Guild Wars 2

LaurenLizzy.8429:

Jayne.9251:

In WvW we call outnumbered “a target-rich environment” … or “MORE LOOTBAGS FOR EVERYONE!”

Ah hahaha .. this is a major necro of a thread.

Really they hide then kill us before we can barely get a hit. What server are you guys on you sound like you’re having a better time of it then us? So sorry about reviving an old thread, it’s still a problem, at least I think so.

Just to clear up they play normal WvW and not EotM for what they’re referring to.

Anyways since the team/servers in EotM is based on what color they have in WvW that week, it is largely random for most of them. So there isn’t a clear solution what server to move to. BlackGate is the one that have the highest chance to be green each week but it is in no way set in stone, and it is also full so you can’t transfer there.

Also, people transferring to try to be on green is also a part of the problem of why it isn’t any fun to play as red/blue. The more people that do the same, the less fun it is for anyone on blue/red to play.

Most commonly the problem isn’t that red/blue has less people, but that green/blue/red fights, and one of them wins (often the green), and then all the players on red/blue just quits, logs out, goes back to PVE, or something else. Often they try to find other “instances” of EotM and see if it is the same there.

I’ve seen a bunch of times when the other colors Red/Blue wins the initial fights, and Green and the other color leaves the map instead. But it is less common than Green winning.

In EU Seafarers Rest used to have stacked so much people onto that server, that whatever color SFR was on, won EotM without any contest. From what I’ve heard, it seems they broke up, and is in line with other servers again.

(To be fair, the largest problem with balance in EotM is that people leave if they lose, and then more leave, and then more. As long as that remains, nothing ANet can do to fix it.)

Johje Holan.4607:

joneirikb.7506:

Johje Holan.4607:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

BAITness.1083:

joneirikb.7506:

The linking system sure doesn’t seem to work very well with Glicko. Uncertain just how fast glicko reacts to changes these days, but it might be unavoidable to have Glicko reset, or at least a partial naturalizing of the glicko scores on new links ?

After all, the Glicko score represents the status the server used to have before linking or the previous link. Each link basically creates an entirely new situation.

I don’t know the number-crunching of Glicko, so don’t know how it would work with the current “faster change in glicko”, it might just end up making the winnder of T4 shoot into t1, get totally smashed, and get sent down to bottom of t4 again etc. So be careful what you wish for. :p

This is very true, and a real concern, but this linking thing is showing us some very surprising numbers. Right now the four-server-alliance is the most active WvW participant – by far. Comparing to BG, which is widely considered the most active server, the Quad server is about 40% more active (using kills + deaths as measure of activity). Part of this may be BG having an off-week and YB being absolute pros at avoiding fights at all costs, but the quad server is keeping a ridiculously high level of activity. It is rolling at a monstrous 1.28 kdr. The only server with a better KDR right now is JQ+AR, and they are not nearly as active.

What I am trying to say is, from the limited info we have, it looks like the quad server could be a real contender in any tier, and maybe even be the best server for the duration of the pairing. It depends 100% on whether or not their activity level stays this high.

But unless we get glicko resets, we may never find out.

Since Friday reset of last week, CD has had at least one zerg of 40+ all 24 hours of every day. I think it was two nights ago that was the least active I had seen them but they still had a blob that was map hopping. Otherwise, they have one massive blob in EBG usually ranging from 50 to 70, a blob in their BL between 30 and 50 and smaller groups usually 20 or less hopping maps. This is every. Single. Day. Since Friday reset and this is 24 hours a day.

To be honest, I’m not horribly upset because it’s been relatively fun. There’s non stop action and I stopped caring about PPT a long, long time ago. Still, their numbers are totally absurd whether I care about the score or not. Tonight when we were attempting to take SMC for like the fifth time, I had to stand back for a second to appreciate how many people they had in that room. Our own zerg had two tags and we must have been 40 – 50 tops but CD just swallowed our zerg like it was nothing.

I’m going to go on record and say that I’m not at all mad about this match up or Anet’s poor server pairing but I will say that it’s pretty kitten ridiculous. I believe what I had said in the server pairing thread was “Good LORD, four servers?” And I was right to be concerned about it. That many communities mixed in to one means that one servers down time will be another servers prime time. Effectively making their zergs prime time numbers all hours of the day and night.

Hmm, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Maybe this is what we should be hoping for. (See my bolding of your post). This is what WvW should be.

Maybe we should be hoping Anet links even more servers together. Perhaps all we need is 3 tiers in NA.

Just to note that for many, this is already feeling like EotM.

Isn’t that because they’re too dominant and have no one to fight? If every server had 40+ people on 24/7 then there would be someone to fight.

Personally noticed it with the TC+Kain link, where I entered a WvW map and found lots of people and guilds I had no idea who where, what where doing, who was running private or open, and a bunch of other things. It felt just like going into EotM, and just watching a swarm of people you don’t know.

And then knowing that in 2-3 months, when you finally got to know some of them, things would change again, and you would meet new people.

Same thing is exemplified quite well in the T4 match-up, lots of servers mashed together, not only don’t I know most of the people, I don’t even know what server they are from, etc. 4 Servers trying to organize a team-speak and failing, and some wonder if it is really worth the trouble to later sort out all the accounts in 2 months again.

Simply put, the feeling of “community” is washed away, and you stick to your guilds instead. At least that is how I’ve reacted to this. This is exactly how I also feel when entering EotM.

I’m not against Linking, I think it has many good qualities and uses. But the more I experience it, I wonder why they don’t just mash us together into an EotM system and call it done (I know some servers are large enough that they don’t need to be linked, and thus won’t feel the same etc). Guess I’m just saying that the difference between being linked 2-3-4 servers and EotM is very small, you saying: “Perhaps this is how WvW should be?” and I think: “Like EotM?”.

Just food for thought, trying to highlight the perception of linking vs EotM, and how small the difference really is.

PS: Almost every time I’ve been in EotM I’ve been red, and gotten run over :p so nope!

On the whole I wouldn’t mind trying most of these, largely since I like variety. But this one stood out, and I’d love to try it just to see the feedback from the community, and how people handled it:

No Arrowcarts week

Johje Holan.4607:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

BAITness.1083:

joneirikb.7506:

The linking system sure doesn’t seem to work very well with Glicko. Uncertain just how fast glicko reacts to changes these days, but it might be unavoidable to have Glicko reset, or at least a partial naturalizing of the glicko scores on new links ?

After all, the Glicko score represents the status the server used to have before linking or the previous link. Each link basically creates an entirely new situation.

