@puck – we don’t know how they linked them or would re-link them. I don’t think pop came into play first pass – wasn’t it simply 1+24 2+23 based on Glicko? If Glicko is no longer being tracked for the guests, I guess they could potentially be tracking players or players*hours. It’s hard to say they accomplished anything with the linking at this poiNt IMHO….
When nostalgia wears off and people realize they are now WVWing 2014 style, they will remember why people were leaving in the first place. DBL itself didn’t cause people to leave and ABL itself didn’t cause a resurgence – there were other things going on in WVW as well….
They said it had to be done because of some software limitations. It is not a biggie. Get over it.
It is a biggie with the complete lack of communication over it. It came at completely the wrong time for my server and we were hampered by the lack of preparation. This is being overshadowed by alpine being back so its not receiving the attention it deserves. We had some completely new matchups that some of us were enjoying and it was cut short. Why not patch this specific thing at normal reset time? Players would not have minded so long as they knew what was happening.
And even now the API score sites have not fixed the change.
AFAIK our glicko is still being updated so that is live.
you are correct, but only for the host servers. the guest servers won’t be updated – they are simply mercenaries with no country of their own (or style of play of their own)……
Of course they are not, and as long as they try to make the population adjust to the maps instead of the maps adjust to the population they never will be. All you accomplish by merging without having the maps adjust to the current population is ensure those that play during the busiest times do not get to play and are met with queues instead, and still having servers that do not have any coverage outside prime time being matched up with servers that do.
When most of the NA servers have NA prime coverage and only a disproportionate amount have coverage outside NA prime, you cannot balance the servers by merging servers that all have NA prime coverage. You would have to merge servers with off hour coverage with NA prime servers to resolve that.
Totally agree with you on this. I don’t see what they were even trying to accomplish with the linking. Even if the linking served some greater purpose I don’t see, it appeared to be so simplistic and not even adjusted for the very significant population shift before/after the patch. Not to mention, if t8 people wanted blobs they had 3 years to move……
I understand that some people will not enjoy the higher populations, but the reality is, it is the only way to legitimately fix the population balances, and that is, by trying to get everyone as close to “Cap” population in WvW as possible. If the Maps are Full, then everyone has even numbers, and it never ends up with a 5 vs 42 match up, which anyone on the mid and lower servers knows can happen.
So this was the way they could resolve the issue, by capping the maps. If you can think of another way to balance out the population to eliminate lop-sided match-ups, I am sure Anet would love to hear it.
But as it stands, the direction they took, was to try and fill the maps, so that everyone would have roughly the same number of people on the field. It does remove the issues of being overrun by a higher population server, which has been a major negative issue for WvW for a long time.
I fully understand that there will be issues of “us/them” in the game, after all, it was a link, not a merger, and maybe that will be for the best,so that they can mix things up a bit as time goes on and that it does not feel like a merger, but a rotating link.
Where, perhaps, next week, it can be Ferguson’s Crossing/Northern Shiverpeaks, facing Darkhaven/Sorrows Furnace or some such.
There is much the future might bring, and I for one, hope it is all good things.
huh? they were all blowouts. there appeared to be little more than linking 1+ 24 / 2+ 23 / 3+22 etc… didn’t even account for the significant population shift before the patch and returning “sleeping” players that returned after the patch. No accommodation for coverage. There was no fix at all really since a good percentage of the people in the lower tiers liked that style of play. The only thing I see is saved $$ by leasing less servers / server space.
of course they are not balanced. not enough time was allowed to take into account the significant population shift before the patch and the return of dormant players post patch.
Edit: and locking servers as full while making it cheaper to go to a guest? Maybe Chaba was right – they wanted to spread the population and then end the linking because it was beta….
To the OP … I’m afraid it’s going to get worse for you.
