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Would 'alliances' really work?


JTGuevara.9018

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@"JTGuevara.9018" said:1.) It's not much different than server links -- Servers already get partially restructured every 2 months with server links.You do not seem to see the importance of the finer print in the announcement. The important parts of Alliances is not the shuffling but rather what factors are taken into account when the shuffle occurs and what factors are taken into account to calculate when a world is full or not. That you can choose your friends and get shuffled with them and that your group of friends will have a priority for when people want to transfer to your world is very important as player groups move or quit when servers or maps get crowded and they get choked out of recruitment or their own content.

If anything, it will be worse.There is no basis for that conclusion.

2.)Players and guilds won't change -- Try-hard players and guilds will still find a way to bandwagon and game the system.You list that as some superficial negative thing and casually throw around popular terminology that you don't seem to understand (bandwagon).

Alliances are meant to recruit. Guilds are meant to attempt to be competetive and we have a ladder for that reason so every group can be matched up for content at their own level, so they can have more fun without being put into situations where they get dominated as often.

Under the existing system guilds transfer away from guildless players to open up their recruitment pool. The guildless players (who have no interest in joining the guilds or helping them out, they just want access to their content) transfer after them. The guildless players are the "bandwagon", not the guilds.

You seem to be completely oblivious to that fact. The guilds do not want the bandwagon, it is something that follows them which they can't keep away.

3.) Guilds will have too much power -- Alliances will eventually consolidate into powerhouses limited only by the yet to be proposed alliance cap, dominating smaller ones either through victories, bandwagons, or both.Again, that is meant to be. That is why we have a ladder. Some "servers" (alliances, worlds) are meant to be stronger than others. The ladder is there to make sure that the matchups have fitting content levels. One problem with the existing system is that the ladder does not match servers up very well. A strong server is meant to dominate a weak server so they can separate on the ladder and on their own match up versus respectively strong and weak servers. That is the intention of the entire system since 2012.

The problems we have right now is that guilds do not have enough power over the content that the guild itself creates. Players who are not in the guild have equal or better access to the content that the guild produces. That is a major problem as it makes the players who create content stop. They stop either by quitting or by giving up (not producing content, not sharing content, trying to scare unwanted volume away).

Let's look at how things are now and some issues that come with that:

The content a guild and their commanders create and then possibly decide to share with players not in that guild by making their squad open is not content that all those other players are entitled to. That is also a major misunderstanding kept by players who post on this forum and are not commanders, roamers or members of guilds themselves. You feel entitled to that content: You take public tags for granted. You take the players who share their content through public tags for granted. ArenaNet takes those players for granted as they never prioritize them in whatever little attention this game mode gets. ArenaNet does very few things for WvW but equally troublesome is that very few things ArenaNet does for WvW has been done for guilds or commanders. Everytime something is done for commanders (like hidden tags for example) the entitled guildless mass cry and complain, like in this thread.

This problem has only been getting larger and larger as the balance between players in guilds (content creators) and players without guilds who rely on public groups (content consumers) grows more and more distant. This is more of a problem than losses in total population because - in the total loss of population we have - there is relatively a larger loss of content producers than we have a loss of content consumers which means that tags have just become more and more scarce relative the population total. As a result, players have started to transfer more and more as time has gone on. The population totals does not create that situation, a larger disparity between tags and how many players want to follow those specific tags creates that situation.

It isn't a problem if most players in guilds end up at the higher tiers of the ladder and most players who are not in guilds and take no part in helping out with producing tags and content end up at the lower end of the ladder. That is how it is supposed to be and players like the OP and their ilk have kept protesting things like this for years while the mode just bleeds guilds and tags, making sure there are less and less tags per player. They call others bandwagoners, but they are the wagon.

Of course those players are going to protest the Alliance system and muddy the waters surrounding it, because it takes content that they are not producing from them, by stopping them from taking content from the players who produce it. It is easy to see when they are all "grrrr guilds" without aknowledging that the guilds are the tags and the vast majority of well-organized public tags you see are guilds who decide to share their content with the public. They are angry at that the tags that they want to follow does not want them to follow them. The tags wants to get away from them because they are not helpful and just takes them for granted.

So, anytime you see someone go "grrr those bad bad guilds who transfer and are too powerful" you should go: Good, that means ArenaNet are actually doing something for the players who produce the vast majority of content in this game mode and that is the only way to breathe life back into it - to encourage players to go out and create content!

Alliances are for the people who wants to play with friends, who wants to create guilds and who wants to tag up to produce content. They are the people who are for Alliances in the same way that they were the people who were for hidden tags. Tags are not public commodity even if they can be set to public access. ArenaNet needs to see and understand that, no matter how much some selfish majority of solo-public consumers wants to muddle that truth.

The thing agree with the OP on is that I am far from sure that Alliances are comming anymore, despite Ray's somewhat recent reassurances.

However, I strongly dislike these attempts at swaying opinion on the matter by creating noise and misunderstanding or misrepresenting what Alliances are.

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@Gudradain.3892 said:Totally agree with that but the easy fix would be to make server transfer free.

I want them free, but I doubt ANET will want to make them free. Maybe, if enough ask for it.

The fact that server transfers ARE NOT FREE is why we have not gotten

alliances when

because they have not figured out how to monetize it more than they already get from world transfers. They are not going to kill that Gem Goose.

