Guild Wars 2

Instanced raids. And as of 15th April, real servers that it was made for.

We play the wurm for the adrenaline, not the loot (cause there is no loot). Though the adrenaline starts wearing of when killed ~30times.

Best:
1. No subscription.
2. WvW. really fun game aspect. Especially tournaments (not there there are some rewards).
3. Guilds and server communities. Social aspect makes the game. Hindered by the Megaserver.
4. Orr – used to have been fun, with chain events, interactive Temples, campaign feeling etc. Before the Megaserver!
5. Megabosses a’la Teq & Wurm. Excellent to have events that require coordination and player cooperation. Also hindered by the Megaserver.

Worst:
1. By far. The Tower of Babel that is MEGASERVER. It does not work. It breaks communities. It hinders remaining communities and events. It hinders recruitment for PvX guilds. It is not wanted.
2. No development on the dungeons.
3. Storytelling of the Living Story. Very naive and feels disconnected to the rest of the lore.
4. Temporary content that comes with the Living Story.
5. No instancing of Megaboss events.

Posted in the “Feedback” thread, but since this is quite an important issue (a bug?), I don’t want it to be lost.

Megaboss gameplay issue

• ISSUE REPORT: 29.04. and 30.04. – “Hardcapped” empty maps
  While gathering for the Great Jungle Wurm in the Bloodtide Coast (EU), we have encountered what appears to be a glitch or a bug of some sort where people could not join on their party members (hardcapped) in maps that were seemingly empty.
  There were 3 megaboss teams ready to attempt the Wurm on 3 Bloodtide overflows/megaservers on Europe at the same time. Our map was hardcapped very soon, but we had AFK people on the map and TeamSpeak people who couldn’t get in, so we decided to re-enter. According to Anet’s model of the megaserver that “puts us in the same map as our friends and guildies”, we should have ended up together in the new, empty Bloodtide instance. Instead, when we re-entered, we were spread out across several Bloodtide servers. But what made things more difficult, after some initial joining / server-hopping, my party members were no longer able to join on me. I counted <30 ppl at the Firthside Vigil WP and I quickly ported to other WPs to see if anyone was on there. I also asked in map chat if anyone else was doing a big event (guild missions or Taidha), no response. Yet the map that held 30 people was already hardcapped. If it has been another Megaboss guild, they would have said so, as we’ve communicated like that beforehand.
  It took several map-hoppings to find a server that was half-empty. And still a lot of TS people and guildies weren’t able to join.
  This “hardcapping” issue appeared several times. And not just in prime time for the scheduled event, but also later, when we were about to guild-spawn the Wurm.

TL;DR – FEEDBACK ON A POSSIBLE BUG

• Issue 1: When guildies and party-members enter the map, Megaserver scatters them across several overflows / Bloodtide instances.
• Issue 2: Unable to “join in” on friends / guildies / party members when they are in a server instance that looks empty and should hold more people that only 30 people.
• Note: Both issues appeared several times across a few days, both during the scheduled Wurm and the guild-spawned event, on EU servers.

I hope this doesn’t get overlooked or ignored here, just like all feedback concerning Megaserver, but if I made a new thread it would just get locked. So here it is, about an issue encountered by the Megaboss community recently.

Megaboss gameplay issue

• ISSUE REPORT: 29.04. and 30.04. – “Hardcapped” empty maps
  While gathering for the Great Jungle Wurm in the Bloodtide Coast (EU), we have encountered what appears to be a glitch or a bug of some sort where people could not join on their party members (hardcapped) in maps that were seemingly empty.
  There were 3 megaboss teams ready to attempt the Wurm on 3 Bloodtide overflows/megaservers on Europe at the same time. Our map was hardcapped very soon, but we had AFK people on the map and TeamSpeak people who couldn’t get in, so we decided to re-enter. According to Anet’s model of the megaserver that “puts us in the same map as our friends and guildies”, we should have ended up together in the new, empty Bloodtide instance. Instead, when we re-entered, we were spread out across several Bloodtide servers. But what made things more difficult, after some initial joining / server-hopping, my party members were no longer able to join on me. I counted <30 ppl at the Firthside Vigil WP and I quickly ported to other WPs to see if anyone was on there. I also asked in map chat if anyone else was doing a big event (guild missions or Taidha), no response. Yet the map that held 30 people was already hardcapped. If it has been another Megaboss guild, they would have said so, as we’ve communicated like that beforehand.
  It took several map-hoppings to find a server that was half-empty. And still a lot of TS people and guildies weren’t able to join.
  This “hardcapping” issue appeared several times. And not just in prime time for the scheduled event, but also later, when we were about to guild-spawn the Wurm.

