Guild Wars 2

Dolyaks are brown,
storm clouds are grey;
Why haven’t you joined us
on Ehmry Bay?

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Beside, server pride isn’t being elitist. When you see yourself as THE elite, you are convince that you are THE kitten and that others can only hope to smells like it.

In in fact gave you the link to the matchup forum, and told you the date to start reading. Those are the people and guilds who literally just left and are currently leaving. Server pride was there as well (some pride – they’re bailing when it gets a little tough) but go read.

Diva Rarity.6201:

Well sign me right up, that’s the most convincing thing I’ve ever — oh. Wait, I’m already on that server.

+ for the Heinlein references though.

Well spotted.

LostBalloon.6423:

When you talk about elitists, are you talking about the organized guilds that brought the server all the way up to T1 (moving up the ladder at the same time as BG) or the ones I never heard of that poped up after SoR’s fall from T1? (after every single WvWer jumped ship for very valid internal issues. (which is well represented by your observation of SoR becoming a PvE exclusive server)

The latter – they’re the ones that represented SoR while I was dealing with them. And they were all “Proud to have been on SoR from the very start…” et cetera.

MeanCoffeeBean.2073:

Whatever… this is the fifth week in a row EBay has been up against GoM and the previous four matches were all EBay/GoM/DH. This is stupid. It’s not even close on the population and coverage. Meanwhile we watch ET leap entirely over our tier.

ANet will not fix it. Devs… you are killing your WvW player population with the complete lack of attention and inequity in the matchups. We need feedback. We need something.

Actually, GoM and DH are the servers we’re closest to in population – we just happen to be lightest populated of the three. The tier below us is populated less by a significant amount. Look at it right now if you’re so inclined – DH has been ticking over +600 since reset and has all of the waypoints; all thirteen of them. We would have done much the same.

There are no magical matchups that will be perfectly balanced, but what we’ve had in T6 have been the most balanced across the NA and EU servers for the past month. Check the histories – we’ve been lucky.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Rimmy.9217:

Odds can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Matchup-wishlist/4559117

Thats for any one given week. The odds I was talking about was to get them three consecutive weeks.

Easy to calculate if you’re so inclined, but the odds of any particular string of matchups over the course of weeks is going to look just as unlikely.

Zadarh.1932:

TL DR

BUT I agree with OP. I paid for my transfer (KN-TC) and am happy with my choice. My havoc group and I would (just for sport) go to low pop servers and havoc there awhile if we would be allowed to go back to TC when we pleased.

And let’s say this happened, maybe while hvking on another server we decide to stay? That server now has a cohesive Hvk team running around and having a good time.

Because that’s just what a low population server needs – groups from other servers dropping in and putting additional pressure on them.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Like I said multiple times, I’m used to totally unfair matches. Before recently coming to SoR I was on Mag and we had SoS as a perpetual opponent. I did the first 2 season in the gold league knowing way before starting that we had ZERO chances ofdoing better than 5th. Don’t bring me that L2P BS to avoid the point being made.

If you are red and everything is green, the siege disabler will benefit green a lot more often than it will red because the siege disabler is a more potent mean of defense and the green being stronger will naturally be in a position where they can only defend most of the places of the map. This is purely mathematical. There is no learn to play here when we look at the facts. If anything, it’s a learn to reason issue.

That being said, it sure doesn’t help that my server almost doesn’t play at all save for very short windows of time. Yesterday we could retake our keep after an extended battle and had 15+ ppl on line at the same time! I was almost not able to believe it.

The L2P wasn’t intended as a slight, but the flow and style of lower tier servers is very different than in the upper tiers. Everybody who moves comments on this.

Personally, I would have enjoyed the extended battle.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

For the third week in a row, we’re matched up with a server rated 120+ points over us. They owned the match-up. Three weeks in a row….

I don’t even want to take the time to calculate the odds of us getting them three weeks in a row.

DB was only 80 points below FA, but did that happen. Of course not. Why have even remotely even matches right?

Edit : Did the math. Of course I don’t know how they actually base it, but its around .0125% chance.

Odds can be found here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Matchup-wishlist/4559117

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

That being said, I do consider changing server again since it is almost exclusively a PVE server. I can do TeQ every day with my supposedly PvX guild, but we can’t get a hundredth of our guild to play WvW a hundredth of the time. Before the third season it was a lot better than what we have now and I don’t see things getting better.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/recruitment/Obligatory-post-advertising-for-transfers/4549806

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

What do you mean NOW? The subject was never about siege disablers only having an impact on your defensive play. I’m talking about ALL the implications that toy has. And YES, retaking our keep sux big time since that toy is out. Realllllly sux. Dont loose anything or else…

“Now” was in reference to what you were saying at the time.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Siege disabler and sieges work on supply. Who has more suppliesall things being equal? Any other question about how it make the population imbalance even worse?

Usually the defender, unless it’s a tower or keep that you only got back five minutes ago. Attackers potentially have access to more supplies, as they’re not penned inside the tower or keep, but the tower/keep has a stockpile that you don’t have to go anywhere to get. Population doesn’t come into it here.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Yes, we are. Before siege disablers we could still have gotten back our structures unless the opponent was camping them massively. Now only 1 has to remain inside and buy time with disablers for the rest to arrive in time if needed… and believe me, they do… The opposite is totally not happening so, yes, siege disabler made pop imbalance even worse.

