shysaursoft
Member
I think it's safe to say Bobblehead Mode improved Guild Wars 2 dramatically today. It certainly improved my mood every time a Charr ran by.
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Guild Wars 2 |OT3| Two Week Updates, One Box, Zero Subscriptions
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LumpOfCole
Member
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
Oh god it loops
LumpOfCole
Member
One tiny tap on IoJ BL's garrison water gate with an omega golem and all three servers enter World War III over the keep
Lol, yeah it was pretty fun.
April Fools is the gift that keeps on .gif-ing: http://giant.gfycat.com/SphericalFormalAnophelesmosquito.gif
Nah, that'd be your way into the tutorial. Try hitting "Y", that's the shortcut.
Nah, that'd be your way into the tutorial. Try hitting "Y", that's the shortcut.
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
I really hope ANet makes this a permanent option.
Kos Luftar
Member
It's blog post day!
Get ready for a feature so massive it needs 3 blog posts all to itself.
Get ready for a feature so massive it needs 3 blog posts all to itself.
Awesome, glad to hear. Let us know if you'd all like guild invites.
ThatShaman data-mined a Bobblehead tonic a few weeks ago. That doesn't mean it's absolutely going to happen, but the chances are good it will eventually. Then again, there were bikini and school uniform costumes data-mined too, so...
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-megaserver-system/
Introducing the Megaserver System
by Colin Johanson and Samuel Loretan on April 2, 2014
Were down to the last major feature to announce in our upcoming April 15 Feature Pack, and its a pretty huge one: were making it easier to play with your friends on every PvE map, regardless of home world! By restructuring the relationship between players and worlds, were changing our server system to connect you with the people who will best benefit your social experience in PvE.
What exactly does that mean? Well get to the technical explanation in a moment, but it means that youre more likely to be placed on a map that has more of your friends and guildmates, people who speak the same language as you, and more people that you regularly see. It means that maps will have more players adventuring in them to provide you with the best possible PvE experience.
Were proud to announce the new Guild Wars 2 megaserver system.
How the Megaserver System Works
With the megaserver system, players wont be separated into different copies of the same map based on the world they selected on character creation. Instead, you will simply arrive in a map and be assigned to the version of that map that makes the most sense for you as selected by the megaserver system weve developed. This new system takes your party, guild, language, home world, and other factors into account to match you to a version of the map youre entering. This will increase the odds that youll see the same people more often and play with people of similar interests.
With megaserver technology, there are as many copies of a map as are needed to comfortably hold the population of players in that map at a given time. Rather than having a separate map copy for each home world and artificially limiting the amount of fellow adventurers you see, the megaserver system brings players together and dynamically opens up new map copies as necessary.
The megaserver system means you wont encounter overflow maps anymore. All maps are now created equal, and the system tries very hard to always make a meaningful choice for you by keeping an appropriate number of maps open at all times. In this way, our megaserver technology can accommodate our large population and its fluctuation around world events.
The megaserver system is a weighted load balancer for players. It aggregates data about you, like your party, guild, language, home world, and the map copy where people you like to play with can be found. Using this data, it ranks all possible versions of a given map by attributing a score to each. Youre placed in the map with the highest score, which is the one with which you have the most affinity.
The Benefits of the Megaserver System
The biggest benefit of this new system is that youll always find other players to adventure with in the open world, no matter what time of day it is. There are some maps in the game that tend to have smaller populations in them on each world; with megaserver technology, these lower-population maps will be full of players from the same global region, so you can always have a great experience and play any of the content in those maps. People online during nonpeak hours will be able to play in populated zones with other players, since they will all be sorted together to create fuller maps. Please note that the megaserver system will not change region restrictions, so players will still be grouped by the NA and EU server regions.
For players currently on language-based worlds, the megaserver system also provides a great advantage. During nonpeak hours or on worlds with medium population, youll now find more players to play with who speak your language.
On top of this, the megaserver system also increases the odds youll be able to play with your friends and guildmates. It looks for anyone in your party or guild when you join a map and tends to place you with them (if the map isnt full). The megaserver system makes it easier to group up and play with other players naturallyyoull notice this especially with friends who were on other worlds than your own before this system. If the map youre on is full, you can still party with a friend by right-clicking on their name and then select to join them in their version of the map. Other party and guild members will tend to be sorted to join you after that.
The megaserver system makes content in the open world more accessible. Difficult encounters and major Living World moments typically require group effort, which can be hard to achieve at nonpeak hours or for worlds which, in the current system, have a medium player population. With our new megaserver system in place for PvE, it will be far easier to find a map with enough players to participate in group-oriented open-world content.
