@ANet: temporary solution: please slash one German slot (down from 5 to 4)

Thanks for the update on WvW world restructuring. It's good to know you are working hard on it since the balancing problems regarding server populations are still there - especially on the European side where strict language barriers regarding possible server pairings are in place.

By the sound of your update we might brace ourselves for quite a long wait. If the first half of 2019 seems too optimistic I would like to suggest a solution to alleviate the worst imbalance for the time being: please reduce the 5 German slots to 4 and increase the 7 international slots to 8.

Back in the day when server pairings were introduced, the 27 EU servers were paired up into 15 WvW slots. Since then three German servers were condemned to always fend for oneself with no prospect of any pairing because of the strict policy of language segregation. However, time has shown neither their population nor their fighting skills live up to this challenge and all of them are stuck in the lower third of the roster. If you are constantly outnumbered it eventually gets to you and lowers morale. If it goes on for too long ones motivation dies and 2yrs are a very long time. Some EU servers however, even when they are in the top tier of the roster, get paired with one or even two other servers. This imbalance could be made a lot less severe if the number of slots for each 'language line' would be slightly adjusted:

1. current:
   7 slots for the 14 'international' EU servers
   5 slots for the 7 designated German servers
   2 slots for the 5 designated French servers
   1 slot for the one designated Spanish server

2. suggested:8 slots for the 14 EU servers4 slots for the 7 German servers2 slots for the 5 French servers1 slot for the Spanish server

Is this doable? Maybe without even requiring much time from the devs. What do you think?

From zero to godwin in one post.

@starlinvf.1358 said:From zero to godwin in one post.

What? Lol, seriously. How narrow-minded is that thinking?The system is not working satisfactorily. Apparently there are problems even on the American side. ANet has acknowledged this by creating a completely different system.However, the worst issue on the European side could be corrected with a small change as explained in the starting post. In April 2016, when the current system was set up, it was an honest mistake granting the 7 German servers 5 slots in the roster while squeezing 14 EU servers into just 7 slots.As to your 'godwin' reference: my account is on Seafarer's Rest, an 'international' EU server. My guild, though mostly German speaking includes Austrians and Swiss and has attracted members from the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia and Russia (those I know of; there might be others, we have around 400 members). Now please tell me: how is trying to fix a problem that has frustrated tens of thousands of players regardless of nationality for more than 2yrs remotely 'godwin'?

What I notice is a lot of german players are mitigating to international servers (I see a lot of former roaming fellows of my server on Deso, SFR and of course the fotm. servers Vaabi and Whiteside Ridge). If this continues your problem will solve itself as the population will be that low that three german servers can be paired.

I think ANet is aware of that and so won't change anything as the current system has already a solution (three paired servers). The populations are just still too high (I know how stupid that sounds, but it's reasonable).

@KrHome.1920 said:If this continues your problem will solve itself as the population will be that low that three german servers can be paired.

Ehm, no matter how low the population on these servers get, the problem doesn't go away on its own. That's the main point of the TS, I presume. It's simple arithmetic. You have 7 German servers on 5 slots. Two pairs à 2 servers and the remaining three servers always fight alone no matter what. All the while Piken Square and Seafarer's Rest, currently the two top European servers, are both paired with another server. It's just not fair.Therefore, I concur with the TS: decrease the number of German slots to 4 and increase the EU slots to 8.

@Blacky.6039 said:Piken Square and Seafarer's Rest, currently the two top European servers

One of the best jokes on this forum xD

@Curzed.5178 said:

@Blacky.6039 said:Piken Square and Seafarer's Rest, currently the two top European servers

Piken are role players, sfr is a bandwagon servers. go ... Ruins of Surmia!

@Curzed.5178 said:

@Blacky.6039 said:Piken Square and Seafarer's Rest, currently the two top European servers

Anybody still saying Piken is strong lives 9 months in the past lol. After being linked with them so many times I can safely say it was never a good or even neutral experience. It is indeed among my favorite jokes of this forum as well

Anet should simply scrap one tier in the EU and link more servers. Even in the tier 1 bandwaggon zone, participation numbers are much lower than what we had say two years ago (not even talking about the queues in the first wvw-years).

No wonder more and more Germans are migrating to international servers or just leaving the game. Being constantly outnumbered and out-PPTed by servers with more links/players in the lower tiers is bad for morale. Even the few remaining PPK-centered players get bored with always playing against the same enemies.

The situation might be ok for Dzagonur / Abaddon with their seemingly stable link, but three other servers (who don't get the Miller-Link) are pretty much stuck in T4/T5. There are simply too few servers in total to balance them against higher servers by linking.