I have everything required for Nevermore … apart from the fact that I need to max out the mastery chains. To do this you need a lost of mastery points. To get those you need to do a lot of Adventures. It’s taking me an age.
this is when I stopped before ever starting…. I thought you needed need silver AND gold from all (or at least most adventures) for the mastery points to buy the gifts that are also required? when I saw that, I said nope before I ever started…
Reverting back to alpine when alpine is exactly the same map as the one we played on for 2 + years is a bad idea. Reverting to that map while resting the match is more bullkitten on top of that. Thank you.
Oh oh – I actually agree with you…… Reset mid match was no biggie – I think all were blowouts anyway – but back to the old map.. No thanks.
The patch and linkage brought back the queues to the DBls too. To place all the blame on dbls, when so many other HOT changes were bad, and give all the credit to ABL for pop return, when other concurrent changes were also made, seems oversimplified. Only time will tell if any of the recent changes are lasting….
If you liked the game summer of 2015 – it is sort of back to that stage, but with auto loot, reward tracks, and the other hot stuff like tactivators elite specs etc.. I personally think they went backward with the BL, but as others have said – try it yourself and you determine if it is worth it or not. It doesn’t cost anything.
Queues depend on the server bg-TC and guests for sure. I am not sure on the others. If you like everything, but the queues – you can transfer to the guest server in a different linking for 500 gems….
to anets credit, they have let these go on a bit as long as it does not go over the top. the old matchup threads were great, but sometime over the top… the removal was the start of wvw downfall IMHO – less reason to fight…..
I am very excited for the nostalgia bubbles to burst when people realize how boring Alpine is to play on again.
So much this. Remember all th whines for new maps? Apparently others don’t remember them at all….
So much NOT this. A lot of people wanted new maps that were NOT like eotm and had less pve than alpine did. Then they gave us more pve in a map that was a lot like eotm. And that was only the beginning of the problems people had with desert bls. No one asked that the new map be filled with gimmicks, but that is what we got. So people legitimately complained because it was pretty much the opposite of what had been requested over the past 2.5-3 years.
many of those “pve” aspects were already removed (not fast enough), but the fact is WVW is back to summer 2015 when people were already leaving….. I don’t argue HOT did not help and accelerated the attrition, but it seems a lot of effort got us really no where. The reward tracks and auto loot are great, but does anyone think that has a serious lasting effect?
Not sure why they didn’t wait a couple of resets AFTER the patch to set the linkings. Maybe in the end, it wasn’t going to matter, but bg-TC—db saw a significant influx of players right before and after the patch. My guess is they had way more pop playing than YB or Jq.
The blowouts last week show how little linking accomplished in the end. Not sure the blowouts will end until change it’s BG-tc-db in 1 of the matches…..
BG didn’t receive an influx of guilds/players. In fact, we lost a couple of guilds to Mag/DR just recently. This is just players that’s been waiting for changes to WvW finally coming back and seeing what’s up.
That was what I meant by influx – people who were not playing playing again.
Not sure why they didn’t wait a couple of resets AFTER the patch to set the linkings. Maybe in the end, it wasn’t going to matter, but bg-TC—db saw a significant influx of players right before and after the patch. My guess is they had way more pop playing than YB or Jq.
The blowouts last week show how little linking accomplished in the end. Not sure the blowouts will end until change it’s BG-tc-db in 1 of the matches…..
You can transfer to the lower pop realms that got merged, so basically its kinda like all servers are open.
I expect this loophole to be abused at some point….. I mean why make anything full if you can xfer to the linked server… I know you run the danger of being un-linked, but the hoppers will just hop again later.
-How will the linked servers be affected in terms of scores, ratings, rewards if there is another season?
-How long will servers stay locked, and are these servers locked for new players as well
-How long does the beta test last
the sticky “world link beta” says glicko will not be updated for the guests (as of Friday anyway). While the links are not locked, how would they re-link in a different form other than tracking users / hours played…. On a different note, why would a guest server be open for transfer when the host is full?
I wonder if after a set period of time 2 weeks / 4 weeks / etc the linking was removed. At that point the guests could move for free to their respective host limiting the stacking of any 1 server.