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@subversiontwo.7501 said:

@"JTGuevara.9018" said:1.)
It's not much different than server links
-- Servers already get partially restructured every 2 months with server links.You do not seem to see the importance of the finer print in the announcement. The important parts of Alliances is not the shuffling but rather what factors are taken into account when the shuffle occurs and what factors are taken into account to calculate when a world is full or not. That you can choose your friends and get shuffled with them and that your group of friends will have a priority for when people want to transfer to your world is very important as player groups move or quit when servers or maps get crowded and they get choked out of recruitment or their own content.

If anything, it will be
worse
.There is no basis for that conclusion.

2.)
Players and guilds won't change
-- Try-hard players and guilds will still find a way to bandwagon and game the system.You list that as some superficial negative thing and casually throw around popular terminology that you don't seem to understand (bandwagon).

Alliances are meant to recruit. Guilds are meant to attempt to be competetive and we have a ladder for that reason so every group can be matched up for content at their own level, so they can have more fun without being put into situations where they get dominated as often.

Under the existing system guilds transfer away from guildless players to open up their recruitment pool. The guildless players (who have no interest in joining the guilds or helping them out, they just want access to their content) transfer after them. The guildless players are the "bandwagon", not the guilds.

You seem to be completely oblivious to that fact. The guilds do not want the bandwagon, it is something that follows them which they can't keep away.

3.)
Guilds will have too much power
-- Alliances will eventually consolidate into powerhouses limited only by the yet to be proposed alliance cap, dominating smaller ones either through victories, bandwagons, or both.Again, that is meant to be. That is why we have a ladder. Some "servers" (alliances, worlds) are meant to be stronger than others. The ladder is there to make sure that the matchups have fitting content levels. One problem with the existing system is that the ladder does not match servers up very well. A strong server is meant to dominate a weak server so they can separate on the ladder and on their own match up versus respectively strong and weak servers. That is the intention of the entire system since 2012.

The problems we have right now is that guilds do not have enough power over the content that the guild itself creates. Players who are not in the guild have equal or better access to the content that the guild produces. That is a
major problem
as it makes the players who create content stop. They stop either by quitting or by giving up (not producing content, not sharing content, trying to scare unwanted volume away).

Let's look at how things are now and some issues that come with that:

The content a guild and their commanders create and then possibly decide to share with players not in that guild by making their squad open is not content that all those other players are entitled to. That is also a
major misunderstanding
kept by players who post on this forum and are not commanders, roamers or members of guilds themselves. You feel entitled to that content: You take public tags for granted. You take the players who share their content through public tags for granted. ArenaNet takes those players for granted as they never prioritize them in whatever little attention this game mode gets. ArenaNet does very few things for WvW but equally troublesome is that very few things ArenaNet does for WvW has been done for guilds or commanders. Everytime something is done for commanders (like hidden tags for example) the entitled guildless mass cry and complain, like in this thread.

This problem has only been getting
larger and larger
as the balance between players in guilds (content creators) and players without guilds who rely on public groups (content consumers) grows more and more distant. This is
more of a problem
than losses in total population because - in the total loss of population we have - there is relatively a larger loss of content producers than we have a loss of content consumers which means that tags have just become more and more scarce relative the population total. As a result, players have started to
transfer more and more
as time has gone on. The population totals does not create that situation, a larger disparity between tags and how many players want to follow those specific tags creates that situation.

It isn't a problem if most players in guilds end up at the higher tiers of the ladder and most players who are not in guilds and take no part in helping out with producing tags and content end up at the lower end of the ladder. That is how it is supposed to be and players like the OP and their ilk have kept protesting things like this for years while the mode just bleeds guilds and tags, making sure there are less and less tags per player. They call others bandwagoners, but they are the wagon.

Of course those players are going to protest the Alliance system and muddy the waters surrounding it, because it takes content that they are not producing from them, by stopping them from taking content from the players who produce it. It is easy to see when they are all "grrrr guilds" without aknowledging that the guilds are the tags and the vast majority of well-organized public tags you see are guilds who decide to share their content with the public. They are angry at that the tags that they want to follow does not want them to follow them. The tags wants to get away from them because they are not helpful and just takes them for granted.

So, anytime you see someone go "grrr those bad bad guilds who transfer and are too powerful" you should go: Good, that means ArenaNet are actually doing something for the players who produce the vast majority of content in this game mode and that is the only way to breathe life back into it - to encourage players to go out and create content!

Alliances are for the people who wants to play with friends, who wants to create guilds and who wants to tag up to produce content. They are the people who are for Alliances in the same way that they were the people who were for hidden tags. Tags are not public commodity even if they can be set to public access. ArenaNet needs to see and understand that, no matter how much some selfish majority of solo-public consumers wants to muddle that truth.

The thing agree with the OP on is that I am far from sure that Alliances are comming anymore, despite Ray's somewhat recent reassurances.

However, I strongly dislike these attempts at swaying opinion on the matter by creating noise and misunderstanding or misrepresenting what Alliances are.

And you have succinctly made my point in why alliances should never occur, even as you strongly defend them.

You see guilds as the primary drivers of WvW ('content creators'), while everyone is along for the ride('content consumers'). I oppose that statement. Everybody contributes in WvW: PUGs, roamers, militia/havoc groups, guilds. When guilds are not active or they retire for the night, who picks up the slack? That's right, PUGs, roamers and havoc groups. I'm sorry, but guilds are not special, they're a part of the system like everyone else.

You speak as if guilds have not stacked servers forming de-facto alliances since launch, which they have. Guilds historically have also gamed the current system by mass transferring if they don't like this or that server or tier. This makes so-called "competition" ladder essentially meaningless, since guilds with resources and capital can just pack up and go at will like locusts leaving their host server a husk and shell of what it was. This has happened to previous servers and continues to this day. And yet, we as players should give these giant mega guilds more control over this game mode just merely because of they 'create content' with an alliance system? I'm sorry, no dice.

