Kam8T88

RawNG, on 10 February 2013 - 08:18 PM, said:

This is a bit rich coming from somebody riding on PRX's coattails.

RawNG, on 10 February 2013 - 08:18 PM, said:

I don't know why I continue to read this thread.

I really don't care if SoS drops from tier one, but to think it's healthy or normal for there to even be a concept of overtime in a game, let alone to expect players to constantly do it to remain competitive in a PvP arena is insane. Losing your fighting spirit (in a computer game?) is not the same as deciding not to pull overtime (in a computer game). Overtime is something you do to feed your children or help save up for their college tuition, it's something you do to pay the bills or save up for a holiday, it's not something you do to be competitive and enjoy PvP.

SoS didn't lose many players during or after the end of transfers (some fair weather players moved over to JQ to enjoy the easy wins that everyone knew was coming) and a few got burnt out from the stress caused by all the drama on the forums and in game (this is a particularly unpleasant thread to read, and that's saying something given how trolltastic GW/GW2Guru are) and in real life, but for the most part the server is the same as before, just with less overtime. The WvW guilds still WvW on a daily basis (they always did, there may have been less overtime towards the end of the week, but the idea that SoS would just "stop playing" is ludicrous).

Of course there are other factors. Coming in first for several weeks burnt people out (especially those who pulled overtime. Some people got bored of WvW. Some guilds just want it more. After so many weeks in the shadow, even if it's with a population advantage, this is JQs time to be the strongest server. For SoS, it's a place they were for a long time, and they paid to be there, even if they were helped by a coverage advantage. We might see Kaineng put up more of a fight, they've never been first so they could want it bad enough to pull the overtime needed to win it.

Now if tier one is going to be reserved for people who have such great coverage that they will  fill more than one or two maps for most of the day, I don't think there are three servers out there that could do it. It appears as though JQ got enough transfers to do it, SoS never really did it and padded what they did do with overtime, BG certainly didn't do it, neither did SBI. Kaineng probably doesn't have the Euro numbers and their NA presence is pretty much entirely made up of WvW transfers, so a native population isn't going to help out much there (they also aren't facerolling in tier two yet, we haven't seen the whole week, but if it stays like this Kaineng doesn't appear to be much stronger than the other candidates for tier one). I'm not too sure what's going on with SoR, I suspect SoS is very close to them even with the transfers SoR got (it's worth noting that SoR was probably the best competition SoS faced outside of tier one and the competition we had with them before tier one was better than a lot of weeks in tier one, so even before their transfers they were competitive to SoS).

At the end of the day WvW is going to be won by population. Players who think they have a chance of winning the week (and all the glory, gold, ascended items, the big loot chest, the charr hookers, free precursors and a sparkle pony that you get for coming in first place), players who think they have a shot at that are going to fight harder, they are going to play longer to win. Players who know that no matter what they do, outside of everyone pulling overtime, they are going to come in second or third, those players are going to play WvW for as long as they enjoy it that day. They might stay on a little longer to hold a key point, fight for that keep they've spent 38 silver in repairs over (whether it's defending or attacking), but they aren't going to fight for the PPT, at least not for the end of the week tally, not for first place. If players don't have something other than fun to fight for, they won't fight once it stops being fun. In my opinion, that's the healthiest attitude you can have towards WvW and a computer game. In the post-transfer JQ you might have the luxury of an active WvW population so great you can have a considerable presence on most maps for most of the day (or at least more presence for more of the day than the other servers) without having to pull overtime, but it's not the case for other servers (and it never was). I honestly don't know what you expect to happen, do you think the other servers are going to fight with inferior numbers and inferior coverage and still come out top? I don't think any server has the WvW population to beat JQ in a straight up fight, maybe if a PvE event or holidays affected JQ numbers, maybe with a full time 2v1 or everyone pulling overtime, but straight up I think JQ has the considerable numbers advantage. If you want a server with the same WvW population as JQ, I think you'll find it doesn't exist. I suspect the most even match up at the moment would be a tier two with BG, Kaineng and SoR or SoS. This is part of the reason why I think tier two is more competitive than tier one.

Without the ability to transfer off for free, or transfer to another server for free (and create threatening competition) I don't think we are going to see any servers threaten the lead. Until JQ players burn out, get bored or transfer off, or somehow another server receives enough paid transfers to be threatening, I think this is going to be the WvW scene for a while yet. It's possible we will see some upsets, but the numbers as they currently lie don't favour that possibility. Until then, you can redefine what you consider a "fighting spirit" because I think most underdogs wouldn't consider losing the same as having no "fighting spirit". When you stop seeing WvW about the PPT and start seeing it about playing during the time you are on, for the points you can take when you are on, defeating the opponents when you are on, you can clearly see that no matter what place you come in the PPT, you fought hard for it. Be proud of your first place win, enjoy it for all the effort it took to win and all the aforementioned rewards you get for it, but don't disparage the efforts of others because they didn't compete with your numbers.