Over the weekend, Mike Ferguson, ArenaNet Systems Designer, responded to a question on the forums regarding areas in Guild Wars 2 with super-fast respawn timers. “Is the team looking at adjusting any of the respawn rates?” the original question asked. Here’s the answer:

We are trying to adjust respawn rates in areas where the non event related respawns are just too fast. We know it can be a problem and we’ve already slowed down some spawns, but we also know there are more areas out there we need to look at.

If we know the map area and creature(s) involved we can usually find the spawns pretty quickly, so if you know of problem spots please give us as much information as you can and we’ll look into the spawns in those areas whenever we get a chance. Thanks!

So, if you notice any areas with mob respawn timers that simply seem too quick, make note of the area, and provide ArenaNet with a bit of feedback.

Graph is of Henge of Denravi

Originally posted by Mike Ferguson (Source)

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This data was collected from 8:00PM Sept 14th to 9:30PM Sept 18th. I believe the time zone listed is UTC, but I’m not 100% sure about that.

There can be up to four lines on each chart, one for each map that world is playing on. A line is only present for a map if it was full and there were people waiting in a queue. The map abbreviations are:

EB – Eternal Battlergrounds
RB – Red Team Borderlands
BB – Blue Team Borderlands
GB – Green Team Borderlands

Be sure to pay close attention to the vertical axis on each chart as the scale changes from world to world. Some worlds have hundreds of people queued for all four maps while other worlds might peak at a hundred in queue on one or two maps.

Unfortunately I just realized I didn’t put the world names on the chart. A chart’s filename matches the world it represents, so you’ll need to look at the end of the url when looking at a chart (or before clicking on it) to see what world it represents.

We thought these charts would be useful information for people to see, as it helps illustrate why some worlds have much longer waits than others. Hopefully it will also help some people decide to leave some of those higher population worlds for one of the worlds with smaller (or no) queues, which would reduce the queue pressure on the overloaded world and help provide more manpower for the smaller world.

Some other information we gathered from this timespan:
- Almost 30% of the total players who logged into the game queued up for WvW
- About 3% of the total players who logged in and queued never got in.

We’re completely ecstatic about the first number and not happy at all about the second. We’re looking at a number of short term and long term solutions that should help make that second number go down even if the first one goes up. As we make progress on those solutions we will keep you updated.

You can find all the graphs in the link supplied above. The graph shown above is the highest populated server (HoD) in the game. Kaineng appears to be the lowest where there is almost never a queue, and when it is, it’s 20 people or so.

Mike Ferguson, systems designer at ArenaNet, had a few words to say about the current state of WvWvW yesterday in an official news article. In it, he talks a bit about Guild Wars 2′s queuing system for WvWvW, and how to make the most of it. He also discusses matching and the timing of matches, and how those times have chanced since headstart.

Here’s a snippet:

One reason some people experience long wait times is that we are still seeing extremely high concurrency rates, which makes queues longer on worlds that have a large number of players focused on WvW. We also discovered a bug that was allowing people to queue up and enter maps ahead of players who had been queued for much longer. Please check on our forums for an announcement when the fix has been implemented. This should fix the problem of some people staying queued for hours while other people can queue up for the same map and enter within a matter of minutes.

Make sure to check out the full news article to read the rest.

Originally posted by Mike Ferguson (Source)

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Hey everyone, sorry to not post about this sooner, the last few days have been a little hectic and I wanted to verify a couple things first about the issues we’ve been seeing with the queues before posting anything.

As many of you know, it is possible for someone to queue up for a map after you and get in first. We’re trying to get that fixed as soon as possible but unfortunately we still need a bit more time to solve the problem. We will definitely keep you updated when there is any news on our progress.

I have been checking the queue sizes and wait times for each matchup, and there are a couple interesting things I’ve observed so far that may help reduce queue times for some of you.

Worlds at the top of the rankings can have queues that reach multiple hours (particularly for the Eternal Battlegrounds map), but most of the worlds in the bottom half of the ranking quite frequently have open spots in at least a few maps, and the lower ranked the server is, the more likely it is that there are spots available. I’ll be posting the up to date world rankings shortly.

When there are queues for every map, the wait time for borderland maps tends to be shorter. Enemy team borderlands tend to have the smallest queues for just about every team so you may want to try entering those maps first before attempting to queue for the Eternal Battlegrounds. If you are just entering the queue for the battlegrounds and not checking the borderlands maps first to see if they have space open, you could be missing out on playing in the Borderlands while you wait for a spot to open up for you in the Battlegrounds.

Make sure to continue reading.

Looks like Mike Furguson was hanging out in the Heart of the Mists yesterday during the stress test and decided to answer some questions. Tibincrunch took some screenshots and posted them on Reddit yesterday. Thanks to him and the Reddit Community!

Mike Ferguson was hanging out in the Heart of the Mists and a bunch of people were asking questions so I decided to take some screenshots of his answers. Some of this stuff may already be known but I tried to ask some questions that were unconfirmed.

Keep reading for the full Q&A transcript.

Today, Mike Ferguson, a Systems Designer for Arenanet, did an AMA on Reddit and we’ve brought you the transcript. For the full Reddit thread, you can find it here.

Mike Ferguson:
Hey folks, please try to keep question as short and simple as possible, I want to answer as many questions as possible and the longer the questions are, the less I can answer. I can only type so fast

Mike Ferguson, a Systems Desginer for Guild Wars 2, published a developer’s blog with many community based question regarding WvW. There were a myriad of topics he discussed including siege engines, bonuses and more. The most interesting mechanic he discussed was Server Transfers:

Server Transfers
Some of our more astute fans asked about the complications involved with switching servers and how it would interact with world bonuses. Every account has a home server where your characters are created. You can only fight for your home world in WvW. You can visit other servers, and while you are visiting, you still get the world bonus from your home world instead of the bonus for the world you are visiting. If you switch your home server, you lose the bonus from your previous home world and are not eligible for the bonus for your new server at least until the beginning of the next battle for the Mists. We may extend this disqualification into the next match or possibly even longer to discourage people from switching servers right before a battle ends in order to get an awesome bonus. You will have to pay a fee to change your home server (price undetermined), and that will also discourage people from server hopping to chase world bonuses.

Also, if you want to ask Mike Ferguson any questions, he’s hosting an AMA in several hours (9am PST) on Reddit.