You’ve got to stop using rams – seriously. ONE guy sitting on your BL holding your stuff isn’t much of an issue – build a cata that he will be forced to come out to disable, and kill him when he does. It’s not a big deal at all.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Sure it help both side in defense, but once you get your hand on something, it is way easier to keep it for good or bad… When you are small you can’t keep anything even with disablers while the big server can T3 everything that was once yours and keep it all week long. This was impossible before. The real problem is it makes defense stronger for all and the stronger server often has everything in the map so he is almost always in a defensive position while you desperately try to retake (offense) what used to be yours.

And yet, I don’t find that to be the case. Sure, siege disablers are used by anybody but if you use your siege correctly, it forces the defenders to come out or else squander their finite supplies while you can be mobile and have access to all of their camps (especially the ones feeding the objective).

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I’ll make a deal with you. We will switch server and stay one month on the other’s server… you will see what it does to your side when the other side use siege disablers to defend all they took from you and what you do to them when you use it to ry and prevent them from taking anything… after that, if you still believe it is a matter of only you knowing how to play i’ll listen to you.

You understand that I’m on Ehmry Bay, right? We’ve fought you several times since you came to bronze, including when you had the population and we were the smaller server from the lower tier. It’s knowing how to play.

But yes, come switch to us if you like. We have a few who are also from bronze that came over just to avoid the drama in their own communities. You’ll probably have a better time AND we can show you why siege disablers aren’t a huge issue for us.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

True, but among the reason given for the removal of the orb was that it was giving the winning server even more power. A REALLY bad thing. What do we have later? Ruins! What do ruins do? It gives bonus that augment your stats. Who all things being equal get these bonuses? Yeah, you got that right. The big server does.

Until three people, or two with one of the two being fast, decide to go into the always unguarded ruined and flip the bloodlust. Who gets the bonus? Whoever bothered to go into the ruins last.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I’m on SoR and I almost choked when you said it is a gift given to the lower tier. Being a T8 is by no mean representative of a problem. The problem arise when the opposition is unfair from go. There is no problem from being T8 if you face an opposition that isn’t too far from what you can handle. However, if the match-ups are clearly unfair (not just unfavorable) the unfairness become worse because of that new toy. Being outpopulated can also say a lot of things. Do you mean, you always have the outnumbered buff or you mean something else? Because, WE are always having that buff and these gizmos are putrid as hell.

Who are you preaching to? We underwent our own implosion and dropped down to T8 with the kind of WvW population that wouldn’t be able to completely drain a camp even at prime time. The outnumbered buff is an old friend.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Using Tier as an argument is irrelevant. How unfair was the match-up is what matters. And believe me, as much as we did save some towers from our opponents from time to time, they saved a lot more than we ever did courtesy of the same gizmo. Hence the point being made that whatever help it gives the underdog, it gives more still to the overwhelming forces.

Okay, now you’re talking about when you’re on the offensive and the other server uses disablers against you in defense of their objectives.

But what does that have to do with population? It’s not like they’re throwing ten of them on you at once and stacking the durations! They are a force leveler – they blunt the effect of siege over time. And if a “stronger” (by which you mean ‘more populated’) server builds a lot of siege, it can all still be disabled. If a stronger server is defending and they use a disabler against you, it has the exact same effect. How do you think your rams being disabled is somehow unfair compared to you disabling their rams?

Yes, your particular server is falling because you’ve recently had another exodus and you’re still sorting yourselves out to decide what kind of server you’re going to be… but you’re not being unfairly advantaged by siege disablers!

If you’re still rolling up to towers and keeps, killing the guards, and dropping rams… and then are stymied because your rams get disabled… you’re doing it wrong. You either use properly spaced ranged siege (which forces people to come out of their objectives to disable you, and they can’t get all of your siege with one shot) or if you insist on being in close, you use golems which only have a twenty second disabled period.

It’s how you’re playing, it’s not the siege disablers.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

The new LS has been where I went most of the time from that point on. The match isn’t only unfair, but unplayable. I’m used to unfairsince I used to be facing SOS for so long when I was on Mag. But this is a new level of ridiculous… At least SoR is not full of elitist kittens on top of being quitters.

I had to laugh.

Clearly you’ve not spent a lot of time looking at the ridiculous bile and grandstanding that SoR’s self-chosen representatives have been spewing on the matchup forums since they came to bronze.

Talking big, “we’re just passing through and won’t be here for long”, “all of you guys in bronze are terrible and have given up on the game, but we have community and commitment and are strong”, “tell us what you guys did so that we don’t do the same”… that sort of thing.

Pretty elitist, but they had nothing to show for it. Never saw an SoR group attack anything close to its own size, they had to swarm even tiny groups. They preferred hitting empty objectives and then bragging about the PPT they got from it, but a single arrow cart would cut their groups in half in no time. They talked big, but couldn’t deliver.

And look! The loudest and worst of them have left because, despite their words-which-never-match-their-actions, the rest of the people that did the actual work aren’t providing enough of a framework for them to continue to live like parasites.

For all the virtues they spouted about themselves, the fact of the matter is that when the going got tough, they ran away to where other people were already doing the work, and they can clamp on leech-like and claim they’re doing something.

Seriously, go to the matchup forum at http://www.gw2wvw.net/forums/na-matchups and roll back to around May or June and look at the threads that SoR was in from that time moving forward.