And lastly, 'swaying opinion'?...As opposed to what? Spamming "alliances when" in every post? At least I actually have something to say.

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@Naxos.2503 said:To be honest, we dont even know if they would keep the initial iteration they gave when they presented the project, if they actually did it.It's gone to the point that Alliance coming soon for 2 years is not meme worthy, memes are meant to be funny. This is just sad.

It would help guilds actually playing across servers together aaaaaand I think that's it ? You mention it in 3 that guilds will have too much power but honestly, they already Have all the power. It'll always be the same guilds getting in the same objectives and defending said objectives. It'll still be the same guilds leading kill trains. What might change is that it may -potentially- lead to newer guilds on the scene if it's easier for them to play together.

All of this is purely hypothetical due to how little is known and honestly the 2 year (Isn't that closer to 3 now btw ?) has all but voided any possible hype players may have had on the matter.

Edit : Yeeeeup... 3 years ...

It is speculation from all us, myself included. I made this thread as a counter opinion since the current discussion is centered around alliances and the lack of delivery there of. Still, I base this speculation and assumption on prior evidence of what's happened in WvW in the past. As far as newer guilds go, it's a gamble. It's essentially betting the farm hoping that the rain comes. Newer players may or may not enjoy open-world pvp, and even so, do the player gains offset the player losses?

And regarding my 3rd point, now that I think about it...you're right! There's really nothing stopping them now. So an alliance system wouldn't change much anyway.

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@JTGuevara.9018 said:

@Naxos.2503 said:To be honest, we dont even know if they would keep the initial iteration they gave when they presented the project, if they actually did it.It's gone to the point that Alliance coming soon for 2 years is not meme worthy, memes are meant to be funny. This is just sad.

It would help guilds actually playing across servers together aaaaaand I think that's it ? You mention it in 3 that guilds will have too much power but honestly, they already Have all the power. It'll always be the same guilds getting in the same objectives and defending said objectives. It'll still be the same guilds leading kill trains. What might change is that it may -potentially- lead to newer guilds on the scene if it's easier for them to play together.

All of this is purely hypothetical due to how little is known and honestly the 2 year (Isn't that closer to 3 now btw ?) has all but voided any possible hype players may have had on the matter.

Edit : Yeeeeup... 3 years ...

It is speculation from all us, myself included. I made this thread as a counter opinion since the current discussion is centered around alliances and the lack of delivery there of. Still, I base this speculation and assumption on prior evidence of what's happened in WvW in the past. As far as newer guilds go, it's a gamble. It's essentially betting the farm hoping that the rain comes. Newer players may or may not enjoy open-world pvp, and even so, do the player gains offset the player losses?

And regarding my 3rd point, now that I think about it...you're right! There's really nothing stopping them now. So an alliance system wouldn't change much anyway.

I mean, what would we lose that we haven't already lost yeah ? Guilds Are already very prevalent in the system, there's no hiding that, they always have been. From my standpoint though, just guilds being able to collectively pick their active server would atleast give us a shot at concurencing well established, and in some cases dare I say -aging- guilds. They've been as badly impacted by the years droughts as everyone else. Fight guilds now regularly accept roamers into their squad, because they lack the numbers. I dont have a big guild, but a fair amount of us enjoy WvW, the problem is, when I recruit, I recruit based on affinity, not server location, and it always causes issues when it comes to actually playing together. As far as I'm concerned, this is the -only- thing I require Alliance to fix. If it does, I can bring a cohesive group of fighters, and so can everyone else. Aimless roamers may become squad leaders, big or small.

It wont fix everything, or heck, might not even happen at this point. To any dev probably not reading this : -3- Freaking Years. Without so much as a morsel or proof of concept. Tell the managers that if they didn't want to take care of WvW, they shouldn't have put it in from the start.

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see, there is only one answer: yes. if u read the concept plan, i don't see any reason to doubt that it would perfectly work

the current system is absolutely toxic for the gamemode, and we have it for years. so Alliances could only just work, if the current, completely bad system, can "work" somehow as well.

the "old" Servers are mostly not existing anymore anyways. the desolation i started at ~3 years ago only is by now spread out on like 5 other servers, vabbi sorta has died completely even 1-2 years before i started playing.

@Naxos.2503 well, it is even longer. alliances was hinted in a post of the devs in ~ late 2017 yet, the 3 years ago thing was actually when it has been fully planned and ready to technically go live.

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@"Naxos.2503" said:As far as I'm concerned, this is the -only- thing I require Alliance to fix.Yet the -only- thing alliances was supposed to fix was the population differences between matched worlds by cutting up the chunks in smaller numbers rather than trying to match monolithic worlds.

Regardless, what irks me as well is that we havent even seen the soft version of alliances without the actual matchup link - just another layer on top of guilds but below the world, with allied guilds and a new chat channel/MoTD/management system for that. We already began that long ago by brute forcing it - we created community guilds. This would replace how you change your guild and instead show your alliance at the same time as your own guild, as well as showing alliance for objectives claimed by member guilds, etc. Could easily imagine them remaking the guild logo/flag/banner system to a combine the alliance logo+guild as well.

It would have been a great stepping stone at least and bring more depth to WvW rather than "basic" guilds.

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@"JTGuevara.9018" said:And you have succinctly made my point in why alliances should never occur, even as you strongly defend them.

