A Server Held Hostage by its Population

[apharma.3741]

> @"Chris Cleary.8017" said:

> This is something that we are having chats internally about quite often. Essentially server population is a self perpetuating problem and layer on top of that problem region specific time zone population density and you end up in a situation like we have right now. It's not an easy problem to solve, and not a quick one. I can't yet comment on potential outcomes of the internal discussions, however I can comment specifically about this situation in EU.

>

> With BB topping participation and Kodash surging this week, the difference between the Worlds in 3rd and 9nd (for participation) is only between 5% and 15%. That's actually a good spread if those worlds matched up against eachother... however.... BB isn't listed as FULL and Kodash is. The idea of "Full" server status can mean a number of things, but mostly it's in attempt to balance WvW populations so that servers that get matched together have a equal paying field of participation. That's clearly not working if BB isn't FULL atm when it should be.

>

> I'll dig into it significantly more over the next few days (on the population/Server Status situation as a whole). Ideally I'd like at least server status updated (and working properly) before the winter break, but it might happen after. Solving the overarching self perpetuation of population unbalance is a larger issue to tackle, that's not a "soon" thing.

 

As always thank you for the insight and information. It’s nice to know populations are being looked into. I do hope whatever comes of the discussion you consider that the playerbase cannot be trusted to balance out populations or move around in anything but a scummy way. Not everyone but enough of the population to mean we cannot be trusted.

[apharma.3741]

> @"MUDse.7623" said:

> > @"setdog.1592" said:

> > i dont play much wvw. it basically comes down to my being a solo pve artist. the problem i encounter when i join a wvw map is this terrible feeling of being lost.

> > one of the obstacles to new players is learning how to engage the entire wvw game mode.

> >

> > are there any plans to help players bridge this gap in understanding how wvw works? it often feels like nothing is happening out there. in the mists.

>

> i think every server in EU has a TS3 server probably same in NA. the teamchat is for all WvW maps, so if you ask there for the IP you have a great chance of getting it. if go on this TS3 server (preferably when there are actually people, in EU most servers sleep at night) you find mostly someone who is willing to give you a little introduction to WvW and help you if you have questions. in past month i was on 3 diffrent servers and in that time on each was an event to introduce new players to WvW. WvW is a mainly player driven content so communication is very important, but if you dont want to use TS3, you need to look for a guide i guess as there is too much you could possibly not know to just tell you everything in a chat.

> but yes new players get scared away easily by toxic chat or situations where you leave spawn to run straight into a little gank party, that then do nasty stuff to your dead character.

 

Not really, most old T9-7 servers no longer have or use their teamspeak and may not have a website either. I know FoW, UW (Before TPot), blacktide and ruins of surmia all effectively lost their communities just before linking at start of HoT. I don’t know about French and German national servers that are all constantly linked but as far as I can tell Whiteside Ridge is the only low tier linked server that still has teamspeak and website.

 

Even that starts getting muddy because we had a ton of people transfer over from RoF/Deso to what they thought was a dead community (they didn’t do any research even a google search brings up the WSR community page) and set up thief own discord community builds and finally realised oh wait there’s already a community still here. So now WSR has discord and teamspeak as well as a bit of a fractured community.

 

Either way I think it’s only host servers that have their teamspeak still up.

[Rampage.7145]

NO more servers, 3 factions, instanced maps that open and close every 3 hours according to activity just the way EOTM works, problems solved right there, now you have a perfectly balanced system that scales up and down perfectly so people dont have to worry about ¨population imbalance¨ anymore, recurring complain since 2012 don't know if that sounds familiar to you all. Include a new Special type of squad named guild raid, a guild raid and militia tag commanders (with more than 15 on squad) will show up on the instance selection UI so people can see which instance they wish to join/que up for and play with the people they want to hang out with. While ¨guild raid squad¨ is active the game records the WvW guild statistics such kills, deaths, towers taken, keeps taken, castles taken, k/d ratio etc and puts them on a public leaderboard where people can see who the best guilds are and whatnot, A guild raid can have between 20 and 30 members if less or more it will just be considered a militia squad hence guild statistics will not be recorded. Guids statistics reset every 3 months and the top guilds are awarded and saved up in a historical record so people can check it out. Look at that shit i just fixed WvW for you guys for free.

