[Suggestion] A free server transfer to compensate for the Alliances beta?

[Zape.2094]

Hey guys!

Please note that this is merely a suggestion from my particular point of view, and you are more than free to disagree with it and point out any flaws it might have for you. We are all different, play for different reasons and in different communities, so there might be something I am missing from your PoV here.

Anyways, a little bit of a background; I have been a member of a large PvX guild (2 guilds both with 450+ members) for a while now, and since the recruiting has basically been done only in PvE, the people are scattered all over the servers. We have a lot of people who enjoy playing WvW, and with the Alliance beta we were largely looking forward to being able to finally play together in this only aspect of the game where we haven't been able to yet, only to find out in a matter of an hour that we will not be able to do so (we have formed a third guild, solely for WvW in which we have gathered about 100 players from both our PvX guilds that are willing to participate in the WvW content).

Now, I want to make it very clear that I do not think we are entitled to a compensation or whatever. I do not simply want to be given out freebies. The reason I am proposing this, is because we have seen (and I think we can all agree on this) that the alliances are still in a very early stage of development, meaning it is quite likely that it will take months before another chance to play together with our guild arises.

I know that a lot of you guys are looking forward to alliances for other reasons than simply to be able to play with your PvE friends, or people from other servers, and my suggestion doesn't really bring much to you, but I do think this could be a decent start to keep us a little occupied while ArenaNet continues development of the Alliance feature. I know from my perspective if it will take months for another beta to come, a lot of people will likely lose interest in WvW in the meantime; we have generated quite a lot of hype about it within our guild (maybe it's our own fault, I understand that), and I really do not want to lose this momentum and having to re-do all of it again at a later stage.

I just really want to get my people together somehow, and paying for 90 account transfers is sadly far out of my scope.

Please let me know what you think about this. Disagreements are also welcome - please do expand my horizons in any way you can. 🙂

Best,
Zape

[Sviel.7493]

Doesn't everyone get one free transfer or such?  If it's a PvX guild, I'd wager most everyone still has it--if it really exists.

 

At any rate, would be cool if this happened for you but it's probably not something that resources will be dedicated to.  We don't know yet how long it'll be until the next attempt at an Alliances beta since the post-mortem blog post hasn't come, but they mentioned it would be "weeks" so there's a good chance it won't be months.  With that in mind, the situation may not be as critical as it initially seems.

[Zape.2094]

8 minutes ago, Sviel.7493 said:

Doesn't everyone get one free transfer or such?  If it's a PvX guild, I'd wager most everyone still has it--if it really exists.

 

At any rate, would be cool if this happened for you but it's probably not something that resources will be dedicated to.  We don't know yet how long it'll be until the next attempt at an Alliances beta since the post-mortem blog post hasn't come, but they mentioned it would be "weeks" so there's a good chance it won't be months.  With that in mind, the situation may not be as critical as it initially seems.

 

Hey mate, thanks alot for your input!

I've asked around a little, and it seems like not everybody has the server transfer. I am not sure when it was given and/or under which conditions, but it seems as if either older accounts dont have it, or newer accounts dont have it. They have assured me they've never used one yet, and they do have all (both) expansions, so I thought they should have it but allegedly they dont.

Not sure tbh - I know I've had it, and I've swapped servers to the one where most of my guild lies. But it's still only about 10 of us, as opposed to 100ish.

Fingers crossed about the beta - I was really excited to see it happen, and I am not unsatisfied with it in any way - Im glad they're trying things out and working on it. But I do feel like there were a lot of things going wrong - from being placed into wrong team, to having overflows on standard WvW maps which shouldnt have them.... I feel like they have quite a bit of stuff to work on, and with EoD also coming up on us quite soon, I feel like they may have slightly limited resources for this. 

Either way, no matter what I am really happy to see development time put into WvW, and all the effort is really appreciated. But yeah, it'd be pretty sick if I could get my people over to Blacktide to play with them a little sooner to "warm up".

Best,

Zape

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Zape.2094 said:

I've asked around a little, and it seems like not everybody has the server transfer. I am not sure when it was given and/or under which conditions, but it seems as if either older accounts dont have it, or newer accounts dont have it. They have assured me they've never used one yet, and they do have all (both) expansions, so I thought they should have it but allegedly they dont.

All accounts except free can transfer but of course the world has to be open too.