That’s your SoR.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I fail to see the “whining like a baby part” when I address a fact. At least I sound less whiny than you apparently whining about my post.

But back to the point, even so, it was completely false to say siege disabler is only OP in that case.

That being said, I see the main problem we have. You reason and argue in terms of local groups, while I reason and argue in terms of server.

When I say siege disabler benefit more the big server I mean the SERVER as a whole. Not just the local group passing by. Sure you can be in local inferiority, but that is so not important when you have all the backup in the world mere minutes away.

I look at the global effect adding that thing had. It is like removing the Orbs to put the ruins… a complete miss. You remove the Orb because it was amplifying a problem and you replace it with solution that does the same. With the siege disabler it is not merely the same, it is making things worst.

You didn’t like loosing your towers to a K-train? I myself don’t like K-train but I like it even less when the only accessible targets become camps because the only advantage a small server could capitalize on, time and surprise, is now nearly nullified. What is the result? The big server still cap, the lesser ones often fail even if they had local superiority in numbers because that superiority is pretty ephemeral when time is out of the equation thanks to our new toy.

It is worst because whether in defense or offense, the bigger server will benefit even more and thus amplify the initial problem paused by the number disparity. Try to take a tower from a big server who uses siege disabler or delay a big server from taking your tower when you have little reinforcements available. I don’t know on what server you play, but it is clear to me you haven’t seen much of the other side of the medal you defend.

In both case, what was easier to do for the big server is now easier still while the opposite is also true for the small server. Conclusion, it is a bad thing more than it is a good one.

Two things: the orbs weren’t replaced by the ruins – we had a lake there for an awfully long time before the ruins appeared.

Second, siege disablers are a deitysend for the lower servers, and I say that as a member of one who was T8 when they came out, and have gone up six ranks since then. They do exactly what has been said – allow us to buy time while we muster our thinly-spread forces. And they don’t us down while taking objectives other than if we’re stupid and cluster siege. You would only want to do that if you flipping an empty objective anyway – otherwise, you build catapults or trebs that are spaced such that they can’t be taken out simultaneously, and you knock down whatever is in your way. Simple as that.

My server in the tier that it’s in is outpopulated by both of the other servers – I don’t find that siege disablers are giving them any particular advantage over us that we don’t also have over them.

I could see your point if you applied it to people that don’t know how to place siege, of course. But they can learn, or be taught.

yanniell.1236:

People are really wrong if they think T1 has enough people to spare and still keep a minimum viable population. The days when T1 queued all maps all the time are long gone. Besides reset night, it’s really rare to see a queue, and it’s not uncommom to roam in the BLs on non-prime time and don’t see a soul.

The WvW population as a whole is diminishing, and what we need is less servers, not new prices on transfers.

That’s not what the people coming to us from T1 report their own experiences are. Some are people that have left our server to go to T1 and have returned, and others are people who have never been off of T1 until now.

Seera.5916:

Apparently a lot of people prefer playing on the servers that have activity pretty much 24/7. Which only the stacked T1 servers have. Lower tier servers do not have this apparently.

The same perception is used to say that T1 is always queued and is a blobfest where hordes of unskilled players 1 1 1 1 1 their way through endless EotM-style karma trains.

Seera.5916:

I doubt enough people would risk going to a server that may not be active as much as they would like without some reward that is not related specifically to play style.

Then they’re not the people that we want on our servers. We want people who want to play the game, not bandwagoners who are looking for the next shiny.

Seera.5916:

Plus, ANet’s already shown that people prefer the play style the T1 servers support. Those who prefer the slower play likely already jumped ship the last time they had free transfers, which was before one of the previous seasons I believe. In an attempt to unstack the servers. Which I think only stacked the servers more since they raised the server caps at the time.

Do people like that playstyle? T1 has a terrible attrition rate and the people who leave T1 tend to quit the game rather than transfer, whereas people who leave the lower tiers tend to transfer. Doesn’t that imply to you that the perception of what T1 offers is very different than what it delivers?

Seera.5916:

And WvW maps already have caps. And they can’t have them be too high for any server regardless of active WvW population because what happens if those who do not play WvW very much decide to get on as well? It could lag out WvW more than it already does get lag.

I think you didn’t understand the map population cap comment – the idea is to make it lower, like say 40 people per map. The idea being that players on ridiculously stacked servers will have pressure to move if they want to actually play, or else be content with EotM. Closer WvW populations in matchups will help erase some of the ridiculous blowouts that many tiers get, and add some variability to matchups as servers move up and down the ranks.

As it stands right now the higher tiers are stagnant with very little movement.

Seera.5916:

Free transfers to a lower tier won’t do anything. Not by itself.

Everyone will assume that OTHERS will do the transferring.

No one will want to risk transferring down if they don’t think enough people are going to the servers in that tier. They don’t want to roll over the other servers week after week with no resistance.

ANet or the servers in the lower tier will have to offer a reward to those who transfer down. But then you would have the bandwagon effect. The lower tiers stand to become the stacked servers and move up to Tier 1 and just create a vicious cycle of transfers. Destroying what little is left of server loyalty that the megaservers already destroyed.

And then the players in the lower tiers (like the bottom tiers) will cry foul because they won’t get people transferring to their servers and if it’s up to the server to create the incentive, they won’t be able to afford enough incentives to get enough people to join their server to make them competitive.

