Returning player overwhelmed...

Hey guys - looking for some advice.

I'm (trying) to return to GW2 after not playing for about 3 years. Obviously a lot has changed which is cool and exciting, but at the same time, I am totally confused and overwhelmed at how to get into WvW again or if I should even bother.

I am located in Australia, and when I played a few years back my home was Isle of Janthir as it had quite a heavy OCX population. Nowadays, it seems that's the opposite. I really only played for WvW back then and now IoJ sits pretty much at the bottom of the population/WvW standings last time I checked. I was interested in starting a new character anyway as it's been so long, but it looks like I'm basically stuck on IoJ now unless I pay to transfer or just delete all my characters and start completely fresh (which I don't want to do). Are these really the only options for me? I don't want to pay to move a level 1 character, and I don't want to just jump in to my old character just yet.

I'd love to level again (and also find a chill guild with OCX timezone peeps) but I don't want to delete my GW2 history just to change servers for a fresh start. I just don't want to be stuck on an empty server.

Looking forward to any advice anyone has. Cheers

You might want to ask the people on the WvW forum instead of the general discussion forum for questions about empty servers in WvW. However, for transfers your choices are to pay or delete all chars for a free transfer.

(My memory is sketchy for the details and may not be entirely up to date info but afaik...)WvW Servers get paired with other servers now and the server pairings change up once every... month or two? So even if you're on one of the less populated servers you get to see what the atmosphere/wvw guilds of other servers are like before you transfer. Presumably you tried asking in the map chats about any ocx guilds in operation during that time period but just thought I'd mention it in case.Personally I wouldn't be able to make myself delete my old characters.

Island of Janthir fell way to the bottom of WvW and most of its active WvW population left. But it has been merged (albeit temporarily) with Sea of Sorrows, which has far more players than IoJ, so if you were to play WvW now, it would be like you were in Sea of Sorrows.

Your server should be combined with a larger server each matchup, so you should be able to stay where you are.

not worth the hassle

Thanks for the advise everyone. I guess i'll stay put on IoJ for now if it doesn't make a huge difference.

@KHORR.4360 said:Thanks for the advise everyone. I guess i'll stay put on IoJ for now if it doesn't make a huge difference.

Message me in game if you need non wvw stuff/help. So much has changed.

it looks to me a bit like you think the server your on is characterbound, but your whole accound is on the IoJ server. any new character will also be on soj, and i dont think deleting all your characters will make yu able to select a new server, you still need to pay for the transfer.

You usually get 1 free transfer, depending on factors though you loose pips for two weeks when you do.

Linking is a thing that helps, SoS is pretty good.There's a lot to get used to, take your time: Enjoy it.

A side comment: if you want to play wvw, doing so with a low-level character is no longer beneficial. You don't get leveling experience in wvw any more. Instead you get tomes of knowledge that you can use to level any of your characters, so most wvw players expect you to bring one of your 80s to the game if you have any.

Making a new character to "get back into the game" works fine for pve, but in that case server is irrelevant thanks to megaserver. If you feel like you need help getting back into the game via wvw, grab one of your 80s and ask for assistance from your fellow players in wvw team chat. I'm sure there are players/guilds on your (linked) server that are happy to help you get going :) .

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/ shows the current server pairings. Every two months on the final Friday of the month they review the balancing and switch up the server linking. You should explore Ioj and see if there is an active wvw guild that you can get into. Or even check out guilds on sos since you are paired with them for the next two months. If you find that you enjoy sos more than ioj you can switch. Or if you have friends on another server that is open you can always go there. I am on FA and I love it everyone is wonderful there. A lot of my friends are on GoM and it is a wonderful server as well and is very active.