Let me preface this by saying WvW in BWE is what sold me on the game. The PvE was great, but WvW pushed it over the top for me. Now, with that being said, I see a huge problem forthcoming for WvW- imbalance with non-participating servers. Case in point, consider this screenshot:

Here you can see the red world with nearly 10x the points of my server, Ferguson's Crossing, while the green sever has barely over a tenth of our total. When I logged in for WvW multiple times throughout the BWE, I was surprised and dismayed to find my world *NOT* participating. While, yes, its a beta and people are checking out other things- THIS is the draw and appeal of the game (well, at least for Eternal Grove!!). With participation in WvW being optional, I'm a bit concerned that players may be obsessing over PvE a bit too much, and letting the best part of the game slide. Your thoughts/experiences with it over two BWE? For me, I can see lots of server transfers to the more active servers. I won't stay on a server that won't participate.

Yup, it's an issue no doubt.

Not only are people missing out on what I, too, think is the main draw of the game, but others who would like to actively participate are essentially being asked to simply change servers to one which suits.

Honestly? I don't think they can fix this. There will always be people who simply don't like WvW or will refuse to ever try it - and some servers are just more prone to that sort than others. Additionally, from memory, Ferguson's Crossing was a comparatively low-population server, and that would definitely effect your WvW performance.

In the end, the solution is within your question statement - all you can really do is move. (I recommend Yak's Bend : P - we have a bunch of Euros playing with us over here)

Aside from this, hopefully their match making works out to the point where more active servers and barely active ones are never matched up. (This will take a while to get working properly - but from the 2nd match up in this BWE, I can say it worked out very well. That was one tough fight, and though we came second, it was very rewarding.)

At launch WvW matches will go on for much longer. I also heard there were a problem that made some of the worst servers get matched up with the best instead of three servers of similar skill level.

It's been stated by the developer that after a WvW event, your server will be matched up to servers that preformed similar to yours. As such you'd be matched up with other servers that didn't have much participation or got steamrolled, which will keep it fair in those terms. However if you're worried out 3 servers up against each other where no one participates, and it's sparse, you're in a bit of trouble. The only real thing you can do then is earn some gems (currently 1800) and transfer a server where WvW is more popular.

It's not as big a problem as you would think, thankfully, the developers have been really smart about it all.

I was on the other side of this problem in the latest BWE, playing on a high population server being matched up against the new very low population servers they added. An hour after the reset we were in 100% control of the entire battle and stayed like that until the next reset, making actual WvWvW non-existant.

It will take some time to balance out, but matching the winners against other winners and losers against other losers means that eventually you will be matched against servers with similar activity and coordination levels. It may take months because of the lenght of each battle but it will happen.

The combination of longer WvW matches, and teaming each server up with similar skilled enemies may take away from some of this problem at launch, but I'm guessing it'll always be a factor. I don't know what ANet could do to try and alleviate the issue.

Also, a lot of people arent concerned about WvW because the bonuses it grants just arent meaningful in a beta environment. But as the matches last for 2weeks, getting a constant bonus in your pve gameplay will become a much bigger deal. Hopefully that will be a big enough incentive for people to participate.

@Giefcookie said:

Also, a lot of people arent concerned about WvW because the bonuses it grants just arent meaningful in a beta environment. But as the matches last for 2weeks, getting a constant bonus in your pve gameplay will become a much bigger deal. Hopefully that will be a big enough incentive for people to participate.

The bonuses are only meaningful at the end of those two weeks, assuming your server dominates the other two. That's not going to happen after a few matchups.

@gike987 said:

At launch WvW matches will go on for much longer. I also heard there were a problem that made some of the worst servers get matched up with the best instead of three servers of similar skill level.

WvW doesn't have much to do with skill but rather server population and activity. It can definitely suck if you find yourself in an underpopulated/disinterested server.

I only played WvW a bit this weekend but I wasn't really drawn in (but that could change as I play it more). I think that if they made it into a dedicated PvP mode (with max gear for everyone), more people might be interested. Right now, people might prefer to play through PvE and max out their gear before migrating to WvW.

IT should balance out more when people hit level cap and look for something to do for end game. This is a very hopeful stance by the way.

@Giefcookie said:

It will take some time to balance out, but matching the winners against other winners and losers against other losers means that eventually you will be matched against servers with similar activity and coordination levels. It may take months because of the lenght of each battle but it will happen.

One of the devs (I think it was Jon Peters) said in the AMA that at launch they would probably have a few shorter WvW matches to determine initial server rankings.

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

@Giefcookie said:

It will take some time to balance out, but matching the winners against other winners and losers against other losers means that eventually you will be matched against servers with similar activity and coordination levels. It may take months because of the lenght of each battle but it will happen.

One of the devs (I think it was Jon Peters) said in the AMA that at launch they would probably have a few shorter WvW matches to determine initial server rankings.

That would make sense. Starting out with 3-5 day matches and moving it up a few days each reset would help in sorting out the early contenders.

Will balance out once Diehard WvW' player are matched against other diehard players, just needs a month to balance out.

Sadly beta is a horrible representation of what WvW is actually going to be like. Heck, not even the first few weeks or even month will be. But once the ball gets rolling you should not see this problem much. If you just happen to be on a server that for some reason does not participate in WvW (and totally missing out!) then you can just transfer to some other one you know is fairly active in the fighting.