The “reward” for transferring down is you get to play in a way that’s different/better from where you were transferring from. Because clearly you didn’t like something about where you were.

If lower tier servers become stacked (and they shouldn’t, if map caps are put in place) and rise up and there’s a cycle, vicious or otherwise, that’s better than what we have now with a stagnant set of servers stuck in place.

With the amount of love I get in-game, it’s not just this that I put up! BAM!

We handle it by never actually having a plan and by streaming into fight single file – nothing of reportable value to be found in our TS!

See? I told you my recruitment post was boss!

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

WvW population is so low atm. (maybe not T1) but considering T2 and T3 have less people together to fill up T1 these tiers should definitely become gem free to transfer to.

In the end the way people use the system to stack and blob is a direct result of the designed gamemode add to that gemtransfers and you have a system that locks out low populations in general.

I highlighted the parts I’m having trouble resolving in your post – you want free transfers to the second highest populated tiers in the game, and you recognize the negative effect that’s had in the past.

But you still want to do it again. Explain this to me.

Oh, come on. Even though I kept your reward tantalizingly out of reach, I gave it to you in the end. Fwar!

Jeknar.6184:

EBay is soon to be replaced tho… Huehuehue.

It remains to be seen what level of play ET can sustain – since your reboot you’ve only gone up against imploded servers…

But T6 is looking forward to going up against you guys – hurry up!

It’s really only k-trainers that have a problem with it.

And if you don’t consider yourself a k-trainer but still insist on clustering your siege rather than adapting to a new defensive tool… you’re a k-trainer. Switch to catapults or trebs and spread them out enough that a single siege disabler can’t hit them all.

Or if you must use rams, use them on the wider gates that let you put them at extreme opposite sides.

Or use golems, which get disabled for much less time.

You have options, so stop crying that the way you’re used to doesn’t work anymore. The game is heavily tilted toward offense over defense as it is. Spec to provide barriers to the disablers too – they’re a thrown projectile.

oRx, you could consider moving to Ehmry Bay. We’re in the same tier as Darkhaven, and we actively encourage our people to be in several guilds – you will likely find people doing anything you want to at any given time you happen to be on.

But what do you want ANet to do? It’s a population imbalance – sure you’re up against servers from a tier or two above you, but even when it’s your regular tier it’s not like the fights are even.

oEXDETHo, also a driver for a major WvW guild and additional fan of missionary.

I said we encourage other positions, not that we eradicated missionary.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Its now been two weeks of this (for us anyway) and that’s a whole lot easier said than done.

Its not sulking to point out that Anet has the ability to prevent this from happening, but makes no effort.

No, that’s not sulking.

Sulking would be not even playing because you’re not having fun. You’ve got to find a way to make it fun, just like all of the other servers do when they get rolled.

Get people together, make a push to flip something, whatever. And forget about PPT.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

I don’t feel for anet. The people complaining about stagnant matchups and the people complaining about lopsided match-ups would both be placated by two things. One easy and the other more difficult.

The first is to have human interaction in the match-up process. Anyone who used their brains could have seen that the match-ups were ludicrous and they could have avoided it. But, instead, half the matches lopsided – so much so that its making the regulars not even log on.

The second thing is all about population imbalance. It may be the toughest issue they’ll ever have to deal with. There are lots of ideas about that one, however, nothing has been done about it.

It’s one week. #2 and #3 should both queue up #1’s home BL and paper it.

It’s that or sulk. Then the week will be up, and you’ll go back to your usual tier’s matchups.

krmatth.3904:

Log in, Jump to WVW home map, leave cit and immediately get killed by 15 enemy capping camp, spawn, whatever

Successfully get away from spawn and be jumped by 15-3o enemy camping routes between spawn and any objective

Successfully gain entry to objective and be killed by enemy who just happened to let you get in to Lords area just to see if they could wipe your group before you can cap…because they’re bored too.

Log on at anytime of the day and find one of the opposing servers is STILL ticking over 550 (and has been for a majority of the time since reset).

FIX YOUR MATCH UP ALGORITHM ANET…THESE TYPES OF MATCHES SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME, DO SOMETHING. HEAR OUR CONCERNS BEFORE TOO MANY VOTE WITH THEIR $$ AND LEAVE THE GAME.

Thank you for your kind consideration in this matter.

I feel for ANet on this one – when the matchups were decided strictly by rating, people complained that they always fought the same servers, and that the weeks were boring. So things changed to be more random, and people complained about wildly uneven matches.

So now they’re mostly decided by rating, with a larger random factor added. How would you like them to decide matchups?

And honestly, if you’ve never been in a week where you are completely outnumbered, you have to stop playing for PPT, get people together, pop Siegerazer, veil or mass invisibility your way out, etc.

You play for the experiences and get through the week. That is all.

Khalamity – leader of a major WvW guild and fan of missionary is a contact also.

Aduah and HotTotti up above this post are from the server, as am I. Contact us if you are interested. Also contact Aduah or HotTotti if you’re not interested, because who doesn’t like chatting with new people?

WvW community! I have words I’d like for you to read.

Now, you don’t like us and we don’t like you. Why? Because we don’t know each other, and don’t really care to. But enough about your overweight promiscuous mothers – we’re here to talk about WvW.