You see guilds as the primary drivers of WvW ('content creators'), while everyone is along for the ride('content consumers'). I oppose that statement. Everybody contributes in WvW: PUGs, roamers, militia/havoc groups, guilds. When guilds are not active or they retire for the night, who picks up the slack? That's right, PUGs, roamers and havoc groups. I'm sorry, but guilds are not special, they're a part of the system like everyone else.

Roamers and havoc groups usually are guilds. You yourself used the word group. Whereas for pickup players, if that is all they do, then that too is implicit in their name. That implies that they do not play unless there is a tag to feed them. That is a problem. It isn't necessarily a problem for me, but for the game if it grows rampant. There are caps, people get locked out. Roaming and havoc groups create their own content. That's not a problem.

Now, obviously most people who play in pickups do not only do that, that is why tags lead them and other players who tend to be in guilds follow them too. However, ArenaNet making changes in favour of the content creators then obviously comes back to all of those players: Happy tags = tags = content.

I think you are severely missing the point here. My problem isn't with pickups existing. I want pickups to exist. My issue is that the current system making guilds quit also makes the players who produce the majority of content for other players (or themselves) quit or stop. There are less public tags as a result of guilds getting split apart, starved out or feeling forced to not share. I don't even have a problem with players who are 100% pugs, casuals or PvX. I have a problem when those players thinks that holding tags hostage, attempting to force those tags to cater to those uninvested players, is a functioning system that doesn't make the tags quit, lash out or stop tagging up (publically or completely).

I'm also posting because while ArenaNet are terrible at communicating, they are prone to read threads like these and get cold feet, so any project dealing with full servers, transfer costs and other population issues trickles on for even more years. This has been going on since Colin's comments on it before HoT where he showed that they were clearly reluctant on who to listen to. He mentioned the server communities and them being Alliances, but the issue was the same then as now. Sometime they need to decide and commit. Do you listen to the tags or the people who follow them? Boil it down to its bare bones and that is the crude decision. As long as they do nothing they listen to the players who follow tags over the people who put the tags up.

What exactly is your reservation?

Do you disagree that guilds produce the majority of popular tags and content to affect populations? Do you somehow disagree that there seems to be less public tags per capita now? Can you relate that to remaining tags becomming more guarded with who they lead? Do you disagree that the guilds that remain seems to grow disproportionally stronger relative the content on their worlds ("killing servers" when only one or two guilds leave as opposed to server communities absorbing that in the past)? You just seem to errenously piece things together and go with it, confusing what things like pugs, bandwagons or Alliances themselves are or how the system is actually gamed or faulty (including night capping and coverage or cross-region stacking).

You have to excuse me but that baffles me with your argument as you somehow accuse guilds of ruining servers but then you do not want to aknowledge that they have the power to do that for a reason (they can kill the server because they are the server). If you were the server it wouldn't affect you if they left or it would affect them if you left. That is the case though, no? You also don't want them to have more power without understanding that their actions are prompted by a lack of options and that giving them more power to choose would result in more good choices being made. If you assume them to do harm it wouldn't affect you if they had the power to go do whatever they do elsewhere. Those parts of your argument simply do not click together.

You seem stuck in this loop of not being part of the guilds, being angry at them but still need or want them with you. My point here is that we just get more JT's relative fewer guilds the longer this transpires. Your frustrations will just grow. If not your frustrations then someone else's who is in your position on another server. The fewer guilds the more dominant the servers who still have them become. The less likely it will be that you will have that content rather than any other JT.

At the end of the day we seem to have a smaller and smaller portion of the community creating a larger and larger portion of the remaining overall content. For a mode, for a game and for a game developer that should be a major red flag. That is irrelevant of remaining player totals. The playerbase overall is less productive. You can try to figure out why and try to turn that around or you can put your head in the sand and just grrrr. The roaming and havoc groups are also hurt by full servers, transfer costs, map queues and whatever else. They also have problems creating their own content as a result even if they are less known to share it. They do not hold the server above their own group either and will transfer to survive or make sure they can play as a group of friends.

There are even still some guilds on servers who are all happy about the server they've been on since release. However, they are only happy with that until they are faced with the reality of getting split apart (host/link) or choked out of players (full but friends looking to come). Then they sing another tune. The same goes for maps, if a number of other groups transfer to them and clog up the maps, those old cool cucumbers also quickly turn rather toxic. So the issue, in most cases, is that they have not been faced with the realities of the system. That goes for pugs as well. They can be rather prideful until their favourite tag transfers away. When it does they rarely have qualms about transfering themselves. The pride is out the window. Or they just go grrr toxic.

You speak as if guilds have not stacked servers forming de-facto alliances since launch, which they have. Guilds historically have also gamed the current system by mass transferring if they don't like this or that server or tier. This makes so-called "competition" ladder essentially meaningless, since guilds with resources and capital can just pack up and go at will like locusts leaving their host server a husk and shell of what it was. This has happened to previous servers and continues to this day. And yet, we as players should give these giant mega guilds more control over this game mode just merely because of they 'create content' with an alliance system? I'm sorry, no dice.Again, all I hear here is "grrr guilds", with you being upset at guild groups who left you to go play elsewhere without you. It just comes across as egoistic and it reads like "giant mega" hyperbole to me. If friendships exist between guilds and they choose to go somewhere to build community and that server then climbs the ladder that is working as intended. They are the community, they are the "server" and they make that server climb the ladder. That is how it works and how it should work. The problems we have is when things do not work that way.

