Anet post about server status

Today Anet posted that the server status is based only on WvW ranks gained and hours played, but I cannot find the topic anymore. Where did it go? I posted a comment on that topic, but I also cannot find that one in my post history anymore, so did the whole topic get deleted?

Sounds like it did get deleted; those are all symptoms of a post that got out of control. I thought I remember someone posting the quote verbatim on Reddit, so check there.

It was deleted. Which is odd, since it had a dev comment on it, and nobody was talking about matchups, just individual full servers.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:Sounds like it did get deleted; those are all symptoms of a post that got out of control. I thought I remember someone posting the quote verbatim on Reddit, so check there.Not suprising that it got out of control. That algorithm is nonsense and counter productive. Eg. servers with lots of WXP booster users at a disadvantage, servers with lots of pip farmers at disadvantage. Servers like riverside are bleeding out because they never get any links and lots of WvW players left over the last months and yet it is still considered full.Anet needs to realize people dont want "balanced" servers at all costs. Which will never happen anyway because plenty of people do not mind to transfer to the flavor of the bimonthly server link. Server merges needs to happen instead of links and artifically considering servers full, locking out people who just want to go try an other server for a couple of weeks and then come back.

They look at activity time first.

Ranks second.

What's so hard to understand about that?

On the old forum the post said activity time/player hours is what counts. Rank is only used for tracking the first metric, not for actual population.

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/wuv/Yaks-Bend/first#post6513382

"We use play hours to determine the size. Rank gains is tracked for comparison purposes since they usually follow a similar curve, but isn’t actually used to determine the world size."

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/wuv/Yaks-Bend/page/2#post6514338

"Using exp boosters does not affect play hours and thus does not affect world sizes."

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/wuv/Transfers-Links-and-Population-Data/first#post6664495

"1. World sizes are based on WvW play hours and players. People who do not play WvW, or are guests, do not factor into the population size of a server. If a world is locked, it is because it has a larger population than our “Full” threshold.

2. Yes and no. We look at timezone participation but timezone participation is hard to balance because people who play at certain times tend to all gravitate towards the same worlds so they can play with a lot of people. There are not enough off-hour worlds that we could link to create 24-hour coverage for every world. It just is not possible with our current world populations.

3. Yes, high population servers are usually the benchmark for when we link worlds. For example, if Blackgate has 10 players and it’s the highest populated server, then we try to link worlds so their populations are also around 10. We can’t be totally precise so sometimes worlds might end up with 12 or 9 but we try to get as close as possible."

Their algorithm doesn't account for why some servers are allowed to exist well over the threshold, while others are merely stuck there. For example, assuming 100 is the threshold:

Server 1 = 100 Server 2 = 100 + 50 Server 3 = 100 + 100 Server 4 = 100 + 150.

All 4 servers are full, but obviously Server 1 cannot compete or field the same numbers as the other servers, just as server 2 can't compete with those above them. This is essentially what has happened.

To make matters worse, suppose Server 4 is bored and wants to even things out a bit and wants a change. They still can't transfer to server's 1,2, or 3 because they still are full. They essentially would have to transfer to a server that's likely desolate most hours of the day. Obviously they likely aren't going to do that. They need to make the thresholds = to the server with the most population and leave them all open until the numbers are equal.

The rank is just there to determine if you are afking or not afking. Though it is a weak indicator, you don't get rank much for defending if enemy is not dying.