[MUDse.7623]

> @"apharma.3741" said:

> > @"MUDse.7623" said:

> > > @"setdog.1592" said:

> > > i dont play much wvw. it basically comes down to my being a solo pve artist. the problem i encounter when i join a wvw map is this terrible feeling of being lost.

> > > one of the obstacles to new players is learning how to engage the entire wvw game mode.

> > >

> > > are there any plans to help players bridge this gap in understanding how wvw works? it often feels like nothing is happening out there. in the mists.

> >

> > i think every server in EU has a TS3 server probably same in NA. the teamchat is for all WvW maps, so if you ask there for the IP you have a great chance of getting it. if go on this TS3 server (preferably when there are actually people, in EU most servers sleep at night) you find mostly someone who is willing to give you a little introduction to WvW and help you if you have questions. in past month i was on 3 diffrent servers and in that time on each was an event to introduce new players to WvW. WvW is a mainly player driven content so communication is very important, but if you dont want to use TS3, you need to look for a guide i guess as there is too much you could possibly not know to just tell you everything in a chat.

> > but yes new players get scared away easily by toxic chat or situations where you leave spawn to run straight into a little gank party, that then do nasty stuff to your dead character.

>

> Not really, most old T9-7 servers no longer have or use their teamspeak and may not have a website either. I know FoW, UW (Before TPot), blacktide and ruins of surmia all effectively lost their communities just before linking at start of HoT. I don’t know about French and German national servers that are all constantly linked but as far as I can tell Whiteside Ridge is the only low tier linked server that still has teamspeak and website.

>

> Even that starts getting muddy because we had a ton of people transfer over from RoF/Deso to what they thought was a dead community (they didn’t do any research even a google search brings up the WSR community page) and set up thief own discord community builds and finally realised oh wait there’s already a community still here. So now WSR has discord and teamspeak as well as a bit of a fractured community.

>

> Either way I think it’s only host servers that have their teamspeak still up.

 

even if its only the host server if you join WvW and ask for TS IP one of the servers you play with has a TS usually. german link servers i know dzagonur one is used still and millers ts is pretty much dead only a few people in there in guild channels

[Strider Pj.2193]

I think someone stated it well in another thread that WvW is a community game. Those communities have shifted, adapted and in some cases died out, over the past couple of years because of attrition, linking, locked servers, stacking, (the list of reasons is quite exhaustive actually)

 

My primary worry about a 'faction' based system is there is no 'community' there. You will consistently be shifted into different communities based on where you are that week. It would be nearly impossible to maintain that consistent community that many of us have come to expect. Guilds likely would be fractured, and as many have noted who play WvW as a member of multiple guilds, have the chance to have those guilds fractured over different factions.

 

The same concern applies if you shift to a guild based system as people who work with multiple guilds would likely be split over multiple areas.

 

Even one of our NA servers working hard to open their server has noted that if one of their primary guilds moved servers, it would lead to a lot of the militia from the server moving to, because of the community.

 

That has been my largest objection to both blowing up all servers and to creating a faction / guild based system.

[Seffen.2875]

> @"Sovereign.1093" said:

> A permanent fix is to have 3 factions. This removes population imbalances because there will always be players to play.

>

> The hard fix is to remove linking and merge servers, increase pop cap. This also ensure timezones are covered.

>

> The easy fix is to manually adjust pop cap based on this calculation. Every week.

>

> count 1 player per skirmish, which is normally 2 hours. 80 map cap. 4 maps.

>

> 12 x 80 x 4 = 3840. so if a wvw server does not have an average player of 3840 a day for 2 weeks, manually open it for a week. then recalculate. Auto lock only if in a day = 3840 x 1.05

>

> If wvw stats can count it, anet has a more intricate way to do it.

>

> The irresponsible way to fix this is to do nothing and say nothing. because the player base is in need of answers.

>

>

>

>

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Oh GOD pls just don't. This would be the Moment i would quit WvW instantly.

 

If you want that go to the eotm. The way WvW is working right now is just perfectly fine. Having you home Server. Having several matchups. Beeing able to Transfer between the Servers and matchups. that is just all fine.

 

However what is not working is the Server Population. But that is just a small part of the wvw. (it is not working due to declining Population in General on the same amount of Servers as before).

 

Fix that and everything is completely fine. Do not kitten this whole mode up completely. Having just one matchup for all. All languages and no Server structure would kill wvw within months. Trust me on this one.