Regardless of who we talk about (BG, guilds or whoever else you are mad at), the problems under the existing system isn't that the best 5 guilds can band together and possibly create the strongest server. Both the system and its eco system should be able to handle that. If a server does well because it is good or active, that is not gaming the system. That is the system. If a server does well because it stacks coverage or is more active outside a region's free time than in it, that is gaming the system. Alliances makes gaming the system (stacking worlds) more difficult while playing within the system (alliances) easier.

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@"subversiontwo.7501"

First off, I will just address your name. You have a massive post, so I will just address it in general. As far as my argument being "baffling", it is simple enough to me. Maybe I should reiterate it? Here it is. I'm just going to be transparent about this.

Guilds should not be given any more power in this game. A potential influx of guilds aided by the implementation of an alliance system will not magically fix WvW, specially at this point. The fact that PUGs are toxic and mean at times are not a viable argument for guilds taking control for this game mode. Period. End of. Guilds are not "the server", as you claim, they are a part of the server, they are in the server. Guilds are no more important than PUGs and everyone else. That is ALL that I have said.

I really cannot make this any more clearer than that.

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@JTGuevara.9018 said:@"subversiontwo.7501"

First off, I will just address your name. You have a massive post, so I will just address it in general. As far as my argument being "baffling", it is simple enough to me. Maybe I should reiterate it? Here it is. I'm just going to be transparent about this.

Guilds should not be given any more power in this game. A potential influx of guilds aided by the implementation of an alliance system will not magically fix WvW, specially at this point. The fact that PUGs are toxic and mean at times are not a viable argument for guilds taking control for this game mode. Period. End of. Guilds are not "the server", as you claim, they are a part of the server, they are in the server. Guilds are no more important than PUGs and everyone else. That is ALL that I have said.

I really cannot make this any more clearer than that.

I don't think you understand what power actually is, or how it manifests itself in something like WvW. Else you would not be speaking nonsense like you are.

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@X T D.6458 said:

Help me understand here...JQ tanks to avoid t1/BG, but you want to open up because?@"MaLeVoLenT.8129" said:No one wants a link. Aandrie Youre wrong. We're tanking to avoid T1, tanking to open. Welcome to the meta imposed by 1 up 1 down.

JQ wants to open up because just like many JQ has been bleeding. JQ has been locked for 6 months, moving to a 7 month period since before the expansion. During the expansion players come back to the game and they want to play with their friends. These players have been waiting for longer than a half year in the wake of an expansion. Meanwhile during the 7 month period JQ has lost substantial coverage and guilds alike, yet we still remain locked. JQs overall ideal Tier should perhaps be Tier 1 second or 3rd place. However because of the capacity situation posted about in various threads, the only thing Tier 1 itself provides is a slow degrade to implosion and the general population avoiding the most stacked server and organized server, that can still beat every server while being half dead and bored. The same effect has been happening for ages, even to the days of my alliance and way before that. The only difference now is 1 up 1 down greatly intensifies this disaster of a WvW system.

The common response I get to this is, they why don't you xfer to a lower server population. But yet the same folk who would give me that would also cry when I do and call me a bandwagon when the same outcome happens.

TL DR JQ is trying to save its life. Just like the rest of you.

Oh I feel so sorry for poor Malevolent (OnS) who backstabs his own server and tries to destroy them repeatedly by stacking to servers to break the T1 wall. Before his lack of sportsmanship and wanting a challenge drove him to create the alliance of TW and several other cross server repping guilds. Yes go ahead and stack another server like you did to TC and YB.

Tanking is no problem when there is no honor to be had because nobody has any server loyalty anymore. Thanks to you and your ideas for WvWvW Arenanet listened to you and we have the rotation you wanted so much for years. Whats the matter doesn't it suit you when the game is dead years later?

This is from the old forums when he used to run Blackgate as server leader.

"Greetings I’m Malevolent Omen, a server leader of Blackgate and the guild leader of [OnS]Onslaught. Blackgate is seeking Oceanic, South East Asian, and European guilds to fulfill our community’s coverage during Season 2. We seek guilds and individual players who want to join the server that maintained the lead in WvW Season 1.

Since I came to Blackgate, I found that Blackgate has a great community with many people willing to work together to strengthen the server to better the community.

Resilient is the word to describe Blackgate, which is one of the reasons my guild chose to come to here a year ago. No matter what trials and tribulations we go through as a server, in the end we always work together and get over them. These same tribulations have made us strong. Whether it is being the world’s first Tequatl kill or our will to win Season 1, Blackgate has always put its best foot forward.

Coming to Blackgate isn’t an easy win and Season 2 will be a much more competitive environment. If you are expecting easy wins here, chances are you will be disappointed. The competition is fierce and our Rival Servers want our heads on a stake.

If you are interested in Blackgate, we would love to hear from you. We are looking for like-minded guilds and players that want to come compete in North American Tier 1 WvW. If you are worried about Blackgate being Full, please note that our server status changes depending on time and we have been monitoring it so we know when players are able to transfer. If you are worried about the cost to transfer to a Tier 1 server, please know that on Blackgate we help support guilds and players that are interested in our community.

Join us on BEASTGATE!"

Website: http://www.blackgatewvw.com

South East Asia & Oceanic Contact• Death Dollie (Tenebris.9258)

Europe Contact• Skugg (glorius.1235)• Smokee Gee (Smokee.1754)

North America Contact• Malevolent Omen (MaLeVoLenT.8129)

Malevolent as leader of BlackGate stacked the server with the help of the community warchest.

Another post from reddit about the history of WvWvW and the 2v1 because of lack of sportsmanship.

