Guild Wars 2

Deli.1302:

Can someone please give me a concise list, not some wall of text which this thread is overflowing with, on why they think destacking is a good thing?

1. Matchup variety. If t1-3 could mix together somewhat like EU does atm, there’d be a lot of different servers/playstyles/guilds to fight.

2. Tier 3 won’t be a complete mess.

3. More guilds overall to fight. Once current t3 servers can pop into t2, and t2 can pop into kitten will basically be able to fight all the best guilds from all around, t3 will get to learn to get gud by consistently fighting t2 servers, and t1 will get to ppt against new people. lol

4. It could remove the full population from certain servers, making it possible to actually patch up coverage holes with transfers if the need arises.

5. It’ll make the mobility between tiers not so screwed up like it is now. If a server wants to get into t2, it won’t have to beat on tier 3 servers for ages to drain glicko. Whenever that sorta thing happens, like it’s happening in t3 and t6 right now, it’s damaging to the game’s population.

Concise as I could make it.

gennyt.3428:

No, I shouldn’t and I’m not. That’s something for the people designing and running the game to address. My GW2 concerns don’t go beyond a guild level and its not like we don’t play other games together.

If the game dies/falls to a pop level sufficiently low that your guild can no longer enjoy the game, they’ll have 1 less game to enjoy together. Further, you’ll have a game with unique qualities (wvw isn’t currently replicated well in any other MMO, no wvw-esque mode exists with anything near the same following as wvw in gw2 atm).

Certainly you don’t have to care about it, but anyone who is reasonable and likes GW2 WvW, practically or conceptually, should care.

This is the kind of tunnel vision I’m talking about. The mode always being coverage wars aside, a lot of people in T1/2 know exactly what it’s like on lower tiers because they’ve played there(some recently) and decided its not what they want. But nope, you know best.

I was bringing up coverage cus it’s basically the only valid reason for not wanting to play in a lower tier server. Believe it or not, even t8 can get a zerg going in primetime, t6 and above have large zergs in primetime, t4 has queues daily. It don’t matter if there’s 10 guild groups running in one bl and 10 in another, you only need one bl to be populated to get fights. Unless you’re a gvger that is.

“Variety”, that thing that quite a few people seem to seek these days doesn’t have to come in the form of different matchups and so guilds and individuals will likely gravitate toward certain tiers. There is no player solution to hypothesize. Its not a difficult argument, its just pointless. The basis of your argument is so skewed and you’re failing to see it. Anyway, good luck protecting the game for future generations and all that stuff.

Yes there is a player solution to be hypothesized, namely, the one that involves the destacking of the overstacking t1/2 servers and spreading their population responsibly among servers to create a healthy, balanced, and variety-filled wvw scene. Of course, again, it’ll never happen. But, it’d be a great solution if it would happen. Again with the vague phrasing like the “non points” assertion earlier. What about my argument is skewed?

Coyote.7031:

Arius.7031:

Why are you ignoring those (Dh/IoJ/HoD/EBay/NSP)?

I don’t know much about WvW since I’m new, but I do know that the guilds that left my server transferred to two of those listed servers. In fact one of them is allegedly buying guilds from us and other lower ranked servers. I strongly doubt they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. I imagine they are all mini band wagon servers, for people who don’t want to go beyond tier 3 and still want that small server feel. If I was to leave my server, it would be to ride their coattails to victory, not to go for tier 1 or 2.

At the moment though, I’m just waiting for thing to stabilize before I make a final judgement call. At the moment tier 3 to 7 look pretty rough with unbalanced match ups of varying degrees. Even tier 2 seems to be suffering a bit. Just look at those scores! What a terrible mess and a terrible time to join the GW2 WvW community. The only tiers that seem to have balanced matching is tier 1 and 8.

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups

Yeah most of those (esp hod/dh) were bandwagoned up to varying degrees.

Also one thing I’ll caution you as an experienced wvwer (since launch over 2 years ago): the matchups are bad right now because of RNG, not because of actual balance. SBI got rng’d into t5, but they’re still a t4 server. T4 is arguably the most balanced and well rounded tier in the game at the moment, SBI/Dh/HoD/NSP are all highly competitive with one another and all have a very good shot of getting into t4 in each matchup. t5 should also be quite balanced when t4 servers stop getting rng’d into it. CD/EBay/IoJ have similar populations with GoM being the smallest (they’ll go to t6 when Mag gets some more glicko probably).

Tier 1 is balanced to some degree, sure, but it’s a coverage war (JQ wins during SEA for example) as opposed to round the clock super tight race. T2 is terrible atm, weak balance, weak variety, even lots of the fights guilds are complaining left and right about it. Tier 3 is the worst tier in the game, cus of the need for people to stack into tier 2 wannabe servers.

Deli.1302:

Arius.7031:

Deli.1302:

Chaba.5410:

Deli.1302:

Everyone is allowed to enjoy the game the way they want to. So obviously the majority of players enjoy playing in an active environment where they can get fights in rapid succession.

The general trend for 2+ years has been to transfer to higher tiers. The only time that there has been mass transfers to lower tiers was during the Kaineng bandwagon and the HoD bandwagon. Those were free transfers. They were also both disastrous.

Yup. They tried to do that with RoS and then with Blacktide too but all the guilds left and transferred back up eventually. And those servers were left drained off all recruitment potential and even native guilds followed suit and transferred off. So anyone suggesting guilds from high tier servers transfer down to theirs does not realize how much harm will happen to their server. I can guarantee that if the Kaineng bandwagon never happened, Kaineng would be a much higher tiered server now.

Bandwagoning, whether down or up, is always bad. You can’t make the jump from “these instances of destacking are bad, therefore all are bad/are probably bad”. That leap cannot be made. We have bad examples of destacking, because they were done in bad ways. Then again, what about all the servers that have risen out of bronze to silver successfully? Why are you ignoring those (Dh/IoJ/HoD/EBay/NSP)? Also, kaineng was rank 24 server until an initiative to stack it that was pretty popular on the forums back near launch. I have no idea why you think Kaineng would be higher than they are if the bandwagon hadn’t happened, they were dead last lol.

Most of those servers rose up because others around it died/imploded and I’m pretty sure attrition had something to do with it.

Sure! But a lot of it also had to do with transfers in as well. My server used to only be able to queue 1 map infrequently in t6. Now we queue 2 maps on week days here and there (reset is guaranteed 2 map queue and then 2 or 3 guild groups in each other BL). A lot of servers lost a bunch of people, but some servers also gained. HoD/Dh in specific have gained boat loads of people.

gennyt.3428:

@ Arius

Didn’t say T3/4 are dead and I’m sure it’s a real hoot at points but not when I play so it does not matter to me and the people I play with. Why would I be concerned with what happens when and where I’m not playing? And I see you still compare NA to EU as if there aren’t real differences.

You should be concerned because the lower the overall pop of the game the worse the game does overall. Less money for ANet, less people in WvW, less possible transfers to your precious tier, less guilds to fight, etc etc… A healthy overall WvW benefits ALL WvW servers. It’s been brought up by many people on YOUR side of the debate that overall population getting lower is what caused the whole stacking issue in the first place lel.

You keep making non-points and tossing around the idea of “destacking”. When populations change due to patches/expansions/new games/general staleness/real life stuff etc, what magical method will be used to “destack” or balance, again and again and again? I’ve yet to hear a reasonable method. It’s like you’re arguing for the sake of arguing.

What non-points are you referring to? I can hand wave your entire post as a non-point as well, and if you continue to do so to me, I’ll return the favor gladly.

I didn’t say we actually SHOULD destack, it’s not a realistic possibility. Y’all are too convinced the game is ded in off hours on every server outside of t2, that there’s no fun to be had. You’re wrong, of course, but you think so regardless. You will not destacking except by the natural rising/falling of servers that occurs. This whole conversation started as how stupid it was to stack in the first place, it was never intended to be an actual conversation on what we should actually do. If you don’t like that, sorry that you don’t like thinking and discussing difficult topics. Don’t read this thread if you’re so opposed.

