[WvW broken]

1 hour ago, Yes I Cap.5389 said:

You are quite right to be upset, poor gandara the victims to Arenanets Wrath for your policies of roaming and ganking people running out of spawn! I stand with you an invite you to RoF server discord to discuss possible ~~Drama~~ and rebellious ideas to fix this 

You must be confused. Try again with Jade Sea organised groups (like 10 players from the same guild) hounding enemy spawn camps (redvale and bluevale, greenlake and redlake) and ignoring everything else and maybe, just maybe, I'll believe you.

You are in T1, Gandara in T5.  Not only that, you have been in T1 most of the last link period and Gandara is always T5. The last time we played (other than at the beginning of this linking period when you were linked to Deso and we were striking) was mid December 2021, your kdr was 0.85, our kdr was 0.85, your K+D were 90k our K+D were 59k, your total score (1st place) was 467k our totals score (last) 380k. What a welcome contribution to illustrate our point made elsewhere about Gandara's situation. Now get @Chaba.5410 to reassure you about how much you were outnumbered and ganked, one time, 6 months ago, based on the numbers above and some irrelevant ANet posts. I'm pretty sure even him will have some trouble with this.

[Idea, Improved Stats Based On Rank]

How about we increase stats, including boon duration based on how outnumbered people are and we also give random boons in combat, if they are totally outmatched? Also remove down state for people fighting outnumbered enemies.

Then we're talking: 2v8 with permanent stab, protection, resistance, swiftness, quickness, alac and might, +120 to all stats and no way to rally for the larger group...the smaller group is still at a substantial disadvantage but it levels the playing field some.

[WvW broken]

5 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I heard from another Gandara player that they only stopped playing for 2 weeks and that it ended already, which isn't enough time to try to tank the population algorithm.  Not sure which player is more accurate as to the length of the coordinated tanking.

Come on man nobody said 2 weeks. We tanked for 3 weeks and people came back after the 3rd consecutive unchanged status.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

5 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Since that data is impossible to obtain we'd need to try to use other data.  A record of all objective flipping over 24/7 might help since that indicates someone playing WvW while not necessarily performing PvP activity.
 

And I told you it's a very common occurrence for us to see PPTs split of 250+/50/30 where we either are the 50 or the 30 depending on who the linked server decides should be in 3rd to their benefit.

K+D numbers shouldn't be taken in a vacuum and I always reminded you that the PPT from objectives is completely lopsided as well. Besides when you have 20% lower K+D in the same match from 2 servers compared to the winner, that is undeniably indicative of participation disparity within the tier. And if a server easily wins t5 with 40k K+D and then has 70k K+D in T4 the following week that is also indicative of population disparities. It's like saying that being the shortest student by 8 inches in your class doesn't tell you anything about your overall height. And that if the tallest student in your class is put with different class mates and he's now average or the shortest person there, that also doesn't mean anything about you being short or tall. It doesn't tell you your exact height, but it does tell you you're way below average and quite likely the shortest in the school.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

5 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Why though?  The outnumbered buff is anecdotal evidence.  My Kodash story is also anecdotal evidence.  I don't need to provide that sort of data by your own logic.  I'm just following and imitating your methodology here since you stick to logic and facts.  Lead on.

Speaking about the discord leak, I hope you caught this snippet:
"My trick is I do WvW on the side on a laptop while I work. It's easy to get a solid 5-6 hours in, as it's very passive. Just flip a camp quick every 10m 🙂

Sometimes flip a tower if I have a few minutes and no-one stops me."

What do you think about that comment?   It must be true since some other people said it's true.
I hope for your sake that the solid 5-6 hours every working day with 0 K+D player isn't on your server.  That'd be great irony.  Get five of those and you're looking at maybe 125 extra hours a week pushing up your population with negligible contribution to K+D?  

"It is possible that what is hurting Gandara is, like on an NA server, that they have more players playing outside of EU prime time that is pushing their rolling playhour average up.  K+D would not show that because such activity level is always low outside of prime.  A single player isn't going to be able to see that from personal experience either.  That is the type of data I would pursue."
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/116585-anet-cannot-count-participation-and-this-is-a-fact/?do=findComment&comment=1686181

 

You haven't claimed that Kodash was outnumbered all the time. You claimed that they were the benchmark server locked for and almost always without a link. Are you backpedalling once more?