[Aeolus.3615]

@Sovereign.1093, it would be kewl, but it would not work, cause WvW was made for pve players and the Ktrain vs empty server is a must have mechnics, if you take that out and make populations balanced that will burden most WvW'rs since servers only have population when they can ktrain, i f cant they will try to change to other bl or drop the game if that bl has adversaries has well.

Would be cap where other blob isnt and bail out when blob arrives, plus massive lag wars when the groups encounter each other... or just pass by....

 

WvW is limited due its design being towards easy way to reward players, cant have more mechanics not other gameplay.

[Basti.3698]

 

 

Dear Forum,

 

Thank you for your constructive participation in this discussion.

> @"Chris Cleary.8017" said:

> This is something that we are having chats internally about quite often.

Also, thank you, Chris Cleary. It's good to know ANET isn't ignoring the issue.

 

Our server has an active WvW Teamspeak server, and we have weekly meetings to discuss and try to analyze our situation. The themes repeat though, to a point where people lose hope.

 

The sad reality on German servers is that nobody is expecting ANET to intervene, and daily more people are quitting WvW for good due to frustration. Therefore, I want to highlight the urgency of this matter, and would hope for more comments from players to give credence to my words. Speak up now and let it be known that you care!

 

Best,

B.

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

As Apharma said about your EU servers losing their communities the same thing happened at least on my server (IoJ) it was in steady decline since before HoT our website is gone, our TS is gone, one of our TS admins stood up a Discord since nobody else was doing anything yet it sits empty about 99% of the time. But yes pretty much the same thing happened to us on IoJ as with what happened on other servers.

[Garrus.7403]

I just wonder what is happening on NA. I see so many players from NA Servers on Eu Servers now. Is NA really so dead?

[Baldrick.8967]

I think it's time we abandoned the idea of 'servers' and just move across to 3 factions battling it out over 2 or 3 instances of the maps (have a bonus to move to lower population maps via rewards). You can set your faction and earn higher rewards the longer you stay in that faction.

 

Have auto balancing so people can't bandwagon one faction every week.

[Torolan.5816]

I can confirm that Miller´s Sound still has a TS. We are more often than not paired with Drakkar Lake. We were the punching bag of silver and one of the rulers of bronze for years, and I would say that we always managed to at least marshal a skeleton crew even when we were steamrolled by Gunnar or another seriously populated server.

 

Someone already mentioned Eve online. It is a razorblade of a game, but the pvp / wvw scene is strong. It may be stagnant sometimes and remind you of the powerblocks of the last century, but the community aspect rules supreme there. My guess why this is the case is because alliances have real although virtual space to lose they can´t just win back in a nightshift so you have to step in and defend your stuff. Maybe that would also be a solution for WvW here, although you would have to turn things completely upside down for it to work.

[wYvern.3560]

If GW2 player numbers are decreasing, and WvW player numbers decrease as a consequence, merging server is inevitable in the long run IMO. The linking system is too roughly grated to allow for a good balance.

 

Another aspect that I see though is that winning in WvW is completely inconsequential. We have a leader board, yes, but what does it matter if there is no benefit to being on top of it? As setdog pointed out, getting into WvW, especially if there's a lull in activity at the time you first join a map, can be daunting, and without easily recognizable objectives. Why invest time into learning that game mode, then?

 

Right now, the benefits are PIPs and everything that's tied to them, bags from killing enemy players, karma, and a unique backpack skin unlockable through WvW rank. Also, a lot of people seem to do their third daily in WvW. Most of these things can be achieved in other game modes, and all of them without actually contributing to a match-up in an intelligent way.

 

Tying some sort of benefit to the outcome of WvW matches could increase both interest in the game mode, and change the way people engage with it. For instance, if climbing a tier through performing well in a match-up would give a 7-day boost to magic find, or gathering, or maybe even agony resistance, raid, fractal or solo PvE people might be more interested in contributing. These benefits aren't strong enough to give competitive edge to things like speed runs on the highest level, so nobody is forced to engage with WvW if they don't like it. I don't have numbers, but I believe even 10% of the PvE population doing 2 to 3 hours of serious WvW throughout the week might make a huge difference.

 

setdog also brought up the idea of exclusive skins, which sounds very interesting to me. You might say we have that with the backpack, but it's too little, and tied to the wrong thing. If we want collective performance to matter, rewarding personal WvW rank won't cut it. What if servers got access to skins based on their ranking, which would revert to their original look after a set amount of time? This way, continued performance would be rewarded.