For players in guilds, the world your account uses as its home world is the same world that will receive your guild influence. That system has not changed (for now).
Can I Still Play with People from My Home World?
Yes! You will still be playing with people from the home world youve selected: the megaserver system uses home worlds as a way to create persistent community within the game, which means youll encounter more of the same people over time. This is also a way for us to start creating more focused, meaningful social units in order to connect you to other players you can relate to and share adventures with. This initial release is just the beginning of our new approach to enhancing the in-game social environment.
While the new system behaves differently, it actually helps you play with slightly more people from your home world. Weve run a number of tests with this system so far, and you can see the excellent results below:
In our prototypes and simulations, the megaserver system yielded fascinating results. For example: as you may know from first-hand experience, players arent evenly distributed throughout the game world. A lot of folks concentrate in a few maps where the latest world events are happening. While that will still be the case in this new system, other maps will see a huge increase in populationwhich means that youll have a better experience with more content all over the world!
With the megaserver system, the average population on each map doesnt depend on the map anymore. The population on every map is now much higher. For you, this means more people to play with, and more content to enjoy everywhere in Tyria!
How Is the Megaserver System Being Rolled Out?
With the launch of the April 2014 Feature Pack, well be activating the megaserver system on our level 115 maps, main cities, and the PvP lobby. Well monitor and test the system to verify that everything works correctly. Later in 2014, well activate our megaserver technology across the entire world of Tyria.
What about World Bosses, Guilds, and WvW?
Later this week, well be discussing how our transition to the megaserver system will affect the timing of world bosses and some changes were making to support this. Well also be discussing the long-term plan for guilds and WvW in relation to our megaserver system, so check back each day this week for more information!
It still works like the current system in place when you want to join your friends overflow.
It all sounds great until that moment:
With the launch of the April 2014 Feature Pack, we’ll be activating the megaserver system on our level 1–15 maps, main cities, and the PvP lobby. We’ll monitor and test the system to verify that everything works correctly. Later in 2014, we’ll activate our megaserver technology across the entire world of Tyria.
LOL. So basically it doesn't do ANYTHING for people like me, who just started playing. Zones after the 1st one will still be empty as fuck. Guess I'll be back playing "later in 2014" when they introduced to the entire world map. Thanks for crushing my hopes Arena :<
With the launch of the April 2014 Feature Pack, we’ll be activating the megaserver system on our level 1–15 maps, main cities, and the PvP lobby. We’ll monitor and test the system to verify that everything works correctly. Later in 2014, we’ll activate our megaserver technology across the entire world of Tyria.
LOL. So basically it doesn't do ANYTHING for people like me, who just started playing. Zones after the 1st one will still be empty as fuck. Guess I'll be back playing "later in 2014" when they introduced to the entire world map. Thanks for crushing my hopes Arena :<
You literally just found out about this. Weren't you already planning to play it with out this new system? I've leveled up 3 characters on the old system and it wasn't that bad. Heck, the way gw2 works, you could only focus on the 1-15 areas and still make extremely decent progress.
AFollowerNotALeader
Member
I think what's pretty great about the megaservers thing is that unlike other games which have gone through consolidations, the underlying architecture of GW2 (guesting, overflows) means that this can all happen without it negatively affecting players.
Compare to SWTOR when the EU servers were merged I lost:
1) My "Legacy name" (basically surname)
2) Most of my characters names
3) Guild name
4) Time + stress doing the transfer myself.
The resultant break down in my old server's tight-knit PvP community contributed greatly to my decision that I had nothing to lose by trying (and eventually moving to) GW2.
None of this will happen in GW2. Everything 1-3 is already unique and we already get automagically popped into on demand overflows due to crowding, and can already freely guest to our friends' servers if we need to.
Really elegant, ANet - I'm impressed!
Compare to SWTOR when the EU servers were merged I lost:
1) My "Legacy name" (basically surname)
2) Most of my characters names
3) Guild name
4) Time + stress doing the transfer myself.
The resultant break down in my old server's tight-knit PvP community contributed greatly to my decision that I had nothing to lose by trying (and eventually moving to) GW2.
None of this will happen in GW2. Everything 1-3 is already unique and we already get automagically popped into on demand overflows due to crowding, and can already freely guest to our friends' servers if we need to.
Really elegant, ANet - I'm impressed!
Just please don't even consider breaking up our home realms for WvW. Please?
My main disappointment with this announce is not the release date (later 2014), but more the fact that EU and US players will continue to be separated... This is one of the greatest problems I have with GW2. It splits the community so hard...