I don’t know the number-crunching of Glicko, so don’t know how it would work with the current “faster change in glicko”, it might just end up making the winnder of T4 shoot into t1, get totally smashed, and get sent down to bottom of t4 again etc. So be careful what you wish for. :p

This is very true, and a real concern, but this linking thing is showing us some very surprising numbers. Right now the four-server-alliance is the most active WvW participant – by far. Comparing to BG, which is widely considered the most active server, the Quad server is about 40% more active (using kills + deaths as measure of activity). Part of this may be BG having an off-week and YB being absolute pros at avoiding fights at all costs, but the quad server is keeping a ridiculously high level of activity. It is rolling at a monstrous 1.28 kdr. The only server with a better KDR right now is JQ+AR, and they are not nearly as active.

What I am trying to say is, from the limited info we have, it looks like the quad server could be a real contender in any tier, and maybe even be the best server for the duration of the pairing. It depends 100% on whether or not their activity level stays this high.

But unless we get glicko resets, we may never find out.

Since Friday reset of last week, CD has had at least one zerg of 40+ all 24 hours of every day. I think it was two nights ago that was the least active I had seen them but they still had a blob that was map hopping. Otherwise, they have one massive blob in EBG usually ranging from 50 to 70, a blob in their BL between 30 and 50 and smaller groups usually 20 or less hopping maps. This is every. Single. Day. Since Friday reset and this is 24 hours a day.

To be honest, I’m not horribly upset because it’s been relatively fun. There’s non stop action and I stopped caring about PPT a long, long time ago. Still, their numbers are totally absurd whether I care about the score or not. Tonight when we were attempting to take SMC for like the fifth time, I had to stand back for a second to appreciate how many people they had in that room. Our own zerg had two tags and we must have been 40 – 50 tops but CD just swallowed our zerg like it was nothing.

I’m going to go on record and say that I’m not at all mad about this match up or Anet’s poor server pairing but I will say that it’s pretty kitten ridiculous. I believe what I had said in the server pairing thread was “Good LORD, four servers?” And I was right to be concerned about it. That many communities mixed in to one means that one servers down time will be another servers prime time. Effectively making their zergs prime time numbers all hours of the day and night.

Hmm, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Maybe this is what we should be hoping for. (See my bolding of your post). This is what WvW should be.

Maybe we should be hoping Anet links even more servers together. Perhaps all we need is 3 tiers in NA.

Just to note that for many, this is already feeling like EotM.

I main Guard, and usually don’t run anything else in WvW. So if you see me, I’ll be that guardian that charges alone into the blob as Crummy tells "fake push". Every single time. Then the TS will be full of laughter, it seemingly never gets old :p

15 TS bugs and a bottle of rum!

Know the feeling, I got a bit sensitive hearing myself, so I can manage at most 30 minutes with TS, and then I just need to shut all sound off or I get a headache.

But I do like dropping in every now and then when the guild is actually trying to do something other than using the TS as drunken karaoke bar. :p

If it is Crummy leading in TS you’re mostly missing his drunken British/Australian accent, and that everyone are to busy squirreling to listen to him. It’s quite fun. :p

"The most organized un-organized drunken squirrel guild ever" -Rock, Guild Leader SIN

Problem is if someone installs a pack that that gives them a tactical advantage over others. Things like invisible walls on keeps/towers, so they can see players hiding behind. Or the good old Counterstrike example where everyone have big flashing red targets around their head, so it is much easier for you to know where to aim for head-shots, that flash through walls.

If you give players an option like this, they will find a way to gain an advantage because of it. And it will likely be impossible to check/find out, and stop.

EDIT: but if they let me mod away stealth.... I’d be tempted...

Borlis Eredon Crystal Kaineng = B.E.C.K. (Or PECK if you stat with pass)
Bronze4 Alliance/Way/Lyfe/Quaggan
Or my personal favorite: "Finally out of T1!"
"Quadjump" After an old friends of mine fascination with Rocket-Jumps in Quake 1 using the Quad-Damage boost. Mutually-Assured-Destruction.

The linking system sure doesn’t seem to work very well with Glicko. Uncertain just how fast glicko reacts to changes these days, but it might be unavoidable to have Glicko reset, or at least a partial naturalizing of the glicko scores on new links ?

After all, the Glicko score represents the status the server used to have before linking or the previous link. Each link basically creates an entirely new situation.

I don’t know the number-crunching of Glicko, so don’t know how it would work with the current "faster change in glicko", it might just end up making the winnder of T4 shoot into t1, get totally smashed, and get sent down to bottom of t4 again etc. So be careful what you wish for. :p

Kinda like the base idea, but can’t see a good way to implement it.

I keep thinking that we might finally have a use for the Centaur and Skritt areas in BL’s, to basically get bounties for going into these areas on enemy BL’s to look for bounties, would be interesting to finally have a reason to go there.

But on the other hand, what kind of npc would there be any point in hunting ? Veterans just die, Champions can be hard for most people to take down on various builds, and if they’re champions lots of people are going to zerg it... So scaleable Elite/Champion ? If they take too long to kill people get bored and ignore, if they’re too fast to kill you won’t have time for others to come and +1 for or against.

One thing I’d love to see is to somehow use 4 random of the PvP-test-dummy-AI’s that you can fight in heart of the mist, they actually fight a bit back, and fighting against random 4 of them at a time should be fun, and hard for most solo, and a decent fight 2-3.

(Granted I just want those AI scripts to be used somewhere in the rest of the game, because they’re actually fun to play against. Replace all the guard AI’s with those, I’d love it!)

Completely agreed on the amount of work either way. Was mostly pointing out that it doesn’t need a new mode to achieve what he wanted, and wouldn’t have to change any of the existing rules of the game to accomplish.

That, and I certainly would like them to create more *different* maps, instead of just more of the same style/type, we already got 4 maps in the same/similar style.

I personally would likely have been bored to tears on the map example I made above. I need my free movement to run around.

Xenesis.6389:

Teon.5168:

Xenesis.6389:

Sounds like a “battleground” idea to add separately, not something to replace wvw.

I could maybe see that, but I think Anet has a lot higher priorities than that right now.

Yup, they don’t have the time to build new systems for a completely new game mode at the moment, still need to upgrade the old stuff we have, wvw, spvp, dungeons, fractals, then living story soon, new legendaries some time this century, new raids, new expansion, when they’re quite clearly shown they can’t work on all of the above at the same time.

It’ll be nice to have battlegrounds at some point though, if they can manage to do something bigger than 5v5.