“Lol, sorry you don’t like people telling you what you did was bad for the game, but I’m not here to make you feel good. I think it’s a perfectly fine thing to ruin the game for others and make it bad for the majority by making a selfish decision, again, games are fundamentally selfish pursuits. If you want to be selfless, that’s great and reflects good on your character, but being selfish is perfectly acceptable. That doesn’t change the fact that your decisions can damage the game, especially the selfish ones.”

/facepalm
But you suggest people sacrifice what they’re looking to get out of the game for your sake. The irony.

I’m not suggesting that. It would be good, but it would never actually happen. Y’all don’t care about anyone else playing in different tier, that much is obvious, it’ll never happen. You’ll keep screwing all of us over day in and day out, not giving a second’s thought to it. So no, I’m not suggesting that you destack, I know all too well that you guys won’t destack willingly. Again, the conversation was originally about how stupid it was in the beginning to stack, and then hypothetically what would be the optimum player-driven solution, nobody holds any hopes that y’all will care about the game and actually do something about it. We know you won’t.

Deli.1302:

Chaba.5410:

Deli.1302:

Everyone is allowed to enjoy the game the way they want to. So obviously the majority of players enjoy playing in an active environment where they can get fights in rapid succession.

The general trend for 2+ years has been to transfer to higher tiers. The only time that there has been mass transfers to lower tiers was during the Kaineng bandwagon and the HoD bandwagon. Those were free transfers. They were also both disastrous.

Yup. They tried to do that with RoS and then with Blacktide too but all the guilds left and transferred back up eventually. And those servers were left drained off all recruitment potential and even native guilds followed suit and transferred off. So anyone suggesting guilds from high tier servers transfer down to theirs does not realize how much harm will happen to their server. I can guarantee that if the Kaineng bandwagon never happened, Kaineng would be a much higher tiered server now.

Bandwagoning, whether down or up, is always bad. You can’t make the jump from “these instances of destacking are bad, therefore all are bad/are probably bad”. That leap cannot be made. We have bad examples of destacking, because they were done in bad ways. Then again, what about all the servers that have risen out of bronze to silver successfully? Why are you ignoring those (Dh/IoJ/HoD/EBay/NSP)? Also, kaineng was rank 24 server until an initiative to stack it that was pretty popular on the forums back near launch. I have no idea why you think Kaineng would be higher than they are if the bandwagon hadn’t happened, they were dead last lol.

Chaba.5410:

Dream In A Dream.7213:

Stacking servers leads to long term dmg to the game.

Players quitting leads to long term damage to the game. Stop blaming a coping mechanism.

Why shouldn’t we blame something that is also damaging the game? People quitting damages it. People stacking damages it. They both damage it.

Bump for Acium cus such Acium wow.

henchmen.1856:

Arius.7031:

henchmen.1856:

Arius.7031:

- Idk what you think lower pop servers look like. My server can easily field a 50+ zerg in EB in EU, and then havoc/roamers here and there. We usually get 20-50 pugs on tag in SEA, then 1-3 guild groups fielding 10+ depending on if son/sot run (sotd always runs). OCX we’re ded sevr and we can still do 30+ on tag + havoc and 1 guild group lol. This is all assuming a tag ofc, it can get quite dead otherwise. It may not be the massive pop you’re used to, but it’s far from dead.

As someone who has recently been on dh I can say that this is completely false. Never saw a 50+ zerg during eu timezone. I saw zergs but never that big and all not on teamspeak and many uplevels. You know, those zergs made up of casual pve’ers that you see on every server. Ocx was completely barren wasteland. Sea time same as eu, lots of uplevel pugs not on teamspeak.

I’ve played in high and low tier servers and if the numbers this guy claims is true then dh would have been in tier 2 a loooooooooong time ago.

Your post history says you were looking for a new server back in early september. How long has it been since you’re on Dh? Do you realize we’ve received somewhere in the order of 15-20 guild transfers (including multiple daily raiding full zerg busting guilds) and a host of pugs since then? We received a ton of transfers within the past 3 weeks. A few matchups ago we lost to SBI twice in a row, last matchup we beat them by 40k. We’ve grown a ton, not only in semi-recent history, but within the past few weeks (we received two guilds like 3 days ago even lol).

Also we have a daily raiding SEA fights guild, how can you say we just have pugs who don’t get in ts? You don’t know what you’re talking about lol. I ain’t even including when sotd and son run.

I was on dh from December until end of Jan and was there during early 2014 as well. I never said you didn’t have a sea raiding guild. I just said the pugs were bad (don’t worry not just on dh). And those numbers, I didn’t see it. Sorry.

Ah I see, all good. Hope you enjoy your new server more than you did Dh.

fishball.7204:

11pm and 6am PST aren’t OCX.

And I said nothing about SEA, plenty of servers have SEA including SBI, CD, DH and others.

11pm is close to ocx, close enough that it gives you an idea of what we’ll be running in ocx. If there’s been a consistent com (which is a fairly big if) through late NA and into OCX, we will have decent numbers (though not massive, ocx is our weakspot). We have one guild that raids early OCX [OdM] and a few regular pugmanders. We can struggle to field numbers if there’s been no consistent tag, then you’ll see a really ded ocx from Dh. Otherwise, ocx I have seen field 30+ on many occasions. We’d have to field that much to survive SBI’s ocx lol.

henchmen.1856:

Arius.7031:

- Idk what you think lower pop servers look like. My server can easily field a 50+ zerg in EB in EU, and then havoc/roamers here and there. We usually get 20-50 pugs on tag in SEA, then 1-3 guild groups fielding 10+ depending on if son/sot run (sotd always runs). OCX we’re ded sevr and we can still do 30+ on tag + havoc and 1 guild group lol. This is all assuming a tag ofc, it can get quite dead otherwise. It may not be the massive pop you’re used to, but it’s far from dead.

As someone who has recently been on dh I can say that this is completely false. Never saw a 50+ zerg during eu timezone. I saw zergs but never that big and all not on teamspeak and many uplevels. You know, those zergs made up of casual pve’ers that you see on every server. Ocx was completely barren wasteland. Sea time same as eu, lots of uplevel pugs not on teamspeak.

I’ve played in high and low tier servers and if the numbers this guy claims is true then dh would have been in tier 2 a loooooooooong time ago.

Your post history says you were looking for a new server back in early september. How long has it been since you’re on Dh? Do you realize we’ve received somewhere in the order of 15-20 guild transfers (including multiple daily raiding full zerg busting guilds) and a host of pugs since then? We received a ton of transfers within the past 3 weeks. A few matchups ago we lost to SBI twice in a row, last matchup we beat them by 40k. We’ve grown a ton, not only in semi-recent history, but within the past few weeks (we received two guilds like 3 days ago even lol).

Also we have a daily raiding SEA fights guild, how can you say we just have pugs who don’t get in ts? You don’t know what you’re talking about lol. I ain’t even including when sotd and son run.

fishball.7204:

I was on SoS when we fought DH like a year ago or whatever; You guys had no OCX that showed up even when we only ran like 10 people, tagless.

I keep hearing these mythical “30 man OCX” zergs in low tiers but it’s just bs.

You do realize we were in tier 6, and now we’re in tier 3, right? I fought SoR before it went to t1, does that mean SoR never had more pop than I saw it with? Also, enjoy the pics of our OCX and SEA (the time stamps are in the bottom right, I’m PST). Count the mini dots.

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

- Has t2 ever been lower pop than it is now? It seems to me that y’all have enjoyed t2, as it has risen and decreased in population over the years since gw2 has been out. Do not sit here and, frankly, lie through your teeth, and say it would not be fun with a slight population decrease. Don’t waste our time trying to justify your opinion with falsehoods. You know, and I know, you may find the population of t2 atm ideal (for all we know, you want it more populated, idk why it’d magically be perfect right now), but you wouldn’t exactly be crying if tomorrow suddenly a few guilds from each t2 server disappeared. The amount of guilds you’d gain too, when you include native t4/3 guilds, would be a large payoff to that as well, more guilds to fight.