I'm a PvP player, so I prefer to stay on one of the most active PvP worlds (EU Desolation), but in the same time I really want play some PvE and guild/player missions with GAF on US Stormbluff. Of course, because of this stupid restriction, I cannot do so freely...
But it's a good sign they are willing to rework such a fundamental thing like server infrastructure. I'm sure it's for the better.
And I've never being a fan of servers/shards/worlds, as I much more prefer the GW1's district system, which this megaserver looks like to me.
I'm a PvP player, so I prefer to stay on one of the most active PvP worlds (EU Desolation), but in the same time I really want play some PvE and guild/player missions with GAF on US Stormbluff. Of course, because of this stupid restriction, I cannot do so freely...
But it's a good sign they are willing to rework such a fundamental thing like server infrastructure. I'm sure it's for the better.
And I've never being a fan of servers/shards/worlds, as I much more prefer the GW1's district system, which this megaserver looks like to me.
LumpOfCole
Member
Who was right on about this update? This guy.
Not to mention it is really a good idea for a phased rollout for a system overhaul that big, rather than change all maps all at once. There are lots of 1-15 maps, and they are pretty fun too. Totally not worried. This is a great change.
I also caught the tease about the 'for now' on influence with guilds' home worlds. I am very excited to see some future plans for guilds.
Kos Luftar
Member
This is very cool. I just hope this does not make prime time PvE as laggy as WvW prime time because that would suck. I wouldn't want to have to lower graphics to low to be able to participate in PvE content.
Yea I'm a little worried this could potentially make things "zergier" at ALL levels. Granted, that's up to the community, but if there's more and more people per map...they will likely end up doing that.
I'm interested in seeing how they handle switching between megaservers, as there has to be some way to guest between them.
It's also a little puzzling that the "home" hub(Gendarran atm) won't be server specific. Perhaps they are truly going to remove "servers" and just have districts/instances.
I can see some potential issues with event specific activities(guild missions, CoF entrance, world bosses, etc.), so I'm looking forward to the next 2 updates where they hopefully address those.
A change this big has almost certainly been in the works for a while, considering the amount of network mojo this sort of thing would require. I wouldn't be surprised if the problems with overflows at launch had them working on something like this in the background.
That said, even if it is a reactionary change, it's a change for the better, and that's a good thing.
If it's any consolation, they said they were going to remove PVE culling "sometime later" after they removed it from WvW, and that ended up being only 4 months later. I'd rather they implement it smoothly than have the game yanked down for maintenance.
I'm sure I'll get more than a little hate for this, but if there's one thing that Edge of the Mists has really driven home for me, it's that "Server vs. Server" is infinitely more annoying than "Color vs. Color". Stacking, spying, grudges, cheating/hacking, spoiling; that all goes out the window when you're fighting a rough amalgamation of eight servers.
And yeah, I know there's no way they could get everyone into the existing WvW setup without major headaches (they've already said the maps are as large as they can make them, and I'm pretty sure they've got the player cap as high as it will go). I just think from a behavioral standpoint, that extra layer of anonymity makes WvW less directly hostile. If WvW can be divided into two segments, the "Good fights" people benefit from a more diverse selection of opponents, while the "PPT" players still get lots of action without having off-weeks where they're matched with a server that doesn't put up much of a struggle.
Who was right on about this update? This guy.
It's been something like 16 years since Hamsterdance was a thing, and I can still hear that damn song.
Yep, they definitely needed at least one extra blog to explain this, because there are some legitimate concerns like this that need to be addressed.
Still, really fuckin' excited by this news.
Kos Luftar
Member
Looks like it was explained in the post.
It just looks like guesting is happening in the background automatically instead of you having to do it so that you are always with your friends, guildies and servermates and if you are still not in the same one because map fills up you can join in to wherever you friend is and all new party or guild members will be sorted into that server.
Can't wait to try it out.
The other thing that strikes me is how they truly want to make guilds entities of the player rather than of the player and server. Which means actual server focused guilds outside of WvW won't matter. Which means my primary objection to joining something like TTS will be shattered, right after one of my other guilds completely disbanded.
Just in case I forget, I should clear some space in another guild vault...
Welp, already in the jaded phase. Expect the "I'm unsubbing" posts before the end of the month.
Just in case I forget, I should clear some space in another guild vault...
Welp, already in the jaded phase. Expect the "I'm unsubbing" posts before the end of the month.
shysaursoft
Member
Megaservers?