TL;DR – FEEDBACK ON A POSSIBLE BUG

• Issue 1: When guildies and party-members enter the map, Megaserver scatters them across several overflows / Bloodtide instances.
• Issue 2: Unable to “join in” on friends / guildies / party members when they are in a server instance that looks empty and should hold more people that only 30 people.
• Note: Both issues appeared several times across a few days, both during the scheduled Wurm and the guild-spawned event, on EU servers.

MithranArkanere.8957:

The megaserver systems requires the following things:

• The ability for guilds to create private instances or guild world events, and determining who can and cannot enter them. These instances won’t be map-wide. Like personal stories and the starting instance, they’ll have a “border” and teleport back in or kick out those who move outside the boundaries.
• Numbering to identify each particular instance of a map created by the system, so people can try and enter the same map without getting in the same party.
• Queues like in WvW maps, so people can queue to enter the same map if it’s full.
• A list of all existing instances of any map available to any player from anywhere. For example, whenever they click a waypoint in that map from anywhere in the world, a third button in the waypoint confirmation message opens a panel with this list.
• This list must include:
  • Number of friends on each instance.
  • Number of guildies on each instance.
  • Queue size.
  • If you are waiting in a queue, your position in that queue.
  • If the instance is a private world event instance, a symbol to indicate it, like a lock.

That way people will have an easier time getting together, and be able to set instances private to attempt things without random strangers if so they want.

applause

Well, at least they honestly admitted they couldn’t care less about us while China is willing to throw money at them.

Nynuwe.5893:

PS: Even the people who mention the pros about megaservers admit the cons are terrible.

Basically, 2000+ posts summed up in one sentence.

lakdav.3694:

If we only knew that waking another dragon will have such dire consequences as the Megaservers…

Ley-lines disrupted, invaders from other worlds freely roam in our home world, almost chaoticly, as if summoned by those chaos crystal portals, confused, sometimes not even speaking the same language as us…yet unable to hurt or kill us.

The most powerful beings on Tyria cannot gather enough power anymore to appear more than a few set times per day, locked in an eternal limbo…

Its all scarlets fault.

:-O :-O :-O
This is Season 2: we are stuck in the Fractals! Stuck in a boss timetable like Dessa. That’s why Scarlet sent Aetherblades into the Mists – to tamper with the Overflow Lines and the Grind Magic in EotM – a limbo shunned by the brave heroes of the Mist War for it is full of brainless incognito hordes!
Meaning that the Megaserver is an ugly AU where Scarlet imprisoned us in the Mists. Or it is the fault of Ellen Kiel’s tampering research with the Fractals!
Meaning that maybe there is still hope…

Srsly, makes more sense than Anet driving a bulldozer over their own playerbase.

Asacledhae.2650:

Speckly.3729:

tl;dr If you’re afraid you’re getting rusty and sPvP isn’t your thing, go to Orr and try doing any event at all.

I took your advice earlier today, but i have a slight problem with it, as Orr refuses to load. And if it does load, i get around 2 FPS caused by all the names i was seeing in front of me, even on the lowest settings. As a result, my game crashed, so after around 4 minutes of re-loading, i took my character and ran away screaming (Yes, i’m proud of it).

:O Now we know why Trahearne keeps failing to cleanse Orr – because of the Megaserver! Not even Scarlet messed up Tyria that much!

Lord Kuru.3685:

Rin of Rivvinda.4971:

still don’t understand why mega server was not just added as extra server next to the existing servers. use mega as an underflow option when you enter a low population map (give popup like when server was ready to get out of overflow) so you can opt to join there.

A lot of people are saying this. The real reason we have megaservers is to save Anet money. The fewer map instances, the less server resources are needed, the more money Anet saves.

They could have had the money if they went for an expansion like the players asked for. Just sayin’, I wouldn’t mind paying to play the real, pre-April GW2.

HerrDoktor.3490:

I am doing my best to continue enjoying what is left for me in GW2 but it really really sucks that, in essence, parts of the game I played and enjoyed have been patched out.

TRUTH.

Asmodeus.5782:

Eh, my proposition thread has been mercilessly cut down

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-the-mobs-in-the-megaserver-gw2-need/first#post3955422

And when I asked why are so many useful and constructive feedback thereads like that, and the Save our Spawn from the gw2community being CENSORED locked, my post got infracted and deleted, saying that we should not discuss how the forum is run. And that’s not what I discussed. I just observed that Anet KNOWS OUR OPINION on this matter BUT CHOOSES NOT TO ACT. And that’s not just my opinion, that blog post on the final megaserver roll-out is the clear proof of the everything-is-great-and-awesome-and-will-be-more-awesome head-in-the-sand approach, without addressing a single of our concerns posted in accordance to the Giving the Constructive feedback thread, for example, like on this page . There is also plenty for useful proposals on how to make the best out of the current situation, but sadly that hasn’t been acknowledged either.
About 10,000 players (perhaps more) in the current Megaboss Allainces have voiced their concerns (in a civilised fashion!), yet those threads have also been ignored or locked.