1) It would provide a path for those that do like the zergs to continue with that playstyle.
2) It also provides for the return of small scale that some really prefer.
3) It allows the guest to escape the host where there is culture clash.
4) It restores an identity to the guest server that simply no longer exists.
I admit I don’t know what happens after, but the linking didn’t resolve population balance anyway IMHO.
edit: added 4
Well there is population balance, then there is coverage imbalance. Population balance is easier to work on, basically combine as many people as technically possible on a server, as it the case with server linking, its essentially a soft version of a server merge except with linking it allows servers to remain and be rotated periodically. This was actually a smarter move then simply removing some servers altogether because it leaves them room to use servers should the need arise, if they had removed them, they lose that. Coverage issues would require a little more work, now that each server has more people, what is needed is a rework of the scoring system.
No argument here on coverage and scoring. Was the population balance really resolved by the linking or did people come back because of the other patch changes which were pretty darn good? We only got to see 3-4 days without the link, but I know BG, JQ and YB had many more peeps playing tues, wed, thurs after the patch.
I wonder if after a set period of time 2 weeks / 4 weeks / etc the linking was removed. At that point the guests could move for free to their respective host limiting the stacking of any 1 server.
1) It would provide a path for those that do like the zergs to continue with that playstyle.
2) It also provides for the return of small scale that some really prefer.
3) It allows the guest to escape the host where there is culture clash.
4) It restores an identity to the guest server that simply no longer exists.
I admit I don’t know what happens after, but the linking didn’t resolve population balance anyway IMHO.
edit: added 4
If they were to remove the linking, we would be right back where we were in wvw. Lower tiers with little action, higher tiers action packed, and lower tiered wvw’ers moving again to higher tiers.
I don’t know……am not sure what point you’re trying to make with your post…..I am getting that you want things to return back to the way they were in wvw…..but maybe I am not interpreting your post correctly.
but many of the players on the lower tiered servers WANTED that style – some even paid to move there. If they wanted the bigger pop they have had 3 years to move. Now they have no choice and no identity at all.
I wonder if after a set period of time 2 weeks / 4 weeks / etc the linking was removed. At that point the guests could move for free to their respective host limiting the stacking of any 1 server.
1) It would provide a path for those that do like the zergs to continue with that playstyle.
2) It also provides for the return of small scale that some really prefer.
3) It allows the guest to escape the host where there is culture clash.
4) It restores an identity to the guest server that simply no longer exists.
I admit I don’t know what happens after, but the linking didn’t resolve population balance anyway IMHO.
easy fix – the pop-up walls of rock and the cripplers really need to go
more complicated fix – shrink the size of bl, give towers some significance, and redo air keep (just where is outer on the south?).
@jonei4rikb – TC has had big queues since the alliance moved there prior to the patch. good luck thinking those are going away any time soon.
@testpig – several of the servers queued all 4 maps (and sizable 40+ queues on each) – there is no “go to” anywhere…. Bg even queued OS.
guess what, your glicko as a guest isn’t being adjusted either. You don’t exist other than a group of players who could be “easily” moved as a group down the road into another society where you still have no identity.
from Anet in their worlf link sticky
“Linked “host” worlds have their Glicko data updated in the usual way. Linked “guest” world Glicko data isn’t affected. It’s not yet determined what approach we’ll use for Glicko data for guest worlds when world links are changed, in the case that a guest either becomes a host or goes solo.”
They all show host server names. I was fighting against UW players today and they all had FSP tags now. I knew them only from their guild tags so, nothing will show which smaller server they from.
Thanks for answering, FogLeg. That’s exactly correct. The biggest motivator for showing only the “host” world in enemy nameplates was to help identify enemies quicker. With only two other world names showing up in a given week, it’s easier to quickly figure out which color team they belong to. Since world linking supports any number of “guest” worlds linked to a single host, it would potentially get pretty confusing to see a big zerg of nameplates with any number of world names, and figure out the composition of one team versus another.
