This has been demonstrated to be false. The population of a server regarding status is based upon the number of people logged in and playing at that time on the server. If you're not logged in, you don't count against the cap otherwise blackout events would never work. Population levels have indeed been manipulated by use of blackout events, knocking a server from "Full" to "Very High" temporarily. That's really all the proof needed.
This post is factually false according to ANet; the makers of GW2.
Server status is based on accounts that have that server as the 'home' server. Doesn't mean it has to be active.
CC Eva wrote:
Connor, when you see a server FULL means that the people who’ve chosen that server as theirs, or players who have moved to that particular server, have reached the cap, independently of where did they create their accounts.
All that means is that people "guesting" to that server don't count against the server cap. If you created your account on Maguuma and moved to Jade Quarry via transfer you'd count against the JQ cap, not Mag.
It is observed phenomena that the server can drop from FULL to VERY HIGH when enough people log off to take it below that threshold. An out of context quote doesn't change what is actual, documented fact.
Sometimes I really wonder if ANET knows what they are doing. They have never defined these population statuses. So telling us what heavy, full, medium, all means nothing. What are the numbers? What does a Heavy Population mean? I still remember all the arguments on these forums over how full these servers were in the months following the release. And someone even posted a screenshot showing players participating in some random dynamic event to prove the server had a population. LOL. Yes we know GW2 has players. I can log in and see there are players. IMO, those statuses have been artificially manipulated from day one. Why? To try to keep control over the server populations. Honestly, I thought it was a good idea to keep the fair weather WVWers from server hopping. I still think they should do that. Now, they have opened the flood gates to allow servers like JQ and BG to further themselves out in front.
Sometimes I really wonder if ANET knows what they are doing. They have never defined these population statuses. So telling us what heavy, full, medium, all means nothing. What are the numbers? What does a Heavy Population mean? I still remember all the arguments on these forums over how full these servers were in the months following the release. And someone even posted a screenshot showing players participating in some random dynamic event to prove the server had a population. LOL. Yes we know GW2 has players. I can log in and see there are players. IMO, those statuses have been artificially manipulated from day one. Why? To try to keep control over the server populations. Honestly, I thought it was a good idea to keep the fair weather WVWers from server hopping. I still think they should do that. Now, they have opened the flood gates to allow servers like JQ and BG to further themselves out in front.
There's no doubt in this fanboy's mind that they are indeed manipulating the statuses. I've seen it. I've also noticed a critical trend though... every time they do, they do so by increasing the cap per server. You never hear of servers that were once high, very high suddenly becoming very high, full respectively... it's always the opposite direction where servers suddenly have more room.
I see where you're going with JQ, BG becoming potentially larger juggernauts, but there's also something else they did... they made it cheaper to transfer to the less populated servers by having them fall in the "Medium" category now. People looking for elbow room find it for less.
Sometimes I really wonder if ANET knows what they are doing. They have never defined these population statuses. So telling us what heavy, full, medium, all means nothing. What are the numbers? What does a Heavy Population mean? I still remember all the arguments on these forums over how full these servers were in the months following the release. And someone even posted a screenshot showing players participating in some random dynamic event to prove the server had a population. LOL. Yes we know GW2 has players. I can log in and see there are players. IMO, those statuses have been artificially manipulated from day one. Why? To try to keep control over the server populations. Honestly, I thought it was a good idea to keep the fair weather WVWers from server hopping. I still think they should do that. Now, they have opened the flood gates to allow servers like JQ and BG to further themselves out in front.
There's no doubt in this fanboy's mind that they are indeed manipulating the statuses. I've seen it. I've also noticed a critical trend though... every time they do, they do so by increasing the cap per server. You never hear of servers that were once high, very high suddenly becoming very high, full respectively... it's always the opposite direction where servers suddenly have more room.
I see where you're going with JQ, BG becoming potentially larger juggernauts, but there's also something else they did... they made it cheaper to transfer to the less populated servers by having them fall in the "Medium" category now. People looking for elbow room find it for less.
