Guild Wars 2

Mag can have some fun and play spoiler; but the match with two T1’s will be a brutal spawncamp.

otherwise, they might as well have this last hurrah as the “we play for fights” because they won’t be holding much territory.

Actually it will work fine. 1st week is by tiers the other three weeks are different combinations of one match with a t1 server and two from T2, while the other match is two T1 servers and one T2. Each possible variation will occur, which is probably why the season is only 4 weeks because a repeat would have to happen after that.
I don’t know about EU, but the only outcome in doubt in NA is the possibility of YB and CD beating each other In Different matchups which will result in a tie.

Either way, I think we can safely crown the likely winners in 7 days.

Ok, Swiss-style and you won’t have the same matchup twice.
If we assume that the first week is matched up by tiers, doesn’t that mean that the League winners will be decided in the first week?

Don’t get me wrong, there is opportunity for shenanigans in the shape of ties and we might see a 4th seed beat 3rd or a 7th beat 6th; but the actual winners should be decided by the first week, barring any 2v1’s in the first week which seems unlikely.

Straegen.2938:

Vermillion.4061:

It should at least have diminishing returns if you continue to use it 1 after another.

I would agree to this but would rather see a hard cool down for X seconds.

I can agree with this. It’s way to easy to chain them ad infinitum.

Yet another change to the game that promotes blobs over tactics.

We’re reaching out to those who are thinking about or have thought about joining intense the WvW scene in Tier 2 NA; and are curious to know more about the Sea of Sorrows server and what we are like.

The Sea of Sorrows community is committed to encouraging our members and guilds to “play how you want to play.” No one will be demanding that you play for score, or tell you when you can GvG, or where, when, and how to play in anyway. We’re here to have fun and refuse to treat our server like it’s a boot camp.

What’s our community like? It’s well-known we have a large Oceanic population (Aussies and Kiwis), but we are proud to have players from all over the globe playing at all hours of the day. We’re proud to be an International server and no matter what time of day or night you play, you will have the same seat at the table everyone else has.

We are doing well in our matchups, but we are hoping we can find players and guilds who play in the mid-to-late EU time zones and early North American timeslots, as this is a very active time with our opponents and we simply do not have enough hands to collect all the loot.
More important than the time you play at, is that we are looking for friendly and mature people; who don’t believe in quitting or giving up when it’s hard; nor people looking for easy victories.

If you want to know more, here is a list of our contacts and the times that they play:

EU:
afk.8230

NA:
Fallen.4317
Malikor.3210
Chris.3290

OCX:
Huddo.1065

SEA:
Wen Jie.8920

Cheers!

DeWolfe.2174:

Just looking at the server statuses and SoS is FULL. Then I remembered this thread and said “wtf?” to myself. Soo… if this whole thread was a political tactic, GJ Sos! You successfully pulled a BG

The hilarious part is it was Fort Aspenwood’s political tactic. In general, T2 are but neophytes to the skilled political operatives that run Tier 1 NA. In our tier a “political coup de tat” is a screenshot of one server blobbing.

The simple truth is that we lost a few guilds and now have a pretty good matchup. We could use a few more hands in the early NA time with EPIC having left; just as FA is actively trying to recruit OCX and SEA to cover their gaps as well.

Either way, we now have at least a two-way competitive matchup that is still going SoS’s way; but FA is putting up a better fight now that they don’t feel overwhelmed so much.

We’ve “destacked” from our OCX and SEA times so we’ll probably look for some folks to join our NA and FA will get the fights they’ve said they’ve wanted all this time.

Huddo.1065:

Buffy.9246:

Chris stop thinking sos is superior…

When Chris said “We’ll let the score do our speaking for us.” I think he was trying to address the point that SoS is not imploding since we can still hold our own in PPT at the moment. No superiority there.

Exactly, you can list guilds all day long, but in the end the score will reflect the state of things. This multiple-personality disorder needs to end; where we are somehow over-stacking yet imploding at the same time. You have to pick one and live with the answer when you are proven wrong.

XacTactX.6709:

losing 6+ raiding guilds in a span of 3 weeks = imploding, it just doesn’t show because of the instability of t2 and Mag

We’ll let the score do our speaking for us.

BEAR is still on SoS and plans on staying through the season at the very least.