If you’ve been up against us in the past, either in bronze or when we were in silver, you might imagine that our business cards look like this:

SIEGE SINISTER SERVICES SYNDICATE

“The Villains Nine Rig Ruin”

Reputations Ruined – Competitors Bankrupted – Dragons Wormed – Basements Flooded – Wells Dried Up – Georges Exterminated – Contracts Executed Promptly; bargain rates on mothers-in-law – Juries Suborned – Stocks, Bonds, & Gallows – Saturday Night Specials – Houses Haunted (skilled poltergeist at small extra charge) – Midnight Catering to Ghouls, Vampires & Werewolves – Incubi & Succubi for rent by the night or the week – 7-year itch powder

P.S. We Also Poison Dogs
______________________________

But nothing could be further from the truth! We’ve wiped our nethers and gotten better! We’ve chucked out the egos and stockpiled blueberry Eggos! We also have not been directly responsible for any unexpected pregnancies since February 2014!

In fact, here are the new cards we’re printing up and giving to all of our *WvW Associates:

ANYTHING UNLIMITED

“Six Sixty-Six Smiling Slaves Supply Supreme Service”

Reputations Restored – Teeth & Wells Drilled – Water Filters – Love Philtres – Chastity Godel Lox Pict – Virginity Renewed – Scithers Sharpened – Old Saws Filed Categorically – Silver Bullets – Fresh Garlic – Fresh Strawberries – Strawberry Marks for Missing Heirs

P.S. We Also Walk Dogs
______________________________

Our server which-will-not-be-named has climbed up a few tier and is in a position where it’s fairly evenly matched against the others in the tier. So: it’s all fun and heroin right now, which begs the question “Why are we advertising for more people?”.

Well I’ll tell you. As much as we enjoy where we are right now (and let’s face it – a quick look at the matchups shows that we’re the only server in NA or Europe that has a balanced matchup where one server isn’t blowing the other two out of the water), we want others to enjoy the same WvW experience we’ve been enjoying. Eredon Terrace, formerly the poster-child for “last place” has been zooming up the ranks and are now poised right below us, and their forum posts indicate that they’re ready for the fun fights that only our tier can offer.

So we thought “How can we arrange it so that four servers can have this satisfying level of play when the tier can only hold three servers?”. And it came to us! We’ll move up, make room for ET, and spread our message of fun to a new set of servers! That’s where you come in, avid readers!

I know, I know. People think “missionary” and get turned right off. But never fear, here on this server we applaud and encourage all sorts of positions other than missionary so you will be welcome to get your freak on in whatever way you and your lawn tractor want.

If you’d like to be a part of our psychosexual revolution that will shake the very meta meta of WvW to its knees (see? Told you it wasn’t only missionary here) then transfer over and start Living la Vida Veloka.

Oh, what are the requirements? That’s the best part! There aren’t any.

Why not?

We want you to want to play. If that’s once a month or every second, we’re pleased. Want to jump into a group of people and run around with them? Then link arms with the people around you and you can-can do just that!

Want to shun all form of social contact, dig a burrow halfway up a hill over a camp, and shake your fist at passing yaks? We’ll supply the shovel!

There’s room for everything here, and just by your very presence we can move on to different tiers and make the entirety of WvW a better place for everyone! People will look forward to being crushed by us, because they know they’ll be the ice in our mai tai of joy!

So join us now, and you can have your very own Krytan condominium with hot and cold running champagne and underwater dancing!

Oh, who to contact you say? Any of the satisfied authors of the replies under this post, cutie!

• We’re not actually going to issue these cards – something about copyright infringement

Reverence.6915:

@Rimmy, you’ve completely missed Smokee’s point. T1 is the only place left for non-NA players left in this game. OCX prime is like T5-T6 NA prime. There’s not enough OCX, SEA and EU players to split up on the NA servers and still continue to provide those players a decent WvW experience. In fact, look at all the T2 OCX guilds that transferred to T1 recently, and we still can barely match T5 NA prime populations. We simply cannot spread the population out any thinner than it already is

Nonsense.

You think T1 is the only place that there are solid populations of non-NA prime time players?

I know you’re all about all things BG but BG and T1 in general isn’t a good place to talk about satisfying game experiences – again, it’s from T1 that people leave the game, not transfer.

But I’ll play along – if the T1 players from other regions are really like T6 NA prime time, then lowering map caps isn’t really going to affect them much anyway, so there will be no pressure for them to go anywhere unless they want to.

Sorted.

Smokee.1754:

Tier is all about coverage, and theres only enough OCX, SEA and EU guilds / players to substain one “healthy” tier. Encouriging people to transfer down would do nothing.
BG that is considered the most “stacked” NA TZ server in NA T1 currently have a max of 1 queued map during NA prime on a saturday and none during weekdays.
We´ve given up finding fights during EU prime, and have had trouble finding fights during NA prime in T1 for so long that we´ve decided to disband as a guild from GW2.

There’s nothing “healthy” about tier 1 – that’s kind of the point. T1 is a stacked and overstuffed tier, and whether it has queues or not doesn’t really say anything other than large queues is a sign of an unhealthy server, as there are people who want to play that can’t.

My own server, currently ranked 18, manages to pop a queue on resets in EBG and/or home BL sometimes, depending on who we’re fighting. Do you think that means we have more coverage than Blackgate?