To the casual bandwagoner, the high cost may be a deterrent, but to those serious about WvW, typically entire guilds that are WvW focused, this is exactly what they wanted. And it's those groups of players who will make the difference. Not the WvW PuGers.
I've already seen one of our server's premier WvW guilds go Buh-Bye.
Maybe people over think it too much. Anet probably just name their server anything they want.
Dont' it puzzle your mind every server was very high before?
I think Anet made a mistake doing that because when new players join the lower population server and see no one playing, they wont' be happy. At least now new players can avoid those lower population server since it is rightly renamed to correctly account the number of people.
The server cap does relates to accounts but it will also reflect the active population. And A-Net will increase the server cap to promote an active playing populations - whilst keeping the servers running fluently.
And it will all be based on metrics and "target bands" - not actual numbers.
On any server there will be accounts that are "active" and accounts that are largely "inactive". As the number of inactive accounts goes up the number of actual playing accounts will go down - although what impact this has on playing server populations will also depend on how many hours a day an average each account plays.
So A-Net will track stuff; lots of stuff e.g.
- the typical account profile: new purchase, X hours a month in month 1, then less in month 2, then less again in month 3. They will use this to predict server loads in future months.
- the percentage of "active" accounts that play 20+ hours a week, that play 5 hours or less a week etc.
- when accounts log in - days/times etc. (worldwide so times / holidays / even weekends will vary)
- what percentage of new accounts choose high pop servers vs. lower pop servers (as above predict future loads)
- they will also measure how many people are playing; per week/day/hour/minute/second even
These metrics will change day by day - hence nothing will be based on hard and fast numbers - so they will track trends.
Based on the stuff they track they will create an upper and lower number and I would expect this to be per server.
Going above the upper number will mean a server is filling up again (= latency etc.) and they will mark the server as full - which is were predicting future loads comes in. They will assume that a certain level of drop off in existing accounts so they won't want to mark the server as full to soon.
Going below the lower band will mean the active population is too small and the server cap needs to be increased - to get new players onto that server.
This will be an on-going moving feast. And whilst the trends will probably be measured in play time per week / month etc. it wouldn't surprise me if the upper band is active players per minute or even second -to maintain decent server performance.
I can't believe the OP, who is one of the biggest GW2 fanboys ever, believes this nonsense, oh wait, of course I can hahaha.
On launch I remember my server was high shortly after release and in the mists there would be 160 16/16 games and WvW would have a queue on all four maps.
The status was "full" three months later with only 40 16/16 games and no queue on any maps in WvW, we actually had the underpopulated buff or whatever on two of the four maps. SERVER FULL BRO!
THEYVE BEEN MANIPULATING THE SERVER STATUS SINCE RELEASE. You'd have to be downright stupid or a blind fanboy to believe any MMO publishers server status. SWTOR lied, TERA lied and GW2 most certainly lied, or we could go with deceived or manipulated. But in the end it's just lying, they know what they are doing.
I see it as a way to not have sever merges yet, let people transfer off the less populated servers to the more populated ones... /shrug. In essence yes the population is in decline but made to look as if it is growing. Picking up what I am putting down?
The servers that use to say light will say empty soon.
"The King and the Pawn return to the same box at the end of the game"
seriously, most dont care- we know what GW2 is all about- even if the population quadriplet, those players will make it eventually to lvl 80 and and leave the game after 2-3 weeks like we all did.
For me, GW2 was the biggest dissapointment of all time. No i ddint have any hgh expecations, i was most time cynical even before release (check my old posts).
your loyal GW1-fanboy.
*And all good GW1 employes left Arenanet long ago- or do you belive somone stays faithful to the same company for 10years, where he can get somewhere ells alot more cash? Arenanet had theyr time- they certainly lost me and other core players from GW1.
Basically, GW2 did what TERA did, server status is based on accounts/characters on that server, so even if theres hardly any active it still shows the server as full, they are increasing the capacity of "players/accounts" that can fit on the server,
All of TERAs servers still say high to this day, but that's not the case, it's much like what GW2 is doing.