I’m only offering contact info for people who may be looking at transferring to us; and even took the extra step of informing folks that they might not want to join during FA’s weak periods.
We certainly have no desire to stack off-hours only wish to offer your North and South American members the most competitive matchup possible. We can’t do much to change the casual nighttime population’s activities so we might as well make things as interesting as possible when people on FA are playing.

Spam this idea more, I never get tired of the same idea being recycled by you every 3 days.

Yeah, it feels like there is 80 people nearby even when the map is empty.

SoS did shed some guilds that were just not getting any fights from FA and with Maguuma having lost most of their active guilds, the current matchup was nothing but tedium from them.

SoS is a very healthy server, and all this change has done is change the matches from complete blowouts, to a more competitive matchup; especially in the late EU and NA timezones.

Anyone who is curious or interested and plays in either timeslot (outside of the tournaments and occasional rare T1 matchups, we cannot promise an exciting experience for any OCX or SEA folks) are welcome to get ahold of our community at www.sosgw2.com or message myself if you want to talk to our folks on our server’s teamspeak.
Don’t let forum posturing confuse you, SoS is stable and highly competitive.

They need to work out a 3-6 match rule where if you lose for that many straight, you get to drop down.

This can create a “rotating chair of death” scenario but there are servers stuck in places they don’t belong thanks to the incredibly slow pace of the glicko system. Glicko, which was never meant to be used in bracketing; but versatile in that it’s not supposed to punish someone for facing someone who’s better; is meant for a large tournament scoring.

SoS is open most of the time now.

It’s a 24/7 format and dedicated off-hours players are an increasingly rare commodity.

There are a few oddball groups that are happy to PvD away the night and never fight human players.
However, off-hour stong servers are disappearing from lower tiers and are even dropping away from all but the highest few tiers.

If you are in a top tier server and simply lose because your ridiculous coverage is out-done by even more ridiculous coverage then there aren’t many tears to be shed.

It seems foolish for any people or servers to change their behavior for this tourney, it’s only 4 weeks. I can understand transferring or tanking (a little) if we were talking about another 9 weeks.

9 weeks with servers a tier or more higher than you? Yeah, strap a rat cage onto your face instead and you’ll have more fun.

4 weeks though… Go to EotM if it’s really odious, or surprise your enemies and yourself with a good strong push.

Have fun with it.

I expect that siege disablers are going to be incredibly popular in Silver League

Johje Holan.4607:

azizul.8469:

Jessica Boettiger.2563:

The league structure from the past 2 tournaments will remain for EU and NA.
• EU has 3 leagues, 9 teams each.
• NA has 3 leagues; gold contains 6 teams, silver and bronze each have 9.

The Fall Tournament announcement references places 1-12 to account for the introduction of WvW tournaments in China, which will have a slightly different league structure.

but but from the announcement :

" Our next tournament will be an extremely intense, exciting four-week-long tournament battle. The shorter format will ensure that worlds will not be repeatedly matched against one another , which will more closely resemble a true Swiss-style tournament. Each matchup will be unique, and every win—or upset—will make a huge difference! "

the bold part. how is this possible for gold league ? i know this is possible for a 9-team league, but how is this possible for a 6-team league ?

I would assume “repeatedly” means over and over – as in more than twice.

The could do:

1/2/3 4/5/6
1/2/4 3/5/6
1/4/5 2/3/6
1/3/6 2/4/5

And there are other possibilities.

Wait why am I defending Anet?

I had figured on that series as well. That way each T2 server only has to face two T1 servers once; while no T1 server gets to face two T2 server more than once.

Any other system will unfairly punish or reward servers.

Straegen.2938:

Chris.3290:

The chances of Mag facing BG are just 2% less than dropping to T3. Let’s all hope the RNG is kind to them.

Doesn’t really matter. Whoever lands in this spot will get hammered. SoS is significantly more populated and have vastly better coverage. Mag can still queue a map (as it did this week) but that doesn’t matter much when SoS can load up a map 24×7. Even FA which is stronger than any T3 doesn’t hold on outside of NA Prime.

The idea that any T3 server wants to move up is either naive, stupid or a glutton for punishment. T2 populations need some rebalancing and that will take time. Until then avoid being 6th or really even 5th in Gold as you will be ice skating up a hill in a snowstorm.

I love people who are self-appointed experts on our off-hours coverage. I’m pretty sure that SoS has not had a queue outside of NA prime since Season 2 when everyone would stack on one map to follow Eldsvada around in a massive blob, while every other map had outnumbered buff. Likewise, we didn’t have any even in our T1 glory days.