I would agree if ANet would actually have to build a whole new game mode for this, alas they don’t have to, all they need to do is create a single map for this. Granted creating a map isn’t exactly nothing, but still much less than a whole new mode.

WvW mode is actually amazingly flexible, and could easily adapt multiple more play-styles by adding more different maps, instead of repeatedly creating the same style of maps we got so far.

A lot of players just want constant action and wouldn’t mind sacrificing some of the other elements of the existing maps for that, a map like the one I suggested above would probably be popular with that crowd. Basically a running 2 front fight over towers/keeps, and if you get pushed back to your main keep you start building up handicaps the further you get pushed back so less numbers can actually fight back against the enemy. So you never feel useless or hopeless.

It would definitively not be a map for the more “serious WvWer”, this is also why I thought it would perhaps work better under eotm than traditional wvw.

Too early to cry wolf just yet, we have to see what happens when the 4way shed some fair-weathers, and the other servers fair-weathers comes back.

DeWolfe.2174:

joneirikb.7506:

One of their goals with linking is to make servers similar enough, that we can match up against different servers and still have a chance. The glicko is holding that somewhat back, but essentially this also depends on them getting the linking right.

And as TylerB hinted at once before, this would have been much easier if we had twice as many servers with half of each current servers population. Since then they could match servers up much easier for more “equal” numbers etc. (Not balanced, never balanced. The fair weathers runs off, and numbers get skewed, as always)

Except, being a free thinking American, I want to create my own team in a competition. I don’t want Anet to decide who wins and who loses for us. You realize for them to create the pairings, they must start with a conversation on who’s going to be in each Tier? That’s no longer a competitive game mode at all.

Exactly! That is one of the core things, WvW isn’t competitive, and honestly never was. Linking does remove it further from being a competitive game than it used to be, but there was already too many things designed to ruin any sort of competition in the first place.

Creating your own team, control over who gets to play and who doesn’t, equal numbers on both sides, and a static team are core concepts for a competitive sport, and WvW never had any of that.

Linking removes:

• Any remaining control players have over the teams (wasn’t much to begin with)
• Stability of numbers on a team
• Communications (with new linked servers)
• Glicko becomes even more useless since it doesn’t represent the link

Granted, the game wasn’t very competitive to begin with, considering the complete lack of control over amount of players, play time, play style, builds, skill levels all over the place, fair weathering, and so on. Some servers managed much better than others with this, but in general it is “Herding Cats”, and those trying to “control” the game mode like a strategy game, has generally found that other players will quit and do their own things.

On the other hand, what they have done is give more players to play with and against. And as PopeUrban said in another thread:

It’s designed for players to constantly have some massive epic fight they can run to within three minutes, not for those fights to have any long term consequences.

Coming from a small server myself, I keep thinking that the linking feels just like EotM. And both when we where linked up with TC which outnumbered us so much I barely if ever say anyone else from Kaineng. But this new 4way link also makes me feel like I just stepped into EotM again. At this rate, I’m starting to wonder “What’s the difference? Would it really make much difference if they made the rest of WvW into EotM at this stage? Would I notice any difference?”

PopeUrban.2578:

… The mode is built specifically to encourage giant zerg battles first and foremost, not to simulate a working battlefield. “more fights” is an obviously higher design priority than “meaningful objectives” because WvW is the single session popcorn version of a PvP siege game. …

Man, I just love reading your posts ! >_< Can I subscribe to your newsletter ?

One of their goals with linking is to make servers similar enough, that we can match up against different servers and still have a chance. The glicko is holding that somewhat back, but essentially this also depends on them getting the linking right.

And as TylerB hinted at once before, this would have been much easier if we had twice as many servers with half of each current servers population. Since then they could match servers up much easier for more "equal" numbers etc. (Not balanced, never balanced. The fair weathers runs off, and numbers get skewed, as always)

Never was intended to be. So I guess working as intended ?

Teon.5168:

I have to agree with those that posted that the OP’s suggestion is basically a new game……not wvw in GW2. Too late to make this sort of game mode change in GW2, as it would appeal to a completely different set of players.

Op’s suggestion would work much better in a game that was being developed with WvW as a major part of the game, rather than an afterthought….as Anet did it. I could maybe see the down the road ‘Camelot Unchained’ being able to do something like what the OP suggests.

Well, in this case you could actually solve all this with a single new map, no need to actually change the game mode or anything.

But it would be a map that would work very different from what we’re used to from WvW currently. And it might work better with EotM than WvW as things stand, since it focuses more on constant action than tactics.

But I can completely understand why you would want to skip that evil looking heart-crushing wall of text above, I would have done the same if I could.

Zuko.8021:

Imagine if WvW can be turned into a mode. A mode that would put a defensive side and offensive side.

The defensive side would have to defend 3 castles and a certain amount of keeps. The castles do not connect internally but there is a starting point for the defensive side to rally behind the castles.

The offensive side on the other hand would have to only attack but setting certain camps or keeps as a safe hold for their rally.

Each side would consist of two servers each meaning two ally servers vs 2 other servers. Having commanders defend three castles that will be attacked.

The map wont be like WvW where its so open that you can skip the enemy or go getting points for taking empty castles or keeps without a fight. Both teams would be forced to fight of course one more defensively than the other.

Once that match is over then the teams will swap from defensive to attack and vise versus.

I hope Anet can take a look at this and maybe take it as a suggestion and add some thing like this with their great ideas and developers. It would probably bring back some players who knows.

Added line breaks for easier reading.

---

It sounds like what you want is more of a linear map between 2 "teams", where you can push back and forth. Sort of a map with a single big lane where each team starts on the opposite sides, and with structures, keeps, and towers etc closing off each area. Thus creating a "conflict zone" system, where people will be fighting over one specific tower or keep at a time.

If team A lose a keep, they have to fall back to the previous structure (tower for ex), and team B will get to hound them all the way, and start laying siege to the next structure (tower). This system gives less freedom but focuses/directs the action much more into these "conflict zones". At the loss of the freedom of movement we currently have in WvW.

This kind of map would lead itself well to a handicap system, so at the center (SMC for ex) there would be 0 handicap, and everyone would be on an even standing. But the further back you get pushed, the more map-inherent handicaps you get. These can be anything from geographical advantages, to better siege spots, unique defensive siege, more or harder npc’s, or other dangers etc, like nasty bridges that creates focus points etc.

This could be so hard that at the very last structure 1-2 people might be able to hold of a single map blob. And that last structure should be super easy to retake for the "home team" at that side.