SWTOR just outright manipulated their status and thresholds for what deemed a high/low population on a weekly basis it seemed whereas TERA and GW2 went the simpler route of anyone who makes a character on this server is added to the total regardless of if they play or not.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I first choose a server, I choose one with a good population. If the server populations is low, I won't go near it. I did once in another game, and the server was dead. Although busy servers do bring problems, it's better than trying to get a group in an empty zone.
Basically, GW2 did what TERA did, server status is based on accounts/characters on that server, so even if theres hardly any active it still shows the server as full, they are increasing the capacity of "players/accounts" that can fit on the server,
All of TERAs servers still say high to this day, but that's not the case, it's much like what GW2 is doing.
SWTOR just outright manipulated their status and thresholds for what deemed a high/low population on a weekly basis it seemed whereas TERA and GW2 went the simpler route of anyone who makes a character on this server is added to the total regardless of if they play or not.
And of course, we all know that this is wrong. Otherwise, the population of servers would not fluctuate between peak hours and off hours. Server which were full at peak hours were no longer full during off hours, and then were full again during the next peak hours. The server status is based on the number of people logged in, it's obvious.
We know you have a grief towards GW2, but you should use more subtle lies than those which can be disproved by simple logic.
Not a big deal to script that: If certain conditions are met, server status will change +1, as long as that condition is met.
HAve you ever seen a GW2 server go from light to full? i certainly didnt.
Basically, GW2 did what TERA did, server status is based on accounts/characters on that server, so even if theres hardly any active it still shows the server as full, they are increasing the capacity of "players/accounts" that can fit on the server,
All of TERAs servers still say high to this day, but that's not the case, it's much like what GW2 is doing.
SWTOR just outright manipulated their status and thresholds for what deemed a high/low population on a weekly basis it seemed whereas TERA and GW2 went the simpler route of anyone who makes a character on this server is added to the total regardless of if they play or not.
And of course, we all know that this is wrong. Otherwise, the population of servers would not fluctuate between peak hours and off hours. Server which were full at peak hours were no longer full during off hours, and then were full again during the next peak hours. The server status is based on the number of people logged in, it's obvious.
We know you have a grief towards GW2, but you should use more subtle lies than those which can be disproved by simple logic.
I don't have a grief, but it's obvious, I watched the server status say full on my server at all times for months... when the population was like 1/20th what it was on launch.
Maybe they changed that now and just manipulate the status but when I played it was full at all times of the day, whether all four WvW maps had 2 hour queues or if we had 0 objectives and 5 players on each map.
Still, server status was always full, for months, no matter how much stuff fluctuated in game. At one point I was seeing 2-4 people idle in the mists, on launch I couldn't even see my character it was so crowded. But server status permanently remained full on my server.
The status was "full" three months later with only 40 16/16 games and no queue on any maps in WvW, we actually had the underpopulated buff or whatever on two of the four maps. SERVER FULL BRO!
Do you realize that sPvP is inter-servers? And a major problem with WvWvW is if your server is getting destroyed, less and less people will be willing to do WvWvW, a snowball effect. I'm on Tarnished Coast and whenever our server dominates, it always take a long queueu to get into WvWvW.
I don't have a grief, but it's obvious, I watched the server status say full on my server at all times for months... when the population was like 1/20th what it was on launch.
Maybe they changed that now and just manipulate the status but when I played it was full at all times of the day, whether all four WvW maps had 2 hour queues or if we had 0 objectives and 5 players on each map.
Still, server status was always full, for months, no matter how much stuff fluctuated in game. At one point I was seeing 2-4 people idle in the mists, on launch I couldn't even see my character it was so crowded. But server status permanently remained full on my server.
I suspect I'm wasting my time, but let's try this...
How do you explain that just after release, servers were "FULL" therefore stopping people from joining them at prime time, and no longer "FULL" during off hours allowing people to join them?
Think before answering... think hard. How can this be if the server population is based on accounts no matter if online or offline? I'll give you a hint: it can't be.