 

I realize this could potentially worsen the migration of people to already-strong servers, and may lead to more saltiness within the communities, but it would motivate players to look into WvW and care about their performance, and would potentially strengthen community bonds and the rewarding experience of achieving success through group effort. Maybe such measures would increase the importance of WvW and thereby participation in a server's overall population to a sufficient extent.

 

> @"SugarCayne.3098" said:

> I just wanted to say OP is exceptionally well written. If English is your second language, I’m most impressed.

 

Basti wrote the original post in German, and I translated it loosely, so although it was a joint effort, I'll accept some of this unexpected recognition. Thank you.

 

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

> @"Garrus.7403" said:

> I just wonder what is happening on NA. I see so many players from NA Servers on Eu Servers now. Is NA really so dead?

 

I thought Vabbi was the EU Maguuma. It's only half or less a Maguuma's worth. So I went to stack on AG (Gandara's link) and PIP farm things down.

[MUDse.7623]

> @"wYvern.3560" said:

> Another aspect that I see though is that winning in WvW is completely inconsequential. We have a leader board, yes, but what does it matter if there is no benefit to being on top of it? As setdog pointed out, getting into WvW, especially if there's a lull in activity at the time you first join a map, can be daunting, and without easily recognizable objectives. Why invest time into learning that game mode, then?

>

> Right now, the benefits are PIPs and everything that's tied to them, bags from killing enemy players, karma, and a unique backpack skin unlockable through WvW rank. Also, a lot of people seem to do their third daily in WvW. Most of these things can be achieved in other game modes, and all of them without actually contributing to a match-up in an intelligent way.

>

> Tying some sort of benefit to the outcome of WvW matches could increase both interest in the game mode, and change the way people engage with it. For instance, if climbing a tier through performing well in a match-up would give a 7-day boost to magic find, or gathering, or maybe even agony resistance, raid, fractal or solo PvE people might be more interested in contributing. These benefits aren't strong enough to give competitive edge to things like speed runs on the highest level, so nobody is forced to engage with WvW if they don't like it. I don't have numbers, but I believe even 10% of the PvE population doing 2 to 3 hours of serious WvW throughout the week might make a huge difference.

>

> setdog also brought up the idea of exclusive skins, which sounds very interesting to me. You might say we have that with the backpack, but it's too little, and tied to the wrong thing. If we want collective performance to matter, rewarding personal WvW rank won't cut it. What if servers got access to skins based on their ranking, which would revert to their original look after a set amount of time? This way, continued performance would be rewarded.

>

> I realize this could potentially worsen the migration of people to already-strong servers, and may lead to more saltiness within the communities, but it would motivate players to look into WvW and care about their performance, and would potentially strengthen community bonds and the rewarding experience of achieving success through group effort. Maybe such measures would increase the importance of WvW and thereby participation in a server's overall population to a sufficient extent.

 

if the outcome of the week is to be valued more, that will increase bandwagoning ( as much as it is possible with most servers closed) . so rewarding individual participation is a better way to go IMO, but just increasing pip rewards will lead to the pve farm trains joining WvW. i think leaderboards for individual tasks might get some more people into wvw. like a ranking for each week: most killed dolyaks, flipped camps, killed enemies , something like a small scale ranking giving points for every stomp and withdraw them for every death and so on. this way even if you lose you might still be in lets say top 10 yakslapper and get a little extra reward, i.e. a special stomp for one week.

 

[wYvern.3560]

> @"MUDse.7623" said:

> if the outcome of the week is to be valued more, that will increase bandwagoning ( as much as it is possible with most servers closed) . so rewarding individual participation is a better way to go IMO, but just increasing pip rewards will lead to the pve farm trains joining WvW. i think leaderboards for individual tasks might get some more people into wvw. like a ranking for each week: most killed dolyaks, flipped camps, killed enemies , something like a small scale ranking giving points for every stomp and withdraw them for every death and so on. this way even if you lose you might still be in lets say top 10 yakslapper and get a little extra reward, i.e. a special stomp for one week.

>

 

Yeah, I acknowledged that it might lead to bandwagoning, but I don't think it's actually possible to make people care about succeeding as a group with rewards for individual behavior. The game is too complex to take all different scenarios into account.