This system can also work with 3 teams actually, by forming the map into a Circle form, where you get to fight against both other teams, one on each front. And get pushed back to your last keep which guards the entry to your spawn. If you lose that, then you get pushed into a running retreat toward spawn with towers with more and more handicaps like above.

---

All of this could be done with a single map, without the need to change the game mode.

The above idea is based around keeps and towers completely blocking progress to the next area/zone, so you need to batter through it. Optional ideas for making only some of them lock access to other areas, so roamers can still scout around somewhat. For example make towers block roads but not keeps. And towers can have extra walls that can be catapulted down to bypass etc. This is a bit up to taste really.

---

If we where to make a own new mode, I think I’d rather see something more like a competitive variant of WvW, something like a 40vs40 planned game, where 2 teams line up, set a time/date, and meet up. And do a 2-3-4 hours battle on different maps. Either a SMC style siege, or a full on full fight in ruins or something.

Would let larger guilds and guild alliances try to be actually competitive in a WvW environment. Setup an make teams, train and setup comp, make plans, voice coms, organize etc. And then do a 2-4 hours Match against another equally determined enemy. Sounds much cooler than a pve raid, it would actually put in the elements WvW lacks to be considered competitive/sport etc.

---

This rant was brought to you by a bored guy that is trying to procrastinate because he hates packing stuff for moving.

As stated above the reason for the 5 target limit is technical in nature.

Theorizing on what might happen if we could affect it:

From what I’ve heard from those that played WvW at launch, there was no target limit, and it created a different kind of blob meta, where everyone was stacking on water fields, to blast healing so nobody died. So removing the target limit might have a completely different outcome than expected.

I’ve before suggested linking the Outnumbered "buff" to give increased number of targets on abilities. Anywhere from 7-10 targets total. This "probably" (Since I have no technical numbers) would work from a technical point of view. But would let people affect more players, both defensively and offensively, when the enemy has larger numbers than you. Stand your Ground affecting 10 friendlies instead of 5, Fear Me! affecting 10 rather than 5 etc.

This might make outnumbered water-field spam a thing, dunno how effective it would have been. I don’t think this would effect server performance, since if you’re outnumbered you’re probably less than 40 players in the map.

On the whole I agree with those that comment that this game has way too much AoE damage on too short cool-downs. And if ANet toned down the amount of AoE’s, or put them on long cool-downs, or elite skills etc (instead of on skill #2 and #3 etc) this would become less a problem.

"Johje Holan.4607"

The fairweather effect. Just exacerbates #1 and #2. The QuadLinked servers may have had similar pops as the other linked servers in the previous weeks. But then something new comes along and people are like, Wow gotta go check out the 4-server link! And they suddenly have more people than ever before. Which demoralizes the other two T4 links and it gets worse.

This alone is probably why we will never get a fair and balanced WvW. The moment you wipe, or start losing in points, or lose your EBG keep or something. A bunch of players just log out, because they deem it pointless. As long as that happens, no matter how much ANet tries to even out population, re-linking, tries to change things. It won’t work.

This becomes even more apparent during "off-time", where 20 players can wipe 10 a couple of times, until most of them just log out or do something else. The last 4 players doesn’t stand a chance against the 20 enemies.

This certainly doesn’t feel like a war when everyone just stops and walk away every time they meet some resistance :p

lil devils x.6071:

joneirikb.7506:

"lil devils x.6071"

snip

snip

There really isn’t a "middle ground" between PvE and WvW outside of openworld PvP without full loot and no score. And the truth is they cannot compete with the current openworld PvP games as that is not their " niche". Gw2 has different modes instead. PvE for the majority, PvP for small scale PvP and WvW for large scale PvP. The way you make that grow is know your "niche", and try to be the best on the market for that, not try to be to the " be all" because all the " be all" winds up being is being the "empty" because neither side will be fully happy with that. If they want to grow PvE they make Great PvE. To expand their PvP, you make great PvP, and to make the best RvR you make it the best RvR.

The problem is they are not trying to do that, they are trying to be the " be all" and that means you lose your dedicated WvW players while still having PvE players not coming in and staying. All that results in is neither side being happy and still looking for what they want. If they make it the best large scale PvP on the market and it gets promoted as such, players will come as word gets around. They would have to start over entirely in their direction and undo much of what they have done already to accomplish that though because that would mean listening to dedicated WvW players first and start with that as a base, then bring in ideas from elsewhere and test it out with the dedicated players and see if those new idea work before fully introducing them live. You start with the dedicated players and then improve from there first. They have never done that.

So your idea to fix the mode is to make it even more niche, and target it at a specific population. Instead of working on the current "semi-sandbox" mode they got.

The question is how large is that population? Is it enough to be worth it? Is it enough to even fuel enough servers to make this feasible? And how many other players will be kittened at the removal of a game mode they enjoyed, or see it take a completely U-turn compared to what they wanted?

I honestly doubt you’d get enough new/old players in to compensate that, no matter how hard they marketed it as the new coming of RvR. It is to late in the games life, and too many direct competitors coming up. And that big a change likely wouldn’t be feasible for GW2, and more properly aimed at GW3. In that regard they *might be better off* just terminating WvW entirely, mash it into EotM and call it a day, and move those resources into making GW3 instead.

---

I’m honestly wondering if you would have enjoyed a mode that worked on example 40vs40 structured matches. 3-4 hours matches, pre arrange time, set up teams of 40 on each side, and battle it out. It would be competitive, focus on the communication, comp, classes, strategy/tactics, let you do proper sieges etc. Don’t know about map perhaps a slightly smaller version of EBG.

lil devils x.6071:

Chaba.5410:

lil devils x.6071:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

fishball.7204:

Free XFers don’t work and HoD historically showed that. T1 never destacked to move to HoD for free tourney win, it was always the other servers in lower tiers that shuffled into HoD to stack it big.

There is no incentive to leave T1 unless your entire guild moves off and you like them more than the server. Or you hate the queues (which once again, are almost non existent again).

Instead of trying to destack T1, they should get more people into WvW so that T2/3 are also T1 competitive. T1 is basically the last place with somewhat 24/7 WvW action on NA and trying to gut that seems like a poorly thought idea.

I sorta agree, that’s why I think they should have just merged servers to create what you’re talking about. However, the counter argument is that people don’t like "Tier 1 playstyle".

I agree. What players don’t realize it isn’t actually a " tier 1 playstyle", it is called a healthy and active large scale PvP arena instead. For a massively multiplayer game mode to be healthy and successful, it needs to have massive amounts of people enjoying it together. They do not seem to want it to be a large scale PvP battlefield arena at all.