I already told you afkers are not the problem with Gandara. Virdo seems to have a problem with his server and since I respect him, unlike you, I believe him  but people chilling at spawn for 10 minutes is not my experience for Gandara, otherwise I would be complaining about it and asking to remove people leaking participation from the population statistics. I assume this is a more common problem with servers that outnumber others as most objectives won't change hands frequently and running for the north camps might be a chore, so people just wait for the south camp on alpine to come off cd. Notably those people do still enter the k+d probably more than me, as properly roaming involves a lot more running.

[balance is awful please hire people that play multiple classes in wvw]

On 6/20/2022 at 9:22 AM, Hotride.2187 said:

Just get the designer/developer staff (but don't touch the environment/artist staff, they are amazing) to do weekly gvgs vs the hardcore gvg guilds (I'd say do blob fights but there won't be enough staff...). And then make them solo roam for a couple of hours.

You know so its not just the players who suffer.

That's not enough. They need to play only the classes they have nerfed into ground and are now unplayable in each game mode. And lets see them clearing the new strikes CMs with core classes or a setup of our choosing that is able to provide all the standard boons. I'd watch a stream of that.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

3 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

From the quotes the only things one can understand is:
a) The threshold determines whether a server is open or closed. "If a world is locked, it is because it has a larger population than our “Full” threshold."
b) The population of high population servers is used to set links (nowhere do the quotes say anything about any prevention). high population servers are usually the benchmark for when we link worlds
c) The population of these high population servers may be a lot higher than the threshold. Blackgate
d) They usually use these highest population servers as a benchmark for world linking. high population servers are usually the benchmark for when we link worlds  ...  if Blackgate has 10 players ... then we try to link worlds so their populations are also around 10
e) Teams sometimes will be created which have populations higher than the highest populated servers and sometimes lower populations. 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

Wow so you can actually understand what you quoted and you were just misrepresenting.

Now let's see if you can do an extra step and reconcile how we have 2 Full+Full pairings right now and 2 medium+vhigh and all of the above.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

4 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Oh well in that case Kodash is also anecdotal evidence because I have an alt on Kodash from before the time server links were implemented so I can tell you it's from personal experience rather than someone else's experience.  Now you have to believe me, right, otherwise it invalidates your own anecdotal evidence?  It's only logical that you'd hold the same standards across the board when weighing evidence.  You do use logic and facts, do you not?

Alright I'll make it easy for you: provide a record that shows of how many months the server was locked and how many months it was without a link. Anyone can double check this for Gandara, this is a hard fact, this is not debatable, it happened. Once you provide the same for Kodash, we'll talk on how Kodash was Gandara, before Gandara and how ANet always failed at one thing or another, doing things directly in contrast with their own official policy.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

4 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

It is illogical to take at face value that chat.  No one has any way to verify the text (other than through hearsay).  No one has any way to verify which discord this was from nor understand the purpose of that discord (lack of context) and the biased interests of the participants of that discord.  And especially no one has any way to verify and understand how much influence what gets written on random third party online spaces have to what actually ends up getting implemented in-game.  It's logical to acknowledge that customer discord chats are not an internal business process (compare with official surveys) and that it serves only as personal opinions.

The real take away from that leak is the dev shouldn't be invited to any more pool parties since they talk so casually about work and I can almost guarantee any sense of transparency in communication from Anet devs the community has been hoping for is going to now dry up.  Beyond that it's just rumor and hearsay and a source of drama and entertainment.
 

The people in that chat confirmed it was true. What exactly do you want more lol? You need a written statement under oath by the developer? Not that statements under oath have any value for you americans seeing how even your supreme court judges openly lied under oath.