 

E.g. if you implement a leaderboard for 'most structures repaired', you will get people running around and depleting sups from vital positions just to repair a barely scratched wall somewhere in to depths of your own territory. If you run in a zerg with the intention of a sneak attack on an enemy structure, someone caring about his ranking on the yakslapper leaderboard will most likely kill yaks in the area, disregarding the zerg's commander's order to not do so to not give away the zergs position.

 

There is no 'one individual behavior fits all situations in a team-based competition', so rewarding any behavior other than actually winning the team compition will make people not only not contribute, but actively work against that goal in a significant number of situations.

 

 

[Grim West.3194]

> @"Chris Cleary.8017" said:

> This is something that we are having chats internally about quite often. Essentially server population is a self perpetuating problem and layer on top of that problem region specific time zone population density and you end up in a situation like we have right now. It's not an easy problem to solve, and not a quick one. I can't yet comment on potential outcomes of the internal discussions, however I can comment specifically about this situation in EU.

>

> With BB topping participation and Kodash surging this week, the difference between the Worlds in 3rd and 9nd (for participation) is only between 5% and 15%. That's actually a good spread if those worlds matched up against eachother... however.... BB isn't listed as FULL and Kodash is. The idea of "Full" server status can mean a number of things, but mostly it's in attempt to balance WvW populations so that servers that get matched together have a equal paying field of participation. That's clearly not working if BB isn't FULL atm when it should be.

>

> I'll dig into it significantly more over the next few days (on the population/Server Status situation as a whole). Ideally I'd like at least server status updated (and working properly) before the winter break, but it might happen after. Solving the overarching self perpetuation of population unbalance is a larger issue to tackle, that's not a "soon" thing.

 

Because of the way WvW is designed, the most important tactics for winning are population and coverage. Those two attributes trump skill and every other design decision that makes up WvW. NOTHING else is important. That is extremely poor game design.

 

So the most important factor in competition is organizing guilds to stack a server. That has been true ever since launch when PRX created the alliance that made HoD the premier server. This organization takes place outside of the game and makes every play inside WvW meaningless. Tanking and overstacking are the only tactics that are useful in WvW. And it is extremely boring. PRX and most other serious RvR gamers left this game years ago because of this nonsense. Of course HoD died immediately after PRX left.

 

Until you address this most basic of issues forcefully, the game mode will continue to bleed players (customers).

 

Good gameplay should be the premiere tactic in WvW, not coverage or the size of the zerg. Good commanders should be able to effect the outcome of the match, even if they are on very low population servers. Focus on the strengths of WvW and eliminate it's most obvious weaknesses. Stop forcing players to join overstacked servers to win.

[Erskine.5206]

> @"Chris Cleary.8017" said:

> This is something that we are having chats internally about quite often. Essentially server population is a self perpetuating problem and layer on top of that problem region specific time zone population density and you end up in a situation like we have right now. It's not an easy problem to solve, and not a quick one. I can't yet comment on potential outcomes of the internal discussions, however I can comment specifically about this situation in EU.

>

> With BB topping participation and Kodash surging this week, the difference between the Worlds in 3rd and 9nd (for participation) is only between 5% and 15%. That's actually a good spread if those worlds matched up against eachother... however.... BB isn't listed as FULL and Kodash is. The idea of "Full" server status can mean a number of things, but mostly it's in attempt to balance WvW populations so that servers that get matched together have a equal paying field of participation. That's clearly not working if BB isn't FULL atm when it should be.

>

> I'll dig into it significantly more over the next few days (on the population/Server Status situation as a whole). Ideally I'd like at least server status updated (and working properly) before the winter break, but it might happen after. Solving the overarching self perpetuation of population unbalance is a larger issue to tackle, that's not a "soon" thing.

 

Thanks for answering to our concerns.

I'm on a full German server myself. It's good to hear that you see the problem internally as well. We're looking forward to some kind of solution. WvW is a game-mode very close to my heart and it would really be helpful for the servers.

[free.7283]

I miss the good ol' times, when fights went on for minutes, zergs clashed, gathered, healed up and so on. Nowadays its over within seconds, PoF kind of broke wvw for me :*(

[CrimsonNeonite.1048]

> @"apharma.3741" said:

> For anyone that doesn’t know he’s talking about Elona reach and to be clear he’s mainly talking about Kodash/Deso that bring the 50 man blob when they have 15 people. I find it kind of funny someone saying this is happening to Deso when last week Deso absolutely destroyed Elona and Ring of Fireside Surmia (the 2 medium and high servers) together.