[Norbe.7630]

2 hours ago, Zape.2094 said:

Hey guys!

Please note that this is merely a suggestion from my particular point of view, and you are more than free to disagree with it and point out any flaws it might have for you. We are all different, play for different reasons and in different communities, so there might be something I am missing from your PoV here.

Anyways, a little bit of a background; I have been a member of a large PvX guild (2 guilds both with 450+ members) for a while now, and since the recruiting has basically been done only in PvE, the people are scattered all over the servers. We have a lot of people who enjoy playing WvW, and with the Alliance beta we were largely looking forward to being able to finally play together in this only aspect of the game where we haven't been able to yet, only to find out in a matter of an hour that we will not be able to do so (we have formed a third guild, solely for WvW in which we have gathered about 100 players from both our PvX guilds that are willing to participate in the WvW content).

Now, I want to make it very clear that I do not think we are entitled to a compensation or whatever. I do not simply want to be given out freebies. The reason I am proposing this, is because we have seen (and I think we can all agree on this) that the alliances are still in a very early stage of development, meaning it is quite likely that it will take months before another chance to play together with our guild arises.

I know that a lot of you guys are looking forward to alliances for other reasons than simply to be able to play with your PvE friends, or people from other servers, and my suggestion doesn't really bring much to you, but I do think this could be a decent start to keep us a little occupied while ArenaNet continues development of the Alliance feature. I know from my perspective if it will take months for another beta to come, a lot of people will likely lose interest in WvW in the meantime; we have generated quite a lot of hype about it within our guild (maybe it's our own fault, I understand that), and I really do not want to lose this momentum and having to re-do all of it again at a later stage.

I just really want to get my people together somehow, and paying for 90 account transfers is sadly far out of my scope.

Please let me know what you think about this. Disagreements are also welcome - please do expand my horizons in any way you can. 🙂

Best,
Zape

I will give you a scenario.

Suppose anet gave that free transfer compensation.... 
Then all guilds talked to each other then coordinately transferred to a single one server.

Can you imagine the queues?
Can you imagine what was once a server called Blackgate before?
What if it will take years again on the alliance...?


Please never ever mention the free transfer if you already used yours on those friends as an excuse. Think about the consequences. There are tons of options you can do to play with your friends form other servers in WvW.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Please-reopen-BlackGate-for-transfer

Edited September 28, 2021 by Norbe.7630

[Zape.2094]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

All accounts except free can transfer but of course the world has to be open too.

But for a fee, right? The thing is, I know some of us got free server transfers, but apparently not everybody did. So a lot of my guildmates do not have this for whatever reason. And transferring 90 people, 500 gems per person.... Well, you do the math hehe 😛 

 

 

54 minutes ago, Norbe.7630 said:

I will give you a scenario.

Suppose anet gave that free transfer compensation.... 
Then all guilds talked to each other then coordinately transferred to a single one server.

Can you imagine the queues?
Can you imagine what was once a server called Blackgate before?
What if it will take years again on the alliance...?


Please never ever mention the free transfer if you already used yours on those friends as an excuse. Think about the consequences. There are tons of options you can do to play with your friends form other servers in WvW.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Please-reopen-BlackGate-for-transfer

I will give you a scenario.

No guild wants to be on the same server as every other guild, since that means infinite queues and 0 content to fight against. Im not even sure if you play WvW at this point lol...

Not sure about your alliance comment - it has nothing to do with transfers unless Im missing something? So what if it takes years for the alliance system to come into effect? Just the more reason to allow people to swap servers, no?

 

I have used my free transfer, yes. But alot of my guildies havent, and apparently they dont have the option to either. That is where the problem lies. I am not going to transfer. I just want my friends over here. Thats it. Those of us who have formed this guild are mostly on the same server, and we're happy here. Its those that joined after the megaserver system that are spread all over the place. These people are the ones I want over.

Best,
Zape

[Norbe.7630]

1 hour ago, Zape.2094 said:

 I have used my free transfer, yes. But alot of my guildies havent, and apparently they dont have the option to either. That is where the problem lies. I am not going to transfer. I just want my friends over here.

There you have it. (It's not We but I reason)

Btw on the alliance in case you missed the point, what if it took years again to implement after giving free transfers and every players bandwagoned to a server.

 

No guild wants to be in the same server as every other guild?