Sadly, with that kind of response, I’m afraid we should accept the end of the game that we all loved: pre-April GW2.

eleshazar.6902:

You know I think that if we got a writer from Eurogamer, or some other popular gamer magazine/blog to pick up the story of the mega-server fail we might get a response from Anet then. I think they are not responding because there is no real harm at the moment of them not. If there were to be an article about this and the unsatisfaction it has caused we might see them react a tad bit differently to “save face”. Never known a journalist to turn down a juicy story of angry people….

Excellent idea!
Just imagine the title: “When server mergers go bad – the story of GW2’s Megaserver”.
Eurogamer grilled them before, when they ignored the community on the admittedly, then a minor issue of the Scarlet Living Story. (that has led to a lot of people quitting, that then led to harsh unannounced server merge) Megaserver implementation)

Morrigan.2809:

Nerelith.7360:

Palador.2170:

But what if they said “We’re open to ideas, but parts A, B, and C are not going to be open to change. What can we do to parts D and E to make this work better?”, they might get more useful feedback.

They will also get tons of comments from people that want A, B or C. Asking why they are not being treated " fairly" or they might feel that only players that want D, or E are being listened to bla bla bla…

Sometimes the best thing is silence.

Not in my case- I wanted any reply so that I can make up my mind if Anet has my interests at heart.
Since someone kindly linked me the German community response, I know that they do not.

Much as I have loved this game in the 2 years I have been playing it everyday- I will now no longer do so until Megserver returns my experience to me- if it cannot or will not, I have to call it a day.

Today I got a beta key for another game that I previously had no interest in because I was invested in GW2- now, I am in the market for a new game.

Indeed, a lot of people just want to hear something precise and clear.
Why do we wait for an answer? Because GW2 pre-Megaserver was a good game and we want to keep playing it, so we hope as Morrigan says, that they will return our experience to us. If they do not, fine, there are other games.
A clear answer on whether and how they want to address the multiple issues raised by the community will decide stay or go for a lot of people. Silence does not make the problem go away.

So much about the “Dynamic” Events and “no grind”.
People on EU are still at work when Teq spawns.

Also, an issue caused by the synchronised megabosses, from an excellent feedback thread that was censored locked:
From Kinsmir.5623

“Well, i already said +1 but i will repeat it again.
Today with the mega servers enabled on Bloodtide Coast made it even worse.
A lot of folks from [DV] got in the same instance with [Wurms] both trying to organize it on the same megaserver.
What caused for us ( [DV] ) to move everyone to empty overflows and caused a lot of people to miss out of our entire run and a lot of problems with people being unable to join.
It also caused for a lot of people of the german population getting mixed with us because they wanted to do a run with [Wurm] and their mega server/instance was full.
We ended up doing our run in multiple language (english on teamspeak and german/france in map/local).
At this rate this community is going to down really fast if it stays as it is, because some people got already hostile about it.”

Its what happens when servers are gone and we’re left with a cloud of of overflows. Random overflows everywhere.

No more real Orr experience where actions in one map impact the other. “Story” makes no sense any more. For what? Incognito zergs.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

To my somewhat cynical eye, we just got hit with the biggest de-facto server merging in my MMO experience and they managed to relabel it and call it a “feature”. They merged every server without the bad press of “GW2 announces Server Merges”. Great PR stunt at the expense of server communities. Problem is.. this MegaMerge has produced negative effects far beyond conventional server merges. You dodged one bullet and then the piano landed on you.

I live in a rural MN town of 4000. That is a community. I can drive to Mall of America and be in the middle of more people.. doing the same thing I am, but it is NOT a community. It is a ton of people doing the same thing I am. It is a fun place to go, but it is not a community. Population does not instantly create community.
…

Guilds need adequate measures taken to insure that the Guild Content Anet provided for them is doable and enjoyable in spite of MegaMerge. Give guilds the tools or sort weight to load Guilds into zones as a cohesive group. Don’t wreck Guild community.

Anet.. you encouraged the Super Guilds like TTS, GW2 Community, etc. You built the content that made them happen. Give them Schedules and a method to do what they do, please. Don’t wreck their community.

Anet, you made language preferred servers. Respect the communities that made that choice in good faith. They should be exempt from MegaMerge outside of chosen language.

And I’m done with the topic. Again, blowing away the smoke, all I am seeing is everymmo Relabeled and Reloaded. ANET spends far too much time on some weird crusade to somehow re-invent every aspect of the Genre and not enough time to insure that the Brave New MMO is actually working.

Love the comparison of a community and random people doing the same thing.
I really liked Anet’s GW2 as it was, it was an excellent game that created nice communities etc, had fun dynamic (i.e. non scheduled) events. Scarlet was the low point, but at least we’ve had other things except the Living Story – there were server communities, server world boss runs and other in-game activities, server guilds helping each other with g-missions, etc etc. Now, even that social aspect is taken away, so that playing with other people that noone guarantees you will ever see again if you relog (!) is the onlything that remains. And that is not enough for an MMO. Personally I play MMO for the people. Right now, I can just go and play a single player RPG and have much more fun.