I would appreciate if you don’t accuse others of lying. It is not constructive to this conversation at all and does nothing to support your arguments. I have not always played in T2.

You misunderstand me. I don’t think you’ve lied—yet. I’m pre-empting you, I’ve had this conversation a million times. “Oh, if we lost players this tier would suck!” the tier 2 person asserts, without actually grasping that we’re not suggesting T2 lose many players (in fact, it’s mostly tier 1 that would lose, and even then it wouldn’t be massive, they’d still have enough to match/surpass what FA is atm). Sorry if I’ve offended you, but this is a very annoying and personal topic for me. It sucks to see t2 folks literally coming to our teamspeak, moving to our server, and outright stating they’re here to take players for t2. They will sit in our main teamspeak channel and tell us “oh, t2 is great, much more skill, way more fun”, if you even say that you just prefer an alternative playstyle, they call you a casual and belittle you. Fallen ran into our thread on gw2wvw with a couple other people and did just that a few months ago even lel. Dealing with this whole t2 situation, when every outside of t2 can see t2 is hurting the game so bad, is just an annoying situation. So again, sorry, that was more rude than I should have been considering how civil you’ve been.

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

There’s loyalty found here and there, but more often than not they’re just there for population/activity, to have fun, not cus they luf teh communities…

I think t1/2 would enjoy the game far more, getting to fight a variety of guilds/players with variety of tactics every single week

Y’all seem to think if t1/2 destacked your playstyle would be ruined… but with how amazingly overstacked t1 is, the population of the top 9 servers would probably be just somewhat below that of a current YB/DB rofl. Your playstyle should be completely intact on that scenario.

LEL

- Yes, the loyalty is to the population/activity level. That’s exactly why players do not destack and have no interest in destacking.
- No they wouldn’t enjoy the game far more because again, the loyalty is to the population/activity level. They enjoy it.
- Yes, destacking would ruin that playstyle. Less players = less variety. I already know what it is like to have less population than what current YB and DB have. It sucks for anyone outside of NA Prime. There is less variety. Guilds are forced into specific roles.

- Yup, even though as already described there’d be plenty of population for those who like it at aprox t2 pop, because t1 is so incredibly overstacked we’d probably wind up with 9 servers around the current pop of db/yb but slightly lower (highest probably being what FA is now).

- Has t2 ever been lower pop than it is now? It seems to me that y’all have enjoyed t2, as it has risen and decreased in population over the years since gw2 has been out. Do not sit here and, frankly, lie through your teeth, and say it would not be fun with a slight population decrease. Don’t waste our time trying to justify your opinion with falsehoods. You know, and I know, you may find the population of t2 atm ideal (for all we know, you want it more populated, idk why it’d magically be perfect right now), but you wouldn’t exactly be crying if tomorrow suddenly a few guilds from each t2 server disappeared. The amount of guilds you’d gain too, when you include native t4/3 guilds, would be a large payoff to that as well, more guilds to fight.

- Idk what you think lower pop servers look like. My server can easily field a 50+ zerg in EB in EU, and then havoc/roamers here and there. We usually get 20-50 pugs on tag in SEA, then 1-3 guild groups fielding 10+ depending on if son/sot run (sotd always runs). OCX we’re ded sevr and we can still do 30+ on tag + havoc and 1 guild group lol. This is all assuming a tag ofc, it can get quite dead otherwise. It may not be the massive pop you’re used to, but it’s far from dead.

Rimmy.9217:

People won’t care about your spelling when they’re trying to climb out from under the rubble of your falling Walls of Text.

But Dh has the better name, objectively. Clearly all HoD must move to Dh.

(also HoD gud sevr 10/10 recommend if not moving to Dh)

Rimmy.9217:

I love having Arius doing all of the talking – my metaphors are better, but he doesn’t foam at the mouth. Better spokesperson.

I just actually looked through my posts for grammar/spelling errors and general typos. The horror. I really need to start proofreading again :/.

Cake.4920:

If all the guilds worth a kitten moved up to the upper tiers, there’d be more guilds to fight without having to wait week to week.

But they won’t, and they shouldn’t. Worsening t3-8 to make t2 marginally more enjoyable isn’t worthwhile in the context of overall WvW and stopping our favorite gamemode from bleeding more players. Every server down here (cept SBI to some degree) has native skill groups who will not leave, subjected to t2 playstyle they could become quite excellent.

On the other hand, if SOME of the guilds worth a kitten moved down to the high-mid tiers, you’d have MORE guilds to fight overall AND variety (instead of facing YB’s siegehumping every week, alongside their awesome fights guilds, you’d face it every other week, instead maybe facing Dh’s terribad pug zergs with awesome fight guilds).

This won’t be fixed by destacking/this isn’t a player caused issue. If t1 tomorrow had t8 populations, it’d still be impossible for them to drop.[/quote

And they wouldn’t have been able to drain so much glicko from t2 servers if they hadn’t been so overstacked, they couldn’t have gotten stuck in the first place. That was a stupid decision. Further, they CAN drop, one server simply needs to bleed a lot of glicko while the other 2 maintain their massive glicko. If BG starts getting rekt, they’ll drop enough that t2 will eventually rng a matchup with t1, the t2 server will basically have no choice BUT to bleed the massively inflated t1 glicko, and eventually t2 will be in a position to rng into t1. Not saying that’s a plausible solution, it’s obviously not. See why overstacking t1 wasn’t particularly smart? :P

gennyt.3428:

@Arius

There are less people playing (for numerous reasons and this will continue), the poplulation will shift to fewer and fewer servers and you keep labeling this as being unhealthy and irresponsible because you’re too stubburn to leave the limb thats atrophying as the number of servers is becoming less and less viable. That’s like having favorite brick and mortar book stores and saying online shops are affecting their health. If people generally find online stores more attractive, that’s whats supposed to happen. It’s not worth dwelling on, either adjust or don’t. But preaching about why shoppers messed things up for book shops and should come to your favorite stores in order to save them (and the shopping experience of the people who still like to use them) will most likely be fruitless.

What I’m suggesting is a healthier, more competitive, more varied HIGH TIER experience. I’m not suggesting we fix t5-8, believe it or not, some people like it that way (though we should try to keep the gap between t6 and t5 manageable so as not to have this mag situation type of thing repeat again, that’s a dif topic).

You may like to pretend to yourself as you’re going to sleep every night “t3/4 are ded sevrs”, but that’s not even close to true. My server queues 2 maps on non-reset nights at times, every day there is at least 1 queue, we even have near queue size map zergs in SEA (I can give multiple pics of 50+ zergs that I commanded myself, I was surprised we had those numbers as I don’t always play SEA). We’re not dead servers, but we’re not hyper overstacked like your servers are. My server is not losing any guilds to t2 for months, but we’re getting transfers from it by the loads. The servers that are bleeding are lower ones, and I’m not necessarily suggesting we save those (again, some people like that play style of super low pop, it SHOULD exist).

And people talk among their guild and friends on where to go, that’s silly to even bring up. I mentioned getting people on ts in reference how difficult it is just for a typical public raid, I should have been clearer about that. But you want people to do this on a massive level involving many guilds and individuals spanning multiple servers. Thats nuts, not to mention many would outright reject being told where they should go if they even give the idea the time of day to begin with (and rightfully so). And I wish people will stop making NA/EU comparisons when the situation is different for several reasons (for starters, NA does not have language specific servers).

I don’t actually believe anyone will do that. If you’ll recall, this conversation started with us saying it was a bad idea to stack these servers in the first place, soon as it looked like they were super high pop people should have stopped… but they didn’t.

