complaining about “devs not responding” or “devs offering generic ’we’re working on it’ responses”, what they’re referring to is this lack of information. We need to know whether or not the system is being tuned to address our issues, or if they’ll never be addressed at all. After all, the whole contested waypoint thing was described as an unfortunate side effect of the new system and was determined to be an acceptable loss by ArenaNet. There’s nothing telling us that our concerns aren’t going to be treated in the same way.

Just want to chip in that the lasting effects I see of the current implementation of megaservers is that while servers are generally well populated, Anet are basically killing/neglecting the most important aspect of a thriving MMORPG; the community is at a severe disadvantage to getting relevant players together, whether that comes from friends at a micro-level to groups/guilds at the macro level and players from your own homeworld at the biggest level. Before you’d see the same names over and over and develop a sense of community and belonging, now even guilds and small groups are facing too many barriers just getting to play together, and as such megaservers in their current implementation are just killing off GW2’s most important factor.

Anet – you seriously need to revise your algorithms/implementations of megaservers and how you put players together in shards; come up with a way of handling “districts” like in GW1 and rather than having people spam “join in <zone>” to get in over and over when a shard is full, queue people up just like you do for WvW entry so that people can rather focus on playing the game in the meantime while still moving forward in queue to get in to the same shard as their friends/guilds/etc.

For me, Anet rushed through the implementation in a big way, and didn’t stop to consider issues that may arise. I applauded them at the start because they chose to start with the lower population zones and I assumed that and a supposed gradual rollout would help address the multitude of valid concerns that arose pre-launch.

But it was rolled out across the board way too fast, and since then there has been very little communication from Anet. As an RPer, i still remember Colin’s fantastic response to simply guild up, and as such failing to have any comprehension of what the game’s RP community is about. And then the system rolled out and even being in a guild didn’t seem to have any effect. To me that showed that Anet not only failed to understand substantial aspects of their community, but also failed to introduce a system that delivered what it was stated it would, and that was regardless of the wider concerns raised by the players.

Fast forward a couple of months, and where are we? Anet have fallen almost completely silent, meanwhile very little has changed in terms of the Megaserver. Of course, some players will say its because theya re still heavily invested in the China launch, but then it looks a lot like they are gambling away our support in the hopes of gaining new support in China. A risky strategy that is perhaps walking a fine line.

As for the little statement saying they are working on it. Well, good for them. The thing is, the huge silence in between has allowed the not unreasonable in the circumstances impression to sink in that Anet simply couldn’t give a flying kitten about us. And, as others have said, it doesn’t really tell us much about what they are doing, and how they re making the experience better for us. Its not enough to be working on the necessary improvements. They have to be seen to be doing it as well. With little to show for it in the game, and no details, and incredibly little communication from Anet, coupled with many player’s view that we have been ignored, there is still little reason for many players to trust Anet’s word, or believe they are doing anything.

I understand that the Megaserver is new and would have issues that need to be worked out. Even small patches inevitably have bugs and a huge change like that would have consequently bigger issues to work through. But a failure to meaningfully interact with the playerbase while those issues are being addressed creates discontent and a distrust that will take a long time to recover, if it ever will. In that, i really feel that wide portions of their community relations policy is not fit for purpose, and I hope Anet can, for their sakes as well as the players finally start to actually enter a dialogue with the players, rather than letting this collective player monologue continue in its current form.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Calling it “Skynet” isn’t nearly as clever as you seem to think it is.

Yeah, at least Skynet had intelligence. This is more like its lobotomized cousin.

Tyops.5894:

I am deeply concerned. Someone needs to rethink this communication strategy.

Arenanet seems to go through phases of communication blackout. Whether its intentional (someone high up enough on the management org chart muzzled everyone), or unintentional (everyone’s just too busy), it needs to be fixed. We need someone who’s primary job is to interact with players. Someone who can read, but more importantly respond, to threads like these. Someone who may not reveal everything that’s going to happen, but at least can assure us that when bad things happen, we can know why and be proactive in getting answers and making sure the 43 pages of feedback get to the right person that can get flaws fixed.