---

You suggest that healthy means crowded. Yet players and guilds leave when there is a crowd and they can’t get through a queue. A true healthy WvW is when there is a mix of styles to attract a wide variety of player because *WvW is a sandbox arena*. People leave the lower tiers when the population gets too low to support large scale battles. People leave T1 when the population gets too crowded to support guilds who want to run on their own without being nothing more than a 15-man "havoc" or "gank" for a pugmander blob. Everyone has their own reasons for playing and seek different goals out of the sandbox. Crowds have a habit of enforcing/imposing only one goal on a sandbox.

Healthy =\= overcrowded though. Queues are a technical problem that could actually be solved, not one that is a problem that has to actually exist. WvW isn’t actually a "sandbox arena" due to their being an actual score. A sandbox PvP mode is open world PvP, like they have on some other games, which if implemented in this game means you could attack people in the PvE parts of the game world, but you cannot. WvW is a battlefield arena due to there being a score kept and actual objectives. In real "sandbox"
PvP zones, you can even build your own forts, there is no score and the players create their own methods of scoring against one another.

You do have different playstyles within though and all playstyles work together on coordinated servers. The Roamers, havoc scouts, and zergs all work together on the more coordinated servers as they should as they all perform different roles that are beneficial to each other if they are good at their positions on the field. They are all communicating and helping one another work towards common goals. often on the lower servers, players left because the guilds there would not do that. JQ, for example, had many groups of 15- 20 all working together and were coming in 1st place every week for a looong time.

The only ones who are not beneficial to the team are the player who ignore their teammates and just do whatever they want instead of try and play as a team. It is like you are standing in left field and they are screaming at you to throw the ball in and you are saying " but but I wanna to catch this butterfly instead" so when that happens of course people are going to start yelling wondering WTH ?!! they are doing. LOL

On coordinated servers they still have Roamers, havoc, scouts, and zergs , and all of those playstyles are done quite well, just those groups have to work together rather than just do their own thing and ignore the rest of their team. What is misunderstood is that it being a large scale battlefield arena means that there are not numerous types of playstyles within. Of course there are, just like there are different positions on a baseball field. Just because there is a large scale battle going on does not mean there are not havoc battles, roamer battles, and scouting going on as well. Of course there is because that is all apart of the mode. That being part of the mode does not change that it is still a large scale PvP arena with a score.

Every time I read one of these posts, my head just keeps translating it into:

"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."

What is siege ?

Really curious how they’re going to solve it this time.

There has been a lot of population shifts (as usual), and they might skip all or some of the T1 servers, and link up more smaller servers in other cases. But who knows, since we haven’t been told a thing yet

Most likely I won’t be able to check this until Monday evening anyways, as I’ll be away all weekend, but if I get curious enough I might grab a PC with internet for a few minutes and look it up. (I’ll be busy beating people up with Miniature Wargames instead!)

We will find out when it happens.

ANet (rightfully) don’t want to tell before hand to avoid more stupid band-wagoning. There will still be some though.

"lil devils x.6071"

snip

(Hey, I was just helping translating a post!)

Well I think this case/post could just as well refer to "Average WvW player" and "Average GW2 Player" etc, but I do see and agree with where you’re coming from. Have friends that throw a fit at the mere idea of going into a dreaded PvP zone! And wouldn’t be caught dead in a PvP based server in the games that has those.

But on the other hand, ANet said they specifically wanted WvW to be a link between PvE and PvP, to encourage both types of players to find a middle ground that they could learn to enjoy the other/itself. So obviously listening only to the hard-core WvW players are going to scare away the "Non-PvP players", and that means little to no new blood/recruits.

So where is this golden middle ground, to make WvW skill/strategic enough for the competitive/pvp crowd, while also keeping it interesting/fun/tempting enough for the most casual/pve/carebear/average/(whatever) players to want to come and try this ?

Always been a fan of the idea that higher risk = higher reward, so as you go into continually higher difficulty areas to get higher rewards, you eventually end up in WvW or PvP as the highest difficulty. But I can just imagine the pitchforks and torches at ANet’s office if they made WvW the most lucrative gold-mine in the game.

After all, if new people won’t join WvW, it will die by simple attrition. No matter what changes and updates are done to the game.

(Can just imagine, in 7 years, Puck sitting alone in the last Alpine borderland, vigilantly keeping an eye on the horizon, perhaps this will be the day that a new player will join the map, and not another tumble-weed!)

No rants silly :P

Have this weird feeling inside... not sure if I’m relieved or kind of sad :P

Legendary WvW Backpack: [The Bag of Salt]

Make it fill up with more salt the higher your wxp rank is.

cranos.5913:

It’s acceptable if the game is promoted as a primarily RvR game with some side pve just for leveling. It’s beyond unnacceptable in GW2 where WvW is a small niche game mode most ppl don’t even like.

Agreed with this. Would need to have been the plan from the start, with a different structure.

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

Lord of Rings.5371:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

DeWolfe.2174:

MaLeVoLenT.8129:

we have some staff in our guild and we’ve been in their testing events as you guys saw from Reyanas stream.

And this is why I think the game mode has never evolved for the better. Dev’s should be non partisan and they clearly are not.

Devs should play their own game. I’m not sure what you mean. They are in many many guilds. Some you don’t even know are devs but they could be playing along side you. ArenaNet team is a very nice team and they are gamers. I think if anything exploring their relationships with the GW2 community is helping them greater not hurting.

Sometimes “What You See Is All There Is”.

When developers develops a game based on the experience of gamers with 24/7 participation, they are creating a game for the 24/7 gamers.

So don’t expect mass appear for the game mode and don’t expect the game to be popular.

Even through PR would say otherwise, people would find out the expected participation level quickly and quit.

I’m confused by what you’re saying. “24/7” gamers? What do you mean by this. What do you also mean by “mass appear” and Guild Wars 2 is popular.

They dont expect 24/7 of participation. I’m not sure where you are getting this from when I say Arena Net also plays their game as well.

My reading of this: If the devs listen to people that are “above average dedicated” to the game, they will design a game for the “above average dedicated” crowd. And not appeal to the more average or casual players.

So, the more ANet listen specifically to the most die-hard-core WvW players, the more WvW becomes intimidating and less tempting for the casual/average gamer.