FYI I was on BP when they faced DB for weeks and when a server is ticking upwards of 400 before midnight server time every night, their NA can breeze through the week. Unless BP suddenly had 60+ bodies in organized groups regularly, then nobody was going to stick around or trickle in to deal with that. In the end, most people don’t care they just want to log in and have fun.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a WvW akin to eu then? Where there is no massive, huge gap among high tier servers like that? T4 can compete in t3, t3 in t2, and t2 in t1 (in case you missed, I’ll repeat again, their #5 server JUST BEAT the #1 and #2 LOL). I’m suggesting we move to a more balanced setup like that, where server populations compared to one another aren’t cliffs, just inclines.

• Transfer
• Quit
• Enjoy a small server community

or the third choice is to whine about why you’re right and everybody moving to have fun did something bad.

Lol, sorry you don’t like people telling you what you did was bad for the game, but I’m not here to make you feel good. I think it’s a perfectly fine thing to ruin the game for others and make it bad for the majority by making a selfish decision, again, games are fundamentally selfish pursuits. If you want to be selfless, that’s great and reflects good on your character, but being selfish is perfectly acceptable. That doesn’t change the fact that your decisions can damage the game, especially the selfish ones.

etrigan.4213:

Except that its not a good solution. The underlying cause of the stacking is still an issue.

Your fix is pointless without a proper fix of the underlying causes.

That’s like saying plugging the hole letting water into your boat is pointless without fully repairing it first. It’s a way to alleviate the issues and makes things better that will last for as long as we need rofl, meanwhile an actual solution can be put in place. Making the best of a bad situation.

You’re also suggesting that players and guilds stop playing with other guilds they want to be with. You can moan all you want about the servers that got stacked, but in the end, all of those players and guilds want to be where they are.

Where they want to be is irrelevant to the discussion lol. You’re missing the point, motives, desires, so on and so forth, are 100% pointless in the discussion. We’re talking OBJECTIVELY, what would keep the largest amount of people playing their game? If you think for a second high tier servers have some massive server/community loyalty in all their guilds, you are 100% mistaken. There’s loyalty found here and there, but more often than not they’re just there for population/activity, to have fun, not cus they luf teh communities…

You’re asking for the health of one tier over 7 others.

What? I’m not saying we do anything to decrease the health of ANY tier. I’m saying t1/2 should destack for the overall health of the game. That act shouldn’t harm lower tiers unless we do it stupidly. At best you could argue I’m harming 2 tiers for the sake of 6 tiers. But, there’s a critical flaw in your thought: you assume de-stacking t1/2 is bad for those tiers. I beg to differ. I think t1/2 would enjoy the game far more, getting to fight a variety of guilds/players with variety of tactics every single week, wondering “ooooh, who we gonna fight next week?” You are missing a MASSIVELY enjoyable aspect of the game, getting to face tons of different groups each time.

The fact that there’s four servers that are full, and the rest a “very high” would point to the fact that there’s a lack of WvW participation more than there’s an issue of stacking.

We’re discussing how to best use what we have for the health of the game, it doesn’t matter if it’s 10 billion people or 10.

As I stated before…that I contend that the vast majority of WvW players are happy where they are. Whether that means they are in the top two tiers(likely right?)…or not.

To say you’re happy where you are, is not to say you wouldn’t be happier if you were somewhere else rofl. Y’all seem to think if t1/2 destacked your playstyle would be ruined… but with how amazingly overstacked t1 is, the population of the top 9 servers would probably be just somewhat below that of a current YB/DB rofl. Your playstyle should be completely intact on that scenario.

You honestly don’t believe that servers below you want to play with more people, want to see more activity? Sorry bro, you haven’t been where I been. When you see 20 people take an entire t3 bl in primetime like it can happen in bronze, you don’t sit there and say “I like this tiny pop”. Sure, people like smaller pop, any no one is suggesting every tier get tons of transfers. But a more evenly populated game where the highest pop and lowest pop servers aren’t as far apart would benefit our overall health GREATLY.

Chaba.5410:

Rimmy.9217:

Bringing up the causes of how we got to where we are today helps to illustrate some of the underlying problems. Whether you personally find it distasteful to destack from your currently overstacked server, or if you’re employing the Nirvana fallacy of “it won’t automatically and completely fix everything that’s wrong, so I’m rejecting any change completely”… then relax.

Nothing written in here is going to require you to do anything. Some people just want to maintain the WvW experience for as many people as possible for as long as possible, in as enjoyable a way (for everybody) as possible. We don’t have that now and, to use a partial parallel – people will tell you that hoarding money during an economic downturn is the worst thing that people can do. Individuals may personally benefit in the short term, but suffer more and for longer in the long run. Overstacking has much the same effect on WvW as a whole.

When you ask for causes, you have to be willing to not be selective. You state that the problem is overstacking yet ignore instances of when players have destacked from a higher tier server and what effect that has on WvW as a whole. Months ago T2 and T3 were relatively balanced, but then Maguuma imploded because too few guilds were transferring there to maintain what balance there was. An imploded Maguuma caused a lot of lopsided matches which continued all through Season 3 and resulted in player attrition on both SoS and FA. Ultimately those lopsided matches reverberated down to T3 as Maguuma’s implosion sucked the highest ranked T3-sized server (YB) into T2. Ironically, players from the higher tiers have destacked and gone to Maguuma and players are still complaining about lopsided matches.

In other words, you’re underestimating the effect that destacking has too on WvW. This isn’t to say that overstacking doesn’t have an effect, just to say that trying to identify a single cause is an oversimplification of the larger system.

De-stacking when there are only three tier 2 servers AND there’s a huge gap between t2 and t3 is bad. Ofc we’re not suggesting that happen. We’re suggesting that, firstly, overstacking was bad. Secondly, I’m suggest that a balanced general de-stacking of the tiers would be healthy. If every server cept JQ destacked, we’d have a bit of an issue wouldn’t we? Tier 1 would be a sorry, sorry place (more so than it already is).

We’re not saying de-stacking is always good. But, de-stacking in a specific way should theoretically be good for overall WvW.

etrigan.4213:

Destacking wouldn’t fix a thing.

There has ALWAYS been population gaps and mismatches. Take a look at WvW history on MOS.

Right now you have maybe 2 or 3 servers unhappy. Out of 24.

You have 4 full servers and the rest are “Very High”. So its not really a server population issue, its a server participation issue.

Good luck on getting people to participate with megaservers though.

Yes, there has always been population gaps and mismatches… Again, nobody is denying that what we have is a bad situation to some degree, and that will continue to exist no matter how much we try to fix it. It’s about making the best of a bad situation, not pretending there’s a magical 100% solution and that everything can be perfect.

You say destacking won’t fix a thing. I will list things that destacking will either fix or improve (as we’re not necessarily saying it’ll fix stuff, just improve stuff):

1. Matchup variety. If t1/2 were to spread around somewhat to tier 3 and maybe even tier 4, we’d see a lot more variety in matchups. This means more guilds to fight (as many servers have native guilds that refuse to leave), and new play styles to come into contact with, without necessarily seeing a drastic decrease in overall population for any individual server.

2. Ability to move through the ranks (mobility). Currently, t3-2, and t 2-1 have such massive gaps it’s almost impossible (or in the case of t1-2, 100% impossible) to even get a matchup. What this means is, since glicko moves pretty slowly in general, it is very hard to move ranks. If Dh were to suddenly be bandwagoned into oblivion, to the point where we were bigger than all y’all, we’d have to spend weeks beating up on t2.5 servers and t3 servers draining every ounce of glicko they have available. Funnily enough, the fact that there’s a t2.5 server actually alleviates this issue. If the tier 2 fights heaven were working perfectly as everyone seems to want (3 t2 servers, not 4), it would take months and months of complete utter domination of t3 to even get a chance at rolling t2.

This is a VERY dangerous issue that we face currently, and causes quite a few people to lose interest in the game. Don’t think for a moment that IoJ’s population decrease is purely because of transfers, most of them can’t enjoy the game mode and so a lot either go to dif game modes (bad for the health of WvW), or quit (bad for the health of WvW and the game overall). It’s a dangerous system when glicko gaps become too large. People generally don’t enjoy spawn camping every week, and people REALLY don’t enjoy being spawn camped every week.