Morrigan.2809:

MMO’s live and die by the cohesion of their communities- we have none atm.
It is currently more lonely playing GW2 than it is playing a single player game

Sad, but totally true.

Heck, I would buy an expansion that offers proper instanced raid system for megabosses. If all Anet is worried about is the money.

Cause it seems like the non-expansion features/LS isn’t really cutting it, neither for them not for us.

anzenketh.3759:

You will need to use Google Translate to translate the dev post.

https://forum-de.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaserver-System-Die-Konsequenzen/page/15#post374779

Dat transparent communication…

Pirlipat.2479:

I didn’t want the mega-server yesterday, I wanted it when it’s ready.

Apparently, we’ve been playing a Beta version all along.

Complete removal of MegaServer.

If they don’t scrap Megaservers, there will be none left to play Season 2.

Server communities…

The censorship and the lack of any clear communication is just appalling.

We had big issues at the Wurm yesterday. [DV] got into the same map as [Wurms] and then had to switch to another overflow so we can run in English and we lost a bunch of people in the process, time as well. And ofc, a bunch of people were asking for help with POIs in that new overflow.

Quoting Kinsmir.5623 from the thread that was pointing out issues Megaboss communities are having with the Megaserver, but was brutally censored locked by moderators.

“Well, i already said +1 but i will repeat it again.
Today with the mega servers enabled on Bloodtide Coast made it even worse.
A lot of folks from [DV] got in the same instance with [Wurms] both trying to organize it on the same megaserver.
What caused for us ( [DV] ) to move everyone to empty overflows and caused a lot of people to miss out of our entire run and a lot of problems with people being unable to join.
It also caused for a lot of people of the german population getting mixed with us because they wanted to do a run with [Wurms] and their mega server/instance was full.
We ended doing our run in multiple language (english on teamspeak and german/france in map/local).
At this rate this community is going to down really fast if it stays as it is, because some people got already hostile about it.”
____________________________________________

This incident seriously hindered our attempt at the Triple Headed Wurm. Not to mention that there were people in the map asking for help with POI and skill points who we’re not doing the Wurm event, but were taking up precious map space.
And before you say “well, can’t the two guilds work together?”. No. Not in this case. [Wurms] is a German megaboss community and they organise their runs on TS on German. Which is perfectly fine, why shouldn’t they. That is why we had SERVERS FOR DIFFERENT LANGUAGES IN THE FIRST PLACE, RIGHT? But, without a firm server or an instance to go to for the raid, we all get mixed up in this cluster of overflows. Hopping to an emptier overflow and taxiing 150 people is not an easy task.
We had a great streak of attempts going that would enable a wider range of people to do the Wurm on different servers and not just camp for 1.5 hours on Deso or their right overflow. Megaserver just destroyed our efforts.

Thank you, Mkoll and Noobix, for clearly voicing out the concerns of anyone in the megaboss business or caring about communities.

As an officer in a smaller megaboss guild ([DV] on EU) that depends on alliances and general server-pride and solidarity that brought people together to learn and tackle these “hard-core” events in the first place, I can say Megaserver is proving to be an obstacle to us. Schedule isn’t very suitable as people are at work/school etc and we, like gw2comm and TxS are used to later raids.

Additionally, while bigger megaboss guilds might not have had this problem, a fixed server as a guiding point is crucial for megaboss organisation for smaller (often intra-server) megaboss guilds. The event isn’t done by one guild, but an alliance of several, plus the other people of that server and some guests that are willing to participate. (by ‘participate’ I mean, listen on TeamSpeak and learn from the experienced people explaining it all, and playing their part, i.e. not trolling or AFKing)
Without that firm meeting point that is a real server, the element of randomness that is introduced will seriously hinder the efforts of smaller megaboss guilds that did just fine before April 15th.

To the 1st post I would also like to add one more request:

• IN-GAME “ALLIANCE BUTTON”
  A way for different guilds to connect in game.
  gw2community is composed of several guilds, TxS and TTS are clusters of guilds, both on EU and NA. There are also alliances on different servers gathered for the sole purpose of “doing Teq at home”. Without firm servers to go to, there is nothing ensuring that guild members get into the “right overflow”. So, if AI must be used instead of players’ choice, please note that a guild and F-list do not make all our social interactions in the game. Recognition of alliances would not solve all the problems of the Megaboss Community, but it would help us greatly.

My gaming experience is ruined as well. I was loud in raiding concerns about this before April 15th, but now it’s much worse than expected. Instead of time for adaption, they rolled them out in a lot of maps already and I am now sure how the guild/friends system works. Our guild chat is full of requests for a taxi to the right server/overflow, I am surrounded by completely unfamiliar guild tags, we cannot do Karka as a server any more, guild missions were a disaster since every mission was started by some other guild etc etc.

jsannn.8197:

no Cursed Shore is “megaservered” too, just played there.