Grabs the “special” popcorn for sitting waiting for LilDev’s rant on this

Man I’m tired, sat reading through some pages of this, until it hit me "What the heck is a GoB?" had to check, and went like "oh, never cared for." That was a waste of my time reading this thread -_-’

Anyways, dragging PVE players through WvW tend to do bad things, even if I do miss my world completion of WvW maps. Like ArchonWing’s suggestion above, or something.

I think I threw away my gift of exploration, as I’d never going to use it anyways, and I’ll never bother getting a second one. Who the heck want one of those ugly skins anyways ? They’re literally the most ugly weapon skins in the game, even the starter weapon skins looks better.

Edit: Just had an idea, make GoB tradable, WvW’ers need another good income source!

Yeah...

I think the dynamic queue control could have worked great, if they also basically trashed the existing servers, and set up something new.

For Ex, setting up new servers entirely, with smaller population max, add the map queue adjustments, make transferring cheaper to low pop servers, and impossible to full servers.

Then you could do some more variations to types of match-ups.

(3server) Have one map that is only 3 servers vs each others.
(3link) Have another map(s) that are a link of multiple servers vs other links.
(3faction) And EotM as the third variation.

You would have a cluster of smaller servers, that could play in a few different ways without changing servers. And the dynamic queue adjustment would be quite useful in a few of these. Especially the 3server map would benefit from this, but also the 3link maps to some extent to force people to spread out, and if there are too many they would have to go to 3faction (eotm) mode, or transfer.

"Digomatic.4218"

I wish more people would post their thoughts on this because something needs done. This would limit some population issues. I’m not saying it is perfect or that it is the only thing but, it would help in areas and hurt in others.

Player bases traditionally hate "trade-off’s", they want both the cakes and get to eat them both. ANet themselves have guaranteed thought about several plans like these, but considered the back-lash they would get, and the angry fans to not be worth it.

TylerB posted a while back and asks that if they made a set of new exstra servers, if players where willing to de-populate from the larger servers to the new empty ones. The idea he wanted to push us towards was if we had several smaller servers, instead of a few stacked ones, it would be much easier to regulate the population in each match-up. And thus also the Queue’s.

In many ways it would have been a very good solution, except that people aren’t willing to de-stack servers. But that system would have removed most of the same problems that the Dynamic-Queue’s would have. At the cost of every server-link being 2-3-4 servers linked together, changed a bit every now and then, and felt more like EotM light.

"Digomatic.4218"

The linking is killing server identity and community anyway except for the top 6 tiers servers. Some people liked the smaller scale servers for small fights. This would support that as well.

Actually, with the "Full status" on all the host servers, it is killing even those servers in another way. When they re-link the servers (however they do it), it will cause a huge impact. People screaming and yelling, and hating it etc.

So many jumped to the linked smaller servers to play with the larger ones etc. So when they re-link using new populations, probably half of all the small servers are probably going to jump off to other servers again. Thus making the linking-by-population near impossible.

"Brace For Impact!"

"Apocolyptic.5068"

That ruins guilds and comminities more than this would.

They do give those guilds too much credit, they couldn’t have done all that alone.

But the general cycle of servers building up, getting new transfers because they show promise, then collapse to various reasons, and have to restart again. That is something that has happened to every server in some way over the years that GW2 been around.

Kaineng being the perfect example, as a bunch of guilds went from other servers down to Kaineng, ranked dead last. And rode the server up to rank #4 (iirc), and then abandoned it. The server spent 11 months falling down the ranks due to slow glicko back to rank #24.

So it isn’t unique to the top tier servers, or those guilds at all. It is just a natural cause of the server structure, and how player mentality (or flock mentality) works.

Apocolyptic.5068:

Sounds good to me. I would be ok with some per match-up balancing. Might actually spread out the SEA and OCX from being stacked on 1/3 of the servers in most of the tiers.

Here is where you can easily hit on one of the other problems I mentioned, that perhaps all the SEA/OCX players on a single server is in the same guild, or all of them are friends that have played together for years. So while forcing them to spread out, you’re also splitting Friends/Guilds/Community.

This is the kind of system that would have made much more sense/less negative impact, by having been included from the start. Adding it this late in the games life cycle, it is likely to cause quite a lot of grief. Same as most other obvious solutions to all problems related to servers.

"Lord of Rings.5371"

If the oppositions can make the game boring for you and your commanders, they are winning slowly because servers are weakened when their players stopped participating by either sitting out or transferring away.

Winning decisively is one way for a server to win because it demoralizes the oppositions.

Disengagement and playing defensively is a counter with the goal of make the winning server bored of frustration and quit.

An outnumbered server has no obligation to be played and served up as bags just because it is losing.

Morale is the single most powerful win in this game. If you make the enemy grow bored, tired, angry, etc and quit, then you gain more on this than any other way of fighting the enemy. In this aspect Griefing, Trolling, Ganking, Mesmer-portaling, Cheating etc are very good tactics in WvW, because they demoralize the enemy more than anything else.

How to fix this ? Don’t know, you’d have to try to make it un-rewarding to do these things. And different people find different rewards in those: Personal Gain, PPT, and plain griefing.

---

For Personal Rewards:

Possibly link reward track and other rewards entirely to actually fighting other players ? Not to ticks or attack/defend events ? But rather use the Events as multipliers to the reward track gains ?

The idea here would be that you gain reward track by fighting other players (win or lose, but probably a bit more for wining). But 5 people taking a tower or camp solo wouldn’t get anything or very little, unless there was someone defending it.

This would hopefully encourage people to go for fights, to be willing to engage. As you wouldn’t get any rewards from just avoiding them. Even losing you’d gain more on fighting, than trying to avoid it. That reminds me, probably should say no rewards from using Siege either, or at least extremely little. And the multipliers from the events should lead people to fight over objectives.

Probably a dozen problems with this.

As I understand this:

OP is not talking about the actual "Server Populations", so no blackouts to get more people on server.

He is talking about having a Dynamic Changing "Map Queue". So if Server A has 60 people, Server B has 20 people, and Server C has 10 people at the same time. The server would average it out at say 30 people max for map Queue. (Simplified)

This obviously wouldn’t hurt the Servers B+C since they’re under. But Half of Server A would be stuck in Queue. Hoping this would encourage them to move to other servers.

---

I don’t know how much it would fix, compared to how much grief it would cause. Obviously Server A in my example above would be very kittened that half their players couldn’t play, but even more severe is that friends and guild members etc might be caught in the queue, and thus making it even harder for them to play together.

Servers, Population, and Queue’s, are a very difficult problem with a lot of angles that needs to be considered. Or it would probably have been fixed already.