At least part of the status is based on the number of accounts and not people logged in. ArenaNet has stated as much. The quote is even in this thread. And what he said is obvious.... if the population is a lot less than launch and the statuses aren't changing then something is wrong with your logic..... hmmmmmmm
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
Ah yes, the quote that has been misunderstood and/or conveniently interpreted by the naysayers.
Twisting a quote to fit your agenda doesn't make the new meaning you made up for that quote any more true.
Why bother using facts to deal with this pair ....neither deal with anything but hater's logic where their twisted opinions supercede any amount of facts or common sense
Ah yes, the quote that has been misunderstood and/or conveniently interpreted by the naysayers.
Twisting a quote to fit your agenda doesn't make the new meaning you made up for that quote any more true.
Why bother using facts to deal with this pair ....neither deal with anything but hater's logic where their twisted opinions supercede any amount of facts or common sense
Actually it is you guys that are failing to apply any common sense. Answer the guys question. Why have the statuses not changed since launch? There are a lot less people playing now then there were then. I don't think anyone misunderstood or misinterpreted the quote. Show me where Anet says differently? Oh you can't..... That's what I thought....
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
Actually it is you guys that are failing to apply any common sense. Answer the guys question. Why have the statuses not changed since launch? There are a lot less people playing now then there were then. I don't think anyone misunderstood or misinterpreted the quote. Show me where Anet says differently? Oh you can't..... That's what I thought....
Statuses haven't changed since launch eh? At launch more than half of NA servers were full, now you've usually got 4 full servers, yep definitely haven't changed at all.
Actually it is you guys that are failing to apply any common sense. Answer the guys question. Why have the statuses not changed since launch? There are a lot less people playing now then there were then. I don't think anyone misunderstood or misinterpreted the quote. Show me where Anet says differently? Oh you can't..... That's what I thought....
Statuses haven't changed since launch eh? At launch more than half of NA servers were full, now you've usually got 4 full servers, yep definitely haven't changed at all.
Once again you are banging your head against a wall .... it wouldn't matter what the facts were haters don't need facts to twist out more crap .You're right steve boy nobody plays GW2 we just come to forums have fun trading barbs with proven forum warriors like yourself . I mean after all if you don't like something nobody should Right?
Actually it is you guys that are failing to apply any common sense. Answer the guys question. Why have the statuses not changed since launch? There are a lot less people playing now then there were then. I don't think anyone misunderstood or misinterpreted the quote. Show me where Anet says differently? Oh you can't..... That's what I thought....
Statuses haven't changed since launch eh? At launch more than half of NA servers were full, now you've usually got 4 full servers, yep definitely haven't changed at all.
Once again you are banging your head against a wall .... it wouldn't matter what the facts were haters don't need facts to twist out more crap .You're right steve boy nobody plays GW2 we just come to forums have fun trading barbs with proven forum warriors like yourself . I mean after all if you don't like something nobody should Right?
Not even close there bad.puppy...... I see that you're not answering the questions... sigh.... I guess if my logic was so flawed, I would most likely do the same. I never said that nobody plays GW2, but it is undeniable that the amount of people playing GW2 now compared to launch is not even close. This hasn't shown in the server status. I play the game so I know.
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
To be honest, with culling, no one can tell whether or not the games population has increased or not. It's obvious to me that it's not as busy as launch, but when there are 10 people are me and I walk 10 feet away from them and they disappear and a new group of 10 people surround me it's hard to tell the collective population of the game at any given time based on your map.
For example I know Lion's Arch on JQ has to have at least 100 people in it at any given time, usually more in peak hour... but because of culling I can only see 5-10 around me and everything else looks dead... So I can't really tell if the popular has increased gradually since the high of launch...
Comments
All that means is that people "guesting" to that server don't count against the server cap. If you created your account on Maguuma and moved to Jade Quarry via transfer you'd count against the JQ cap, not Mag.