The dev was doing his job getting feedback on possible changes and talking to some well known members of the community for their thoughts and their advice. I see no problem there. The problem is the admitted incompetence on his part (like that he has to look for skills on the wiki because he doesn't know what they do, that he never played some classes he was going to 'balance' such as thief, warrior and ranger), the fact he disregarded or flatly ignored the advice being given to him and the total and utter lack of care and respect for you, chaba, my helpful bumper and also his valued customer.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

4 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

And my hope for you is that one day you'll think more critically.  It's illogical to use the outnumbered buff to say something about any server's average population.  It's nonfactual to say that total K+D measures playhours.  It's illogical to compare the K+D of an unlinked team with the combined K+D of linked teams.  It's nonfactual to say Anet cannot count participation.  Ad nauseum.

Still with the strawmen and moving goalposts, bumpingnman? The outnumbered buff doesnt tell you about server average population. A server which is full and is constantly outnumbered at home or EB, while taking a beating in the scoring, just tells you it has a far lower population than the opponents. And since we're talking T5, it means a far lower population than anyone else.

K+D and scoring are the only tools we have to account for participation. In a balanced matchup PPT scores of 250-450 by one server are unattainable (and yes we have seen 450).

It may be that Anet can count participation and fails elsewhere: e.g. keeping Gandara full and with no link, having multiple Full+Full playing Medium+VHigh is done manually rather than looking at population. Everybody can see something doesn't add up somewhere, but you. And the funniest thing is you haven't provided a shred of evidence about any of these possibilities to either prove or refute them. Keep going.

Btw, discord chat was confirmed to be true and accurate by multiple participants. How strange, who could have possibly seen that coming.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

4 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Says the person who also uses the outnumbered buff as "data" then gets upset when people don't accept that as evidence for anything.

That is anecdotal data, which is better than the no data and hearsay you provided, and I don't get upset when people moan and whine and can't understand what they quote. At the end of the day, because you can't understand basic things, you are a useful tool bumping this thread. On Monday, if the situation doesn't change, I'll make a different thread and I look forward to you being the bumping tool once again.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

4 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

It's literally what you wrote, not an accusation.

Here's the Anet quote again for your reference:
high population servers are usually the benchmark for when we link worlds

They did not say they compare every server to the threshold.  They said they compare every server to the high population servers.  That includes servers which are larger than the threshold.  They said NOTHING about comparing to the threshold.  Stop making things up.

Wow either we are speaking a different language or one of us does not understand English. The quote you used says servers, servers not highest population server. And those servers are used to set the links, not who is open and who is closed. From the quotes the only things you can understand are: a) they have a threshold they set and every server is compared to that threshold to determine if it's open or closed. Nothing is said about one server's population being the number they use to set the threshold and therefore that server being full by default. b) population of servers is used to set link, to prevent high population server being linked together and low population servers being linked together (which we currently have multiple examples of)

As we know what they say may not be what they do, but here you are completely misrepresenting what they officially said as well.

[How to fix Headbutt]

In pvp lowest gold division, I'd say you hit about 50% of the times if you also have bull's charge to help you bait a dodge. Now, if you play condi zerker then you have more problems: you actually need to be in berserker mode to do anything, since it's the only way to do decent damage other than the fire shield from torch. So when you don't hit HB the odds of filling adrenaline and using berserker mode are almost zero, you could weapon swap a couple of times, but with no adrenaline you'll probably need to stay on mace/shield to survive so you really can't. You'll have to wait for you next HB and by then you will be dead, one or more of your teammates will be dead because you applied zero pressure or you'll have been carried hard. In the end you're forced to take signet of fury exclusively for the 30 adrenaline and open up with that while keeping HB for a more advantageous situation, like catching the edge of a dodge. For the record, in my measly gold setting, I haven't lost to a power zerker on a condi zerker on a side node this season.

It doesn't really matter since we will all play shoutsworn after the patch.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

3 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

So what about what's written privately or internally?  You had to qualify: "if those chats are legit".  No one can verify such "evidence" since it isn't externally facing and usually presented completely out of context.  That's one reason why I didn't even try to provide any private chat proof on the size of Gandara, only hinted that you can hear about it word-of-mouth.  Anyone can make a case out of bad data.

