So out of random curiosity, why does anyone play on SoS? Seems like such a lopsided server. Big off hour population, small NA population. I could see playing NA there because you would always be in a target rich environment, but I haven’t encountered many on SoS that really seem like the type to appreciate that situation.
The server doesn’t have the population to be competitive at higher tiers, and they have this huge off hour population that never fights anyone because no one in these tiers has much of an off hour population.
Seems incredibly boring for the off hour folks.
Most weeks we have had one or more of SoR/TC/FA/DB in the matchup, all of whom have reasonable numbers of people playing through oceanic time. So we have had more people to fight against compared to this week.
I’ve posted this before. But here it goes again:
-Reduce map caps to about 60 per map
-Lock transfers to top 4 servers
-Open free transfers for 1-2 weeks
-Close transfers
But ANet would never do that, they are probably swimming in money right now due to all the people transferring to top servers, and there’s no way they would drop that for a better WvW experience for the players
I agree with this except the locking transfers to “top 4” (based on WvW rating). They have already tried to move people by reduce cost to “low pop” servers (which does affect some people’s decision).
Although maybe they can get away with it – transfers to lower-rated servers will be half-price or something. But I think that might happen after the first season of the league.
The Overpopulated servers do not want to play Borlis Pass either.
It was clear a couple weeks ago when SOR went to T2 we had to get as many points as we possibly could to get back up. We did not want to be facing uncompetative servers.
To further my point. Many of us have paid 1800 gems to be on these servers and play in a competative environment.
So from a T1 point of view I 100% agree with the OP that the Leagues are a bad idea. But I don’t agree that these servers should be ‘broken up.’ I paid good money to for the pvp I am getting atm. It’s much more organised and strategic. The competition is much smarter and effective. Sadly the lag is much more effective too.
Whether it is perfect or not is another debate.
One of the best things that has happened was IoJ and SoS breaking up a little after being T1 servers. Why? Because the oceanic population spread out rather than being concentrated on these two servers. There are now at least half a dozen servers with significant numbers of oceanic players and it becomes more fun for us when we play say FA, TC, SoR and others.
There was a lot of movement just before the end of free transfers early in the year (JQ anyone?). I know some guilds are looking around to move before the start of the leagues and there will be a rush of transfers in the next two weeks (both in and out of the top three servers). I know people aren’t keen to go through weeks of uncompetitive matches (which the “T1” superservers are going to experience).
Personally I am fine playing against say BG (it is a good challenge – g’day MERC), but I am sure some on BG will not be excited on say a BG/SoS matchup. BG will be the ones who will lose rating for a start (assuming they have the same rating system).
Just saw Blackgate, “ranked tier 1 in North American WvW”, has put up a recruitment thread.
I am sure luring guilds from lower ranked servers (let’s say Borlis Pass) will make for fun gameplay when Blackgate plays against Borlis Pass. BG will need all the help they can get to be +695 24/7.
Some NA people still haven’t realised that especially after league starts there will be no such thing as T1 anymore and JQ/SoR/BG will rarely be playing each other.
Close battles are much more fun than final score or winning any league.
THis is partly Anet’s attempt to move the WvW playerbase around a bit.
While I don’t think we know how Anet are going to organise the matchups my guess is JQ/SoR/BG will play each other at most once in those weeks. The concept of “T1” will absolutely be killed off.
I can’t see much incentive for the arms race to continue across those three servers, in fact players on there will have to get bored stomping as much as those they play against will hate getting stomped.
If any top 12 server can play against each other it could (although after a bit of pain) level things out a bit.
(thinking about this further they will probably reset ratings as well at the start of the season?)
Of DB/FA I like playing against FA a lot more for some of the reasons mentioned above. They have pretty good representation across all timezones as well.
ballymun many of us are serious about WvW, have spent time in T1 (when there was actually a T1) but choosing not be there at the moment. An SoS/Mag/FA matchup is just going to be different from a JQ/SoR/BG one.
Heizero I would look most closely at SBI and SoS as I reckon those two would fit what you look for best.
SoS has a dedicated group who are out there leading in WvW (some of whom have posted above). They do a really good job pulling together people who are mostly PvX focussed, combined with leading the WvW-centric players.
There seems to be a lot of good will from those who left earlier in the year which is appreciated (and I was personally a bit said when some of those people left – including my own guild).
The fact that SoS is 7th ranked NA server (winning matchups pretty comfortably against everyone except the top six) despite not having (and instead playing against) OCX, MERC, AFS, AoI, TSYM I think we are doing pretty well. Getting advice from those still ON the server (rather than from the sidelines) and who can actively help solve any perceived issues and grow the community probably carries more weight.