"I want to start with a disclaimer that for story purposes, the servers are presented as simplified groups, in one case in particular, the characters presented as a server are a small subset of that server's population which gave that server a bad name. There are tons of great people on BG, and very often I've had some great, enjoyable fights with them.

Once upon a time, I was on Sanctum of Rall. I did not begin playing at launch, closer to around the January of the first year. I joined the server and guild of a relative who'd been playing since launch. This particular guild had a longer history of being an RvR guild, going back to Dark Age of Camelot. We had our own vent channel, we had a commander to lead guild raids in WvW, our server's standing was improving rapidly. Life was good.

Soon after I started playing WvW, it became apparent that our server, SoR, was on it's way up to T1, to compete with the big boys. One week, we were fighting Storm-Bluff Isle and Tarnished Coast (whom we considered enjoyable opponents) The next week, we were up against Sea of Sorrows and standing champion Jade Quarry. Looking back, I wish we'd never hit T1.

We did alright that first week in T1, placing second. That partial success seemed to change much of the attitude on the server from "We enjoy WvW" to "We are good at WvW". The server, our guild included, got much more competitive. SoS soon fell out of T1, replaced by a new opponent, Black Gate.

As competition increased, tempers began to fly. No longer were our opponents other great communities with whom we had enjoyable fights. No longer was JQ the admirable champion, whom we sought to dethrone, and no longer was BG the rookie, the newcomer to greet with the same good-natured battle with which we greeted other servers. No, now this was war; the other servers were just scumbags who sucked, and we found every possible reason to call their play dishonest. BG called themselves BeastGate. Not ones to pass up the opportunity, we called them every name under the sun (BadGate, BagGate, HackGate, etc). We also took to calling JQ "JQQ". I don't know whether or not they had names for us.

Then, in the midst of all this, WvW Tournament Season 1 came about. At the start, it was assumed that JQ would win, given that they had the best seed. But while we at SoR decided to just fight like usual and kitten about it on the forums, BG took action, and by action, I mean they bought a kitten of big WvW guilds from other servers, including a massive Russian guild. They wiped the floor with us and had us eat off of it.

I want to take a moment to reiterate, before I go further, that there are dickbags in every server, and that there are lots of nice people in BG. Those in BG that did bad things are not representative of BG as a whole.

It was at this tourney that SoR died. One of the biggest things was that our server-wide teamspeak got DDOSed, a lot. It was also noticed that our teamspeak, without exception during this tourney, got DDOSed if-and-only-if we were facing BG that week. Tensions grew. "They're a bunch of hackers and cheaters." the TS got moved from its public ts that everyone knew of, to a secret one which was given only to wvw guild leaders. It also didn't help that BG had made several guild purchases for the tourney; we said they'd "raided Mommy's wallet", and added to their name list monikers such as "BuyGate" and "BribeGate". As the tournament came to a close, SoR fell in status, WvW guilds transferred out, having tasted T1 and not wishing to leave. As a result, SoR fell further, and the loop continued until SoR hit its current spot.

My guild was one of the guilds that left. We came to TC, our old enemies friends, the next guild moving up in the ranks. We only did so after TW, the server's flagship guild, abandoned ship. This fractured the guild immeasurably; only about half transferred. I almost didn't; I almost stayed in SoR, but my relative in the guild offered me the gold needed to transfer. Because we were split between worlds, it was much harder to get those who played less into groups. The guild died. Some moved to other games. Those that stayed found other guilds, including myself.

SoR as a whole suffered a similar split- those who left got split mostly into JQ and TC. Few, if any, went to BG. There was far too much bad blood. BG, of course, lauded themselves on victory, and in the weeks leading up to season 2, boasted to JQ and TC of how badly they would wreck us, like they did season 1. This was a mistake on their part, for three reasons.

-Reason 1: TC and JQ now had many guilds from SoR, expatriots of their home server, due to events for which they blamed BG. Exiled from their home soil, they were out for blood.

-Reason 2: Most of the rest of JQ had been in the server for Season 1. They'd expected an easy win, and were none too pleased with BG's antics either.

-Reason 3: This is the biggest reason of all. BG, in all their "Beast Gate" chest beating, forgot that they were taunting TC. They pissed off a Role-Play server. Never kitten off a Role-Play server.

Thus began the farce that is known as the Season 2 2v1, or as I like to call it, the reaming of BG. In a hastily contrived plot, JQ and TC agreed to focus fire on BG, trading wins week-by-week, so that by week 7, BG could not win. We'd then duke it out for 1st on the final week. BG didn't like this, and took to the forums to demand Anet's divine intervention. They didn't get it. We added "BlubGate" and "CryGate" to their name list.

It's worth noting that by now, Anet had locked the WvW matchup forum category, forcing discussion to move to an unmoderated third party forum. It began unmoderated, at least. The 2v1 resulted in one of the biggest flame wars I've ever seen. Several players laughed, saying BG got what they deserved. Several BG said they never deserved anything like this. Several non-BG painted a picture of the 2v1 as a Jihad against the unrighteous. Several BG compared the other servers to an evil empire. There were several reaction pictures posted, of laughter, and of rage. Moderation finally got introduced when someone attached a massive picture of a kitten to his post, for the world to see.

JQ won in the end. TC came second, and BG got third. After it became clear that TC couldn't win, we almost managed to sway public opinion towards letting SoS beat us in the matchup, to put BG in fourth, but alas, nothing came of it.TC solidified its identity as the new third T1 player, and BG got kitten. All was right in the world.