Why would you think or expect others are supposed to treat private chats as equal to official, company-sanctioned publications?  How would one know what's legit?

lol alway the nitpicking and always the chicanery. Have you read the chat? Do you think someone would write 73,000 words (140 pages in MS Word without formatting) using names of actual people we know and recognise (none of whom has come out and denied this btw) because they are content creators, making an entire chat up? Alright, keep believing in fairies.

And that is not out of context: it's the whole dump of a discord chat.

I see you are not worth spending time on, you are a like a covid denier or a flat earther. I still have hope that one day, at some point in your life, you will stick to facts and logic.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

2 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

No where did they say in that quote that they use the Full threshold for linking worlds.  Why did you misunderstand the quote?  The quote says specifically that the high population servers are "usually" the benchmark and BG is the highest populated server.

 

As usual you move the goalposts. I did not accuse you of saying the use the full threshold to link worlds, I quoted back to you that they claim to link servers to balance population and we have 2 Full+Full and 2 medium servers linked to not full servers. Now to beat the dead horse and repeat for the 110th time: either the medium to full grading is not in line with what Anet said or the linking procedure is not in line with what they sayd. The quote doesn't say that high population servers are the benchmark.

 

2 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I see nothing clashing with reality.  The quote says sometimes worlds might end up with 12 (larger than BG).  So if linking a Very High world with a Medium world ends up being larger than BG, they will do that because they can't be precise/get the populations balanced any closer.  Servers are like Duplo blocks when what's needed is Lego bricks

 

lol this is either delusion or wilful ignorance, mate. I've already explained how full servers and linked servers have double and sometimes more the K+D that Gandara has. Let's be generous here and, for the sake of argument, say Gandara is the highest population server (it's not, but we will entertain the thought) valued at 10 and the other full servers are with 10% of its population. You are claiming that 9+9=18 and 4+7=11 is a match that fulfils the requirements Anet said they follow? OK...

2 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

And recall that it's a Gandara person on another thread claiming that Anet is using Gandara as a benchmark.  I only said it was possible and here is the reason why I think that's possible.

"If a world is locked, it is because it has a larger population than our “Full” threshold."

"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."

 

I'm sure you can understand those quotes. Based on those quotes Anet has ever claimed they use 1 server as the benchmark, they explicitly used the plural there. And the servers with the bandwagoners always exceed that threshold and in fact we have now 2 links that are full. All of those servers have a population at least similar to Gandara and most likely higher and deserve to be without link just as much as Gandara and more, seeing they never have been without a link or have had no link for a very long time.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

2 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

So what if you weren't reading forums or playing WvW back then?  That doesn't make the Kodash story not true.  It just means it's beyond your realm of experience and why you haven't noticed the long term trend of the lab rat rotation.  Others with more experience will tell you when there's things you haven't considered and urge you to try to move beyond the limitations of your shorter experience.  No one needed to tell you the Kodash story before because it was a non-issue until it became a Gandara issue.

Look the bottom line is: I can prove Gandara has been locked for 2 years (and counting) save for a glitch when all the servers became open and has been without a link for 10 months, you cannot or are unwilling to prove the same thing for Kodash. Try back when you can, thank you.

[Nothing will change]

1 hour ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Also, it feels like this thread is drifting past one thing that constantly seems to get overlooked: The main appeal of fighting outnumbered (as Umbra refers to it) is that it is better from a strategic standpoint. It is already better to spread out and use objectives as force multipliers and if you can take outnumbered fights you free up more of your own numbers elsewhere. The only problem with it is that worlds are so differently sized and winning matchups is so detached that no one really cares about those strategic aspects. They are diluted in all the population balance issues, but many worlds that are "good" are so because of stuff like this. It will get more attention when worlds become better balanced and players begin to value matchups and outcomes more.

What you say is impossible if you are truly outnumbered because while you split in 5 groups of 10 your opponent will have a group of 50 and 5 groups of 20. With this your chances of taking anything of value are next to nothing. So people will stick to 1x50 blob fighting 1x50 blob, while the second 1x50 blob or several smaller groups do some capping. 

