New to Guild Wars 2? Ranked Server or Mercenary Server

[Foghladha.2506]

In Guild Wars 2 WvW there are Ranked Servers, then there are Mercenary Servers. Each come with distinct advantages and both have a reason to play on them. Here's a quick look at the differences between these two server types.

Ranked Servers

These servers have been ranked in the top 12 for WvW and carry the primary name of the battlefield. They have organized server meetings, expectations for builds and character classes when grouping, and tend to have some of the most competitive fighters in the game flocking to them. These servers are great to watch your realms progress through the ranks but also suffer to server drama that tends to crop up when guilds transfer in and mess with the chemistry servers have in place.

Pros:

• Organization
• Teamwork
• Knowledge
• Competitive

Cons:

• Prone to server drama
• Can be elitist at times
• Most are not very casual friendly

Mercenary Servers

These servers are among the bottom 12 servers and thus have no rank bound to them. They are paired with other servers every 8 weeks based on their population. This lends to a very organic WvW experience with changing foes and changing allies on a regular basis. These servers tend to lend themselves well to new and learning players as they are able to play along side some of the best in the game and learn from them before their paired with another server. This creates an environment that is great for learning and getting the hang of things. There is very low server drama on these mercenary server as most of the competitive nature guilds have transferred to Ranked servers to compete in the server ladder.

Pros:

• Casual Friendly
• New Player Friendly
• An optimal place to learn
• New Battlefields Weekly
• New Allies every 8 weeks
• Low Server Drama

Cons:

• No Ranking
• Little organization
• Mostly Casual Players
• Very little server identity
• Most allies will want you to be on their voice comm which means changing your voice comm every 8 weeks. Same is true for server websites.

More Information:

You can see the current rankings at: https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/na/wvw

[Foghladha.2506]

Bumping for the new folk

[SkyShroud.2865]

Disagree. Drama is subjective to the people on your server, if you have jerks on the server seeking for drama regardless if is host or guest, there will be drama.

Likewise, new players friendliness is again subjective to the people of your server, if you have a group of elitist stacking on the same server regardless of host or guest, it will never be new players friendly.