As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.
Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.
I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”
This just seems to be an attempt to kill of the ‘guest worlds’ though by relegating them to a second class of sorts who aren’t important enough to even have their name appear on the scoreboard. Using the word ‘linking’ mad it seem like each server would be on an equal footing with the partner servers but this just seems like a merge, resulting in the destruction of the ‘guest’ server. Perhaps it’s just me but this doesn’t seem like what was being proposed.
agreed – especially if their glicko wont be adjusted either as I thought I read elsewhere – total second class citizens forced into the blob mode they may not have ever wanted.
You guys need to get over the queues , everyone is excited right now about mergers so of course you will see bigger queues , the queues will eventually go back to normal . And it’s reset so stop crying . Better knowing WvW is alive and kicking then dead .
Its not just about queues, are you so short sighted, people go to lower tiers to escape the blobbing of higher tiers, they go there for a different style of play, now they are being forced to be a part of it, they now have no where to go and cannot escape it. The blobbing, lag, queues that people from lower tiers were able to avoid will now be a daily part of their wvw experience. And for those in upper tiers our ability to get our guilds on the same map, coordination, communication has been impacted severely.
agreed – wait till they see a three way at SM where skills don’t even work…….
I knew you all were going to be shocked with the queues. To be fair, YB wasn’t seeing those queues in ages, just only after the patch. I’d imagine that was true everywhere but TC.
The total loss of identity sucks as well – not only does your server not show, but your glicko is no longer being updated either (according to the official link thread).
If it doesn’t consider all the movement in the last 10 days, it is doomed from the start. It probably should have waited an extra week or so to consider the patch changes as well – YB queued every map for the first time in forever
That was my take – 2 servers on the same 4 maps with each other. Pro : crickets tiers will see many more people. Con: they could also see a que for the first time since launch.
@bearded – point is someone has to be 3. I personally (I only ever speak for myself and not a guild or server) don’t think it will be JQ or YB. Time will tell of course.
when tc drags db (JQ nor YB will stay) up to t1 and db implodes, they will have bg to fight on the weekends and doors during the week…… congrats well played…..
They had no interest in spreading out when they came to YB, they weren’t when going to TC. If some of TC hadn’t moved to db and others gone to db as well, just who would they be fightIng? They love to spout what good they did, but that is spin……
For a prolonged 2v1 to work, there needs to be a reason for the other 2 to unite forces. JQ/TC v BG was a season response to buy gate s1. YB/eBay v sbi was for placement in a season as well.
This incarnation is the most basic reason of all – good v evil with the alliance perceived as the evil empire that destroys everything They touch because someone has too much time on their hands.
@JT – pretty much what you said with speculation that the alliance had/has inside information of what is happening Tuesday prompting their move before hand …… The rebel alliance mostly started with people previously with TC (now on db) that didn’t agree/didn’t want the alliance on TC.
only way to really stop stacking is to remove the incentive to stack. no glicko, no tiers, just 4 random matchups each week with a small bonus for winning the week is one way…
Too bad anet’s attempt to address the issue were cut off at the knee before it ever went live…..
Please wait for the april 19th patch. Hopefully that will put an end to TC’s 3 map queues and mega blobs who are there to damage other’s enjoyment. If this is not remedied and you still feel bad for the TC pugs, then maybe we can help find them a smaller server.
Inb4 the April 19th patch takes players waiting in queue to fill in population disparities in another tier.
inb4 no more glicko, no more tiers, just 4 random matchups each week between 12 servers….
April 19th has a patch. Leaked notes (possibly fake) hint at mergers. The leak has sbi + cd… Look at the other threads and see if you want to wait until the 19th or look elsewhere… T2 got interesting for sure….
It wasn’t just JQ. It was all 3 BG/JQ/YB. I was pretty upset myself that some knew and used it to their advantage (more upset with Anet really), but the TC +5 tick made me feel better.
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