And yet, not all was right. In the end, winning isn't much of a victory. I don't play WvW much anymore. It's not the same- no one from my old guild is on anymore. If I run, I run with strangers in mumble. TC is a welcoming and rich community, but I must confess it's not as good as it was. I miss SoR; I miss what it was. I miss having good fights with opponents we respected. I miss doing raids on a keep, with the whole giant group all in the guild. I miss the people ion the group being there to have fun, not to win. Sometimes, when I run in wvw, with a particularly friendly commander in mumble, just for a moment, I feel like I'm back there. But then the moment passes.

TL;DR: Tier1 is full of drama, someone please come up and knock us down to T2."

Why is it that the whole of the GW2 playerbase is punished for the actions of a few alliances of guilds who have stacked servers since the game's launch? You know what the worst part of all this is Arenanet? Now you're just going to give them all the tools they need to do it forever with these new "megaserver alliances."

Let me give you some proof of this with some videos and reddit posts by these people.

Does anyone remember the Titan Alliance who stacked servers at the beginning of the game?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/vvzs5/introducing_the_titan_alliance/

Sanctum of Rall was stacked by Indo (Tempest Wolves):

Blackgate was stacked by Malevolent (OnSlaught):

They have even made blatant statements about what their intentions were to do below:

[–]MaLeVoLenT_OnS 2 points 2 years ago

"I heard about this Weeks before HoT even had a release date. Arena Net wasn't kidding they've been working on this for years. I even hinted at this multiple times and i told various commanders and leaders. The information was provided to me by Arena Net hired beta testers and streamers. The same folk who provided me with this intel are the same folk who warned me if a season was coming or a certain patch. The information is legit the only thing thats not is the fact that they've been working on this for a year + so what we have as a leak could be vastly outdated.

When TW, OnS, WHOA, TS, EK, kitten, LUN formed "The Mad Court Alliance" we also knew about this. We also didn't like how the Tiers rotate and we wanted to break it. We wanted to play with who we wanted and fight who we wanted. We didn't want the stagnant pace of WvW and we believe that GW2 WvW community is a global community and friends and guilds are what builds communities not the server you are currently on. So yes "The Tier destroyer alliance" is real and the list of guilds within will probably keep the alliance going(hoping its just not 3 guilds)."

Malevolent was removed as server leader of BlackGate because he along with these guilds started cross-server representing. He wanted revenge on BlackGate even though he made it into what it is himself. The hypocrisy of some of the people in this world...He's finally won and destroyed Blackgate now.https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26547/world-restructuring#latest

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

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Alliances were just a joke of an idea:

  • Language specific servers would become even more obsolete (even though they already kinda are). Imagine being french or spanish speaking person amongst people that don't speak the same language.
  • The selling point was to balance every timezone, yeah right, balance 10 or 15 whatever servers offprime timezones with like 3 total commanders that might quit/transfer any moment. What it will make is server timezones even more of a mess than relinkings already do. Imagine if most of the 30 Tier 1 server noontime players are thrown to the lower tier servers, what are they gonna do, have 2v2v2s? Who would tag up for that?
  • It removes reason lot of people play the game as it is: For their server. Ton of people are proud that they never transferred, which is weird but still a case against it.
  • Guilds and commanders come and go, alliances will be dead as soon as they're formed.
  • 99% of the active players have had extended break from the gamemode once or twice, imagine coming back after 6 months and not knowing anyone. You won't stick around for very long.
  • Most people while useful to their server just don't stand out and will be too shy to join alliances, meaning people will forget to include them.
  • Pugs will be split evenly so pug servers will have less pugs and more guilds, so it seems great for them. BUT THE ONES WHO WANT ALLIANCES ARE ALREADY ON STACKED SERVERS !!! So the ones who want alliances will have ton of pugs. Guild players don't want to play with pugs, they will be forced to.

Now for some people alliances have the positive is that it gives guilds the power to choose players on their server, but all I see is upcoming drama of kicking people that the guild leader or his closest companions dislike. Maybe they'll even charge people gold to join their alliance. And don't forget the rules like forcing people to run certain builds and whoever is in charge of supervising that will overlook their friends.

Issue with WvW is the terrible balancing and relinking system that forces people to stack. Alliances won't fix that, just make it worse. Just fix the bad changes for example shield gens, claim buff, fast upgrade times and superspeed upkeep are still problematic

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@God.2708 said:

@JTGuevara.9018 said:@"subversiontwo.7501"

First off, I will just address your name. You have a massive post, so I will just address it in general. As far as my argument being "baffling", it is simple enough to me. Maybe I should reiterate it? Here it is. I'm just going to be transparent about this.

Guilds should not be given any more power in this game. A potential influx of guilds aided by the implementation of an alliance system will not magically fix WvW, specially at this point. The fact that PUGs are toxic and mean at times are
not
a viable argument for guilds taking control for this game mode. Period. End of. Guilds are
not
"the server", as you claim, they are
a part
of the server, they are
in
the server. Guilds are no more important than PUGs and everyone else. That is ALL that I have said.

I really cannot make this any more clearer than that.

I don't think you understand what power actually is, or how it manifests itself in something like WvW. Else you would not be speaking nonsense like you are.

My apologies! Might you explain to the rest of us what power is then if what you think I say is "nonsense"? I'll be waiting.