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/

lordkrall.7241:

hedix.1986:

Already in Sparkfly?! But I was under the impression we’ll still be safe for some time until this rolls out by the end of 2014.

Well, it’s official now – April 15th update that is killing one of the only interesting things left to do in this game.
Guess I’ll need to quit sooner than the end of 2014.

They have never given us an actual time-line for the roll-out though.

It was basically: We will roll-out it over time in order to not crash the system.

Nowhere did they even suggest that it would not happen to certain maps before the end of 2014.

Wrong, krall. Such a this was indeed suggested: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-megaserver-system/

“How Is the Megaserver System Being Rolled Out?

With the launch of the April 2014 Feature Pack, we’ll be activating the megaserver system on our level 1–15 maps, main cities, and the PvP lobby. We’ll monitor and test the system to verify that everything works correctly. Later in 2014, we’ll activate our megaserver technology across the entire world of Tyria."

Already in Sparkfly?! But I was under the impression we’ll still be safe for some time until this rolls out by the end of 2014.

Well, it’s official now – April 15th update that is killing one of the only interesting things left to do in this game.
Guess I’ll need to quit sooner than the end of 2014.

^^
15 Charrs salute Thareen with a +1

Morrigan.2809:

I haven’t actually seen any of my friends or people from my server, the maps are completely over run by random people.
there are trolls everywhere and the Tower of Babel is not funny.

I have never felt this alone in the game, which is ironic because people are like ants- everywhere.

I want my lovely server and our community back

<3 It’s like you read my own feelings on this matter.
:(

Hopefully about MegaServers.

Also, Guild alliances and some in-game feature that will recognise guild alliances.

saalle.4623:

There is no trait hunting since they add it soo cheap to buy it.I was hoping that i will have reasons to go and do dungeons now (for those traits) but when i saw that its just 3 golds…i didnt want to bother i bought them all.That is only thing about this patch that disappointed me,traits should never been able to be bought or at least not this cheap.Megaserver is awesome as well as everything else in this patch.

1) paying GOLD for traits goes against the no-grind policy that promoted the game in the first place. End game should be interesting content, not revamping the game so that you need to level / fully bring your character to its bets all over again.

2) Dynamic events being turned into dull schedule goes against the no-grind policy and ruins the concept of “dynamic events” that promoted the game in the first place.

3) If you think MegaServer is “awesome”, I conclude that you are not a part of an active server community or cross-server guilds and guild alliances that tackled megabosses.
For some of the many game-breaking aspects of the MegaServer system and the big concerns raised by the core playerbase, please have a look at this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-Alliances-on-Upcoming-Patch/first

Reporting a major bug with the 15th April update.

It’s been identified and called MegaServer. It breaks the game as we knew it. Please fix/remove it. Thanks.

Cursed Shore is still safe.

VoiceOfUnreason.5976:

Whether they’re working on something or not, they need to say something. Going this long without acknowledging the feedback threads they themselves created is really harmful to their relationship with their customers.

Exactly. The longer the time of no response and questions to some pretty important concerns the community has raised, the sooner will the core playerbase start to dwindle.

Kate Soulguard.7132:

Well… I suppose……. we could all get together and roleplay in WvW…

As a WvW player – oh gawd no. :p Buuut, I would join you, it would be an excellent way to demonstrate against the MegaServer.
Not to mention that there will be even more “snap out of it Anet” threads from WvWers that would help us preserve the original game with server communities.

There would be no disappointment if ArenaNet didn’t decide to “fix” the things that aren’t broken and destroy the server communities and guild alliances we’ve built in the last 1.5 years.
Negative feedback is important – it is our only was to show Anet how displeased we are with where they are heading, and how to keep us in the game. Personally, I’m leaving GW2 as soon as / if MegaServer gets implemented everywhere. But I like the game as it was before 15th April, and would continue playing if we get our servers back. Forum feedback is telling the devs how to keep a player like me. If they ignore it (like they’re doing right now), they will lose their playerbase. If they hear the feedback and concerns of the great part of the community (please check this thread), they will be able to act on it and possibly keep the players playing.

My negative feedback is not to “belittle the devs”, it’s to provide consumer feedback and try to keep the product that I enjoy, without it being changed into some other game.

Oh where are those simpler days when the only bad thing in GW2 was Scarlet!?

Sadly, server bashing is now common in any map plagued by the Megaserver. Just like it happened in previous overflows at big events. Just like we predicted it will happen once our established communities are destroyed by Anet.
Worst. Feature. Ever.