Right, but what if the Megaserver they're in is full? There aren't any Overflow servers anymore, but what happens when one of the Mega Servers reaches capacity? I mean, it's calculating a bunch of stuff to make sure everyone goes into the right Megaserver, but eventually they have to start flirting with capacity, right?
I mean, it says right there, "It looks for anyone in your party or guild when you join a map and tends to place you with them (if the map isnt full).", but then says " If the map youre on is full, you can still party with a friend by right-clicking on their name and then select to join them in their version of the map. Other party and guild members will tend to be sorted to join you after that.". Seems like their solution is still the same as overflows; if it's full, go somewhere else. I guess the upside is that "Somewhere else" isn't just a copy with nobody else in it, but another Megaserver with lots of people on it.
I imagine they've built this puppy to calculate when a bunch of people from the same guild seem to be flocking to the same location and can make sure there's room allocated for them. If I had one wish, it would be for the system to be smart enough to know when you've got Guild Missions queued and specifically put you in a Megaserver where none are currently active. Because bumping into other guilds gets old fast.
Of course, more Guild Missions would help with that too.
Definitely no reason to roll on "Unofficial" servers now, as it's always going to put you with people no matter what.
There's still a problem with there not being enough lures to get people back into the old zones, but this is still a big help. I mean, if you're in Lornar's Pass at 3 AM, and let's assume there's as few as six players doing the same on each server, that's now 144 people instead of just 6... which is pretty. damn. good.
Oh man, do it ANet. Do it.
Change WvW to a megaserver, increase the number of maps available to accommodate the increase in numbers (PvE like map numbers), and you'll actually have something close to what I was expecting WvW to be in the first place. An actual war and territory battle.
A shame they probably won't, though.
Something closer to the ESO system? It could work, and could cut off future problems that this megaserver system causes for WvW at first glance.
Kos Luftar
Member
I have a feeling that this might make it such that we never have to bother about guesting or joining in because it will always put us in the same megaserver (hopefully). I wonder how it decides which guild to match you with if people are part of 5 active guilds.
I think it considers solely the guild you are representing, to avoid that kind of problem.
Astral/H3X
Member
Hrm. That's annoying that it's only the first areas. The later areas are the ones that would have most benefited from this, so I'm not sure how much they plan on using this data.
shysaursoft
Member
I can see why they're spending three days talking about it. The ramifications of this system are quite big: RP servers are now under threat since those "filthy non-RPers" will ruin their fun by breaking immersion (already seen one person say they've uninstalled the game on G+ due to this impending change). World timers for bosses, how will they work now, will all servers be synced with that fancy overflow sync system they fussed with during Marionette and Taco?
More questions than answers. But what surprises me is how there seems to be confusion over what this "solves", especially on reddit. We've already seen this system work wonders in WoW, the Connected Realms system. And yet people are wondering why anyone should care what happens in 1-15 zones. *facepalm*
First impressions. People joining the game for the first time, and running around alone in 1-15 wondering "why is game dead", having nobody to help them with events... it makes *sense* to roll this out on 1-15 first, not just to ensure stability and test the system, but to make sure newcomers have a good, lively first impression of the game, so they can have excitement and fun when they start.
More questions than answers. But what surprises me is how there seems to be confusion over what this "solves", especially on reddit. We've already seen this system work wonders in WoW, the Connected Realms system. And yet people are wondering why anyone should care what happens in 1-15 zones. *facepalm*
First impressions. People joining the game for the first time, and running around alone in 1-15 wondering "why is game dead", having nobody to help them with events... it makes *sense* to roll this out on 1-15 first, not just to ensure stability and test the system, but to make sure newcomers have a good, lively first impression of the game, so they can have excitement and fun when they start.
I worry about what this means for world bosses and for server community events like Vyrances boss train. In some respects this could make playing with the people you want to harder. Do we have to join a guild just to keep people in the same maps?
Also that ominous mention of WvW. Please don't anonymise WvW! Fighting for server pride and all the drama that brings is half the fun.
I'm looking forward to the full roll out for levelling alts though. I joined the game late when many zones were already ghost towns so there is so much content I've never experienced properly.
Also that ominous mention of WvW. Please don't anonymise WvW! Fighting for server pride and all the drama that brings is half the fun.
I'm looking forward to the full roll out for levelling alts though. I joined the game late when many zones were already ghost towns so there is so much content I've never experienced properly.
Doesn't look like guilds will have a lot of weight in the matching, anyways.
shysaursoft
Member
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/feature-packs/
As for RP servers, seem Colin already talked about it on the forums:
Nah, I'm not jaded, I just started playing, lol
But the core of this game are dynamic events and most of them require more people...- Status
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