@"getalifeturd.8139"

It is massive posts like these that just drive the point home for me that any sort of guild 'alliance' system is doomed to fail. All this drama, politicking and backstabbing...for what? Stroking your e-stick to compensate for what you don't have? Doing it just for kicks? Tryharding in this manner is just sad and just drives people away from playing this game. And overall, these situations demonstrate how flawed and broken the server tier system actually is. If ya ask me, honestly, nothing short of unifying all the servers and implementing a WvW mega server with a 3-way faction system will actually address population in any meaningful way. Yes, I know some people will balk at this suggestion, but I honestly see no other way. With the server links that we have, we basically are halfway there. (8 to 4 tiers) However, I see that people are either too loyal to either their guild or their server (aka "guild pride" and "server pride" respectively) to actually accept meaningful changes to WvW.

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@JTGuevara.9018 said:@"subversiontwo.7501"

First off, I will just address your name. You have a massive post, so I will just address it in general. As far as my argument being "baffling", it is simple enough to me. Maybe I should reiterate it? Here it is. I'm just going to be transparent about this.

Guilds should not be given any more power in this game. A potential influx of guilds aided by the implementation of an alliance system will not magically fix WvW, specially at this point. The fact that PUGs are toxic and mean at times are not a viable argument for guilds taking control for this game mode. Period. End of. Guilds are not "the server", as you claim, they are a part of the server, they are in the server. Guilds are no more important than PUGs and everyone else. That is ALL that I have said.

I really cannot make this any more clearer than that.

Such nonsense honestly.Of course guilds should be given the power to organize WvW. You will never have a good balanced WvW system if guilds are given so much less power and Pugs are being permanently transferred from one server to another with the server-linking matchup.And frankly, this whole WvW alliance system isn’t only about WvW, it is also about guilds in general.Truth is guilds in general pretty much needs a strong overhaul because even in PvE, guilds are pointless and there are barely an endgame goal. And the thing is you need guilds in PvE to organize the less popular and needed events as much as you guilds in WvW to pop-up a tag just so that some Pugs can take part in WvW general activity.That is also why they haven’t released the Alliance system imo: as much as it is cool to have guilds being a strong driving force in the hypothetical Alliance system, it won’t do any good to the game if the incentive to join one in the first place isn’t there.

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@JTGuevara.9018 said:

@God.2708 said:

@JTGuevara.9018 said:@"subversiontwo.7501"

First off, I will just address your name. You have a massive post, so I will just address it in general. As far as my argument being "baffling", it is simple enough to me. Maybe I should reiterate it? Here it is. I'm just going to be transparent about this.

Guilds should not be given any more power in this game. A potential influx of guilds aided by the implementation of an alliance system will not magically fix WvW, specially at this point. The fact that PUGs are toxic and mean at times are
not
a viable argument for guilds taking control for this game mode. Period. End of. Guilds are
not
"the server", as you claim, they are
a part
of the server, they are
in
the server. Guilds are no more important than PUGs and everyone else. That is ALL that I have said.

I really cannot make this any more clearer than that.

I don't think you understand what power actually is, or how it manifests itself in something like WvW. Else you would not be speaking nonsense like you are.

My apologies! Might you explain to the rest of us what power is then if what you think I say is "nonsense"? I'll be waiting.

@"getalifeturd.8139"

It is massive posts like these that just drive the point home for me that any sort of guild 'alliance' system is doomed to fail. All this drama, politicking and backstabbing...for what? Stroking your e-stick to compensate for what you don't have? Doing it just for kicks? Tryharding in this manner is just sad and just drives people away from playing this game. And overall, these situations demonstrate how flawed and broken the server tier system actually is. If ya ask me, honestly, nothing short of unifying all the servers and implementing a WvW mega server with a 3-way faction system will actually address population in any meaningful way. Yes, I know
some
people will
balk
at this suggestion, but I honestly see no other way. With the server links that we have, we basically are halfway there. (8 to 4 tiers) However, I see that people are either too loyal to either their guild or their server (aka "guild pride" and "server pride" respectively) to actually accept meaningful changes to WvW.

So I would assume based on the text in your posts that you feel as if ‘guilds’ have no true use in the game. I would also guess you don’t use any VOIP.

And loyalty to a server or guild is bad.

So... who generally tags up on your server?

I’ll give you a hint: it’s normally a guild leader. Or a senior member of a guild.

Many Commanders tag up because they enjoy those people In their guild and trust those members to work with them to succeed. Often the open up to others, work on training them.

Of course there are buttheads out there.

Your proposal would effectively eliminate ANY ability to consistently work with people you know.

You want EoTM back? That exists currently: megaservered WvW. And it was a fail. There was no reason to actually engage the other ‘factions’ unless you were wanting to troll them.

It was a huge circle**** that guilds were established that ran on all three colors and actively avoided each other.

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@JTGuevara.9018 said:

@"God.2708" said:I don't think you understand what power actually is, or how it manifests itself in something like WvW. Else you would not be speaking nonsense like you are.

My apologies! Might you explain to the rest of us what power is then if what you think I say is "nonsense"? I'll be waiting.

asking god to explain to us mere mortals what power is, i can't wait!

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@spectrito.8513 said:Alliances is pointless no one wants to play wvw anymore.This game mode devolved into a single meta class blob per server.It's kitten boring!If there isn't enough people for a zerg people stand afk inside their towers.At best WvW is a pve roleplay map.

Some of us wp away before we get into combat so they don't get us as well. We call out for help, if ppl don't come we leave.

Post reset hours, the server matches for me haven't been able to have many people across four maps. We'd still have problems getting enough population across two maps. Other servers have also mentioned they have little coverage outside their main hours.

Conclusion: remove a map. If that results in long queues for all hours for some servers, but other opposing servers can get in, there's an obvious imbalance in numbers. And imbalances of player populations is the problem.

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