We have had some awesome guilds join us recently and I think that is useful especially as we are playing against the top six servers pretty regularly. it is an issue as we are winning matchups against everyone ranked below us pretty comfortably. Personally I want to see the top few servers destack and spread the WvW love around to mid-tier servers to make it all more competitive – means that you won’t have the score blowouts you are seeing this week (T1-T3 http://mos.millenium.org/na) and also servers like SoR get the chance to have competitive games against other servers and guilds they don’t normally see.
NA has stacked the top tiers. It is what it is. But if players wanted to play the game for the fights, it’s within their power to unstack and make it more competitive. Just have to get rid of the shiny virtual carrot mentality. It’s great to be on a winning server, top of the heap, but when you’re either mind-numbingly steamrolling others or playing the same stale matches every week, you have to understand the power to change that is in your own hands.
THankyou. I wish everyone felt the same.
SoS is interesting in that the people who stayed on here post-T1 mostly don’t aspire to playing “T1” again. The PRX “call-to-arms” thing – telling us we had to fight in WvW at the exclusion of other parts of the game – didn’t sit well and it is something many are sensitive to.
I would really like the upper servers to destack and population to spread out and I suspect the league thing is partly trying to do that. But it is the players who need to make the change.
we were trying to T3 and waypoint TC BL garrison lol, got really really close too before we lost it
I hope TC and SoS alike have learned some things so far this week, for better or worse.. just to see whakittens like up here (non condescending).. its what every week of JQ/BG/SoR is .. huge crazy number fights on every map all day every day pretty much
nice to see fresh faces/guilds/tactics out there
keep comin out the rest of the week!
All due respect but a plurality of SoS players know all about Tier 1 and why we are glad to be rid of it. Too bad Anet’s matchmaking system can’t respect that decision.
Yes many on SoS spent Christmas holidays up top of T1 and so it is nothing new (and we had great battles against SoR and TC BEFORE any of of us went to T1 which I remember fondly).
I am happy to WvW without all the zergy stuff and all the trolling that went on in the T1 threads. Saying that I quite like playing against TC especially. SoR has probably too many players in WvW which makes any matchup too uncompetitive.
i became bored playing against JQ every week in T1. Being on SoS now means we can play servers from SoR down to SBI – even if the matchups are uneven at least we see fresh faces every week.
Sorry the sky is not falling here. Guilds are still looking to move to mid -tier servers today (look at the recruitment threads). The top three (even four in NA) servers are stacked of WvW guilds already so it would be astonishing to see any large movement to any single one of these – is all of TC and BG going to stack onto SoR? I don’t think so.
If players are that keen to get whatever these rewards are then better option would be to move to servers ranked 13-15 NA (the corresponding EU ones). I believe this will happen – there will be a slight destacking of the upper tier servers into the middle somewhere (and possibly a bandwagoning onto say an SBI or IoJ). Which is part of the intention of Anet in all of this.
People have been saying for ages that the WvW community needs to spread out and I reckon this is a smart way of doing it.
People will move upwards to get rewards, no question. Transfer fees aren’t even that much considering the other new content and the price tags there.
Lower level servers will be constantly at war with themselves between the guys who want to PvE and the guys who WvW, it already happens now. A real tangible prize will just ad more kitten to fling around. Oh and a hell of a lot of resentment since people who don’t even participate in WvW will be rewarded.
Actually..
“The rewards for finishing 2nd in the Bronze League will be markedly better than the rewards for finishing 6th in the Gold league.”
Meaning the winner of League 2 will probably get better rewards than 4-12 in League 1. If I was on DB or FA, I’d be moving down to #12-14 to get better rewards.
Agree. Really nice servers like SBI and IoJ are looking pretty attractive at the moment.
Stick a fork in DR we were already dead. Anet has been molesting us from day 1, every single one of these changes has made us even worse off than before. The straw that broke the camels back is now finally here.
The rewards for finishing 2nd in the Bronze League will be markedly better than the rewards for finishing 6th in the Gold league.
I really like this.
Depending on how good the rewards are and what you need to do to get them, it will be an incentive to move some from higher to lower tiers.
Better rewards for being on SBI than on DB? If you are tired of DB this might be the reason to move.
More likely those higher tier people who are most focussed on WvW are the ones who are going to shift. Which will even out the match-ups for those on servers like Mag and SoS and Ebay etc who will never move and who will be facing upper tier people.