Bottom line splitting in smaller groups is tactically and strategically irrelevant at the moment, because there are no balanced matchups (on EU) not in T5 and not in T1. If the stars align you can have a truly balanced matchup in a middle tier once or twice a year.

If you are permanently in T5 because you are full and unlinked, getting out of T5 and avoiding playing against the same people over and over for 2 months does matter.

[Nothing will change]

17 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

When i'm talking about outnumbered i'm not talking about the outnumbered buff. The outnumbered buff is not indicative for a specific situation and therefore should never impact gameplay in any way.

So you are talking about the situation in which your 50 man tag is attacking a camp on your border and you and 9 others are left to defend your keep on the other side of the map against 60 opponents? 

If the buff does not indicate that one side has a very tiny percentage of players on a map, then what is it indicative of exactly?

[Nothing will change]

52 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Not neccessarily. It's not uncommon for our small grp to win outnumbered fights and still be unable to take objectives against the very same players due to direct and indirect defender advantages.

That's already the case. Defending IS easier than attacking. The problem is that every advantage you give to defenders applies regardless of numbers, and do defenders that outnumber the attackers really need those? You don't fix the innate imbalance of WvW by adding more imbalance.

Dolyaks can be hard to stop nowadays. Unless you bring a zerg ofc ...

But you aren't giving any reasons to split into smaller groups, because you aren't adressing why players stack and zerg to begin with. More numbers = less risk and effort with far more rewards. Also what won't make much of a difference for zergs will have a much bigger impact on smaller grps.

Then what do you mean with "extra defenses" or "repair tactivators"? They have already added stat buffs, invulnerable walls, stronger guards, banners, watchtower, ewp and all that guild aura stuff, has it impoved anything? No, not at all. Because it mostly affects smaller grps and makes sigeing and fighting for objectives less fun.

Probably because i'm tired of repeating the same stuff, knowing that it's never going to get changed, because the game is all about pleasing the large crowd of not so good players, now even more than ever.

Better small scale balance, adjustments to combat mechanics that favour larger grps (downstate/target caps), guild auras/tactivators removed/reworked, rewards split between players instead of getting multiplied - just a few things that come to my mind.

But if a smaller grp could defend easily vs larger zergs, how is anyone ever going to take stuff, if there are defenders present? And where do you draw the line? How many attackers should 10 defenders stop? 20, 30, 50?

Look, i get where you come from. It sucks to lose structures against much larger forces, unable to do anything. But you are completely disregarding the consequences for scenarios, where the defenders are not the ones heavily outnumbered. It also sucks, when you are trying to get some action with a small grp, but everyone camps their walls and siege despite superior numbers. And that happens a lot too. Ultimatively winning (outnumbered) should be a matter of playing better than the opposition, not about having artificial advantages, even more so if those advantages apply regardless of numbers.

Objectives should be a focus of player engagement, not a safe haven. That's what the spawn area is for.

As someone almost permanently outnumbered in wvw, I get no tangible advantage from the outnumbered buff, now not even in terms of pips. And a flat boost to stats stacking with how much you are outnumbered isn't even enough, because the inherent advantage from being able to access more boons and cc in a larger group and because of limits to how many targets a skill can affect. Also downstate is stupid when one side is outnumbered, as securing kills is much harder when not impossible. Down state should disappear for whoever is fighting an opponent with outnumbered buff.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

@Chaba.5410 I hope you have read carefully what ANet devs are saying privately on discord chats and you never ever bring up points on forums that read like 'but ANet's devs said this is how it works, so you need to believe it'. If those chats are legit nobody can make a case for that anymore and the glaring inability to assess participation and link servers in a rational way is only the tip of the iceberg.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

3 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

my personal concern for alliances is not its limit of 500 (even I am convinced that it is too high). my concern is to erase the concept of team competition. you are left with the guild or the group of guilds , I would say extremely limited and I would also add much more fragile , than that of being part of a team , a container that arenanet builds and that fills with players.

to put it with an example, it is as if in football the international federation decides to cancel the league of champions . you can continue to do your national championships of course, but it is still reductive. a reductive view could as a consequence, reduce the involvement of the player, reduce the ambitions of the player, reduce the motivations of a player.

ok but say you have 100-150 names you can recognise right now, because they join your tag at least once every couple of weeks, what would be different if all of them were and you were on a different server right now. You probably wouldn't see much difference at all tbh.