Believe me, I know its really a frustrating job, but we need another Allie – someone with the kind of personality that can take the sharp edges of the internet and still be as bubbly and happy as Allie always seemed to be.

I’ve been wondering whether or not a district system like we had in Guild Wars 1 would actually really be the best way to improve megaservers. If you think about it – unless you grouped up with others the only people you ever saw were in towns. When you went to do missions or quests you got an instance/map all to yourself.

With GW2, people are around all the time. While districts would be an improvement for hopping around to see if random events (like temples) are up, I imagine it would essentially be the same system as we have now, with overcrowded maps where events are already completed – you would simply have a greater chance by shard hopping to do them because there are more copies of the same temple available.

This was something that I saw that happened when server guesting was, for a brief period, unlimited (which was for about two weeks after the April 15 update). Because I got tired of uncontested temples, I decided to go into Cursed shore, and by typing /ip was able to find out which shard I got placed in based on what server I guested on. I did this for every single server, for about a week, and made a table of which shard placed me in which server. (Re-guesting would put me in that same server, so I knew it was pretty consistent)
My result was that each day, about five servers would get placed on one shard. Another five on a different shard, and so on. The next day was the same, but the five servers jumbled together would be slightly different, so I gather they randomly rotate out the servers that are together and rotate the IPs to make it seem different.

I never tried this for zones that become overly populated, for example Sparkly Fen during Tequatl or any map with a world boss. My guess is that the same thing happens, however when the map reaches the soft/hard cap the overflow system takes effect and makes a shard that simply puts people together randomly, like before.
This, to me, would explain why some people are seeing the same people as before while others are not. I seem to see people from my home server only when I’m in a map with a low pop – high pop and I’m lucky if I see one person.

With this in mind , I really have a hard time seeing how it’s any different that a server merge. MS is worse in my opinion simply because it’s so random and you can’t really rely on the system to get it right. It also makes an API that can let you know when random events are up impossible, because the shards are randomly rotated out, whereas a server merge would be like what we had before where the IPs are set.

I imagine if they managed to make a district system, it would just be those few shards to choose from, then any overflow shards that were created (there were usually about five different shards total, each with about five servers on them).
It would definitely be better than what we have now, because we would have some play with choosing where we want to go, but in my mind it wouldn’t be an improvement to other issues that we have like temples that are always uncontested or the ridiculous zergs at world bosses…. you’d simply get to choose which 100 man zerg you run with.

From my experiences MS as a whole is not better than what we had before, for so many of the reasons already voiced that have already been explained well enough, and looking at the way the system works just confirms it for me.

Star Ace.5207:

CC Danicia is most probably not on the Megaserver team, and whatever she knows, I am sure she ‘s not freely allowed to share. Rather than hating on her as if she was ANet’s Avatar, think about all she’s doing: her job.

The hate she got from unreasonable voices in these forums is why I don’t mind when ANet is silent about issues-as soon as anyone replies, they just get some hate and “your comment isn’t enough!” Yet these very people tend to complain about ANet’s supposed “perma-silence” which obviously (to them) means ANet doesn’t care about “the playerbase” (which is usually a community among players, and not really “the playerbase”.) Under these circumstances, I would actually post less than they do (ANet is hardly silent-and not only about the gem shop, as is often stated-but many people just want to hear what they want)

In that regards, they are kinder than I am-stating an “official” response in these forums is bound to be unsatisfactory and irrationally hated upon by many. Ultimately I believe it’s a pointless exercise for them to try to convince haters that the megaserver is good for the game, if the latter have already made up their minds about it. “Inconsiderate”, “lacking in foresight” ANet just wanted to destroy their community and gaming experience in their minds, rather than helping to further develop the game.

Best of luck to all ANet employees as you try to move the game forward. The Megaserver needs refining, not removing, and I am glad you are taking that stance rather than letting yourselves be intimidated by all the hate-which as we all know, is hardly universal. No one should admit to a crime they didn’t commit.

