Full Disclosure: The following wall of text is coming from the deepest salt mine on Blackgate. We have to start by being 100% honest about the root cause of our problem. I believe the blame is 90% on players for our selfish behaviors, and 10% on ANET for not beating us hard enough for our actions (or turning a blind eye and just ignoring the problem altogether). Take yourself out of your POV and consider what it is like creating a game where your customers will always break and exploit anything good you try to give them. Blackgate didn't do a single thing any other server could not have done. What we did is snowball together a large number of motivated players and retain them, because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that "good players are on Blackgate" once it starts being proven to be true. A month before pre-launch I started lurking different forums to get a gauge for where a good community of "players motivated to be successfull" was being planned. My ( PVP guild plus PVP community friends from the previous MMO) and i looked at a couple different options while leveling and gearing our first 80's. Then I collected my friends and dragged them here. Alot of other people did the same, for different reasons and game modes. Enthusiasts. Collectors. Die hard YouTuber fanboys. People who just like being around "where things are happening" because it makes them feel more connected to the experience overall. And Elitists (Duh and/or Hello). A large number of people are all of these things combined. Consider the notion that the BG roamer you're about to ambush MIGHT have xferred to BG 4 years ago because they wanted to join or just hang out near [DnT] for PvE glory reasons, and they are capping that camp to maintain participation so they can finish their WvW Legendary Armor to match their PVE and SPvP sets. You didn't really get ganked by them just now because they are especially good at WvW, they simply developed the skill to theorycraft a good build in PvE, had the gold to assemble BiS gear, and learned to 1v1 like a champ while getting their SPvP Legendary suit finished. Every server has these motivated players; BG just has an above average amount of them. "Yeah but you try-hards stacked and bought guilds". Fighting your butt off to dominate, only to log-in the next day and find all your work undone, sucks. So we made friends with guilds in other timezones. We understood that when you ask a guild to xfer, you are asking them to sacrifice not only their time/money, but quite possibly having to wipe their account and start over to join you. Not only this, but you fracture their existing community, and ask them to tell guild members who cannot afford to xfer, or cannot leave other friends behind, to find a new home. So yes, when the guild leaders of Blackgate asked us to open our pockets, either by giving away gold freely, or participating in raffles for Legendary items or other shinies the BG Community donated to the cause, we did it. And no one on BG should EVER feel ashamed. Server pride can come from accomplishment, but it also comes from sacrifices made. It's easy to say server pride doesn't matter when you never put the time and work into building one that other people did. "You killed WvW" Yes, if you mean all GW2 players, we certainly did. Second-account spies, tag watching and griefing. Siege trolls capping maps so your zerg cannot even drop one ram. TS server DDOS attacks. All manner of glitching, hacks, exploits, and intentional mass-reporting of commanders. ANET's slow or missing response to these behaviors (or tied hands for legal reasons). I spent 7:30am-9:30am (PT) in the one float team BG could muster this morning, averaging 20-30 players (with 1-2 maps outnumbered almost consistently because the Roamers got pulled into the zerg, too), and we took SMC three times, and ran MOSTLY unopposed for the duration. If your server can't cough up one tag and 20-30 people at all times, your server doesn't care about WvW, or your server is a ghost town. Period. During the off-peak hours I play, this is a common scenario, including being outnumbered on 1-2 maps consistently. After 9pm on reset night, the longest queue on EBG I've seen recently is less than 15. A server which could cough up a 50-strong zerg (that isn't wearing mostly zerk gear), a skilled commander, and 20 scattered Roamers/Scouts, can slap us around. Easily. Stop defeating yourselves. "Just rebuild your community as an Alliance" I don't think you understand a community. Your server community, just like your family, includes the people you CAN'T get rid of. What would your chats be like without the trolls, self-righteous, and outspoken? When they are gone, you'll miss them more than you think. The Militia contributes scouting, bloodlust, keeps things contested, flips objectives the zerg cannot justify wasting time on, and fleshes out the zerg. At the same time, the militia AFK's alot, chases squirrels, and doesn't push when the commander needs them to. A system which disincludes the Militia destroys an important check and balance of WvW, especially in t1. "yeah but matchmaking and ANET said and no Alliance will be able to..." I've read this whole thread and am basing the following assumptions on ANET's responses so far of what they MIGHT do, so let's call the following a theoretical warning based off of the numbers given and my personal experiences, including the disturbing amount of time I spent in the HzH Alliance in GW1, just to give one example. First off, I contest the notion that there are enough active, highly motivated players to fill 3 1000-strong Alliances and make the top tier interesting. Maybe two days in, maybe two weeks in, an Alliance named "Thanks for helping us get rid of the PUGs LOL" will cement its reign as half of the people in this thread championing the removal of servers realize running in circles and showing up, even when you don't want to, isn't fun for them. Why? Let's say you are really motivated and manage to scrape together 1000 players who put in 50 hours/week on average. So our Alliance weighted average is now 50k hours a week. To balance this, ANET has to link FIVE 1000-strong 10 hour/week WvW Allainces just to get equal potential coverage, so kiss any notion of any extra bodies diluting the talent pool and activity on Green team. Congratulations, the motivated players just ensured every single WvW player on their side is using a META build, in one of two guilds, in the same voice comms, and is reliably showing up to do work. Levels of organization previously impossible are now not only attainable, but realistic, and the "penalty" for excessive hours tagged up actually helps intensify the effect. And even if the 10-hour-a week crowd on Blue Team manages to hold their own against this foe, do you honestly think Red team