In fact, if you want to see healthy, have a look at T6. We’re on our fourth week of the same lineup, and the matchups tend to be fairly close. Final score at the end of the week tends to be within 25k from first to third, and we’re all having fun.

Seriously, have a look – T6 is the only tier that isn’t a blowout. Not on reset, and not at the end of the week. That’s what population balance looks like.

Encouraging people to transfer down will give that experience to more people – you guys in T1 had your fun stripmining the other servers until you were bursting at the gills with players… and kind of created this problem. It was an unhealthy distribution of population, and it’s come back to bite everybody in the hindquarters.

Destacking will give other servers the chance to have what T6 is currently having – a satisfying game experience.

Yes, it’s bronze. No, it isn’t dead. There are zergs, there are large scale fights, there are small scale fights, there are havoc groups, there are solo roamers, there are duels, there is GvG.

And nobody on any of the three servers, in the four weeks of the same matchup, is burning out or complaining. More servers should be this lucky.

So ANet – encourage servers to destack and let’s see more people enjoying rather than karma-training, which is all a blowout match really is. There’s EotM for people that want to farm.

And Smokee, if you don’t want to take my word for what it’s like at this tier, just ask. People from GoM and DH will be happy to tell you much the same. And next week or the week after when ET rockets up to T6, we’ll find out if they can sustain there. If they can, it gets even better with four servers all competing for the three spaces available in the tier.

Remember when WvW used to be fun? We do – it’s daily.

You have to play with a group if you want to learn group dynamics.

If you want to solo roam, learn to flip camps before swords pop up on the map. You have less than a month to do that though, because swords will be removed for a while.

As you get the feel of the flow of the maps (and the borderlands flow completely differently than Eternal does) you’ll start feeling it, and then you’ll be better able to modify your build to suit what you’re doing and/or who you’re with so that you synergize.

Johje Holan.4607:

Ok, Bronze servers don’t want to be merged. So I say merge Silver servers. They won’t mind. They all wish they were bigger and desire to play with large numbers of players.

So just merge all Silver servers into 3 servers. Then we’ll have a 9 member Gold League and a 9 member Bronze League and everyone will have a choice of which style they want to play.

Hopefully they’ll lower the map cap so that doesn’t happen either.

epborden.7492:

Another reason they won’t merge is because when servers are merged it looks like the game is losing players. The game IS losing players, but they refuse to merge the servers out of fear instead of facing the facts. Desperation is the downfall of many.

And because it’s a really bad idea.

When my own server suffered the mass exodus that plunged us down to tier 8, we had practically nobody left in WvW at any given time. At prime time, you could have gathered all of the online players and supplied them from a single camp – yes, that low.

So it would have looked like we would have wanted a merger. But we didn’t, and still don’t. We played as we could, obviously PPT wasn’t something we could really manage for a while, and over time a few people started playing again, and then a few more. We’d get the occasional transfer, but not so many that you’d notice. And a whole wave of PvErs started discovering WvW and some of them stuck. And so now we’ve climbed about halfway back to where we fell from, and the game is satisfying. We’ve had the same matchup for three weeks now (and with a 40% chance of getting again after reset, looks like) and I think all three servers are fairly happy with it. Our scores have us essentially neck and neck throughout the week, there’s roaming and small groups and havoc and zergs – something for everybody. And close matchups keep people playing.

Would we have had this if we’d been merged with some other server? What server would we have been merged with at the time? Kaineng? Eredon Terrace?

Both of those were in the bottom tier when we landed there. Kaineng rose up for a while, largely on the strength of its night crew, and has now dropped back down to rank 24.

But Eredon Terrace? The very name of the server is synonymous with “dead last”, and look at them! They got some transfers (translation – people chose to go there rather than being forced to go there) and have taken off like a rocket. They went up much faster than my own server and, if they play like they have been for another week, they’ll probably overtake us.

Where would they be, I wonder, if they’d been forced into a merge like you want to force others into?

And if things on your own server are so bad that you don’t even want to go into WvW anymore, and you don’t want to run around with whatever few people you can scrape together, and you don’t want to wait and try to build something back up… you have the option to choose another server to play on.

But don’t force others to go to a server that’s picked by somebody else. That’s what mergers are.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Kanebrake.6192:

Neptune.2570:

If WvW is dead, the community killed it, not anet.
How can there be different outcomes and new fights each week when every server is tier locked because we, as a community, have stacked servers so much.

Anet charging $35+ per transfer is what causes stacking. If they didn’t charge for transfers or were much more reasonable about the cost of it, then you’d see guilds and people moving around a lot more.

Interesting comment. Do you think that free transfers would reduce stacking? That things would just naturally even out over time?

I’m genuinely interested in this topic and would like to get some insight into it from our players’ perspective. (For clarity, I’m not on the WvW Team; y;’all know that. I just found the theory interesting.)

Definitely not, because when prices have been less in the past, people stacked tighter.

If the idea is to even out WvW populations across the entirety of the servers, then lock out transfers to the gold tier entirely. For the rest of the servers, put in scaled transfer costs that go from free (for the absolute lowest ranked server) to “punishing” (for the server just below gold.

Then drop the map caps to something fairly punitive and watch what happens. People who actually want to play, especially together, will have to consider what servers will support their numbers and transfer accordingly. Obviously they can farm gold if they don’t want to pay the cash. It should also mean that you can’t buy your way into a gold server, and so anybody that makes it there did it on the strength of their playing rather than via sheer population.