But why keep WvW open in weekdays? Three days/week would be enough. Monday prime time is already totally dead.

I think they should definitely cut 1 tier in EU. Like sure lot of eu servers will have lot of queues on prime but atm theres no server that has all 4 maps queued outside reset and even if there is, usually 3 of those maps dont even have voice commanders. it just feels kinda dumb that the bottom 2 servers are always German while every other server is going up and down in tiers.

@Junkpile.7439 said:But why keep WvW open in weekdays? Three days/week would be enough. Monday prime time is already totally dead.

Thats because you're on sfr and sfr has exactly 1 commander. I think his name Purrbulicious or something like that. Commanders/guilds just dont like the server, the voice comms are silent and the players are bad. The server builds are kind of 4 years old? Last time I checked, it had cavalier ele in it.

Then theres Elite during daytime but he doesnt play prime. Scorpinator is somewhere there also but he doesn't lead much.

Anyways SFR should pull themselves together, which is up to the people who run their community guild and server meetings. You need to have a clear goal and topics relevant enough for people to keep participating weekly. Else you will just get new pugs/random tags every week and your earlier week improvement will be for naught.

@Curzed.5178 said:

@Blacky.6039 said:Piken Square and Seafarer's Rest, currently the two top European serversOne of the best jokes on this forum xD

I'm sorry. The current matchup shows Seafarer's Rest as #2 and Gandara as #1 and it looks like Seafarer's Rest will advance to #1 later today and Piken will move up to #2 while Gandara may find itself down to #8. Maybe it's all due to their linked servers (Blacktide for Seafarer's Rest or Fissure of Woe for Piken Sq). You can laugh it up but that's what the roster says. Anyway, it's distracting from the main point.

@Lemoncurry.2345 said:No wonder more and more Germans are migrating to international servers or just leaving the game. Being constantly outnumbered and out-PPTed by servers with more links/players in the lower tiers is bad for morale. Even the few remaining PPK-centered players get bored with always playing against the same enemies.The situation might be ok for Dzagonur / Abaddon with their seemingly stable link, but three other servers (who don't get the Miller-Link) are pretty much stuck in T4/T5.

This goes on since Summer 2016 and if the new system won't come before next spring, a temporary solution like the one proposed by the TS would be of great help.

Merge all German servers into one.

@gebrechen.5643 said:Merge all German servers into one.

be prepared for siege hugging mania. and hackers ofc!

@Blacky.6039 said:

@Curzed.5178 said:

@Blacky.6039 said:Piken Square and Seafarer's Rest, currently the two top European serversOne of the best jokes on this forum xD

Just because they are #1 and #2 on the ladder does not mean they are good. PPT game strong.

@Lemoncurry.2345 said:Anet should simply scrap one tier in the EU and link more servers.@Threather.9354 said:I think they should definitely cut 1 tier in EU.

This might run counter to the system. ANet compartmentalised the ladder into tiers of three on both sides of the Atlantic. America has 12 slots and Europe 15. If Europe's slots go down to 12 as well, all 27 servers would have to be crammed inside it (America has 25 servers). However, Europe's servers can not be linked so free and easily like the American servers since we have 4 different language tags attached and ANet refuses to link servers with different languages.

Let's see how this would probably look like:1 slot for the Spanish2 slots for the French3 or 4 slots for the Germans?5 or 6 slots for the EU servers?

The 14 EU servers would be distributed among just 5 slots should the Germans get 4 slots (or 3 German slots would allow for 6 EU slots). That would mean a lot a 3-server-links and probably a queue for many hours of any day. Why would they do this? Besides, if players interest into WvW rises (e.g. come 28 September when 'Bloodlust week' is on) a lot a players would see an even larger queue. Why create so much frustration among players? No, the 15 European slots must remain. But I still think the number of German slots should go down by one, meaning the EU slots must go up simultaneously.

@"Lennox.7135" said:Besides, if players interest into WvW rises (e.g. come 28 September when 'Bloodlust week' is on) a lot a players would see an even larger queue. Why create so much frustration among players? No, the 15 European slots must remain.

I'm with you that the German servers get the short end of the stick in this system. And no one likes queues of course. But how many worlds get queues on all four maps on a regular basis apart from the reset-night nowadays? Even the biggest bandwagon T1-servers in the EU can't compare to the weakest (population-wise) ones we had a couple of years ago. And the situation in NA seems to be the same. With the current numbers of players in WvW I think we will be perfectly fine with one less tier.