It is observed phenomena that the server can drop from FULL to VERY HIGH when enough people log off to take it below that threshold. An out of context quote doesn't change what is actual, documented fact.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Sometimes I really wonder if ANET knows what they are doing. They have never defined these population statuses. So telling us what heavy, full, medium, all means nothing. What are the numbers? What does a Heavy Population mean? I still remember all the arguments on these forums over how full these servers were in the months following the release. And someone even posted a screenshot showing players participating in some random dynamic event to prove the server had a population. LOL. Yes we know GW2 has players. I can log in and see there are players. IMO, those statuses have been artificially manipulated from day one. Why? To try to keep control over the server populations. Honestly, I thought it was a good idea to keep the fair weather WVWers from server hopping. I still think they should do that. Now, they have opened the flood gates to allow servers like JQ and BG to further themselves out in front.
There's no doubt in this fanboy's mind that they are indeed manipulating the statuses. I've seen it. I've also noticed a critical trend though... every time they do, they do so by increasing the cap per server. You never hear of servers that were once high, very high suddenly becoming very high, full respectively... it's always the opposite direction where servers suddenly have more room.
I see where you're going with JQ, BG becoming potentially larger juggernauts, but there's also something else they did... they made it cheaper to transfer to the less populated servers by having them fall in the "Medium" category now. People looking for elbow room find it for less.
Oderint, dum metuant.
To the casual bandwagoner, the high cost may be a deterrent, but to those serious about WvW, typically entire guilds that are WvW focused, this is exactly what they wanted. And it's those groups of players who will make the difference. Not the WvW PuGers.
I've already seen one of our server's premier WvW guilds go Buh-Bye.
Maybe people over think it too much. Anet probably just name their server anything they want.
Dont' it puzzle your mind every server was very high before?
I think Anet made a mistake doing that because when new players join the lower population server and see no one playing, they wont' be happy. At least now new players can avoid those lower population server since it is rightly renamed to correctly account the number of people.
The server cap does relates to accounts but it will also reflect the active population. And A-Net will increase the server cap to promote an active playing populations - whilst keeping the servers running fluently.
And it will all be based on metrics and "target bands" - not actual numbers.
On any server there will be accounts that are "active" and accounts that are largely "inactive". As the number of inactive accounts goes up the number of actual playing accounts will go down - although what impact this has on playing server populations will also depend on how many hours a day an average each account plays.
So A-Net will track stuff; lots of stuff e.g.
- the typical account profile: new purchase, X hours a month in month 1, then less in month 2, then less again in month 3. They will use this to predict server loads in future months.
- the percentage of "active" accounts that play 20+ hours a week, that play 5 hours or less a week etc.
- when accounts log in - days/times etc. (worldwide so times / holidays / even weekends will vary)
- what percentage of new accounts choose high pop servers vs. lower pop servers (as above predict future loads)
- they will also measure how many people are playing; per week/day/hour/minute/second even
These metrics will change day by day - hence nothing will be based on hard and fast numbers - so they will track trends.
Based on the stuff they track they will create an upper and lower number and I would expect this to be per server.
Going above the upper number will mean a server is filling up again (= latency etc.) and they will mark the server as full - which is were predicting future loads comes in. They will assume that a certain level of drop off in existing accounts so they won't want to mark the server as full to soon.
Going below the lower band will mean the active population is too small and the server cap needs to be increased - to get new players onto that server.
This will be an on-going moving feast. And whilst the trends will probably be measured in play time per week / month etc. it wouldn't surprise me if the upper band is active players per minute or even second -to maintain decent server performance.
I can't believe the OP, who is one of the biggest GW2 fanboys ever, believes this nonsense, oh wait, of course I can hahaha.
On launch I remember my server was high shortly after release and in the mists there would be 160 16/16 games and WvW would have a queue on all four maps.
The status was "full" three months later with only 40 16/16 games and no queue on any maps in WvW, we actually had the underpopulated buff or whatever on two of the four maps. SERVER FULL BRO!
THEYVE BEEN MANIPULATING THE SERVER STATUS SINCE RELEASE. You'd have to be downright stupid or a blind fanboy to believe any MMO publishers server status. SWTOR lied, TERA lied and GW2 most certainly lied, or we could go with deceived or manipulated. But in the end it's just lying, they know what they are doing.