Your oceanic and eb militia is extremely unorganised i transferred there a while back to check it out. Ended up going back to FA. However SOS had a great community and well organised guilds. We especially love fight against team shatter and jackals fate crew. On a positive EB is constantly queued during NA and oceanic
We have a lot of PvX oceanic people who do WvW, who we try and push on to TS3 as much as possible. The guilds mentioned above tend to be more WvW focussed. We’ve recently had a few arrivals that play out of oceanic time that have made a nice difference which you can see in our current matchup against DB – score is closer than last time we met.
SoS spent its time T1 and so is now pretty relaxed about WvW, matchups are pretty enjoyable.
I’d like to face real tier 1 servers like SOR and BG, as opposed to JQ which has some of the lowest skilled players in NA across all servers, and is just a tier 2 server with SEA coverage.
Either that or a classic match with TC and DB.
JQ has always relied on their (very good) asian guilds – something we had to deal with when we were back in T1. DB is very similar. Frustrating for us oceanic people to play against as they sweep in as we are logging of and undo all our hard work.
Off topic but something I’ve never understood. Why is there such a big distinction between Sea and Ocn. Isn’t there only like a 1 hour difference? 2 from some?
Why are Ocn logging off as Sea comes on? What do Ocn tend to play early and Sea late?
It’s 4 hours difference more or less. And to stay on topic, I would love to have TC back, SOR/JQ/TC would be ideal
Yes Asian guilds come on about 10 PM Sydney time which is about 8PM singapore (depending daylight savings or not). There is an overlap there but they are generally later.
Everyone seems to like playing TC at the moment it seems. They have some good oceanic players (which is a nice challenge for us on SoS).
I’d like to face real tier 1 servers like SOR and BG, as opposed to JQ which has some of the lowest skilled players in NA across all servers, and is just a tier 2 server with SEA coverage.
Either that or a classic match with TC and DB.
JQ has always relied on their (very good) asian guilds – something we had to deal with when we were back in T1. DB is very similar. Frustrating for us oceanic people to play against as they sweep in as we are logging of and undo all our hard work.
Not much more to say except agreeing with the coverage thing. I reckon things have become too bloated towards the top few servers and i don’t get why people are transferring up there when all the QQ is coming about issues to do with queues zergs and skill lag from some of the players on those few servers (and stuff you don’t really find below about FA).
It is the players from JQ and the like who are complaining about this stuff not me. Have a look through the threads on the forums here. On SoS skill lag queues and stuff are almost non-existent.
And Sos has probably played with or against every guild in SoR JQ and BG so I have a vague idea what goes on there.
How many exactly are complaining about the ques? 10-20 at most on the forums? Those aren’t even enough to fill a que. And there are 4 maps, 1 gets qued, just go to another. Reset night is the only night all 4 get qued. Again, don’t make claims about tier 1 when you have not experienced it in months. Need I tell you about skill lag yet again?
I want to stress I am not the one complaining – it is some of those currently playing in those very full servers who are. I had the option of moving with my (then) guild to SoR when SoS fell from T1 but I chose not to as i was bored of all the stuff that was connected with T1 (and seeing the same opponents every week).
Want to add that we are against DB/CD at the moment and “losing the match” by about 100000 but I’ve still had fun out there. The server I like playing the most at the moment is TC even though we are outnumbered – just have to play smart.
Not much more to say except agreeing with the coverage thing. I reckon things have become too bloated towards the top few servers and i don’t get why people are transferring up there when all the QQ is coming about issues to do with queues zergs and skill lag from some of the players on those few servers (and stuff you don’t really find below about FA).
It is the players from JQ and the like who are complaining about this stuff not me. Have a look through the threads on the forums here. On SoS skill lag queues and stuff are almost non-existent.
And Sos has probably played with or against every guild in SoR JQ and BG so I have a vague idea what goes on there.
JQ has had the misfortune of playing against the fewest servers of any realm in NA since the game started. Never really experienced some entertaining matches against guilds on CD, EB, YB, and some on there are even complaining when they have to play against strong servers like FA, TC and DB.
On the other hand there are all these threads started by JQ people about the queues on JQ for WvW, and skill lag in T1.
T1 (which doesn’t exist anymore but let’s pass by that) is so over-rated. Some of us have moved on and are having much more fun without the QQ and the egos up there.
now if DB na could step it up T.T(yeah we need work dun lie but i love you)
Well as other servers always tell us, we’d be T4 at best without our SEA. There is some truth to that. As someone from JQ said last week, it’s Coverage Wars 2.
I predict this thread will have three main troll topics:
1) DB sucks at open field fights, which is all SoS and CD care about because they can’t compete with DB’s coverage
2) DB always hides in towers and keeps and won’t come out to fight
3) DB always runs from fights unless they outnumber the enemy 2 to 1
Maybe we can all agree to not go on about these topics? Week after week the same posts, it gets boring.