(The above is not meant to mean that it’s “wrong” to dislike the megaserver-like what you like-but as my own lamenting about how people often choose to voice their dislikes; intolerance, lack of compromise (other players are important , not just my point of view), etc. Additionally, many people who have voiced their concerns AGAINST the megaserver have done so rationally and maturely, so disliking it is certainly no indication of someone necessarily being like the haters I alluded to above.)

If you can’t agree to disagree, and are just going to reply with more hate, just ignore my post altogether. I care not for unnecessary debates about games, and there’s no reason to expect we must always agree or otherwise hate each other.

We need to know whether our concerns about the megaservers are actually being addressed, or if ArenaNet is not interested in addressing them and is instead just working on improving their own design. That’s the point of all of these feedback threads. And simply acknowledging that it’s being worked on doesn’t say whether or not it will improve our situation at all. As the community coordinator, it’s part of her job to communicate our needs to the team, but at this point what the community itself needs is a member of the team to explain the future of the Megaserver system. And because no such person has made an appearance in any of the feedback threads, CC Dancia serves as the only line of communication we have with ArenaNet. So, maybe it’s unfortunate that she has to bear the brunt of the player’s dissension, but at the very least that means she can communicate that to the dev team. And until some level of clarity is given to us about their plans for Megaservers, she and any other moderator are going to have to continue to be a target of player dissension. Does that mean she should post nothing? Probably. Like I said, at this point posts like “We’re working on it” and “Wait and see” aren’t good enough and serve as a placebo for maybe a day or two (if that). When talking about “ArenaNet doesn’t communicate with players”, we’re specifically referring to developers or a developer representative. Obviously PR talk and generic statements aren’t going to solve the issue.

Almoryk Kane.6085:

So no update till July 1st for the next part of the living story. So dose that mean that we have to wait another month before any fixes come to this system? It seems that all this discussion and something, SOMETHING needs to be fixed.

Well they haven’t even spoken up as to whether ANY of our concerns are actually issues they’re addressing. All they’ve said is that they’re improving the system. But we’ve had major concerns about the very design of the Megaserver since it was first announced and so far none of them have really been addressed or acknowledged. So I would not expect any “fixes” in the sense that you might be thinking to come to the game, ever. If anything, they’re probably working to fix the increased disconnects happening. But they’ve made no indication that they’re in the wrong as far as the design and implementation of the megaservers so I’m inclined to believe they plan to do nothing about it aside from polishing the kitten that they already have. And from the way they’ve handled the situation thus far, I don’t see any reason why anyone should put their trust/faith in them otherwise. They’ve done nothing to deserve it.

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

Just a quick note to let you know that we still have a dedicated team working on improving the megaserver issues.

You know as well as we all do at this point a post like this isn’t good enough. “Wait and see” stopped being a valid response when the system was implemented and every single one of the concerns brought up since the announcement were validated. It was obvious then that you had no plans to address the concerns and you’ve continued to demonstrate this behavior for over a month since the release. “Improvements” on “issues” doesn’t tell us anything. Are any of the RPer’s concerns part of those “issues”? Do you intend to actually compensate for them or should they just be expected to deal with it? Do you have actual plans for allowing large guilds to gather again? These are issues to US. But you’ve made no indication that they’re also issues to you. For all we know, your only concern is bug fixing the Megaservers based on their current implementation when pretty much all of our problems are based on the design/implementation of the feature itself.

Scott McGough.6897:

Canach’s look has indeed undergone a major change since The Lost Shores, and I regret that there isn’t more background available regarding how it happened, but let me address the question here: his change in appearance is almost entirely due to the hardships he’s endured since he escaped Lionguard custody. He’s a fugitive from justice, he’s had Noll’s freelance decommission teams trying to kill him, and he’s utterly alone, so it’s been a tough couple of months for the sylvari fugitive.

Being on the run, fighting for his life, and killing the killers sent after him have weathered Canach; plus, he made a concerted effort to change his look (hairstyle, etc.) so as not to be recognized and arrested by the Lionguard. It’s quite a come down from the high position and status he enjoyed as a secondborn (even if that status was never as high as he thought it should be), and his new, grimmer look is meant to reflect the psychological toll he’s had to pay as well as the physical one.