Excellent post OP, thank you for expressing all of the issues the Megaboss Community is now facing in a concise post.
As an officer in a smaller Teq/Wurm guild that depend on its within-server alliances, I’m also very concerned about the MegaServer / glorified permanent overflow. As there is no in-game “alliance button”, our raids will be at jeopardy. And since we’ve been learning and teaching and and got a community with months of experience, this works really well atm. Megaserver will create and additional randomness element that will make it more difficult for our guild to play with allies. Not to mention that because we’re a dedicated megaboss guild, we haven’t researched missions and even though we’re running raids on Gandara, we have people from many other servers in the guild.

Star Ace.5207:

Aeveron.6194:

By the way Agent you forgot to mention that the average player of this game doesn’t want to improve his skill, doesn’t want to cooperate properly with other people.
-snip-

Surely you must be trolling-where did these average figures of “selfish leeches” who “don’t want” to learn to play and cooperate with others come from? Even personal anecdotes of mine (which admittedly are not valid proof) tell me otherwise.

Don’t state personal hate and bias against others (so-called “average population”) as facts. Plenty of great players that want to help others around.

Since you have that much faith in the average GW2 player, I deduce that you either a) haven’t played events like Tequatl, Marionette etc while they were new, or b) that you were just fortunate enough to end up on a server / overflow with a group of well organised players who knew what they were doing.
Aeveron is absolutely right, sadly.
Average players run poor builds for PvE and worse of all – they refuse to listen when organisers try to explain and teach what kind of builds or skills are beneficial for the event. This was also an issue in non-Megabosses, like Marionette and Knightfall. A lot of people AFK which scales up the event and others suffer. Then there are people who simply refuse to join Teamspeak – and lets face it, Wurm is impossible without a voice comm. I would separate the GW2 population into People-Who-Care and AFKers/trolls who do not put in any effort. And there is a lot of the later ones.

bri.2359:

The RP community expressed immediate concerns and Anet responded, in some fashion, claiming the megaserver will not hit city maps, at least not for now. The RP community is assumed to be around 10k players across EU/NA servers., and Anet seems to value there presence. Perhaps they buy a lot of gems, who knows??
The mega-boss slayer guilds represent around 6-7k players across EU/NA servers. So far all our concerns have been ignored by Anet. Perhaps we do not buy enough gems to warrant consideration, or, we are not the sort of players Anet wants to keep in-game.

6-7k is just the members of TxS and TSS alliances on EU/NA. There are other smaller guilds forming alliances on EU, I presume NA as well, that have been running organised megaboss raids since September. So I would guess it’s over 10,000 players.

Turin.6921:

…without even thinking what anet seems to have in mind.

1. They actually have faith in their megaserver system

Let me stop you right there. These are the people who also had and kept having faith in the Scarlet character.
Hence the concern and lack of faith in their “promises”, especially since this move (and the consequence of the megaserver – the scheduled events) is breaking their business model of Dynamic Events that brought so many people over, they’re removing players’ choice, and they are wrecking the server communities that have been established in the last 1.5 years.

When it comes to the schedule of megabosses, especially Tequatl and Wurm, it is clear that they haven’t spared a single thought about the Megaboss Communities – allied guilds that organise those raids on both EU and NA. Guilds that do megabosses are specialist guilds – not your usual sunday missions main guild. They have one purpose – to organise a boss raid. That does not include grinding for merits and influence and total representation etc. This thread explains those issues really well: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-Alliances-on-Upcoming-Patch/first

Peacenote.1698:

With this update, and the megaserver system especially, I also feel ANet is abandoning what made GW2 great to begin with. I’m concerned not only for the game I know and love, but for the MMO industry in general, if it is indeed true that most are going to a system like this.

I want world permanence. I want a living world. It’s why I play MMOs, and it’s why I’ve stuck with GW2 all these years. GW2, until now, has taken the open world to the best place we’ve seen so far as MMO gamers (or at least of the games I’ve tried), and now we’re taking a huge step backwards.

There has got to be a way to improve on the people-based perspective being done by the megaserver without removing the concept of a home server, a world where my actions have impact and permanence, and a world where the success or failure of dynamic events has lasting effects. But, if we can’t have both, I’d rather see a system that builds on the dynamic events, since it makes GW2 unique as you’ve said, than one that automatically puts me in a map that is always populated.

I cannot like this enough. All very good points.

yelena arnica monta.2541:

WE ALL PROMOTED THE GAME BECAUSE WE THOUGHT THIS WAS FANTASTIC NEW WAY TO PLAY…. and now with these changes I am not so sure… I might not be playing the game by the end of the year… So hopefully it will pan out differently.

Same. Once/if the MegaServer system is fully implemented, it will be bye-bye GW2. The reasons I play are my really nice server community, my guild and our guild alliances, and Megaboss organisation. After Megaserver, all that’s left will be WvW and it’s not enough. I will miss the game though and would keep playing the game as it is now.