These are just 2 things that come to mind that de stacking would certainly improve.

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

But de stacking over stacked servers is healthy for the game, it’s a step in the right direction. It’s a smart choice—from the position of the overall health of wvw—for people to leave t1/2 lol.

No, not really. I used to think this way a bit, but really any server with non-NA coverage is going to be rising up and causing lopsided matches on the way up. Given that glicko rating adjusts quite slowly, player attrition from lopsided matches hits. The non-NA Prime players are really a smaller total population than NA and cannot be spread out amongst all the NA servers.

I would agree that they can’t be spread about all servers, but they don’t need to be. There are plenty of people who prefer smaller scale stuff, and are fine with the game being relatively empty in the off hours. I’m pointing out that it need not be the case that overall (not just NA time zone) we need not stack two tiers of servers in order to enjoy a healthy, competitive environment.

It’s true, any server with off hours coverage will have a distinct advantage, but that alone will not carry you. Even though Dragonbrand always excelled in off hours, they still had enough NA to compete with other servers, that’s how they stayed high ranked. My server’s off hour coverage hasn’t improved much at all since leaving bronze, and we never went above being the top ranked server in bronze (and we were usually 2nd or 3rd in bronze, not 1st).

Again, no one denies there’s an issue with balance in WvW. ANet did not make the system as well as they could have. That doesn’t mean we should say “screw it all, since it’s messed up, let’s just stack 2 tiers and call it gud”. Whether or not people should be blamed for this or that, I do not care. The only thing I care is that WvW is incredibly messed up for a lot of servers (INCLUDING tier 1-2) because of our decisions as a playerbase.

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

Tier 2 made bad situations worse

Tier 2 did nothing. All those players and guilds had free choice and the choices they’ve been making for the better part of the past 2 years has been to transfer up tiers.

Tier 2 did nothing? Tier 2 didn’t actively pursue guilds from other servers, to the point of literal harassment, attempting to buy them off to increase their pop/fill coverage gaps? Bro, I’m in SotD (a SEA based guild, the reason why Dh’s SEA crushes anything below t3), I know about T2’s attempts to suck all the guilds out of lower tiers.

Tier 2 is the tier that is messing up WvW, more than any other tier in the game. Not only are y’all trying make hyper stacked servers, which is unhealthy in itself, you’ve done it with 4 servers instead of 3, and now that’s having terrible consequences for any server unlucky enough to roll tier 3.

The issue I am taking with your statements here is that you are trying to place blame squarely on a single side when in fact there are two sides. No one in T2 forced anyone to transfer just as no guild forces anyone to join them. Guilds and players are making those decisions on their own. It’s like trying to blame all those guilds who are advertising in the “Looking for” forum for stealing players from other guilds. If a player is joining some other guild, it is because that guild is offering what they are looking for. T2 currently has what a lot of players are looking for in WvW. You don’t think that others across all the tiers actively pursue players and guilds from T1 and T2?

You’ll recall, I said our playerbase made stupid decisions, not just t2. The people who transferred to tier 2 made short sighted decisions regarding the overall health of the game, and so did tier 2 in trying to give incentives for said short sighted decisions.

I’m sure that other tiers do try to take from t1/2. But de stacking over stacked servers is healthy for the game, it’s a step in the right direction. It’s a smart choice—from the position of the overall health of wvw—for people to leave t1/2 lol.

gennyt.3428:

Arius.7031:

…snip…

It isn’t about the fact that you’re leaving a server, draining a server, or anything like that. It’s about the fact that your tier is making our tiers unplayable no matter what style of WvW you enjoy (unless you enjoy being spawn camped).

I suspected this was the meat of the issue. It being a “stupidly bad idea” is incredibly subjective and its because of what the results mean for you, the people who transferred are having their fun. Strangers aren’t going to prioritize your fun over their own and attempt to manage the game(which is silly) for your sake. So you’re pointing your finger in the wrong direction since its Anet who created(and didn’t address) coverage wars and how that dictates who gets to fight who. What are people supposed to do? No server can even get everybody in teamspeak but magically all servers’ players will gather somewhere and decide whose going where? And do that again in several months when people quit or new players come in or some guilds transfer without the approval of their WvWvW poplulation chairman? You must see how crazy that is.

Matchup variety isn’t necessarily a universally good thing (toss SoS up against GoM and HoD and see if people generally have a blast. I doubt so). I won’t get too much into what’s universally good as server names and matches are meaningless to me, what I want are new guilds and new tactics to enjoy.

TL;DR: It’s Anet’s design flaws that brought this on.

It’s not subjective at all, because I’m speaking to the health of the game as a whole as opposed to the health of a tier (or the enjoyment of a player). Tier 2 players may have more fun (though I think we’d all prefer a system akin to EU as opposed to t2 NA, where there’s similar population levels over a great many servers), but tier 3/4/5/6/7/8 all have less fun (and make no mistake, these are not all dead servers, my server again queues 2 maps on non weekends at times, we’re not a dead server or small). I’m not saying people should do anything, do what y’all want, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s hurting the overall game. You can’t escape that.

People decide on where to transfer SOMEHOW, you don’t need everyone in TS to make a decision like that. If people made more responsible long term decisions, like not stacking overly stacked servers and instead going to high (but again not over stacked) population servers, we’d see a much healthier overall WvW experience. Servers would frequently drift in and out of tiers, there’d be lots of matchup variety, that means more guilds/tactics to come up against rather than the same old same old.

Chaba.5410:

Arius.7031:

Tier 2 made bad situations worse

Tier 2 did nothing. All those players and guilds had free choice and the choices they’ve been making for the better part of the past 2 years has been to transfer up tiers.

Tier 2 did nothing? Tier 2 didn’t actively pursue guilds from other servers, to the point of literal harassment, attempting to buy them off to increase their pop/fill coverage gaps? Bro, I’m in SotD (a SEA based guild, the reason why Dh’s SEA crushes anything below t3), I know about T2’s attempts to suck all the guilds out of lower tiers.

Tier 2 is the tier that is messing up WvW, more than any other tier in the game. Not only are y’all trying make hyper stacked servers, which is unhealthy in itself, you’ve done it with 4 servers instead of 3, and now that’s having terrible consequences for any server unlucky enough to roll tier 3.

gennyt.3428:

Arius.7031:

Spooksie.4930:

Is it normal and part of the GW2 WvW culture for entire servers to solicit guilds from other servers and pay for their server transfers?

Is this mode all about coverage and that’s it?

I’m just curious because I’m new to the game and this sort of activity seems strange. When I heard that Maguuma had paid for my PvE guildmate’s entire WvW guild to move to their server and was doing that with other guilds, I thought that it didn’t seem right.

I understand that the company makes money off these transfers so maybe they just let it slide and figure it’s an acceptable practice?

Can someone fill me in? I’m finding it to be an odd gaming culture and I’d like to know what to expect and what sort of standards are acceptable before I invest more time and gear into it. I want to know if the mode is right for me.

Thanks in advance.

Yes this happens frequently. Why is it wrong, exactly? If a guild would be happier elsewhere, and is offered aid or even bribes to move, why is it wrong? The wrong choice is in transferring to the wrong server, but not in the actual action of being bought itself. Buying isn’t an issue, buying and stacking 2 tiers, however, is mind-blowingly stupid and unhealthy in the long run. NA WvW, if it is dying, is killing itself by how T2 especially has tried to create such a stacked fights tier instead of letting the fights guilds be spread out a bit more. That is what is wrong, not the fact that guilds can be aided or purchased in and of itself.

Opponents are already limited by matchups and if “Fights guilds” want to be around similar guilds so I think its rather silly to hold their server choice against them. Spread out and have less options for what exactly? For random people to not be demoralized eight months from now? Even from a PPT standpoint, servers want to lessen their coverage gaps and generally have more bodies to help prevent juggling and burning out. WvWvW’s design is whats unhealthy for WvWvW, not the players who are trying to find their fun. Some servers are bound to be cannibalized, especially as the game ages and less people play so either accept that or don’t.