As for the flaming gauntlets, remember that Canach is a seasoned combat veteran and an experienced guerilla fighter with a fairly twisted sense of what’s right. When he heard about the Molten Alliance refugees resettling on Southsun Cove, he saw a chance to help other Consortium victims and get even with Noll. But like a good soldier, he wanted to understand the situation in which he was about to involve himself, so he made a point of seeking out one of the Molten Alliance weapons facilities and clearing it. He obtained the gauntlets from that escapade and wears them now as a symbol of his newly adopted (and so far poorly executed) role as a champion of the weak…right before he set out for Southsun Cove to settle things with Noll.

Hope this helps,

Scott, I do hope you intend to add this information into the game somehow. There’s so much lore that’s not presented in-game itself, so many behind-the-scenes explanations that would solve unanswered questions for players that bring confusion.

Please, can you find a means to put at least much more of these background aspects into the game? Not stuff that’s in your face, but still somehow determinable so that you wouldn’t have to come to the forums to explain these confusions and oddities that, with the explanation, makes a lot more (if not perfect) sense? And even just more filler background lore.

I kind of feel bad for him now. All those hardships forced him to turn over a new leaf.

CC Danicia.1394:

My apologies for not being clear; I was getting more information regarding an earlier post in this thread and some other questions regarding the rewards.

The problems we are discussing are:

1. It is difficult to do well with a zerg – by intention, but with the other design choices, this makes it hard to form effective nonzerg teams. See below
2. However, because of megaserver, which was great for other reasons, isn’t working out here, as no one knows anyone else, we can’t organize as well, therefore, zerging happens. I suppose if a guild like TTS might be able to form a group, but I’ve been hearing since the megaserver, its been hard for guilds to get into a server together to do, say, tequatl or the three headed wurm. If that’s true, this would translate to problems here too.
3. The bosses seem to uberscale real fast, making it very hard to kill them fast enough to earn the silver/gold chests. Don’t get me wrong, I think the new mechanics are fun, but they become drastically hard to kill. Furthermore, as bosses die, more zerglike groups are going to form, as no one wants to miss out on the remaining combats, thus the remaining groups get larger and larger…
4. We have a rather hard time limit.
5. We get crap loot unless we do well… see #1 , #2, and #3
6. We have to PAY for the privelege of doing poorly (paying to do the escort gift dolyaks during the winter was kinda cute, but with the frustrations of above, its quickly lost its charm)

If they made it easier to organize ourselves, OR if they made the bosses not so incredibly tough as they scale (particularly Boom boom and her healing turret, she seems by far the worst offender here), it turns from being fun into being an exercise in frustration.

Really, I have to ask, why is paying for this even necessary? I get the story idea, but when we are paying for the privilege of getting frustrated, I see this part of the LS quickly thinning out as people are getting their achievements, as its not a lot of fun and not rewarding either.

Let me rephase: I actually think the new boss mechanics ARE fun… except that we also want to get the silver/gold chests, and with the aforementioned difficulties, that’s hard to do.

CC Danicia.1394:

Hey all, just a quick note. Earning higher tiers of reward in the Boss Blitz in the Queen’s Pavilion is a great way to earn Festival Tokens, and Queen’s Gauntlet tickets – the rewards that the other activities within the festival give as well. If you check your inventory, you should see the tokens & tickets you have received.

No offense Danica, but you are clearly not aware of what this thread is about, and you are unaware of what the beef is that we players have with this content.
We want the enemies to drop loot and materials like they used to. Otherwise, the event is good for the title and nothing more.

Now that the traits have been changed and this act has assuaged (but not removed) my irritation on that level, two issues still remain.

1- I can log into Divinity’s Reach as many times as I want at US prime time and 8/10 times I will not be on the same overflow as most of my server’s players. Being Tarnished Coast, this ruins any chance of roleplaying in the small window of opportunity that I already have.

2- The complete lack of comment and therefore regard by the developers on all these issues is a major concern. If I found a defect or issue with any company’s product and contacted them with my concerns, I would expect a reply within, at most, a week.

We are now on, what, 37 or 38 days after the feature patch, and we have received no realistic support or comment on these issues.