And ideally it will shake up the matches somewhat – it would be nice if you couldn’t predict how the week is going to end up half an hour after reset on a Friday.

Plus, it means no mergers. Merging is a bad idea on so many levels, like for queues at prime time and destruction of existing communities to name the obvious ones, but something that rarely gets mentioned is that fewer servers means less variability in matches.

Here is a thread, the first post of which has some great artistic representations of some of the NA servers (at the time).

The WvW population is finite – isn’t it time to smooth it out and make it less about karma training and more about fighting, attacking and defending objectives, and not only about who has the most population?

Atherakhia.4086:

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Disband the high population servers to fill in the lower populated ones.

See how that works?

Why fracture an established playerbase instead of just merging fractured ones?

Because that “established playerbase” was created by the fracturing of previous established playerbases.

But you’re right, they don’t need to be disbanded. Drop the map caps to about forty and the populations will sort themselves out. There will be a lot fewer matches where the first place server has a greater score than the second and third place servers combined.

And closer matches are better matches for everybody, plus players who enjoy playing don’t leave, which means more of those matches in the future.

People who think that overstacked servers are fun can stick to EotM, and can karma train as much as they like.

Evalia.7103:

Well merging server names is the worst idea ever, given that they are based off in-game zones…

Two of them aren’t, in NA anyway. Merging servers is a bad idea because it doesn’t fix any underlying problems and actually creates some new ones.

Synosius.9876:

you dont even understand why sanctum of rall exists. sor cannot be merged.

Nothing lasts forever, and despite the backstory it can certainly be merged. If the guild that were on it don’t care enough to stay, imagine how much less the server’s name means to people who have never been on it.

Skriven.3074:

Nope clearly I haven’t been paying attention…..which is why I onlynknow the 2 years of medal history for NA. Beside your very rude opening, you didn’t at all respond to my idea.

You are very smart to note that ET is now T7*…..which is why if we fold the bottom tier (t8) into the second bottom tier (t7) [which ET is in as you were very close to pointing out], then we might see even better advancements in bronze league. Further, you can’t move up 5 positions from t8 to remain in t8……..I clearly have not been paying attention to expansion of the tiers……….so……..k.

Also, your “move” suggestion is dirt. Instead of crying and feeling hopeless, I came on the forums for the devs to fix a clear issue. Thank-you though for directing me to the childish option of ‘leave without trying’. If EB doesn’t want to merge, then I’m sure the server ranked above them will be happy for some t8 infusion (you know those crazy ques we get in that t8).

If you are going to hate on someone’s idea, at least use info that isn’t patently false……thanks……

My very rude opening:? Your own opening was to destroy a bunch of servers and rolling them up together! Nothing ruder than saying “Hey, nice houses! We want to bulldoze them all and stuff you into new apartments we build without you having any say in the matter.”.

I’ll hate on your “idea” because it’s been brought up every week for well over a year. How about you employ the search function and look at “merge” and you can read about all of the other people who have had the idea, and all of the reasons that people on the affected servers don’t want it to happen.

I am definitely tired of people posting on the forums that wrecking my server and several others is “good for me” and will “fix what’s wrong with WvW”, and this has been shown to be nonsense time and time again.

But hey, here’s your info: if lower tiers can’t queue all of the maps all of the time, that means they have peak times of activity, right? So what do you think happens if you merge servers that both have the same peak times? You get queues, and people can’t play together who otherwise could.

Even more so, it doesn’t in the slightest address the times where servers have no coverage – two servers that don’t have NA overnight coverage won’t gain a bit of advantage by being merged together if they’re against a server that has even one person on during that time.

In fact, there was an entire CDI about server imbalance – did you read it at all? An often repeated idea is to lower map population caps so that highly populated servers distribute some of their population amongst other servers. The total opposite of what you’re suggesting.

Leave Bronze servers alone.

You haven’t been keeping up with current events, have you?

Eredon Terrace has moved up five positions, or from the bottom of T8 to the top of T8 since the tournament. Why would they want to be merged with anybody when they’re doing so well?

My own server, Ehmry Bay, broke into T6 the other week for the first time since our own mass exodus of WvWers happened at the start of the year.

Bronze is where things move and happen. Gold is where they are stagnant. We’re not interested in merging – if you’re bored with your matchups then I suggest moving somewhere more dynamic.

Snowreap.5174:

wow, I just looked at this week’s files for the first time myself. NA T1 and T2 are both completely locked now.

-ken

Nothing says you’re in a rut like another run of “Infinity bottles of beer on the wall, infinity bottles of beer…”

Easterbunny.6170:

Here is the solution I put in the other dev brainstorming thread. It works directly with the answer posted here.

This is my solution. Not server merges, but Teaming. My idea is harder to implement for Anet, because it would require a physical changeover of server location 2x a day.

We have 26 North American and 26 European Servers. Someone mentioned bringing that number down to 20, Maybe that is necessary, maybe its not.That would depend on predicted competitiveness.

~ snipped for brevity ~

Not bad, but there are 24 NA servers and 27 European servers. There’d have to be a little bit of jiggery pokery to make it fit.

Other than that, it’s an idea worth trying. ANet, let’s try a couple of weeks or a month of this.