It’s not about holding it against them in a moral sense, I’m not making a more judgement here. Do your own thing. Just examine the effects of these decisions, and make your own judgment.

Almost universally we can agree: matchup variety is a good thing. Nobody likes seeing the same server over, and over, and over, and so on. Matchup variety literally does not exist for tier 1, that’s a problem. Why? What if a tier 2 server (FA for example) gets so stacked it mows over tier 2 servers weeks on end? Even if it were to, it would take months and months of non stop spawn camping to even got a shot at tier 1. That’s bad for the game. Having some ability to cross the gap between tiers is important for the health of the game, because IoJ couldn’t escape tier 3 when the tier 2.5 scandal started, their server lost a lot of people (not only did some move, a lot probably quit the game as well or just stopped WvWing).

This is why stacking just 2 tiers was a stupidly bad idea, that’s having terrible repercussions for completely unrelated servers. It isn’t about the fact that you’re leaving a server, draining a server, or anything like that. It’s about the fact that your tier is making our tiers unplayable no matter what style of WvW you enjoy (unless you enjoy being spawn camped).

etrigan.4213:

No his post is crap, he’s basically blaming players for wanting to play with other like minded people.

Like how is it on the shoulders of the end user to fix servers they may have never been on?

There was imbalance at the launch of the game and there is imbalance now. Was it the players fault that there was imbalance and coverage problems in August 2012?

Not one mention of ANET having an unbalanced pvp game mode.

Deny one bit of reasoning used in my post. Bro, you don’t seem to realize, WvW does not have to be as messed up as it is. Look at EU, the rank 5 server is beating the rank 1 server. The top 6 servers are all within 120 glicko of each other rofl. There’s amazing matchup variety because they didn’t successfully overstack 2 groups of servers (tier 1/2 in our case were heavily over stacked, t1 especially).

I couldn’t care less if you personally prefer to play in tier 1 or tier 2, your preference is unimportant to the discussion, it’s irrelevant. Don’t assume that if you’re in a bad situation, you can just do w/e you want and it doesn’t change anything cus bad situation. Pro tip, you can in fact make bad situations worse. Tier 2 made bad situations worse for half a dozen silver servers, who have to worry about getting unluckily rolled into tier 3 to get beat up on by an over stacked blob server for a week (or in the case of IoJ, 3 months now?)

What you, or anyone else want to do does not mean that it’s a smart choice for the overall game. Sure, by all means, make the game more enjoyable for yourself! I fully support you in that decision, as games are understandably fundamentally selfish pursuits. In the end though it means absolutely nothing, because what you’re doing is STILL bad for the overall game, no matter what you want. A good desire doesn’t mean your choice won’t have bad effects. Have fun on your stacked server, to each his own, but anyone who moves to your stacked server is just making the game we all play worse in the grand scheme of things, making a bad situation worse.

Rimmy.9217:

Arius.7031:

Yes this happens frequently. Why is it wrong, exactly? If a guild would be happier elsewhere, and is offered aid or even bribes to move, why is it wrong? The wrong choice is in transferring to the wrong server, but not in the actual action of being bought itself. Buying isn’t an issue, buying and stacking 2 tiers, however, is mind-blowingly stupid and unhealthy in the long run. NA WvW, if it is dying, is killing itself by how T2 especially has tried to create such a stacked fights tier instead of letting the fights guilds be spread out a bit more. That is what is wrong, not the fact that guilds can be aided or purchased in and of itself.

Sure, but since (clearly) people don’t self-police for the greater good, then artificial limits should be put in place.

Like, transfers can only be bought with cash and not converted gold, for starters.

That specific example creates too many issues, imo. In any given guild, it’s likely there’s multiple people who simply won’t/can’t pay real cash. Thus, guilds would have agonizing decisions—if they truly dislike their current wvw environment—such as deciding whether or not to leave their guildies unable to pay behind. The truth is that solution harms transfers down as much as they harm transfers up, if I were in t2 I certainly wouldn’t leave any guildies behind who can’t pay with real cash, I’d just sit in t2 instead of going to the more balanced tier 4.

Perhaps some sort of artificial limits would be good. I’m certainly supportive of transfers costing more based on server rank and not some strange overall population metric that would place YB as the same pop as a server like HoD. Tier 8 free, tier 7 200 gems, tier 6 400, tier 5 800, tier 4 1200, tier 3 1600, tier 2 2400, tier 1 3200, something like that. I think these sorts of solutions are a good step, though they definitely won’t solve our current issues. Unfortunately our playerbase was so incredibly stupid, we’ve pretty much permanently damaged our own WvW scene by stacking tier 1/2 and saying “screw you” to every other tier.

Spooksie.4930:

Is it normal and part of the GW2 WvW culture for entire servers to solicit guilds from other servers and pay for their server transfers?

Is this mode all about coverage and that’s it?

I’m just curious because I’m new to the game and this sort of activity seems strange. When I heard that Maguuma had paid for my PvE guildmate’s entire WvW guild to move to their server and was doing that with other guilds, I thought that it didn’t seem right.

I understand that the company makes money off these transfers so maybe they just let it slide and figure it’s an acceptable practice?

Can someone fill me in? I’m finding it to be an odd gaming culture and I’d like to know what to expect and what sort of standards are acceptable before I invest more time and gear into it. I want to know if the mode is right for me.

Thanks in advance.

Yes this happens frequently. Why is it wrong, exactly? If a guild would be happier elsewhere, and is offered aid or even bribes to move, why is it wrong? The wrong choice is in transferring to the wrong server, but not in the actual action of being bought itself. Buying isn’t an issue, buying and stacking 2 tiers, however, is mind-blowingly stupid and unhealthy in the long run. NA WvW, if it is dying, is killing itself by how T2 especially has tried to create such a stacked fights tier instead of letting the fights guilds be spread out a bit more. That is what is wrong, not the fact that guilds can be aided or purchased in and of itself.

What information in specific are you interested in? Some things we offer:

Zerg busting guilds (10+ per raid, raid multiple times a week): Mean/Hart/ODM/RIOT/SotD

Roaming guilds (run often with 5, give or take a few): DAWN/SNKY/COPS/MOB

Havoc (ppt-based or not necessarily zerg busting oriented, ranging anywhere from 5-20 ppl): HERO/NUDE/NERD/Orr/Qrew/SDS/SoN/SoT/HotR

May have missed some, not sure. Guilds also tend to specialize in certain things, for example, NERD/NUDE are awesome BL defenders. HERO is great at EB havoc.

If you need any more info feel free to pm me or anyone listed in our contacts on our recruitment thread, linked in the above post.

timmyf.1490:

DeceiverX.8361:

The only real way to solve the problem is to turn WvW teams be created like EoTM color schemes; not individual servers but collections of servers, and simply create larger maps and have dynamic queue scaling to accommodate for more players.

Then on the back end, keep track of things like kills and claims by guilds based upon server, and use the data to create new team compositions for the next week to be more balanced. This creates a constantly-shifting experience and prevents bandwagoning to mid or lower-tier servers while emphasizing server loyalty – the bottom of the bottom will be raiding alongside the best there is, keeping things interesting for pretty much everyone involved.

Let’s bring the “successful” “WvW” “experience” of EOTM to WvW and kill the game mode for good!

Lol. I love you. Pls marry me karaoke

timmyf.1490:

Grav.3568:

timmyf.1490:

Grav.3568:

This problem would not exist if everyone who has ever transferred up, had transferred down instead.

This is a silly comment. Then the servers would just flop around again. Temporary imbalances can’t be cured by a mass migration to low tier servers. They can be cured by migration between near-tiers.

The ideal Glicko ramp is gradual and smooth. We have too many cliffs. That’s why it seems so pointless.

The players created the cliffs by transferring up.

Players created the cliffs by transferring up poorly. I’m not sure why you think transferring down will work any better.