One of the root problems, is ANet’s general philosophy that you should never be penalized for having more players around you, that you should never be negative for having another player join. This indirectly leads to what we have in WvW where it causes a negative experience to NOT have more players at hand.

In a PvP-mode (semi competitive, I guess), where you will never have equal numbers, that just won’t work.

(This looks familiar, think I’ve suggested it once or twice in the past)

Which is to say, I think it is a good idea

3 servers in Bronze, can kind of see it, but also sad about lack of match variety.

For this to work, there would have to new servers, so they could reset the server populations, and try to limit it. I’d probably just always set the most populated server as full, no matter what, and have decreasing cost for gems for the others. Basically 6 servers: Full, very high, high, medium, low, Free!

There probably would need another safeguard against server stacking as well, but I’m not entirely sure what. (Unless we start going into dynamically adjusting map population/Queue’s with the other servers etc, which is going to cause lots of grief as well)

WvW has many "almost" Strategy game aspects, so a lot of players get caught up in those, and try to play it as a strategy game.

The game is a "Tactical" game, you can gain quite a few short term advantages by thinking and adapting. But not a "Strategical" game, as you can’t plan out over time when your (and enemies) "Players/Units" is very unpredictable.

But any game with "Points" and "Win condition" will make a lot of people focus entirely upon that aspect and try to win. Doesn’t mean the game is "Competitive", but those players become "Competitive". You can see this in as absurd situations as family sitting together playing Yatzhee, and 1 or 2 of them is getting way to rilled up about winning a game about tossing random dice.

But if anyone can make me a mod for StarCraft 1 where I get "random units" at "random times" that does "Their Own Random Thing", I’d love to try it for a laugh. I’m sure no one would call that a competitive StarCraft mod.

A very good summarization of WvW as a strategy game, go play an old RTS game called "Majesty" it is exactly how WvW would work as an RTS. Here is a "Lets Play" I found after some quick google, with some explanations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF-EyFUmcsE

The biggest limiter here is the map-limits/Queue’s. Not the server size. If you put 9 servers in a single Link against BG alone, BG might win that for the simple reason of 9 servers trying to get their entire guilds into a single map. Likely none of those servers is going to get a single organized guild into a single map.

Gudradain.3892

Regarding impact on the score: Honestly not at all. Used to feel I could make a difference back in T7-8 simply because the numbers where so low that every single person helped quite visually on the PPT tick.

After being linked up with T1-2 server, the PPT numbers are more like lotto numbers in the background. Just not paying attention to it, and I don’t really feel it would make any difference to the PPT if I play or log out.

Do you think that something over which you have barely any control on the outcome can be considered competitive?

Not at all, I’ve never considered WvW Competitive at all, it is by design casual. This quote says it better than I can:

"PopeUrban.2578"

Plenty of board games (most of which are, like WvW, all about territory control and PPT) don’t tally the score until the end.
Even in traditional sports, people have a tendancy to tune out if the game is already decided before the halfway mark if its obvious there’s no opening for a turnaround.
WvW is not a sport. It never will be. The number of players on the field varies by the minute, you have no control over the composition of the teams, and the participants can choose to leave the field at any time with no repurcussions.
Making sports analogies in relation to WvW is like comparing apples and oranges. It isn’t a sport, and it isn’t a competitive mode, and it never will be. It’s a casual, instant gratification interpretetion of open world siege pvp that only holds player interest as long as the moment to moment play remains interesting.
There are no instrinsic concept or benefits of ownership, no stakes, and literally nothing that makes “real” competition in a siege metagame work. It’s just a large population pvp map with objectives designed to shuffle players in to large group engagements. That’s all it will ever be. It is a meaningless war for no stakes that never ends, never benefits the victor, and never punishes the loser.
And that’s fine. That’s why the rewards revamp focused on personal reward rather than objective based reward. It’s the only logical reward structure for a system that has only ever been about personal gratification and playing war games in stead of attempting to simulate the decision making and tactical processes that go in to a more detailed and impactful actual war game.
If anything, the entire concept of matches and score could be removed from WvW and it would change nothing. The score doesn’t matter, winning or losing doesn’t matter, and there are so many variables inherant in its systems that ensuring “fair” or “competitive” match ups is an impossibility.

Gudradain.3892:

I don’t think he’s talking about dynamically adding map during the week but rather determine the number of map the current population is able to fill before the week start and keep it the same across all the week.

The problem with that idea (determine # of maps for the match-up) is again static, you still have say 3 maps in NA time and perhaps even queue’s, and then 3 maps at eu time with 20 people running around. So you’re just pushing the problem around.

If you first want to change the size of WvW, you should go for a dynamic solution right away, so it can adapt itself, to avoid these kind of problems in the future.

Say you make 2 “base” maps, and rather add on maps to that to fit the population, anything short of the old T7-8 before linking, should have enough population to have a few players on 2 maps for most of the day/night etc.

Old T7-8 Could have done just fine with a single map all week long.

Sweet Sanity.8593:

If they turned wvw into eotm that would be the end of gw for me as it would most wvw players.

To be fair, as the little server tacked onto a big host server in the linking right now. I don’t feel any difference from EotM.

That might or might not be why I haven’t bothered playing much lately. Not entirely certain, EotM has actually felt like a nice option compared at times. shrug

I absolutely agree that there is no way to remove Fair-Weather-Syndrome, we’re talking about human beings after all

But I do believe it could be combated, the above example of the linear/handicap borderland, so even if 5 players left vs 40 enemies, you could stand a chance and defend, at least once you’ve fallen back far enough. So even if the tower you’re defending is overrun you know you can spawn and run to the next tower/keep, and have a bigger handicap and can possibly hold them back.

Currently, when your blob gets out-blobbed most average players will just not play. And not everyone can or want to start roaming or running small groups to take things and back-cap etc. So they feel like there is nothing to do once their blob is gone, they need to be funneled into something they think "I can do this, I won’t just die, I have a chance to succeed."

Shallow perhaps, thems the breaks, the average player seems to love instant gratification.

Gudradain.3892:

Bringing another consideration to the question :

Is there enough oponents? I’m talking about the number of server.

Having 4 maps to fill means that there can be less servers than if you have 2 maps to fill for example.

Also, having more opponents (servers) can create more match up variety.

The problems with merging 2 servers to 1, in order to create less servers to fill more maps, is that we once again become vulnerable to “Population Stacking”.

The problem with having more or making more servers in order to increase the possible match-ups, is that we once again become vulnerable to “Population Stacking”.