Well from what I saw tonight there might be some truth to those statements….
Most of the servers give an overview of what they are on about, and also in the various threads there are often comments from players on others servers on what it is like to play against them. I’d also look at the matchup threads.
Ultimately it really depends on what you are looking for (and also what timezone you play in). I am not sure why TC didn’t work out but maybe JQ FA or SoS might suit.
I will once again start this by saying I apologise if there is already a topic on this!
It is in reference to the fact that I feel a servers own BL’s should be locked down overnight whilst the majority of players are in bed, leaving EB as a playing field.
There’s nothing worse then to have a really good day of WvW upgrading 3 keeps in your BL (is that like 4-5g ish?) only to wake up in the morning and find out a team of 5 people raided your BL with 4 golems. Its demoralising to WvW players and somewhat unfair?
What do you people think about the idea of locking a Servers own BL down so invaders cannot go there but allowing EB to be an overnight playing field?
I so agree lock down the borderlands when us Australians are in bed so no NA people can play and take our stuff when we are asleep.
a lot of IoJ went to FA, got disgusted and left for BG as well.
Say what? They’re still here… and we have highest ppt during oceanic most days…. stronger than SoS….
Sure but last few weeks you haven’t had to face servers like SoR and TC and DB (which makes a bit of a difference to our potential +ppt) so not really a direct comparison.
Sea of Sorrows’s Oceanci presence could be arguably the second strongest out of any server, we have yet to face BG yet. The most accurate description of raw oceanic strength is on reset and the night following when not everything is upgraded and have t3 upgrades in which SoS still have lead ppt even in the SoR and TC matchup.
I’d be curious to see how we’d go against BG in oceanic time. The way the rolls are going to determine matchups I’m sure it’ll happen soon enough.
oceanic was concentrated on SoS and on IoJ but has spread out across servers in the last few months (which is a positive I think). SoS probably has the most PvX guilds still.
Maybe BG SoS and then SoR and TC have the biggest oceanic numbers now (who play WvW) but a lot of servers have people there now. That’s separate from Asian-timezone guilds (such as the guilds on DB and JQ).
Let’s see here. this weeks match up
DB 1,927,906
MAG 1,760,681
YB 1,560,784
Mag always has to face someone with 1,900,000 or higher week after week , which usually outnumbers us 3-1 at the least.
This is what makes it funnier
TC 2,025,177
SOS 1,747,918
FA 1,867,443
The way I see it it should be TC/FA/DB = SOS/MAG/YB
The system is horrible.
This score is all about coverage. Score in NA “T1” is pretty close because all three can cover most maps most of the time. TC will likely win the current “T2” match because they have more people playing in WvW and can cover more borderlands with more people.
SoS is getting used to playing against bigger numbers recently and we have some smart commanders who know exactly how to counter some of these zergs and mess with their heads a bit.
Last night in EB it was pretty awesome between SoS FA and TC. Those crazy battles (even those nasty surprises from TC).
When you play DB 5-6 weeks then you will understand lol
We’ve played TC for five weeks I think and DB for one. TC is stronger than DB. DB does the PvD with the asian-timezone people (a bit like JQ with FOO back when we were in T1).
The only way these population/score imbalances are going to change is for players to destack to other servers to spread the population, and/or Anet impose some reduced caps to player numbers per map (which could include taking out or remaking the borderland maps).
The last matchup TC beat DB by over 100000 and there seems to be complaints coming from TC about the boredom coming from imbalances so maybe the movement will come out of TC (as I really can’t see any of the NA top three servers imploding).
Wishing implosion on your competition is classy as always.
Just another reason why everyone loves you.
My guess is you’re from TC? I really don’t wish TC to “implode” (and I didn’t say that) – trust me, the gloating that went on when SoS had some guilds move earlier in the year was pretty ugly. There are TC people on these forums though complaining about how boring this matchup is for them (and being a bit narky about SoS and FA).
I believe having some oceanic players from SoS (such as people from MERC, OCX, and AFS) move to other servers has been a positive overall (even though I personally miss some of them). We don’t really go +695 any more during oceanic time and the game is more competitive for us and everyone else during that time period (including in current matchup against TC).
SoS effectively “destacked” and emerged fine. My argument is that spreading the population around is a positive but to be honest what I think WILL happen is the top servers will continue to become MORE stacked.
Let’s see here. this weeks match up
DB 1,927,906
MAG 1,760,681
YB 1,560,784
Mag always has to face someone with 1,900,000 or higher week after week , which usually outnumbers us 3-1 at the least.