To some degree you’re right, but I think you overestimate the ability people have to make properly informed decisions. Did the first guilds who transferred to HoD in tourney 2 make a poor decision? If so, why? It was a tier 5 server, lowest of silver, it was free, CD was just as plausibly going to be a bandwagon server to them, yet HoD ended up getting stacked. Even transfers based on the best available data, especially upward, can lead to very bad results.

The issue is this: the majority that move tend to move upward. This is because they see a fault on their server, and think the grass must be greener and better on higher tier servers, so they check those out. Virtually all transfers from bronze tier, are not into bronze tier, they’re into silver/gold (with the most notable recent exception being DR).

Bronze servers individually may have a low pop, but across 9 servers people constantly leaving for greener fields in silver/gold can create bronze tier bandwagon servers (DR, HoD, and to the most damaging example probably in the history of GW2, is the recent bandwagon of DB, destroying the balance for t2 so now t2 servers hate t2, and forcing 1 rightfully tier 2 server into t3 every week, destroying t3 utterly and completely as a tier). These decisions can be made with the best information available, but they still frequently end in disaster.

There’s a reason, in every single tourney, silver league ends up the most lop sided of them all, with 1 server roflstomping every other w/o challenge. It’s because too many bronze folks make the move up to silver and create bandwagons.

This is a huge issue for experienced eles, it’s gone unnoticed since the last patch to burning speed. It needs fixed. Zerk dagger eles rely a lot on this combo to work properly. Please Anet, look into it.

Karizee.8076:

azyume.6321:

Jski.6180:

What i do not get why don’t most of the come T3 worlds (not SoS or FA or even DB they are more on the lines of T2-T2.5) get ppl from T4 and lower worlds to come to T3. Part of wvw is comunitly and if you cant build one then your world will die or simply be crushed by the odd T worlds.

BTW sry to IoJ and NS FA really dose not want to be in T3 though you guys are giving good fights so we are pushing ppt (ppk when we had it) to push back up to T2 where we will get some what stomped lol.

No, thanks. Tiers 4 and 5 are actually stable.

If HoD and GoM get a just a few more fresh blood, a match up with SBI/HoD/GoM will be very balanced and a tough one.

Why should us leave our tiers, which are actually good, to try to “fix” something players had broken themselves by stacking in one server when they knew there was no room for 4 tier 2 servers? Ruining other tiers in a vain attempt to “fix” anything will cause more harm than good as history have been pointing in the past 2 years and half.

Ah, the illusion of choice – at the end of this match there will be only 50 rating points between IoJ and HoD with IoJ losing 22 pts and HoD gaining 20. If it keeps at this rate, HoD will be in T3 in 2 weeks.

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/

It’s worth noting, with the way glicko works, the lower/higher a server goes (assuming the same performance/the opponent have the same glicko as previous week), the slower their rating will change. So IoJ and NSP won’t lose as many points next week, unless they do quite a bit worse. Further, HoD has been PvDing against the two (relatively) ded servers in silver tier (they can compete in t6, but GoM/Dh/Hod/SBI can Mag/CD with relative ease), next week HoD will likely be in t4… they almost certainly will not gain much rating (seeing as every server in t4 atm, Dh/GoM/SBI have beaten HoD in the past, none of them have lost to HoD recently).

In retrospect, games are better when they’re not as much of a chore. If you didn’t have scouts patrolling or just flat out sitting in anything w/o a WP, you could lose it at any time. I can’t say how many times a map would be completely my color, then we’d lose a keep randomly cus some guys build catas on cata wall w/o capturing a camp (probably by running supplies from other maps, I’ve done it myself, it works).

I enjoyed ninjaing some things, but ultimately it just promotes PvD. Thankfully now, when I’m roaming, I can find other roamers by watching for swords on objectives, and vice versa.

Chairface.9036:

Arius.7031:

Dude, you’re way off base. My server queues EB on most nights, and has significant presence in bls (at least 4 guilds running 10-20, as well as a ton of pugs and roaming guilds). And SBI/GoM can, and frequently do, beat my server in primetime. Every single server in this game, down to t8, is active (ish) in primetime. Any server above t5 can field zergs, literally, around the clock (you just don’t see NSP/IoJ doing it because they’ve had weeks, and weeks, of getting pulverized by stacked t2 servers and their map completion mega zergs).

And by the way you say balance? All I see is 2v1s in t2, and always 1 tier server getting a k train matchup in t3. t2 servers hardly are balanced.

Fielding numbers in primetime and maybe running 1 tag on one of the maps is not very active. As I said that’s ok for NA guilds that just care about fighting during their rally time.

And as for balance T2 did reach a balance for a short time when FA and SoS recuited to even things out, but then turned around and immediately started the 2v1 fest you see now.

Lol, you know actually we have 2 tags in EB (pugmander com and havoc com, maybe a guild tag or two), then usually 6-8 tags spread out through the various BLs. You just don’t know the size tier 4 is at apparently. We’re no where near as big as t2, granted, but we’re far from dead.

Also, you can keep thinking we’re a ghost town in OCX, or SEA, or EU, but you’re wrong. Are we at t2 levels? No, but then again, to say we’re not as populated as one of the most populated servers in the game, is not to say we’re not populated.

Chairface.9036:

Sounds like everything below T2 is basically dead then. At least the server population caps are still off, altho a new balancing system to transfers might help.

If you actally care about balance and matchups then it’s probably kitten you should be in. Transferring to silver/bronze might work for some NA guilds that just like to fight but I don’t see how it can be recommended for pugs or non NA players.

Farming the 250 gold to xfer donsent take all that long if you really buckle down, there are a lot of different ways to farm gold.

Dude, you’re way off base. My server queues EB on most nights, and has significant presence in bls (at least 4 guilds running 10-20, as well as a ton of pugs and roaming guilds). And SBI/GoM can, and frequently do, beat my server in primetime. Every single server in this game, down to t8, is active (ish) in primetime. Any server above t5 can field zergs, literally, around the clock (you just don’t see NSP/IoJ doing it because they’ve had weeks, and weeks, of getting pulverized by stacked t2 servers and their map completion mega zergs).

And by the way you say balance? All I see is 2v1s in t2, and always 1 tier server getting a k train matchup in t3. t2 servers hardly are balanced.

I also wanna put my opinion out there… Don’t consider t2 (imo). t2 has done, and is continuing to do, more to harm this game than any tier in the game. Not only are they actively attempting to drain players from servers that need people (my server has been the recipient of this for quite a while now), their own tier is beyond messed up. No matter what 3 servers are in the matchup, there will be a virtual 2v1 (db/yb will focus sos/fa, and either of those servers will tend to focus one server, even each other, instead of splitting their focus evenly, so it’s almost always 2v1). 4 tier 2 servers and only 3 spots for them (meaning 1 spends weeks in t3 doing nothing but k train, and it’s even worse for the people getting k trained cus everyone decided to stack on these servers). T3 sucks, yeah, but T2 isn’t doing so well and t2 servers get stuck in t3 too. Please don’t contribute to the problem by stacking on them further.

Any server in tier 4/5 will be a more balanced experience. Ppt is valid and so are fights, w/o 2v1s. Lots of variety between the 5 servers and potentially even more if t3 gets sorted, seeing as GoM beat IoJ and GoM has been beaten by SBI/Dh. It’s small enough scale for roaming but large enough that zerg action is available nearly around the clock.

Just imo.

Guy says he’s set on going to t4, everyone begins discussing tier 2. Lol k.

Here is my perspective now, as a member of Darkhaven I’ll give me 100% honest observations of each server:

SBI:
Currently the largest server in t4/5, it seems to have bounced back after it’s recent exodus (many of which came to my own server). However, it as a server is pretty much 100% reliant on Bannok. When Bannok took a break from the game, quite a few guilds left the server and it was losing to HoD (a weaker than GoM/Dh, both have beaten HoD many times). Bannok came back somewhat recently and now SBI has beaten GoM/Dh consistently. But, this is with Bannok commanding nearly daily (on TS map queue EB blob with a billion scouts is deceptively effective at ppt lol).

