Disclaimer...I never played DAoC, but I heard a lot about it and wish I had.  I grew up with WoW/Warhammer/Rift/SWTOR, so that's to say that I'm much more familiar with the 2 faction systems.

I was excited to hear that GW2 would have 3-faction WvW because everything I read kept pointing to the fact that the third faction levels the playing field so that one server/faction can't dominate.  If one server starts to pull ahead the two servers banded together to bring the top server down.

This sounded awesome to me.  I'd been in all these other games where the one dominant faction/server could crush the other just because they were bigger so the though of the third server participating sounded great.

Now the reality.  I'm on the Sanctum of Rall server and we're currently playing against Fort Aspenwood and one other server I forgot right now.  At any rate Sanctum of Rall and the other server are each right around 70,000 points while Fort Aspenwood is sitting at 195,000!!!!  They have more points, by a large margin, then both our servers combined!  So, I'm not seeing the balancing the third server is supposed to add.  I would say maybe it's just that these two servers suck, but then I'm reading posts and it appears this same scenario is playing out in most all the groupings.  You have one server completely dominating 2 servers.

So can someone please explain what's going on here?  All I can tell you is that it's not fun, and the WvW is the main incentive at "end game" for GW2.  If that's not fun I question the longevity of the game.  With free server transfers right now I see little incentive to stay on a poorly performing server which is only going to further the problem.

Well if nothing else more games lost means being moved down the server rankings enough where presumably even if you keep losing, you'll play against other poorly performing servers.

As for 1 server often dominating, I think as the game ages you're going to see a bit more intentional teaming up by servers on the strong one, which of course is the main point of 3 faction to begin with.

Well I have spent alot of time in WvW and I will tell you its co-operation based, if your server isnt on the same page you will lose fast. This is where the name Guild Wars really shines, having a large guild in a WvW is really an advantage for your server to acheive victory, its not all about getting kills and taking objectives, their is a degree of strategy and desception involved.

Take this for example, last night my guild was doing our sheduled guild WvW, we were attacking an oposing servers battleground, in terms of numbers they had far more than we did, we developed plan of attack, 2 small squads went for 2 key points on the map, this confused the enemy server to thinking we were zerging in prep for taking an Orb, which caused the majority of them to rush north, we then sent our main forces and captured the entire right side of the map, completly bottling the 2rd server in their own area, we then took the key points and finally sealed their whole server in their fortress, which we then attacked from 2 sides.

My point, an organised Guild can make all the difference to a servers progress in WvW, thanks to our guilds leadership in that battleground, the rest of our server followed our lead and we had our collective numbers working together against a larger number of single players doing their own thing.

If I remember correctly Fort Aspenwood has a couple of very organised guilds that lead them in their WvW tactics, their whole server follows them and does everything they are told to do, amking rhem the top server they are.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5323552/postAction/reply

those are my opinions on it.

what everyone keeps repeating is "the server that has the largest organized pvp guild will dominate in WvW".

of course if 2 servers have the same ammount of oganization then the one with more people wins...:p

What I've seen is one server dominates and the other 2 sit in town all week. Leaving those that go out to fight 1 on 2 or 3.

I haven't seen any sort of two servers joining together to fight the one. This week we are getting stomped by another server. The third server showed up briefly, got rolled, and hasn't been seen since.

The problem is with 4 maps the servers that are getting stomped just retreat to their home map. If you go to the other maps it's maybe 10 people getting camped at the spawn point.

The two weaker servers banding to fight the strongest is just wishful thinking. What really happens is that the two strongest servers band together to wipe the weaker off the map, then proceed to divide the land according to their power.

The point system also means pretty much nothing. Whatever server has a 24/7 presence dominates the points. Retaking everything back takes time and there are so many times your guild members will spend cash to fully upgrade keeps and towers, only to see all upgrades lost the very next day.

I don't know how I could balance the system. You could have it so noone can lose territory after a certain hour during the day, or if a certain server has the outmanned buff. Gaining or losing points slower during off-peak doesn't mean much, considering that a fully upgraded keep takes a ton of effort to be upgraded again (guarding the keep while it gets fired upon, guarding supply camps and dolyaks etc., not to mention people becoming more and more unwilling to spend on pointless upgrades (pointless since they'll be lost in a couple hours and not because they are bad).

GW2 is a massive zergfest both PvE and PvP.

I don't see the problem in this.

Originally posted by bcbully
Nice post OP, and the guy who said the two stronger servers bad together then split the land. It's gotta be concerning to Anet too.

I have never actually seen two people from opposite servers crushing anyone. It would be funny to see though. I do enjoy the the PvP though.

Here's the thing, most players that go in alone just look for something they can achieve. I don't believe it even matters whether they attack the stronger or weaker opponent, except that they want to get points.

Only guilds and large groups go into WvW thinking about overall objectives. It would shock me to find any guild that looks at the map from the lowest server and decides to attack the highest only. Guilds are looking for points so they try to attack the closest target they think they can get the most points from, if they even plan anything.

I think it was different in DAoC, maybe it was just me, but I think in DAoC people were trying to gain territory, which is the way I would like it to be.

The game I think is doing something like what I'd like is Planetside 2. I just wish it was this genre, but with cells to capture over a whole world. I don't believe bigger is better, but I do feel that ten times the GW WvWvW map size would be better with more ability to see a frontline to the war instead of the yo-yo points of interest that's in GW2.

Something I've always wanted in MMO's with world like PvP was domination as a possibility and re-boot the whole system after. If domination is possible then I thnk it becomes clear that the map needs to be large enough that you can't take the whole world in a night or even a week.

People say it's all down to organised guilds but it's really not. In the end it's a numbers game. Whichever server can raise the most players over every 24 hour period will win, it's as simple as that.

I'm on a relatively small server, we rarely have queues and have no meaningful night coverage which means we get dominated by any server that can attack at night when we can't defend and who can outman us during peak. Actually I say that, but we're starting to get pretty good at being outnumbered and have got to the point where we usually win in standing fights against groups up to twice our own number. There's a knack to it which I think only regularly outnumbered servers will have at this stage and I'm not going to share it here.

This week's match-up was going pretty well for us, we fought from a terrible last place on Saturday to a point where we could push for first place within a couple of days. Trouble is, the currently winning server ran two all-nighters (I think they may have members from another time-zone), capped all four WvW maps and opened up an 80,000 point lead which is unassailable. They may do the same again tonight.

It's down to the way that points are scored and I'm mostly OK with it for now, but I really hate the effect it has on people on our server and on others who get rolled the same way. No one likes losing but losing at times when you can't defend due to real life requirements naturally saps the will to participate in a lot of people, and I don't blame them for losing interest.

IMO, the BIGGEST problem with WvW is the point system. 

It alone, makes the two smaller servers battle for 2nd, rather than battle #1. They'd rather see themselves atleast be "ahead" than on bottom.

If comparing to DAoC, the only "point system" we had was relics. And who ever had the most was getting hit by both teams. Or if #1 was attacking one other, typically the one team would try and hold out, while the next would try and cut off #1.

Not all the time, but a majority. WvW it's not like that. There is many things that WvW can do differently, but I think the point system is really the only flaw. Point systems work great for 1v1 or FvF (faction vs faction), but if you want 3 teams to try and balance themselves out, having a constant point battle will ruin that. 

Again, this is all in my perspective. But if you want the DAoC RvR "balance" (which we all know it wasn't, but it worked better than anything else) you can't have a points battle.