This is what makes it funnier
TC 2,025,177
SOS 1,747,918
FA 1,867,443
The way I see it it should be TC/FA/DB = SOS/MAG/YB
The system is horrible.
This score is all about coverage. Score in NA “T1” is pretty close because all three can cover most maps most of the time. TC will likely win the current “T2” match because they have more people playing in WvW and can cover more borderlands with more people.
SoS is getting used to playing against bigger numbers recently and we have some smart commanders who know exactly how to counter some of these zergs and mess with their heads a bit.
Last night in EB it was pretty awesome between SoS FA and TC. Those crazy battles (even those nasty surprises from TC).
When you play DB 5-6 weeks then you will understand lol
We’ve played TC for five weeks I think and DB for one. TC is stronger than DB. DB does the PvD with the asian-timezone people (a bit like JQ with FOO back when we were in T1).
The only way these population/score imbalances are going to change is for players to destack to other servers to spread the population, and/or Anet impose some reduced caps to player numbers per map (which could include taking out or remaking the borderland maps).
The last matchup TC beat DB by over 100000 and there seems to be complaints coming from TC about the boredom coming from imbalances so maybe the movement will come out of TC (as I really can’t see any of the NA top three servers imploding).
Let’s see here. this weeks match up
DB 1,927,906
MAG 1,760,681
YB 1,560,784
Mag always has to face someone with 1,900,000 or higher week after week , which usually outnumbers us 3-1 at the least.
This is what makes it funnier
TC 2,025,177
SOS 1,747,918
FA 1,867,443
The way I see it it should be TC/FA/DB = SOS/MAG/YB
The system is horrible.
TC would win by a lot and SoS would win by quite a bit because of the oceanic time. And do you want this locked in to tiers for the next six weeks?
This score is all about coverage. Score in NA “T1” is pretty close because all three can cover most maps most of the time. TC will likely win the current “T2” match because they have more people playing in WvW and can cover more borderlands with more people.
SoS is getting used to playing against bigger numbers recently and we have some smart commanders who know exactly how to counter some of these zergs and mess with their heads a bit.
Last night in EB it was pretty awesome between SoS FA and TC. Those crazy battles (even those nasty surprises from TC).
TC is a good challenge for us oceanic types on SoS – last time (like two weeks back) we did manage to outscore them most nights reaching about +450 one night. Having both FA and TC is tough on our NA players though.
If SoS oceanic was that good, they wouldn’t end up losing most of their stuff during oceanic primetime.
Do we?
Look, if you want to sell DB than best to talk about strengths of DB rather than make up stuff about other servers.
I reckon too that DB and TC have had these one-sided matches these last few weeks and it makes more sense to boost the coverage in other servers that have really good players on there such as FA, EBay, SoS and so on which will make the matches more fun and competitive for TC and DB.
TC beats T2 servers harder than it loses to T1 servers.
Three weeks ago you played against SoR once and came second by 120000 points and I don’t reckon they were out there in full force. As far as i can see it is the only time you played against a current “T1” server.
While I feel for you guys, I think you are a bit stuck at the moment. Just don’t talk yourselves up too much – other servers have done that in the past and it ended badly.
TC and DB will be destroyed….. did you guys not learn what it means to fight a tier 1 server? That was SOR going kiddie gloves on TC because it was a joke of a match… im sure JQ will fight at full strength….
I just had a thought, and it’s probably crazy, but what about combining two low-ranked servers to fight together? So it would be SoS+Mag (red team) vs. TC (green team)vs. DB (blue team) or something (just the first four servers I could think of, don’t critique this actual match-up). So in this scenario, SoS and Mag would be partners, sharing one BL and points. This might help them achieve the coverage and numbers needed to go against higher ranked servers, which creates more of a challenge for the other two servers. Next week they might be paired up with a different server, or if they’d risen in rank (because the game kept track of their individual rating on its own, that way if one server is doing all the work they get credit for it) they could end up fighting on their own again, or be paired with a different server.
Just a rough idea I had that might alleviate some problems (though I realize that it might cause others) and make more dynamic matches. Requesting input in 3…2…1
By extension you would combine TC and DB in order to be “competitive” against SoR and BG. Why not transfer servers from TC to DB?
Look, in the SoS/TC/Mag matchup at the moment, the overall score does not reflect what is happening on the field. TC has greater overall coverage , but both Mag and SoS can more than match TC at their own peak times – maybe not on all 3 borderlands, but certainly EB plus two borderlands. I’ve said since last year that i reckon they should reduce the number of maps (since almost no server can fill all 4 maps), and/or change it so you get more points for TAKING an objective rather than holding it (which would serve a similar purpose).
