As explained on the forums yesterday, ArenaNet is apparently aiming to fix WvW by rejiggering the arbitary server boundaries that lock WvW players onto one server or another. That’s not worked properly in years, given that each server operates with different population loads in different time zones, and allowing players to choose hasn’t helped. The solution is to go through a “world creation” generation round at the beginning of every season, meaning the game will pick your side for you in a way that actually balances the teams based on your history, language, affiliations, and skill.
“World Creation builds teams so they have similar predicted participation, skill, coverage, and language. Team assignment moves players onto teams by calculating the contribution value of a player and using that calculation to distribute players fairly. We plan to track stats like play hours in WvW, commander time and squad size, time of day, and participation levels. The exact stats have yet to be determined and we are open to suggestions of other stats to use in this system. This new system will expand upon the current calculation that uses play hours for linking. If a player has played WvW before, we will be able to use the statistics from their account to sort them into a new world.”
Guilds will also be able to mark themselves as WvW guilds for the system to consider. “Ideally the system will assign a new player to a world on which their friends or guild mates play, thereby making it easier than it is at present for people to play with friends in WvW,” says Anet. That’ll include a new alliance system stretching up to potentially 1000 players, so guilds can band together too.
The official forum post has the complete rundown of the seasonal schedule, details on how you can transfer if you dislike where the system put you, and the note that this is still a work-in-progress and may not roll out if people hate it.
“If the reception is not great for this system, then the other alternative is most likely to continue World Linking,” ArenaNet concludes. “Even though making a choice between the two systems might seem like too drastic a change for some people, we have been exploring other designs to deal with WvW populations for years and we believe that World Restructuring or World Linking are the only solutions that meet our requirements. Simply ‘blowing up’ worlds or removing people from the worlds on which they currently play is high risk (which is why we have avoided it for so long), and the only reason we are considering World Restructuring now is because it allows players to maintain and continue to build some of the communities they’ve created through the years.”