Honestly, unless they can solve how to avoid Server-Stacking, there really is no point trying to correct the symptoms.

I have no idea how to do that, unfortunately. Honestly the simplest solution is using EotM, and change the way they combine servers to even out the population. But Fair-Weathering will still mess that up.

The most obvious solution, (and one that TylerB did ask us about once) is to make more servers, and split the population out among multiple servers, and reducing the pop cap on each server.

Example split BG into 5-6 smaller servers (random example, no metrics).

Then use the linking system to mash together 3-4 of the small servers together (based on secret ANet metrics) to create roughly similar size teams.

And if server populations would still grow/shrink to create full and empty worlds. They could just link them up differently, like 2 "full" vs 3 medium, and 4 small etc. Or mix them up even more. Unlike now where BG is probably enough for 2 full servers or something.

Tier 1 right now should be BG1 vs BG2 vs TC or something

---

Other options would resolve around ways to dynamically change and adjust the match-up. Like adjusting number of maps, map population, other stuff (dunno, the always unpopular buffing guards, gates, etc).

Things that in general would restrict someone from playing somewhere, if it is to serve any purpose at all. So not popular.

---

Honestly, if someone just came up with a way to remove the "Fair-weather-syndrome" I think that more than ANYTHING else would fix almost everything in WvW. If you actually could have fun outnumbered, feel that you stand a chance, that people don’t just log off or run off to some other game mode the moment their blob gets out-blobbed etc.

---

The more I look at this, the more I think the Borderland maps are designed entirely wrong (yes, both of them). And should be more linear, with increasingly handicaps the further back the home server gets pushed. So the outnumbered server can drop back one step at a time, until the have enough map handicaps to hold back against even vastly outnumbering enemies.

They would still lose massively in points, but it would create a gradually scaling system, that no matter how outnumbered you are (except 80vs0-1) you at least have something you can do, and that "last" objective on your Home BL could be defended successfully by 1-2 persons. And easily taken back.

It’s not about "Fair", it’s about having something to do that feels automatically valuable for the team. And it would funnel the activity to 1-2 objectives at a times.

*Brings out the popcorn, and waits for the Alpine/Desert Lovers/Haters to being the flame*

Largely agree with shrek.1046

I think WvW is a game mode that is designed for a "static" number of players active at all times. So it doesn’t adjust itself well at all to anything outside of the numbers it needs to function.

Obviously our population, coverage/time-zones, fair-weathering on/off, difference in tiers to these etc, changes continually and too much for the system to reach its "preferred numbers".

In lower tiers (you’re T4 iirc) it will feel too large, because population shifts... I’ve been enough down in old T6-7-8 to know that.

Where I’ve last month experienced being linked up with T1/2 server, and seen the crazy queue’s we had the first couple of resets after the linking system was put in. There was more people in queue’s over 5 maps than actually inside the maps.

So, I don’t think it is too large, it just isn’t dynamic enough.

It is a little bit late to work this in right now, but if each server was much smaller, you could have matched together multiple ones easier to try to create even match-up’s.

Still has some problems, but if we had something like 30 servers, all with t4-t5 size populations (pop cap), they could throw together 2-3-4 different servers into a single pairing. Would have made it much easier to match different sizes of servers together, and negating the stacking.

Smaller pop-cap per server, each side being 2-4 servers together depending on size, so a single server couldn’t stack high enough to really affect the game alone. And if 2 servers gets stacked high, they could be playing against 4 enemy servers on each of the other sides. (2 vs 4 vs 4).

But as said, too late now, unless they wanted to blow up all servers and create new ones.

ANet has refused to answer this, closest you will/can get is as Aeolus said:

80’ish per side

SkyShroud.2865:

joneirikb.7506:

The problem with a straight Server Merging is that we keep all the current weaknesses of the Server structure. Especially the wonderful Server Stacking issue, that has caused NA a lot of problems. That alone is a good enough reason for me to prefer Server Linking, but it certainly needs some tweaking.

The primary cause of the server stacking was due to anet lack of concern for population control for the first 3 years. After megaserver, server status continue to include PvE population, until close to 2 years later. There’s also the infamous “black out” method prior the server status algorithms change. Not to forget the experimental method like free transfer to the lowest 3 servers in that division (gold, silver, bronze) during the WvW season. There wasn’t any population control existed and if you let it go on for close to 3 years like that, you get servers that is excessively stacked while having servers that are like ghost towns.

Moving on, the numerous servers also contribute to related population issue which is inflow of players. There are a lot of servers, there isn’t enough inflow of players to all servers, this will then too contribute to population issue.

Server merging will literally reduce the number of servers overall, improve the rate of growth per server due to concentrated inflow of players. Not only that, with less number of servers, it become much easier to resolve population unbalance issue as you will not have to brainstorm on how to link that and link this while making sure communities or guilds don’t get split apart. They can move on using incentive and locking servers to rebalance servers with server merging. Server linking is actually a complicated thing to do in long run, if you are doing it, you will understand what I mean.

Server linking was chosen as a method not because server merging is inferior but because server linking is more acceptable to the community, mainly due to the silly server identity mentality. Dev too have the thoughts of deleting all the servers and recreate a X number of servers depending on population but it is highly not acceptable by the community, but logically, it is the best way to redistribute and rebalance every server.

Server merging does have its own problem, for example, once you merge it, you cannot unmerge it if there is a sudden spike in population. However, it is unfortunate, wvw and gw2 as it is now, there isn’t really enough population to spread across 24 servers.

Mostly agree with your reasoning, but put different value on some of them.

I certainly don’t think the server-linking is the solution, but I consider it a small step above merging.

But if we’re going to abandon server/community pride and all that, we might as well just roll everything into a 3-faction system like MegaServer/EotM. Merging servers is one thing, and I agree that having too many servers is bad for the game splitting the users, but at the same time you’re destroying someones home server and the focal point for their comunity.

If you’re first going to do that, then destroy it all at the same time, and make something new, that doesn’t have to go through this every single time.

Say this time they scrap: ET, AR and IoJ. Who is next ? SoR, Kain, BP ? And then ? At some point even those shouting to shut down the lower tier servers are going to go “oh kitten, my server is next!” and scream no.

At that stage I’d much prefer something like what Tyler talked about as one of their more complex options to Linking the “blow it all up, and assign 3 teams” idea. Just because at least it would be fair for every server/community, and actively change the numbers each time it “blew up”.

Starting to wonder if EotM isn’t working closer as they (ANet) intended WvW to work than WvW currently does.