>

 

Do you think Deso wants to be stuck in T4-T5? That happens in T5, but the same thing happens to Deso in T4.

Desolation cannot compete in T4, they just have less numbers; due to other servers having links and so we're stuck in T4-T5, while also having a perma locked population.

 

There needs to be competitive balance, where players should be encouraged to move to lower ranked servers, with lower populations.

It's not gonna happen, when certain servers are locked by bad population calculations, maybe it needs manual adjustments, just like they did with Glicko.

 

[hadesgangster.1963]

WvW need changes or this content will die .. its one of the best parts/contents from this Game. Servers are empty (in WvW) with a status Full ... more and more WvW Player leaves the Game and its really hard to return back i got the Problems after a long break too. So I hope Anet will solve this Problem or you lose more Players.. and when WvW is empty the other Contents will die too.

[LucusAurelius.9820]

> @"Chris Cleary.8017"

 

Create 3 Factions. Red, Green and Blue. Allow players 2 week notice to coordinate with their guilds and friends which faction to join. Allow faction swapping for gem cost. Never allow one faction to have greater than x% players over the others. Create 3 instances of EB, 6 of Alpine BL, 3 Desert BL, and allow EoTM to be overflow maps. Servers already do not matter for sPvP or PvE, but you are segregating your own player base with servers in WvW. You could have the best matchup 100% of the time and allow guilds that are split among full/non full servers to play together. This wouldn’t invalidate any of the improvements you’ve made to WvW over the years but would finally allow WvW to perpetuate balanced matches like it should. Please look into something like this. You have the voting options for the Lions Arch council seat, use a similar voting format for choosing your faction. You can even tie it in to the original guilds from “The Guild Wars”.

[Pagan Highlander.5948]

I'd say the simple solution is, "merge" or "link" EU and NA servers. increase the player limits. These two would help with the coverage complaints.

reward players that go to lower population servers, and penalize those going to higher population servers. Give incentives (like free transfer if to T4 servers) or additional skirmish reward tickets per week if they achieve diamond. or offer a Free mount if a person reached say rank 1000 in WvW (encourage PVEers to experience WvW)

Heavily increase costs to transfer "Up" or across if same tier with decreased Skirmish tickets for a period of time.

Servers can manipulate their population so as to open their server so that doesn't work, but if you averaged it over say 30 or 60 days and it falls below a certain level, then it could work.

[Mrs Qurly.9372]

In regards to the BB dominance - especially at night when other EU servers are quiet - having a Spanish language server in NA would alleviate that problem somewhat. ?

[diamondgirl.6315]

Unfortunately the problem at the heart of server population imbalance is that players want a winning server the short way, by transferring to a winning server, and not the long way, which is recruitment and building a server up. This is not a value judgment, merely an observation. It's human nature. I suspect it is what Chris means when he says; 'Solving the overarching self perpetuation of population unbalance is a larger issue to tackle [...]'

 

'Self perpetuation.' The servers are imbalanced because we are imbalancing them. Anet's only hope of rebalancing population is to find some way to make a transfer incentive more appealing to basic human nature than buying into a popular brand. And that is a really tough sell. Everyone wants balanced servers, but no one wants to just transfer willy nilly to an empty server where there is low coverage, no fights, poor reputation, etc. It would require trusting that other people will do the same and will create something better together. And that level of trust just does not exist. Far easier to just buy your way into a T2 server and wait like a vulture for a spot in BG or Mag.

 

It's like asking customers to pick a bank with almost no branches, or switch to Bob's Soda instead of Coke. I'm in wvw for fights, I want to log on and fight. The big name brands like BG have fights. I want to be on the 1998 Yankees, not the 2003 Detroit Tigers.

 

This logic is sound as far as being a product consumer goes, but unfortunately it is creating issues in wvw. The most essential part of exercising a great set of guilds is _having another great set of guilds to fight against._ If three guilds each left BG and Mag and JQ and went to lower tier servers, they would bring the servers up and everyone would get better fights in more tiers.

 

The day someone figures out how to incentivize that properly is the day we start to get server loyalty and real competition back. Imagine actual rivalries instead of manipulation! Not just 'Oh, BG hates Mag, so they are leaving SoS alone to force Mag out.'