Greetings,
Many of you may know me as the leader of Gaiscioch [GSCH] a 13 year old gaming community who has spanned 4 games and now entering our 5th. I am also a man whose life was affected by Roger Oldroar Rall and organized a group of his friends and family to help influence ArenaNet to get a server named in his memory.
I understand the goals behind the MegaServer:
1. Avoid Server Closures / Mergers
The Megaserver concept pushes servers together so that they are 1 group of people sharing the same game world. This is a fantastic concept and from a PR perspective brilliant. Instead of the gaming press reporting about server closures and mergers (as you know they would) putting a negative tone on your product and usually causing a snowball effect, you can avoid all this by megaservering up.
2. Putting people in empty zones.
As the population has progressed and spread out, population in non-champ farm zones or Orr has dwindled. This system would allow everyone who IS playing in a zone that’s not as popular as it once was to have people to play with. This is a great concept.
3. Putting more opportunity to make new guild mates.
By pushing the community together guilds can have a much larger recruiting pool. However the problem then becomes how to get them to be able to play with you in WvW.
All of these concepts are great on paper however in application there are some things that you need to think about.
1. The Death of Server Communities.
By Megaservering if your server is not a 100% WvW dedicated place, such as Sanctum of Rall, your zones will be filled with foreigners, people who you have fought against for over a year and a half, who’s blood boils at the mere sight of you. We’ve all seen it, you’re in an overflow and someone starts up with the server bashing. This is going to be day in day out every day in Guild Wars 2 from this day forward. The bad blood is going to be spilled out all over our capital cities, our formerly friendly zones, and fill our chats.
2. Public Community Events
In addition think about events like the Great Tyrian Adventure where 150 people from all of the guilds on Sanctum of Rall pull together for a few events per week to play together and make some epic memories. In the new system all of the servers flood into instances of the zone. Getting those 150 people into the same 2 overflows will become increasingly more difficult. See the Lion’s Arch event for example. Getting into the same instance with 30 of your friends was impossible. Imagine trying to do that with 150+. The megaserver will prevent things like Great Tyrian Adventure from happening altogether. Imagine trying to talk 150 people into getting into the same map to complete as task. Can we say migraine?
Goodbye to Server Climate
The server climate we all have come to love over the years will now be gone. You’ll be mixed into all servers and the feeling of server pride will solely be one for WvW players. For the better part of the past 2 years I have been giving bags out to new players on Sanctum of Rall to thank them for calling us home. On April 15th that will no longer be feasible as every player in the game would also share that zone. There is no way for me to communicate just to the Sanctum of Rall players.
Server Communication
Before every WvW event I travel around and let people know where we’re going and encourage them, no matter the level, to come out and have some fun with us in WvW. I hit queensdale, divinity’s reach, vigil keep, and a few zones in Orr. Come April 15th I will no longer be able to do that as people will not be from Sanctum of Rall and will be unable to join us in WvW. With no way to communicate with your allies this will become an even more difficult feat for non-wvw focused servers to mobilize forces.
I see you objective and it is a valued one however I strongly feel that this is a bad move and will negatively affect the game in the coming months. You’re changing Server Community to Game Community and putting barriers in communication which will hurt those servers who have been struggling.
On top of that I’m pretty sure this is just the tip of the iceberg and soon WvW will be to follow. At which point there will be nothing left of the houses we built.
Please reconsider this option until you have some time to think about all the repercussions and the long term effect on communities.
Concerned,
Founder, Activities Director, Gaiscioch Social Gaming Community – http://www.gaiscioch.com/
Proud Resident of Sanctum of Rall – http://www.sanctumofrall.com/