Chaba.5410:

They’re already migrating from SoS.

The reason many are migrating was because there were many that sounded like the T3 voices here. “We have a good match. We don’t want to face the numbers of the next tier up.” By the time people stopped dawdling and realized we should push, people had already gotten bored and left.

FA was looking strong until a rumor that T1 guilds were looking to transfer there and push them up got started. They stopped in their tracks, lost their momentum, and still haven’t gotten it back.

October 10th, mark the date. The season will be over, they’ll be a rotating door into T2 and your guilds that take themselves seriously will probably have great excuses when they transfer off.

The chances of Mag facing BG are just 2% less than dropping to T3. Let’s all hope the RNG is kind to them.

Arcadio.6875:

59.55% chance Mag stays in T2.
40.45% chance Mag drops to T3/T4.

I can’t take the excitement. Tomorrow I will be spamming F at the Red BL portal while peeing my pants.

You got that a little messed up. There’s just a 40.45% chance of them not facing SoS. That includes the chances of SoS moving up which are just a little bit less than of Mag moving down.

Probably more like 22%-24%

azizul.8469:

if in the next match up Mags are still T2, SoS could possibly troll them by tanking their rating points, pushing up Mags rating, and Mags would have to fight in Gold league.

Only a pittance is left of the people on Mag who made them unliked. No one in T2 is wishing anymore ill-will on Maguuma. Even those who focused them have moved on (along with much of Maguuma’s population).

If anything it’s been cathartic and while there’s still plenty of salt between FA and SoS; true hostility is reaching record lows.

Berk.8561:

Chaba.5410:

It’s not just that. Players are leaving the game.

The Gamescom 2014 interview with Devon Carver has Devon saying that the WvW population is stable, so apparently ANet isn’t seeing big changes in the number of people playing WvW.

If you were to chart the numbers of players who play WvW >80% of the time, you’d see sharp spikes downward at the end of each WvW season.
I’ve lost count of how many guilds that were around since the beginning who make a last gasp transfer then fade away; or just fade period.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

I’m down to check out what all this gold league fuss is about.
http://youtu.be/fhOrxkGlLDM

There is nothing you haven’t seen before with FA and HoD in the last Seasons. Just large numbers and the numbers of off hours will be higher than you are used to.

The T1 servers ability to get 50-70 on a single tag is quite impressive, but they disappoint in terms of individual skill 90% of the time or more.

T2 isn’t all that bad unless you are the kind of person who sweats about what’s happening when you aren’t online. If you are the type who focuses mainly on your play or your guild’s play and can get others on your server to do the same; then you’d be fine.

One more point, DB talks about all that they lost but they lost those people because they liked T2. They make it sound like they broke down or something. They liked what they saw and wanted it to continue. With the shape of things, whoever steps into the 3rd spot has an excellent chance of keeping it if they want it.

Chaba.5410:

Pretty Pixie.8603:

So if SoS server representatives actively discourage T3 servers moving up, then what are we even taking about?

Just YB…. just YB…

Yeah, besides; you tanked so hard you fell out of T3 so I think you don’t have to worry about it.

No one on FA or SoS can promise how long any honeymoon period may last but no one is eager to focus on any of the potential 6th place servers.

Might I add that if one of you had pushed hard instead of holding back and had made sure that Maguuma had dropped down either this current week or next week; that one of the servers left would have been sure to take the 6th place spot.

Live and learn.

tanking has never gone well for any server that has done it. Who knows, you might break the trend but I’ve yet to see it happen.

Yes, but Mag will continue to lose points. T3 will have to purposefully lockstep tie the thing to avoid popping up.
Even then, one of them will pop up in a mere 4 weeks later.

If CD or SBI, or even DR (if Mag drops and DR pops; they are a dark horse possibility) come up for the season, no one is going to go out of their way to make their lives hell. They might have a really bad week the one week they get two T1 servers; but that’s because they’ll be fighting over their land for the PPT.

CD is treated as “Our brother by another mother” by SoS; we have a respectful old rivalry with SBI, and we don’t know DR well enough to have a negative opinion. Basch has already spoken for FA in regards to not piling on the newcomer and I think no one on SoS is eager to kill another server.

It’s not going to be roses and dancing girls; but it’s better than having your recruiting tagline for the next six months being “do you have what it takes to be a coward!?”