Prove me wrong and I'll believe that.

 

And yes, I still do play WvW and even promotes WvW gameplay to non GW2 gamers on PC gaming groups by doing videos.

Here's one

 

Edited September 28, 2021 by Norbe.7630

[Xenesis.6389]

If they give you free transfers then they have to give it to everyone.

 

And while we can make the argument that alliances are now around the corner so what does it matter when servers are going to be no more anyways, it still affects current wvw and may lead to mass transfers that will absolutely ruin population balance even more for the remaining time.

 

I always wonder whenever these request come up..... if your "guilds" and "guildmembers" are "dedicated" to playing with their "guild" why can't those players pick a low pop server and everyone move to it? It cost 500gems to move to the lowest servers, that's about 137gold. Do people really not have 137gold in their bank to make a one time move?

[Magnuzone.8395]

Im just happy it failed horribly. If I wanted to play for a color, I would have gone to EotM.

[Xenesis.6389]

20 minutes ago, Magnuzone.8395 said:

Im just happy it failed horribly. If I wanted to play for a color, I would have gone to EotM.

 

You do realize that was just the first test, not the final product, and it's not cancelled?

Your future still looks mighty colorful.

 

[Magnuzone.8395]

8 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

You do realize that was just the first test, not the final product, and it's not cancelled?

Your future still looks mighty colorful.

I do. And I am amazed how they can work on this for several years and fail so miserably. This wasn't a fail it was a really bad crash landing. It's almost like they found this old dusty folder somewhere, read it and said: "Oh what the hell, lets try it and see how it goes". 

 

If they want to sandbox and try things out, fine, go ahead. But show some freaking professionalism and spare us this crap please.

[Pacificterror.7805]

15 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

Doesn't everyone get one free transfer or such?  If it's a PvX guild, I'd wager most everyone still has it--if it really exists.

 

14 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

All accounts except free can transfer but of course the world has to be open too.

 

12 hours ago, Zape.2094 said:

But for a fee, right? The thing is, I know some of us got free server transfers, but apparently not everybody did. So a lot of my guildmates do not have this for whatever reason. And transferring 90 people, 500 gems per person.... Well, you do the math hehe 😛 

 

Free accounts that have upgraded by buying an expansion/expansions get a free transfer, if I understand correctly. People that owned the game before this came into effect (i.e. paid copies of the base game) get no free transfer, even if they own the expansions.

I looked into this when I wanted to transfer to my guild's server for WvW...unfortunately as I had bought my copy of the base game, I did not have a free transfer available to me.

[Skynet.7201]

A metric ton of us have been transferring for years, since Seasons ended, for content, and to jump off of dead servers due to bad matchmaking and bad links. Nothing hinged on the success or failure of a beta. And more often than not, we paid for our own xfers simply because we love the game mode.

If your people aren't interested in WvW enough to farm and save up as a guild, or pay for their own moves (it's a PvX guild after all, yeah?) then, honestly, why bother? And if your people lose interest in WvW because they lack a free transfer, then, logically, the free transfer, isn't the heart of the issue. It's that they don't want to buy gems or farm for gold to convert, like the rest of us have had to do for literally over half a decade.

 

[Norbe.7630]

This what happens when a PvE player gets stomped in WvW. He wants to bring his entire PvE guild to his server just to get revenge haha.

My advice to you is join a WvW guild on your current server. Let those PvX guilds of yours do PvE content.

[b k.1648]

This would seem a bit like a free CD player to me. Considering servers won't be a thing in a few months, it's a weird time to move to a different one.

[Zape.2094]

6 hours ago, Ben K.6238 said:

This would seem a bit like a free CD player to me. Considering servers won't be a thing in a few months, it's a weird time to move to a different one.

The issue I'm seeing is, "in a few months". Alliances have been first announced in 2015 if I'm not mistaken, which is 6 years ago. Since the beta we've had only included the most basic features of the alliances (it only included guild selection - it didnt include any matchmaking processes, it didnt include the forming of alliances, it had no GUI changes aside from the one menu that wasnt functional anyways...), and even so none of the features were really working (the guild you selected didnt actually lock in for some people, there were overflows of maps there shouldnt be, some objectives were unable to be capped, score wasn't calculated properly...), I am honestly a little scared to say "in a few months".

