Looking ahead to WvW season one, my server of IoJ is going to be in silver league, getting absolutely crushed every week with no chance at all. Our larger WvW guilds transferred away, but that is not factored into what league we will be in. The running debate is whether we will be in last place or next-to-last, which will probably be determined by whether the last few WvW guilds leave. I don’t see anyone transferring TO the bottom servers in each league. As is said of the server competing with us for last place:
They need much more firepower to compete in this league, and being at the bottom of Silver League makes it unlikely their PvE players will be very interested in stepping their toes into WvW.
This is probably true in all leagues, so a system designed to encourage WvW will probably discourage ot in about 1/3 of the servers. And not necessarily the least populated servers: IoJ still has plenty of bodies, but the ones that spent their time primarily in WvW mostly just left, so you get a downward spiral as fewer people find it worthwhile/fun to visit the Mists.
I am not sure how I would design server vs. server competition with the possibility of server transfers without encouraging this sort of thing, but it seems immensely corrosive. I’m deciding whether I want to be the last rat on a sinking ship.
Updating with a golden quote from that thread I linked: “I figured I would start the discussion of what this crapfest of a league will look like. I honestly feel bad for the other servers in Silver league” There will be a few competitive servers and 6-7 victim servers.
: Zubon
Honestly, Anet should make server transfers cost real money, instead of being tied to the gem store. But alas, the ship has sailed.
-Ursan
If there are 6 or 7 “victim” servers in the league, then surely they get a decent match-up against each other, at least? You’re only going to get roflstomped in the week when the rotation puts you up against the two “competitive” servers – the other weeks you’ve at least got a decent fight for second place if not first.
Ultimately though, the problem is, as you say, that this is ALWAYS going to happen if you have server vs server competition and allow server transfers. It’s in the nature of all too many humans to want to join the winning side because that’s easier than working to make your side win.
Of course, the upside is that at least you’ll be able to get into WvW whenever you want to . I suspect the lemmings are going to have some lengthy queues for Eternal Battlegrounds :)
Not really, no. The spread in silver was large even before the last minute server transfers. The top few are competitive for that last slot in gold; at last count, it was still questionable which server would be #6 in gold versus #1 in silver. The same applies at the bottom. There could be a perfect week where the servers are tiered together properly, but apart from that it will be one server dominating the other two for most of the groups for most of the weeks. The best weeks for most of the silver servers will be when the top servers are against each other and a completely dominated server, so that at least the gap is smaller.
How life is for that dominated server depends on how the other two decide to fight it. If the two are directly at odds at most times, it could be fun to be the plucky skirmisher. Or they might each dominate their own lands and mostly fight for control of the third, like Germany and Russia fighting in Poland. Being Poland in WWII sucks.
RIP IoJ.
Alas, Horatio, I knew it well, till January 2013 and when the free transfers ended. The ship was already sinking at that point, at least during the Oceanic/Asian timezone.
Not that my present home server is going to fare that much better. Predicted perpetual fourth. We’ll no doubt kick, bite and put up a plucky fight though.
I’m wondering just how much WvW is going to be required to fill in the nifty Living Story tabs and whether it’s going to be worth the effort of getting run over multiple times by T1 blobs bolstered by reward-seekers. May be time to invest in arrow carts. Lots and lots of superior arrow carts and mastery trait line.
Sea of Sorrows is finding itself sneaking into gold league. We were #7 until the death of Fort Aspenwood, so we’re looking at a roflstomp basically every week.
The funny thing is that SoS’s WvW guilds decided whether they wanted to try and throw enough games to park at the top of silver, or whether we’d try for gold, and the decision was basically defiance: we want to try and upset the T1 servers as much as possible, and if we find a way to actually win things, so much the better.
We’ve already begun: Sanctum of Rall tried to do a deal with us to let Stormbluff Isle win enough to ensure a ticket to the Gold League. We decided that Stormbluff Isle should earn it.
“Death of Fort Aspenwood”? I’m an FA PvE player and I recall my guild discussing how we were trying to tank into #1 silver because being in gold would not go well for us. I haven’t gotten an update.
So is that what you mean by “Death of Fort Aspenwood?” Or did we lose of WvW guilds to transfer?
As a PVE player that occasionally looks at the WvWvW info screen (why are these resource nodes popping so much stuff?) it’s been pretty clear normally highly competitive servers have been throwing the last few weeks’ matchups to try to get in a lower tier for the “season”.
Not sure what that says about GW2’s WvWvW meta game.
I really wish A-Net had done more to incentivize a more competitive spread in WvW. In Gold Tier, the bottom third are going to get wiped by the shear blobiness of the top third. Not sure who thinks that’s fun.
From the Yak’s Bend perspective I’m not at all sure much will change. We’ve sat in roughly the same position, give or take a place or two, for most of 2013. Servers pass us going up and then pass us again going down while we just sit there, scarcely moving.
All the predictions on the linked forum thread show us doing just the same in Silver, hanging mid-table. Suits me. I’ve been extremely happy with our choice of server since we picked it for nostalgic reasons even before beta began. The solidity and loyalty of the playerbase on Yaks is worth much more than the fleeting success (or even lasting success) afforded by server-hopping guilds trying to massage the system. I really hope we never become the victims of a hop-on campaign like the one the ruined Maguuma, for example.
As someone not interested in WvW and someone who often takes a few months off of my games, I feel this would punish me for something I’m completely uninvolved in. I think the best way would be to split WvW and PvE “servers”. PvE doesn’t even need servers, so get rid of servers in PvE and redesign them to fully support WvW. Right now they pose unnecessary problems for both types of game.