Hellbound.5610

Alt accounts and the selfish players that hop around between them is a kitten to WvW. It completely ruins the balance of the game mode.

The majority of WvW players are not in established WvW guilds.

You are now just arguing for the sake of arguing and adding nothing to the conversation. I can also very easily deny every single statement you make, but it is boring. If you do not understand what grey area means then there is no help for you or any point to even have a discussion with you. I can very easily verbally abuse you without it being obvious. In fact, I believe I just did. Am I being banned?

Strawman arguments are senseless. You do not know what is regarded as match manipulation and neither will we ever know. It will always be a grey area up for GM discretion, just like verbal abuse etc. Make from "you will not participate in any form of match manipulation" what you want. It is pointless to try and argue what is and what is not.

How do you handle a 60v30 when half your server members are rather on another server "playing with friends" or even in the opposing blob following some popular commander? With WR ArenaNet is introducing another tier with 3 more teams. Sure, there will be a temporary inflow of PvE players and casuals, but it also means that all alt account players artificially inflate WvW population numbers in general. You can only play on one account at a time, but when you have accounts on every server which you log into and join WvW with you are counted for those servers and when any of them need you for the big fight you are somewhere else, which leaves them with a population imbalance and an uneven contest. This issue is not going away with WR unless it is dealt with.

You are right on the money with this comment! A very good example with this, a few months back FSP had 3 no links in a row with a "Full" population status, but the server never even had queues during prime time. You go to EBG and there are maybe 30 players running around. Throughout this time the population stayed "Full" despite a clear lack in coverage and overall activity. A reasonable number of core players got fed up with this and transferred away, but the population did not change until the alt account inflators stopped doing what they were doing by either to stop logging in or transfer somewhere else. In December the population changed from "Full" to "Very high" to "Medium" to "High" over the course of 3 weeks. There was a large outflow to Fort Ranik and Vabbi and a moderate inflow from Blacktide. I know some other servers have experienced the same problem - Gandara for instance, and Whiteside Ridge right now even though they still have a queue on EBG most of the time.

No, actually, I posted the issue here because I was instructed by CS to do so. Also, I will certainly provide a status update with the list of players that get reported. ☺️

Simple answer - you lower the intended population of the primary server while artificially inflating the population of the secondary server. Now do this with an organized squad as a "popular commander" with players joining from all over. It's a problem.

You should really screenshot this, note the account names, and report it. It is the only way to deal with this. CS does take action with violations, believe me. It is up to all of us to keep WvW clean and balanced. If your favorite popular commander on your server decides to tag up on an opposing server to form a mega meta voice squad and farm your pugs into the ground with like some psycho, report that. This is basically the point of this post. In my view this scenario is match manipulation. How CS views it is another matter, but we will not know until we take action with it.

Check the EU Alliance discord I you want to be a skeptic, I already linked the snippets there.

The rule in the Code of Conduct was confirmed by customer support to also apply to WvW as was stated.

You are 100% correct!

Splitting 3 teams into 6 parts actually makes it even - 1+1 v 1+1 v 1+1. The issue goes way beyond game design. For long WvW(vW) has suffered with players hopping from server to server. ArenaNet has been putting in a lot of time and effort with World Restructuring to resolve matchup imbalances and all of this work will be pointless when these players continue this behavior.

With World Restructuring fast approaching and there being a lot of discussions about "where to park my alt account", it has finally become necessary to point out that you are actually in violation of the Code of Conduct by hopping from server to server to server chasing after "content" like a young child who have not taken their Ritalin. What am I referring to? Rule #23 of the Code of Conduct is as follows: Following clarification from customer support it has been confirmed that this rule also applies to World vs World as it is large scale PvP. Some of you may not understand why alt account hopping is an issue in WvW... WvW is a game mode that is based on numbers and having reasonably even numbers is very important for balanced matchups and encounters. If it is not balanced then it becomes a senseless waste of time which will only cause people to quit and not bother with it. WvW is an incredible game mode and deserves way more respect than that. ArenaNet makes a tremendous effort to keep track of server populations and have been performing regular relinks to ensure that worlds/teams remain balanced, but with players hopping from server to server this all becomes futile. These players who do this over-inflate server populations as they are now counted as several across servers instead of just being individual on one server. We have all experienced while roaming around on home border with things being fairly under control only for this big 60 player blob to suddenly show up out of nowhere to easily break into your T3 Garri and farm the few players available that desperately try and defend and no matter how much you call for help, the players are just not there to support the fight. Why? Because the players that are suppose to be on your team is in that opposing blob! The usual response: "Waa, I am doing nothing wrong, I paid for all my accounts, I want to play with my friends!" Sure, but your selfish and inconsiderate behavior ruins this unique and amazing game mode for every one else. Also, if your "friends" cared enough they would be playing where your main account is based or you all can decide which specific low population server to move to to play on together. ACTION: We are encouraged to report the players that alt account hop and violate the Code of Conduct! Submit a ticket to customer support for them to investigate the matter and take the needed actions. Why? These players manipulate match results by causing unbalanced encounters and as a result disrupts your experience.

Thank you for this reminder, I will be sure to claim mine once the update drops, however, this still does not allow players to choose which "world" they would like to be part of / play for in WvW. For instance, I can only imagine the chaos where Spanish / French / German speaking players are mixed together and nobody understands each other, an issue and frustration which people from Seattle clearly do not comprehend.