Don’t worry whether you are tanking or taking an extended two week break before the tourney, you won’t be popular choices for competitive guilds anymore.
Just the slight perception of tanking screwed over FA. All of T3 will look like a shore in Jersey to anyone looking for a serious home.

Pretty Pixie.8603:

A hotseat is fastly preferable to being locked into weeks of being karma trained and spawncamped by servers with fastly superior coverage.

Instead of the ‘we need a whipping boy for T2’ approach, SoS could destack it’s OCX a little to go to a server that has the NA to compete.

That’s not going to happen, ofcourse. All those free caps!

If our night crew were to ever leave it would be upwards, not downwards. We’d still. E the home servers for the large number of PvX style OCX so this pipe dream that somehow our WvW focused nighttime players like PvD and will transfer downwards isn’t going to happen.

One of two bad things will happen:

1. We lose some people but still remain in T2. With less of an advantage we’d seek to recruit more NA to compete with FA and the two will be so closely balanced that they will need to savagely destroy the 3rd server to win.

2. We implode and not one but TWO of you poor kittens get the hotseat for the future and Season 4

So if you are serious about staying out of Gold you should be toasting our success before every meal.

The tanking thing…it’s short sighted because all it does is buy you a 4 week reprieve. T2 will still be there after the tournament and it will annihilate you.
Right now your biggest hope is that FA continues it’s mission to kill the opponents with boredom, a frighteningly effective strategy.

Anyhow, there’s no way this turns out ok for T3. You will have a rotating hotseat of death into T2 after the tournament so putting off the pain is not helping your situation.

There are no rewards worth the cost of transfer.

it’s not a matchup thread because it’s not an existing matchup. We’re just discussing the pros/cons of the 6 server tier and the problems that happens.

CD is making a play for T2 and apparently has a small OCX contingent. If you are leaving SoS to avoid T2 you are probably stuck with IoJ.

Be interesting to see if the new Mag will PPT.

Straegen.2938:

Chris.3290:

The only way they can get stuck is if DR moves to T3 and wins by a very slim margin.

Glicko and the RNG can easily throw curves in here. Keep in mind that the further apart the scores of the higher ranked servers become the fewer points we will lose. The best shot Mag has it to get beat by a lower ranked server which would drop our score significantly. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen but best I can tell it is a 50/50 shot at this moment.

Of course, i was just pointing out that even if Mag were to not roll low; that they/you would not need RNG to place in Silver for the tournament.

Shooting from the hip I figure the odds are roughly close to 20% of Maguuma staying in Gold.

I can think of 4 different but likely scenarios where Mag drops down and only 2 where it would stay, and those scenarios are both less likely.
DR is 95 points beneath T3 atm where Maguuma is only 80 points above. I also think it’s unlikely that DR will gain more than Maguuma will lose this next week so it makes the chances of it happening in the last week even less likely.

XacTactX.6709:

No way Mag is gonna lose enough rating in two weeks to go below 6th place, you will be locked into gold for the tournament.

They lost pretty much the maximum amount of points possible to lose in a single matchup; and it will happen again, and one more time after that before the tournament.
They lost 50+ this week and probably more this next week since they started out feisty on Friday.
At that point they’ll be 30 points away from T2 with high liklihood of T3. Even if RNG tinkles on them again, they will lose more than 30.

The only way they can get stuck is if DR moves to T3 and wins by a very slim margin.

Blodlyrisk.2801:

Vermillion.4061:

Mag isn’t tanking.. It’s just imploding because nobody plays on the server anymore.

You don’t say?

You should have blurred his name more, I know who that is. Sad when your main home BL commander is saying that; even though I don’t blame him.

Nice guy, even though he complains about golem rushes a lot.

Many felt that HoD was the #6 server in terms of population and strength. Not only did the server over stack for victory; but the server dissolved before actually engaging in an even fight; some pointed out that there was an active discussion about not wanting to play a match they could possibly lose.

It’s sad that people are still angry though, most of the people who stacked are long gone and are on other servers. Those that stayed shouldn’t have to bear any of that ill-will.

Are you really all so dainty that the prospect of losing is that terrifying?

Looking at the balance, you guys have a nice rotation of different servers winning.

I would take losing to a server in my own tier a lot rougher than losing to a server 1-2 tiers higher.
You know you aren’t supposed to win and every small victory matters a lot!