I would honestly expect the next beta to appear soon after EoD launch. And even then, the ACTUAL alliances system is miles away.

The only reason why I'd like to move people to a different one is because we were promised to be able to play with our guild this week, when in reality none of us could. And for this we spent dozens of hours gathering people, instructing them, and organising things.

So it'd be nice if our effort would actually be useful in some sort.

Best,

Zape

[Strider Pj.2193]

4 hours ago, Zape.2094 said:

The issue I'm seeing is, "in a few months". Alliances have been first announced in 2015 if I'm not mistaken, which is 6 years ago. Since the beta we've had only included the most basic features of the alliances (it only included guild selection - it didnt include any matchmaking processes, it didnt include the forming of alliances, it had no GUI changes aside from the one menu that wasnt functional anyways...), and even so none of the features were really working (the guild you selected didnt actually lock in for some people, there were overflows of maps there shouldnt be, some objectives were unable to be capped, score wasn't calculated properly...), I am honestly a little scared to say "in a few months".

I would honestly expect the next beta to appear soon after EoD launch. And even then, the ACTUAL alliances system is miles away.

The only reason why I'd like to move people to a different one is because we were promised to be able to play with our guild this week, when in reality none of us could. And for this we spent dozens of hours gathering people, instructing them, and organising things.

So it'd be nice if our effort would actually be useful in some sort.

Best,

Zape

You were ‘promised’ a beta…. There was no promise that it would continue.  Post beta, it was going to revert back to worlds that were in effect before.

 

 

[Xenesis.6389]

4 hours ago, Zape.2094 said:

The issue I'm seeing is, "in a few months". Alliances have been first announced in 2015 if I'm not mistaken, which is 6 years ago. Since the beta we've had only included the most basic features of the alliances (it only included guild selection - it didnt include any matchmaking processes, it didnt include the forming of alliances, it had no GUI changes aside from the one menu that wasnt functional anyways...), and even so none of the features were really working (the guild you selected didnt actually lock in for some people, there were overflows of maps there shouldnt be, some objectives were unable to be capped, score wasn't calculated properly...), I am honestly a little scared to say "in a few months".

I would honestly expect the next beta to appear soon after EoD launch. And even then, the ACTUAL alliances system is miles away.

The only reason why I'd like to move people to a different one is because we were promised to be able to play with our guild this week, when in reality none of us could. And for this we spent dozens of hours gathering people, instructing them, and organising things.

So it'd be nice if our effort would actually be useful in some sort.

Best,

Zape

 

Well first announced 2018 so 3 years ago, not 6, they had some ideas back in 2016 but the community rejected the one proposed and eventually accepted links as a temporary quick solution while they looked for other solutions. Since that time they pretty much stripped wvw of it's devs, they went through a round of layoffs after having a number of projects cut, and also losing the company president, wvw pretty much had like one dev working in the background doing minor updates. Then they got a new president, they announced the expansion, colin and josh came back since like jan, and things have been moving forward again.

 

We were told this was going to be a multi phase beta testing of systems before the final product is put together, we were told alliance wasn't going to be in yet for this phase. Maybe they should have stated this first test was an alpha test for population sorting to make it clearer for some people, it wasn't going to be a simple flip of the switch and everything would be perfect right off the bat, there's a lot of background stuff that also needs to change.

 

I don't know why people went super ham on organizing for something that was only going to last a week and then reset back to regular servers. Here's a warning for the next two or more tests, they are tests, they will last for a brief period, don't let your expectations/excitement run wild until the very final product is ready.

 

 

 

 

 

[Norbe.7630]

Just play PvE. No need to spoon feed lazy PvEr to do WvW by giving freebies.

[FunesMori.3947]

Pretty much No. Won't happen and shouldn't happen.

First why should they compensate it was a beta test. Even if it worked you would have been able to play togther for one week. And now we are in the same state as before the beta test so nothing changed -> so nothing to compensate for.

Second if they gave out free transfers for everyone server balance would be out of hand like someone already said before.

And third just do what every wvw guild has to do when they want to switch server or recruit people from other servers, pay the transfer fee. "But its 500 gems", yeah around 130g per player. "But we are 90 people", yeah still 130g per player, its not like you have to pay for all players yourself, 130g for players that mainly play PvE is not too much to ask.

Edited October 1, 2021 by FunesMori.3947