Berk.8561:

Rimmy.9217:

People who don’t read the instructions, don’t read the emails sent by ANet to indicate that their rewards are now available to be picked up and must be picked up before the end of the following week likely aren’t “customers” who can work out the complex task of purchasing gems with real money.

I’ve purchased lots of gems and I missed out on a one of the weeks because, quite frankly, the apex of my guild wars experience is not visiting the Battle Historian to get a reward. Assuming that they have a great reason to use that delivery mechanism, is there any reason why the battle historian couldn’t hold a player’s cumulative reward until they go an pick it up?

Certainly there is – because there’s no need for it to. It was clearly laid out for all to see in a variety of media both in game and out exactly how it worked. People spent ten minutes per week getting their achievements done, and then the following week received an email telling them they had received awards and where to get them again. It would take no more time than loading the screen and walking forward to receive their rewards, so the onus was on them. This wasn’t a change from a battle historian that kept their rewards from week to week, this is an attempt to address that not everybody who completed the achievements in seasons one and two got credit for them at the end, so this weekly system that required a miniscule effort from the players was tried to make sure as many people as possible got their rewards.

And so far, I haven’t seen anybody complaining about it not working except for user error.

omegazone.9254:

Now that the tournament is finished for a while , we are left here at FOW with dedicated but deflated wvw’s we are so outnumbered so many people have stopped playing.

The solution – you tell me we are in bronze and where devastated by the outnumbered classes we are a low population server who have been hit that much from beginning to end .
we are now almost non existent in wvw which is a real shame because for me it is my daily look forward to day … but this is fading rapidly !
Any suggestions on getting people back on to wvw ?

Certainly – don’t play for PPT.

If you have any sort of community left (as opposed to just random people that play WvW and don’t really speak to each other) then try to have events so that people can come out in a group (which matters if you’re out-populated) and have them run around together for a few hours. Have theme nights (all minion masters is a popular one) or set an objective (green garrison or bust!). You’ll get your WvW fix, develop stronger ties to each other, enjoy your time spent WvWing, and won’t burn out while your server settles into whatever Glicko backwater it’s heading to.

When my server dropped down to the bottom NA tier, we were in a similar situation. We’ve gone up six ranks in the past few months – things change. Eredon Terrace (also on NA) has remained strong (in spirit) throughout their time in the Glicko ghetto and, thanks to some hot transfer action, now seem to have steady coverage in places they were light before and are on the rise.

It passes. You’ll be okay.

Jeknar.6184:

Kigera.9584:

Everyone but a few delusional servers knows that seasons is bad for the WvW population. I’ve noticed that the WvW population drops every time we have one, not to mention the bandwagoning that goes on right before each season, which destroys servers in the process.

Funny… My server population grew during this season…

I’m pretty sure ours did too.

Filovirus.6258:

I would looovve to be explained what “change” in lower tiers…. Outside of Bt crumbling after the bandwagon nothing has changed in EU bronze for months.

RoS is still hanging around rank #22 with something that is better than totally empty server, but nowhere near the numbers to rise again, MS/Dzag are still at the same levels they were after S1 roughly, the bottom servers are the same at the same place since UW crumbled (after S1 from memory) to dead bottom, and the servers plays the same, with mostly the same guilds around and so on.

And once again, you might “enjoy” running alone on a map most of the day, but it’s not WvW at all….

Oh and most players on low tiers servers are ok with transfering, merging and such, it’s just they don’t want to pay for moving, and/or (most reason) they don’t want to leave without their friends there.

µ

ps : would be nice of you to learn to read before saying stupid things.. i AM in EU Bronze (and i AM leaving too soon, finally decided to leave the only thing that kept me there for months behind, my guild and ebuddies, because i can’t take it anymore, and with a couple other guilds crumbling/disbanding i won’t be the only one. And FoW will probably have the same soon if RA’s officers and leaders don’t come back from AA quickly).

Despite a handful of players pretending they would leave the game if they were merger, the vast majority of players would have no problem with it.

Remove the last 6 servers and offer the players on it a free transfer to any other server but the top 6, and leave them a few weeks beforehand to organize their move, and nearly none will stop, they’ll go to other servers with the people they like (or avoid the people they dislike) and you’ll see in the end most servers players will split up without a second of remorse, leaving behind their so-salled “community” filled with drama and rivalry.

All servers pretends to be a “community” when it’s in fact communitIES plural, with people that don’t mesh, people that despise each others despite being on the same server, and with regular drama occuring because of that (and there is drama all year long in Bronze, not so much elsewhere, even if when it happens it’s far bigger drama that usually leads to server death/crumble like UW/Vizu or a few others).

Change in the lower tiers means: look on millenium once in a while and see how servers change position. Some doggedly climb up, others sail down. Change.

As for you saying that “most players on low tiers servers are ok with transfering”, go to each and every one of their server forums, register, and pose that question to them. I’ve seen it on several bronze NA server’s forums and guess what? “No thanks” is the overwhelming response.

And you’re transferring soon? Great! Although that explains the motivation for these months of your posts ripping on anybody who doesn’t want to leave bronze – you want to bail and have someone else pay your way. All previous rants now understood. Enjoy your new server.

As for me learning to read before saying stupid things, I’m not the one saying that everybody who says no to server merging is pretending to like where they are or are delusional about their placement. Thinking that your own opinion reflects everybody else and that anybody who doesn’t agree with you is lying is ridiculous.