Holding a waypoint through the night vs SoS or JQ; beating a T1 chesthumper guild in open combat; winning a couple rounds against HOPE in a GvG…

Those are things you can take away. I know on SoS I’d much rather say “we lost but we sure bloodied JQ quite a bit, made them play overtime to win it”; than just beating Fort Aspenwood again.

Ok. They promised to not have the same matchup twice; but there are only 6 servers. Likewise, they need a system that does not automatically guarantee wins to any of the top 3 and they can’t pick on any one server either.

The mostly likely format will be something like:
Week 1: 1-2-3; 4-5-6
Week 2: 1-2-4; 3-5-6
Week 3: 1-3-5: 2-4-6
Week 4 2-3-6; 1-4-5

That guarantees that no T2 server faces two T1 servers more than once; it also doesn’t allow any T1 server to have more than one matchup against two T2 servers.

Any other method would either grant an automatic victory to one of the T1’s or unfairly punish one of the T2 servers.

Maybe swapping Week 1 with week 4 might be a good idea to leave the final standings in suspense until the end.

Someone in T3 better grow some and be ready to move up because even if it doesn’t happen in season it will happen immediately afterwards.
Mag is dropping down, that’s a real thing; not a temporary thing that’s just happening for the Season.

Something to also point out, tanking has never been good for any server that has attempted it.

Those who want to play the game get disgusted, and they either quit or transfer.

I know that if I were looking for a server the last place I’d be looking for is a bunch of cowards looking for cheap and easy rewards in Silver.

Also remember, there’s opportunity here. SoS is where it is now specifically because we pushed for Gold; and that’s what kept Maguuma pushing hard for a long time once people saw their willingness to fight they got transfers as well.

Servers 1-4 have Full Status (SoS only sometimes) so people looking to move up only will have two choices.

Siege Turtles: Move slow but hit like trebuchets. Cannot be damaged by other siege (shell) other than Juggernauts.

Juggernauts: Can teleport to siege and destroy it. Has no defense or offense against humans or NPCs; only massive life pool.

Your ball ANet

The maguuma that fought tooth and nail in order to make Gold League twice; that was a group to be feared. They fought in spite of the score.

The era of the weaker sister has just ended, where they were more like hipsters pretending to not care about the score, even though the whining about it was deafening. I’m not sure who or what it lost or what poisoned the well; but they would go on about others PPT’ing where once they didn’t care what you did but would stomp you all the same.

Straegen.2938:

style.6173:

I’m just impressed if you are on mag and aren’t looking to bandwagon another server.

Don’t be too impressed. Our small guild wants to stay in T2 so a transfer at this point is likely. It won’t be to SoS though so I guess it isn’t really bandwagoning as much as abandoning.

You should rally Mag if it drops down into T3-T4 it should do ok. Since YB is threatening to take your spot it really shouldn’t be too bad. Of course, save your money anyhow in case it looks like you won’t drop enough to get out of T2 before the Season.

Once WvW is limited to one tier, they can shut it down due to “lack of interest”

I said this almost a year ago and it’s getting closer and closer to reality.

I was hoping for the 12 server matchups. The three league system promotes tanking and bandwagoning.
Of course those bandwagons usually implode and is a good revenue stream for ANet.

NiloyBardhan.9170:

Straegen.2938:

Making the assumption there are going to be Gold, Silver and Bronze leagues (I don’ t think they have announced that yet), Silver is completely up in the air. Mag could drop out of Gold given its current losses. Scary enough that might put CD into gold.

YB has historically had a massive PvE turnout and they have always managed to forge them into one of the best defensive servers in the game. Not sure if that is still true though.

Bronze may be BP or NS depending on how the movement hits.

Going to come down to the wire but without free transfers (not sure if they are doing that this time around), decent rewards for losing servers and a short season 3 we may not see massive server stacking like previous seasons.

That might be true for us, but we never received too guilds prior to any season and do not want to because that would give us the title of bandwagon. We all know what bandwagoning leads to (Kain, SBI, HoD, etc). I can’t order you, but I will request you to keep YB out of your posts for stacking server, this is the 2nd post mentioning YB. Q.Q

Regarding thread, don’t bandwagon. Be there for your server in the good and the bad times.

YB with a large active population. Imagine the open field guilds being backed by all those arrow carts…we’re talking T1 contention.

This is what I have been talking about for better part of a year, the final nightmare that will snuff out WvW for all but casuals and siege users.

YB won’t bring about the apocalypse….They are the apocalypse