Like I said during beta for me it was very different because we ended up running with people we have fought hard against to the point of begrudging each other in the past. And I'm sure we all enjoyed not having the guys from the other server bothering us all night (sometimes in our favour and sometimes theirs). We took out tags of 20+ trying to defend with that combined group, something we'd never be able to do separately.

I'd be surprised if your experience was much different than it currently is if most people you know and usually play with are in the same alliance. And I appreciate you may have an open tag, but you'd have core people who are normally there and you could try to stick together with them.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

4 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

No. I meant the alliances system - that might get removed. (If people are unhappy and want to stay with their people all in one server ... should their alliances get matched to play with other alliances they do not like. Already have now people sometimes arguing between linked servers.)

In PvP they tried stronghold as a big thing and it is abandoned. (Not removed though. Cause the system allows it to just have it's own map in the unranked mode.) 😄

People always find somethign to complain - and I guess there will be big complaints about the alliances system - once it gets released and people find stuff to be unhappy about. (Trying to pressure the deves to give the old system with servers/worlds back.)

Alliance is quite balanced. 500 people per alliance is enough for everyone to play with enough people they like. If they don't like the alliance they selected they can go solo and get assigned to a random team where they may meet and find people they like and join their alliance.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

28 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

No. They have a new developer. And already shown pics of how they want the UI windows ingame to look. I think it might only take about 2-3 more years. Not 5.  🤣

(Fairly sure though that they'll stay in place less time than they took time to be developed. :D)

You are sure the dev will be removed but you think it might take 2 or 3 more years even if he/she is removed? I'd like to know if I have to look forward to 2 or 3 more years of no link and perma full. Or 5  or 10.

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

49 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

Seems like we're going in circles and I'm honestly mesmerized that almost a week later you still haven't grasped the overall problem. Anet using a benchmarking system based on 1 server out of 27 would only explain why we're permanently locked, the problem here is being locked and without a link for the longest time.

Admittedly there is anecdotal evidence that Anet is doing that as strange things happen when we lower our population and it appears people think they did the same in the US. You have presented no proof Kodash was this server before Gandara and that they were always unlinked. All of this, if proven, would simply strengthen the case for anet not assessing populations as they claim they do and they link servers in irrational ways. So be my guest and provide evidence.

I wasn't reading forums or playing wvw when you say this happened probably. I have no recollection of someone, anyone, ever, mentioning that Kodash was permanently full and unlinked for 10-12 months at a time before you made this claim.

You didn't help anyone but what you quoted from Anet in that thread to make your point is:

Quote

"If a world is locked, it is because it has a larger population than our “Full” threshold."

"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."

As you can see, nowhere they even stated that one server is always full by default because it is used as the benchmark for all other servers. They said they have a threshold and they compare every server to that threshold. What Anet said there is very logical, but now you're claiming that some servers, including Gandara at present, are the benchmark or heavily influence it. If this is true, the statement by Anet you quoted cannot be true or at the very least it is misleading.

The quote about links also clashes hard with reality. Look at the alleged population of the EU pairings (medium to full) and tell me how it reconciles with balancing population. 2 very high+medium, 2 full+full and several other pairings are full+very high.

Again, something's gotta give: either Full v Very High etc are not really indicative of the actual population (i.e. Anet cant count population) or they have a monkey selecting the links. 

[Anet cannot count participation and this is a FACT]

Just now, Luthan.5236 said:

Well ... the alliance system will change this - when servers become obsolete. So I do not think anyone really cares about using manpower to develop changes regarding the calculation of the number of players actively playing on the servers (worlds).

They can manually rotate who gets a link or they can create 2 or 3 new servers to use as link if they can't fix more troublesome issues regarding population. Alliances will happen in 5 years if we are lucky.