OP has a really good point. Some kind of survey of opinions is absolutely needed here. Implementing such a game changing feature that really turns around the social and event aspects of the game without a lot of notice and without asking the playerbase, and with so many people against it, it would be a sign of good will and willingness to listen to your consumers if we are given a choice.
I bet many people would only choose MegaServer for it’s only positive aspect: the underflow idea on low-pop maps; otherwise it is not needed. And from the discussions in my guilds and the feedback here on the forums, I don’t see that anyone is happy with the event timetable.

MegaServer is essentially about taking away the choice: the choice of community, the choice of playing in an actual place instead of random cloud of overflows, the choice of doing the “dynamic” events when and how we want.
= exact opposite of the announced “social play”
Dynamic events are on a timetable and thus no longer “dynamic” and this breaks the game as we new it, which was one of the main selling points for GW2. Long established communities will also be gone – players need to come from somewhere and our communities will be torn apart – UI cannot choose for us!

Personally, I will stop playing once MegaServer system is fully implemented because this is not the game I signed up for. I would like to keep playing GW2 as it is now though and I’m disappointed that it is being taken away from us.
Giving us some sort of choice in this would go a long way for the community to re-gain faith in you, ArenaNet.

SkylightMoon.1980:

and has Dynamic events in each zone, having a lot of players is crucial. Because dynamic events alone dont give a world the living feeling, but the players actively participating in these events, through these chains, are what give it this feeling.

It is silly to see that people think that this will bring liveliness to the game. Think about it, zones are empty because there is no decent content, that’s why nobody goes to Snwoden or Timberline. Megaserver is not likely to change this – majority of players that farm world bosses etc will still be in their boss-chain trains, only waiting and zerging from one to the other with even more brainlessness and even less communication. And all this comes at the great expense of the waypointing system becoming broken, Orr immersion and story going to waste and Megaboss communities having much lower chance at doing their raids due to awkward spawn windows (Anet, 6pm is when ppl come home from work!). Who knows how expensive guild spawn will be, and why should we need them?!? We did this Teq/Wurm as a server community!

Fiontar.4695:

This isn’t much different than the way GW2 has always handled things. It’s just a much more aggressive form of Overflow, where each server no longer has it’s own primary instance of each game zone.
…

There are short term benefits for those who lament how empty many of the game zones often appear, but it’s just an outgrowth of the reality that the game is failing. Losing players in general, while also embracing “Adventure by Checklist” content strategies that have done nothing but destroy exploration of the vast game world and amplified the population issues for the game zones.

The game isn’t dying because game zones feel empty; game zones feel empty because the game is dying. It’s dying because of the horrible Living Story strategy and the way it sucked up all the development resources that were supposed to go into providing a flow of fresh world content that would have given players a reason to keep revisiting the zones in the greater game world.

Megaservers are a further symptom of the game’s woes and a band-aid for dropping world populations that may just accelerate the loss of players, while trying to hide those losses by pooling people together on as few instances of each zone as possible.

True, low population zones are empty because players do not have a reason to go there once they’ve initially explored them (except looking for guild Bounty) – look at Timberline Falls. Even better example – Lornar’s Pass is once again dead after the Marionette event is gone!
ENGAGNING CONTENT, and NOT MERGERS will make a zone more alive. I predict low pop maps to still have very few players as of this patch.

AcidicVision.5498:

But either way, Anet should know that that is the way they are making their customers and fans feel. This is how they made customers feel back with Ascended introductions and I think we can all pretty much agree that fiasco is a scar on GW2 history thus far. It may not have turned out that bad in the end because players can largely ignore its existence; however, people left because of those changes. People are still mad about its inclusion. And that incident still comes up as an example of Anet doing an about face on their core design principles and being out of touch with their players.

History is repeating itself. Your customers are telling you what they want. What they need to continue paying your bills. And the silence we get back is deafening.

I wouldn’t compare this change with the Ascended gear. While one can continue with the overall play completely without ever equipping an Ascended weapon (unless you plan high-end Fractals), the game-change that will follow the inclusion of the Megaserver system has a much greater scope. We will not be able to ignore it, like we could ignore the grind for the Ascended. The choice will fully be taken away from us. Community and gameplay style as we knew them will be gone. We’ll face a new game.

But yeah, I do agree with you that if this goes through, people will leave, prob in bigger numbers than before. And ignoring the concerns and questions from the community (a lot of which are set up in the constructive CDI form!) is not helping.

Future of LFG:

selling COF open instance spot, 1g

“Dynamic Events” – Pre-Events = Timetable Events
…
= Grind-Train
…
=/= not what this game was supposed to be about, not what we signed up for

Thank you for your post, Samuel, but I am now a bit confused. Could you please clearly explain certain points?