They are probably the most organized server atm, with more scouts by far than any other server in t4/5, and high TS participation (matched only by my own server). Their biggest strength is their pugs, they have a pug zerg running basically around the clock which gives them an advantage. They’re not particularly strong in any coverage, just strong at all times basically.

GoM:
Probably the 2nd largest server in terms of raw numbers. They have massive primetime and win just about every friday reset in terms of ppt. GoM, of all servers in silver however, has the weakest SEA and pretty weak ocx unless popular coms pull late hours. Thus, you’ll definitely get a “what happened to the score while I was sleeping” effect with GoM. Other than that, really solid.

Dh:
Dh of all servers in silver currently has the strongest SEA thanks to two guilds that run in that time slot. Our strength is pretty much the opposite of SBI, less pugs but more guild groups. Biggest weakspot is ocx/eu, a step above GoM in ocx but a step down in eu. NA/SEA are really strong though.

I’d say Dh is probably the 2nd most organized of the silver servers, with pug zergs often having high TS participation (for a t4 or lower server) in EB especially. Queue-wise, we queue EB frequently in primetime (especially when Tryden commands there WILL be a queue, anywhere from 5-30 people, the latter number being exceedingly rare), but other than that no queues outside of occasionally a really small Dh BL queue.

HoD:
HoD is like and less organized SBI. Really strong around the clock, but less organized and less capable in a fight imo. Also don’t excel at any particular time. I don’t think they have any fights guilds, their pug zergs don’t really do TS (or if they do, it REALLY does not show), and their main source of PPT is their massive guilds.

CD:
Barely in a better position that Mag. Doesn’t excel in anything except SEA coverage, loses the rest of the day pretty consistently. TDS is a very good guild, that’s about it.

The only difference in roaming that I find going higher up is that there’s more cheese builds. And more thieves. Way more thieves. I don’t think higher up is necessarily less skilled at all in roaming, I’d say about the same… but roamers are a bit more “do it yourself” in bronze. Up here, in silver, most seem to settle for capping camps and a tower here and there, down there roamers got as much done as guild groups do up here. A good roaming group could paper a t3 keep, or k train a paper BL, which is next to impossible the higher you go. Roaming is more bold in bronze, which I do miss.

I was in t6 since, well, basically forever. My server went to t4 recently. I can safely say the average skill level in bronze is insanely low by comparison. Pugs will not do regroups, heavies will not stick at all to commanders, and there’s very little TS participation. I kid you not, if you drop a fire field before a big fight in your stacked pug zerg, it’s very plausible that not a single person will blast (even then it’d rarely exceed 1-3 ppl blasting). Have fun getting them to intentionally blast waters mid fight lel. A pug zerg in t4 and above of equal size could easily 1 push a pug zerg down in bronze of equal size (we recently started running an on coms TS zerg with pretty much everyone in EB in the channel (map queue), the results have been mind blowingly positive, no guild or zerg in bronze could survive it IMO).

In tier 6 and below it’s very server dependant. The biggest servers (Maguuma or Ehmry Bay, depending on which one is unlucky enough to get thrust into t5) can field some zergs in the off hours. The rest can, at best, field a few people (can’t call it a zerg, the night capping servers down there other than the 2 mentioned have just a few ppl capping things) in the off hours.

In bronze, the meta is that zergs are stacked in EB, while roamers and occasional guild groups are in the bls. EB is not too different from higher tiers, definitely still less populated but there’s quite a bit of zerg/roaming action to be found there.

The guild groups there tend to be far, far less capable than the ones higher up. A decent guild from t2 would 1 push just about any guild currently in bronze (outside of maybe MR or CoT? idk).

For most servers in bronze, there is rarely if ever a queue, even on reset night (though it can happen, it’s not unheard of).

To summarize, the skill level of bronze is terribad when it comes to anything large scale. Roaming is not significantly less skill than t4/5 from what I can see though (but t4/5 are less skilled than t2 I’m told). You will get plenty of fights during most hours of the day if you stick to EB. But I’d it’s very improbable any orange swords would pop in SEA/OCX outside of reset night or fights involving the top t6 server.

Tijgertje.7461:

Thnx for all these response, I still have alot of questions mark what I will be fighting beside more numbers and more people. I dont see any guilded force? No guilded force? PuG based only? Any Guild I fight with?

Each server has one or more decent sized guilds that run daily. For guilds that run 10+ frequently, here they are as far as I’m aware by server:

DH – MEAN, SotD, RIOT, SDS, HART, Qrew, HERO

GoM – DUI, BLIS, vox, Odm

CD – TDS, TIME

SBI – IMG

HoD – WAR, HoD, STRM

MAG – Oath, WAR, Prov

I’m most familiar with GoM/Dh. My information may be incorrect on CD/SBI, as I’ve only fought CD one week and SBI only a few hours (first matchup with them was reset tonight).

Most guilds down here run 10-20 for “large” guild groups. Only a couple guilds exceed those numbers routinely (both on HoD lol).

Chris.3290:

15 SEA will make any server lower than T3 move up; take that into consideration.

That’s not tbh. That’s true for t6-8 perhaps. Most t5/4 servers can field decent sea (CD can field straight up blobs in the 40-50+ range + 1 guild group [time]), Dh has 1 zerg busting guild that fields that every day in SEA and then pug zergs that can get freakishly huge. Even then, we only tend to utterly dominate SEA on the week days. T4/5 is fairly active right now.

X T D.6458:

DH is a nice server, had lots of good fights against them, they are competitive, aggressive and determined

Thanks for the kind words

Bumpppp

Tier 4/5 is where it’s at. My server (Darkhaven) climbed out of T6 and we haven’t looked back. It’s hyper competitive, one week GoM wins, one week Dh, one week SBI, one week HoD… It’s a tug of war, with plenty of fights and comfortable room for roaming. It’s not like t3 that is CONSTANTLY fighting a t2 server thanks to there being 4 tier 2 servers (DB, YB, SoS, and FA).

Each server in tier 4/5 has a distinct personality and pros/cons that accompany that server. Currently there are 5 competitive servers in these 2 tiers (Mag is not competitive in t5 unfortunately).

All servers would be a good choice imo. CD has a solid skill level, and very strong SEA/EU. GoM has probably the largest population of all the servers by a good margin, they have very strong EU/NA. Darkhaven is somewhere in between the two, we have really strong SEA/NA but “eh” EU and weak OCX. HoD has really strong EU/NA as well (they’re basically a smaller GoM). Haven’t fought SBI so I can’t speak on them.

If you’re interested in Darkhaven, feel free to contact anyone listed in this thread (a contact is given for every timezone): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/lookingfor/Darkhaven-Ascension-Server-Recruitment/first#post4649611

We’ll give you a very honest overview of what it’s like on Darkhaven, as we want anyone who moves here to STAY. We want a stable community, not a bandwagon. Thus it’s in our best interest to make sure your decision to move is an informed one.

This is an amazing guild filled with loyal, cool, helpful, and skilled people. I veryyyyyy highly recommend them!

T4 – If a keep is papered anywhere near primetime, it is guaranteed to be repeatedly sacked by a multitude of separate roaming guilds at separate times. This makes golem rushing and whatnot in off hours far more effective than before.

Also, roaming is now far more difficult. It’s a lot harder to track down a roaming group/player, though not impossible (if they skip sentries and are even slightly unpredictable it’s basically GG).

Bad change, makes for a decently fun event though. 2-3 manned a multitude of keeps in tier 4 (which given the population I’ve seen from each server, just shouldn’t happen).

Jeknar.6184:

Darkhaven sucks, go to Eredon…

<3 Arius
P.S: Change your signature, noob. It still says [SoLD]

Psh Jeknar, you just hate us cus we’re beautiful.

Also well yeah, I probably should do that. Pls teach me to pvf Jeknar-Sensei!

Dh competing very capably in tier 4, currently 8k ahead of 2nd place. We’re here, and we intend to stay. If you want an environment that is equal parts fun/light hearted and skilled/face-wrecking, Dh might just be the place for you.