isn't now reduced to whomever is left over, and soon to be never logging in again? Maybe I'm wrong, but regardless of how many players there REALLY are who will play WvW going forward, a version of this is already being planned and implemented. There is no system ANET can create which motivated players cannot find a way to break and exploit to achieve their goals without hurting everyone as a whole. "You're crazy, that won't ever happen" Keep telling yourself that. The second ANET adds a single skin or title that you can attain 10% faster by being on the winning side, the absolute worst behaviors possible manifest. If I thought for one second it would last more than a day, I'd be trying to convince anyone who cares about Server Pride into boycotting the gemstore until ANET knocks it off. The theory is sound, as I am willing to bet my Chaos Gloves that TC and BG make up a disproportionate amount of raw cash for gems sales, and voting with dollars would work. For 10 seconds. Then they'd offer up a new way to look cool standing on the bank steps, and that would end the boycott. "RP" I don't RP. I have, however, spent time on RP servers and IMHO, just give RP players whatever they want, as long as the other players don't have an incentive to destroy it. How cool would it be if TC was made the official RP server, and players there could just guest fight on any side in WvW, and have all sorts of RP scouting, spying, skirmish battles, and court intrigue to amuse themselves and narrate their experience? I suspect it would be their favorite thing ever. Until 5 minutes later when TC becomes permanently full, because every WvW player with a second account moves there so they can exploit the system and cut the RP players out of this sweet action. "EU" Sorry fam, I have no idea if anything I'm saying applies to you, but you're probably gonna get stuck with whatever happens to NA. Because of NA. Sadly, I'm sure you're used to it by now. "I want to see player specific metrics" Once again, this will always be used by the elite to disinclude the casual. Any dingbat who can locate Metabattle and put gear on a Scourge can just put a big shade in the center of a zerg, instantly spam all four skills, and run away while other people actually finish the fight. Rinse, repeat until a 50:1 Kill death ratio or any other metric you can dream of is attained. For those who didn't play GW1, there was this cool ability to easily link your character's full build into chat for others to look at, and even save to their account and load onto their own toon. It was a really awesome tool for communication, helping others, and saving multiple specs for different uses and game modes. Then players happened. Simply trying to join a pick-up-group for any content was immediately greeted with the request "Ping plis", at which point you were instantly judged and kept, kicked without a word, or informed you would run the build the party leader suggested (if they felt charitable). Please don't give us shareable stats, we cannot be trusted with them. "OK mister doom n gloom, I don't hear solutions" If we were to go forward with killing servers, my suggestion is that ANET create a RP checkbox at log in that, when selected, prioritizes putting them all in the same instance whenever possible. Simple and easy. Just give them one extra instance of each city open at all times, and open map instances as needed (" A new Roleplaying experience has been started, please click here to join"). The most consistently abused community with the least toxic environment deserves to get something for once. I don't think this is controversial at all, and is the absolute LEAST we can do for them. If the amount of skins, musical instruments, recustomizes, and makeovers they buy with gems isn't worth it to you, ANET, then I don't know what to tell you. For WvW, ANET can start by admitting this game is five years old, anyone who didn't come back when PoF launched isn't coming back, bite the 'PR humilation of server mergers' bullet, and take a hard look at what they are using to determine server capacity restrictions. Next, choose the top 9 population servers in NA, and give everyone else free transfers to wherever they want for 30 days according to your new server capacity determination. Anyone logging in for the first time after this time frame ends gets 48 hours of free transfers. Once time is up and you've chosen your home by typing your server name into the same darn box i have to verify annoying item names in i want to delete, ANET gives you 500gems as a one time apology for making you move. People who don't declare a different server than they were on before this takes effect don't get anything. Yeah, some people won't be happy, but this affects the LEAST amount of customers, and gives a token consolation prize for the inconvenienced. If WvW is still imbalanced, then we can clearly say ANET tried and the players chose to let it fail. Now the concerned Dev team can concentrate on improving the actual game mode with the next six months instead of dealing with bad player behaviors counter-measures. Another option is to invest in some more powerful physical game servers, take the maps up to 100 per side by making them bigger and resdesigned so that winning will require three zergs, instead of one, to control a map. One 3-server matchup/week and the top three servers get to host everyone else as linked servers. EotM continues as an overflow, but contributes score based on all existing EotM instances averaged out to count as one for contribution (with tight controls on when they open/close), and gives pips. This will mean people who are only wanting pips can stick to EotM, but players waiting on Eb/BLqueues get equitable rewards and the fight on EotM matters. Meanwhile, any karma train collusion on EotM will only serve to give the same score contribution to all three sides due to win trading the map simultaneously. If the community who will consistently WvW is as small as I think it is, this would work just fine. How do you determine who the top servers are to host these matches? A combined metric of player activity in WvW, based on actual activity, like real button presses. Could this be gamed? Sure, and I'm sure it could be improved on, but it is a different angle to attack the problem using mostly existing systems and retaining servers. Please continue only giving us rewards which are earned by particpation slowly over time, and cannot be easily bandwagoned to achieve. Big thanks and love to everyone who has stood up for server pride, or even just cared enough to formulate a good argument. Those of you saying "the responses here are overwhelmingly positive" should keep in mind that many people don't post on our read these forums, and many people saw the announcement and just quit without saying a word.