• When you said this will roll out in low-pop maps and PvP area, does this mean it will not be implemented to Cities as of 15th April?
• Can you please specify which maps can we expect to be affected by this as of the feature patch on 15th April? (Assuming Timberline and Snowden) As someone heavily involved in the megaboss community, this information is very important to me and my guild and alliances.
• Around what time of the year is Anet planning on releasing this to more maps, and again, which maps when? Just roughly speaking.

CONCERN:

MegaServer is a complex system, so we will be closely monitoring its deployment. We will make adjustments to our plan in accordance with the results of the roll-out.

From monitoring the feedback threads these past days, as Megaserver is making me consider whether to abandon GW2 or not, most of players’ concerns are NOT about low-population maps, nor the PvP lobby. We are mostly concerned about Cities and more populated maps where we actively run events with our server communities.
So, please consider that the feedback you get now from only low-pop maps does not reflect our main concerns about the whole Megaserver system.
Those concerns largely deal with: 1) breaking the established server communities (F-list ad guilds do not make up all social interactions), 2) more randomness in Wurm/Teq organisation, 3) no more in-game events “meet at server X at Y pm”, 4) fixed world boss schedules, 5) waypointing issues, 6) RP.

It is great that you guys are fixing low-pop places and the response should be good there, but imo it comes at a big cost-to-benefit-ratio when you include all those issues (1-6). So there will be no true feedback until this is implemented in Orr, Megaboss maps and dungeon maps and Cities as WvW rallying places.

Brisban might be an interesting case though. It is very low-pop now, but if / when the Living Story hits (cough Marjory’s sister’s assignment), this will be a whole different issue. It would be crucial how the Mega-overflow system deals with mass flux of LS players that usually created overflows like at Knightfall or Marionette. Brisban (maybe) with the new LS player boom might be a good testing ground, if you must continue with this Beta-test of the game a year since release.

Vol.7601:

Anything short of complete removal of the scheduled events will be a disappointment.

Agreed.

Palador.2170:

A day late to reply to my own thread. Heh. Sorry about that.

Okay, here’s what I think of the whole patch. “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”

We wanted a wardrobe? Fine, but it’s going to be painfully expensive to use.

We wanted Underflows? Fine, but they’re non-optional and will screw up waypoints and dungeon access.

We wanted to wear town clothes in combat? Fine, but only some, and at the cost of no more mixing and matching to make our own outfits.

We wanted to stop getting overflowed out of events? Fine, but now they’re on a daily timer that may put some constantly out of your reach. You can trigger the big ones, if your guild is big enough and advanced enough and willing to pay the price.

We wanted two Sigils in two-handed weapons? Fine, but it comes with a rebalance of Runes to deter mix-and-matching for builds, and mix-and-match with them is totally gone in PvP.

We wanted something done about the poor balance of underwater PvP? Fine, the only map that even had water in it is gone. Problem solved.

I see merit to a lot of what they’re doing here, but… I’m not sure if the costs are worth it.

Hah, pretty much what people have been asking for, but not thought through, with some pretty harsh consequences.
Arenanet adds a whole new meaning to the phrase “be careful what you wish for”.

Vol.7601:

This single update is the WORST thing they are doing to the game, and it will result in a lot of people quitting. Never before have I seen a large majority of players angry about such a feature if you read through the official feedback thread.

Sadly, I agree. Will give it a shot, and I hope beyond hope devs come to their senses and abandon this on the grand scale by the end of the year. Experimenting in map 1-15 is fine – they’ve proven we are playing a glorified Beta version, since the official release. But once / if this is truly implemented, the game will be a fully different game from the one I signed up for, and it will be bye-bye for me. I will miss GW2 as it was though, and I’ll miss my server.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Zergs are a problem with open world content, but empty areas isn’t a solution for that. Better event design is.

Indeed. Even with server merges and mega-overflow-cloud, areas like Timberline and Snowden will be near-empty because there is nothing to do there once you’ve first explored them. More content is the solution for low pop, megaserver isn’t.

emikochan.8504:

It already prioritises putting you with people on your own server, what’s the problem… If you’re part of a community, you should have people in that community in your friendslist / guild, again what’s the problem.

Not everyone in your server community is in a F-list / guild. And this only prioratizes, but doesn’t put you with those people with 100% certainty! The problem is that it TAKES THE CHOICE AWAY, and over a year down the line, this is a very poor development that drastically changes the game we initially joined.

jaka.9635:

So what will happen with the gathering nodes, like orichalcum and ancient wood?
Since there wont be main server anymore, the nodes will change each time we login with a different character?

Sadly, gathering will become much much much more tedious. No more node charts either. I expect prices of Ori / ancient wood to go up ridiculously high once / if this is implemented in lvl15+ maps.

Sirendor.1394:

My concern: zerg fest everywhere. Please tell me this won’t be the case… or I need a new game.

Yup, that will indeed sadly be the case. Hence the +225% increased population. Which is fine for bigger stuff, but Behemoth will go down before you can press 1.