I see it as a way to not have sever merges yet, let people transfer off the less populated servers to the more populated ones... /shrug. In essence yes the population is in decline but made to look as if it is growing. Picking up what I am putting down?
The servers that use to say light will say empty soon.
seriously, most dont care- we know what GW2 is all about- even if the population quadriplet, those players will make it eventually to lvl 80 and and leave the game after 2-3 weeks like we all did.
For me, GW2 was the biggest dissapointment of all time. No i ddint have any hgh expecations, i was most time cynical even before release (check my old posts).
your loyal GW1-fanboy.
*And all good GW1 employes left Arenanet long ago- or do you belive somone stays faithful to the same company for 10years, where he can get somewhere ells alot more cash? Arenanet had theyr time- they certainly lost me and other core players from GW1.
Basically, GW2 did what TERA did, server status is based on accounts/characters on that server, so even if theres hardly any active it still shows the server as full, they are increasing the capacity of "players/accounts" that can fit on the server,
All of TERAs servers still say high to this day, but that's not the case, it's much like what GW2 is doing.
SWTOR just outright manipulated their status and thresholds for what deemed a high/low population on a weekly basis it seemed whereas TERA and GW2 went the simpler route of anyone who makes a character on this server is added to the total regardless of if they play or not.
Not a big deal to script that: If certain conditions are met, server status will change +1, as long as that condition is met.
HAve you ever seen a GW2 server go from light to full? i certainly didnt.
I don't have a grief, but it's obvious, I watched the server status say full on my server at all times for months... when the population was like 1/20th what it was on launch.
Maybe they changed that now and just manipulate the status but when I played it was full at all times of the day, whether all four WvW maps had 2 hour queues or if we had 0 objectives and 5 players on each map.
Still, server status was always full, for months, no matter how much stuff fluctuated in game. At one point I was seeing 2-4 people idle in the mists, on launch I couldn't even see my character it was so crowded. But server status permanently remained full on my server.
Do you realize that sPvP is inter-servers? And a major problem with WvWvW is if your server is getting destroyed, less and less people will be willing to do WvWvW, a snowball effect. I'm on Tarnished Coast and whenever our server dominates, it always take a long queueu to get into WvWvW.
At least part of the status is based on the number of accounts and not people logged in. ArenaNet has stated as much. The quote is even in this thread. And what he said is obvious.... if the population is a lot less than launch and the statuses aren't changing then something is wrong with your logic..... hmmmmmmm
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
Why bother using facts to deal with this pair ....neither deal with anything but hater's logic where their twisted opinions supercede any amount of facts or common sense
Actually it is you guys that are failing to apply any common sense. Answer the guys question. Why have the statuses not changed since launch? There are a lot less people playing now then there were then. I don't think anyone misunderstood or misinterpreted the quote. Show me where Anet says differently? Oh you can't..... That's what I thought....
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
Statuses haven't changed since launch eh? At launch more than half of NA servers were full, now you've usually got 4 full servers, yep definitely haven't changed at all.
Once again you are banging your head against a wall .... it wouldn't matter what the facts were haters don't need facts to twist out more crap .You're right steve boy nobody plays GW2 we just come to forums have fun trading barbs with proven forum warriors like yourself . I mean after all if you don't like something nobody should Right?
Not even close there bad.puppy...... I see that you're not answering the questions... sigh.... I guess if my logic was so flawed, I would most likely do the same. I never said that nobody plays GW2, but it is undeniable that the amount of people playing GW2 now compared to launch is not even close. This hasn't shown in the server status. I play the game so I know.
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
To be honest, with culling, no one can tell whether or not the games population has increased or not. It's obvious to me that it's not as busy as launch, but when there are 10 people are me and I walk 10 feet away from them and they disappear and a new group of 10 people surround me it's hard to tell the collective population of the game at any given time based on your map.
For example I know Lion's Arch on JQ has to have at least 100 people in it at any given time, usually more in peak hour... but because of culling I can only see 5-10 around me and everything else looks dead... So I can't really tell if the popular has increased gradually since the high of launch...