ANet doubled servers for BWE2, but not beta participants. So all the new servers remained medium to low pop. BWE1 servers were all high to full pop 24/7. Hence the crass WvW imbalance on many match-ups.

At release - effective WvW balancing begins 2 weeks in, when the first metrics can be used for matchmaking similarly active servers.

I'm not yet sure, if I actively want to seek out a competitive WvW server by trolling GW2 forums for clues on what PvP/WvW centric guilds are gonna be rolling on, or if I just want a nice casual med pop server and start playing WvW 2 weeks-in, versus equally casual servers.

I don't envy ArenaNet having to deal with this problem. Realistically they can't force people to participate, so even after all of the matchmaking has taken place and servers are competing against similar servers, the low scoring (a.k.a. likely low participation) servers will probably be a very desolate WvW experience. All I can think of is providing a higher incentive for participation, but I bet they don't want to make rewards too fantastic otherwise the losing servers will always complain.

I hope WvW turns out well and issues like this don't occur or don't persist. It is probably the part of the game that I am most excited about so I really want it to succeed.

I think there might be too many servers right now causing the population to be dispersed. Perhaps lower the number of servers? They can add new ones as the game grows.

Aww, green's my favorite color too. This is heart breaking =(

@gike987 said:

At launch WvW matches will go on for much longer. I also heard there were a problem that made some of the worst servers get matched up with the best instead of three servers of similar skill level.

At the moment, I imagine it's hard for them to really match up evenly sided servers. One server might have one, simply because of the amount of people playing for a few days or because the competing servers weren't doing anything. It'll definitely take a while for WvW to hit it's groove and really get going.

And like others have said, some people just dislike PVP and will never try the mode. The only thing you can really do is join up with a guild/server that is really interested in competing. That way you should (eventually) be matched up against other equally active servers. Joining a server that's been "chosen" by the roleplaying community, for example, might not be a god idea.

@UssjTrunks said:

WvW doesn't have much to do with skill but rather server population and activity. It can definitely suck if you find yourself in an underpopulated/disinterested server.

I was a bit uncomfortable with how much the ebb-and-flow seemed to depend on where the sun was. I know there are supposed to be disjoint ladders for North America and Europe, but a lot of Europeans were on the NA servers, which would explain the the phenomenon, as one server woke up and the other hit the hay. So while I know my server did well (Fort Aspenwood, though I might move to Yak's Bend if that's where the GB be hangin'), I don't know how much of that is skill and how much is just circumstance. Just like real life!

@PeezMachine: You hit the nail on the head. It's half skill and half circumstance/time-zones.

On the first day of the beta, I WvWed for about 12-16 hours. The first half or so was with the American guys from GB, and the server activity was huge - it directly lead to the image floating around of us owning 100% of the structures. Yak's Bend is generally (I'd say at least 70%) American time zoners, and in that instance, skill had little to do with it.

When the sun set on their side of the world, it was afternoon here and the servers re-jiggered to us facing Darkhaven and some other server. The reason I ended up playing those second 4-8 hours (I can't even remember how many, it was such a blur) was that, aside from a zerg of about 20-30 randoms which did absolutely nothing constructive, it was pretty much our guild versus a continuous barrage of assaults from Darkhaven on the Yak's Bend Borderlands (they simply had more people awake and active).

It was at that stage that we made Dreadfall Bay (the keep just north of their base camp) our guild's keep, because on multiple occasions about 5-8 of us were literally instrumental on pushing their entire force on the borderlands back (30-40 people). In that case, skill and timing overcame numbers as simply our effective construction and usage of seige equipment broke the backbone of their assault. It was nothing short of glorious, and I feel like a warlord just thinking about it - you know, that feeling that makes you want to sing a song in Old Norse while stomping your feet and swigging ale - even though I can't sing and hate ale... I guess you had to be there. I think I'll always remember our guild banner (the overflowing stein of beer) flying high over that keep on that fine night.

ANYWAY. I'll talk about it more on the next Lincolncast, and hopefully I can get a couple of guys who were with me at the time on as well.

The long and short of it is you're right - it comes down to who gets pitted against who (activity-timing, and all of that), but it also rests upon straight up skill. Just like real life.

The pièce de résistance was watching them build a trebuchet on their tower. It outranged all our defenses and our numbers were not enough to lay siege to the tower.

@Tarkhein: But we held : D

Fuck yeah, we held.

We held on to that keep better than a frightened child holds on to his mother.

Kind of felt like the first few minutes of the Firefly pilot (ignoring the forced surrender). We held on until the early risers got their act together.

If SWTOR/Rift/WoW etc are anything to go by join the unofficial oceanic server having high pop 24/7 will prob mean that server will be on top for WvW

@Hats said:

If SWTOR/Rift/WoW etc are anything to go by join the unofficial oceanic server having high pop 24/7 will prob mean that server will be on top for WvW

I'd like to see them dominate with 500 ping. :P

The hardest thing to get right in these systems is the "mercy rule". I have no real answer on how to address this for Guild Wars 2 but it needs to be carefully done such that the losing side always feels they can come back tomorrow and try again or they simply stop trying.

@UssjTrunks said:

@Hats said:

If SWTOR/Rift/WoW etc are anything to go by join the unofficial oceanic server having high pop 24/7 will prob mean that server will be on top for WvW

I'd like to see them dominate with 500 ping. :P

Not hard to do when you guys are asleep.