Please help me find a good EU server so I can have fun again.

[Deleted]

Hello all.
I started playing the game at around Christmas, and I picked Desolation as my server. At that time the server was incredibly busy, group events were done in seconds as so many people joined them. Ton of dungeon groups were going on as well, even for story modes.

Then I had to take a long break from the game due to RL issues.
And when I came back in May, well, the server is now completely dead, a ghost town (despite still being labeled as High pop server). I hit 80 a week ago, now I am working on map completion, and would LOVE to do story mode dungeons. Which is absolutely impossible. There is no communication on any map except for Queensdale. People also show up for those 2 big dragon events, but thats pretty much it. No dungeon groups except for high level Fractals (not rly interested in that place) or speed runs in CoF. No guilds recruiting etc.

In WvWvW the server is dead last too, every single day (Today's score is something like 220k for the German and French server, and like 100k for us). And yes I did enter and try to help us, but there is no communication, the few ppl online are either afk at the portals or randomly running alone (probably lone wolfs like me)

Atm my personal story has led me to the Orr zones. I finished Straits of Desolation last night, and I never saw what happens when all 3 invasion campaigns successfully complete, as I just couldn't solo them, and nobody else ever shown up to join the fight. Especially the northern invasion is simply impossible to solo, the Pact NPCs die too fast. I heard that there is some cool big fight with avatar of Balthazar or something, but I was never able to see it.

Now I entered the next Orr zone, Malchor's Leap, and after half an hour I just gave up and closed the game for now. EVERY SINGLE event there is group event, and, once again, the zone is completely deserted save for poor depressed me. And no, I don't play at late night hours, it was 15:00 CET when I stopped, plenty of people should be home from school/work and playing.

I farmed enough gold to get 800 gems for server transfer. Could you please help me find a new home? I heard about Aurora Glade and Gandara, are those nice bustling servers where I will be able to do story mode dungeons and group events? And not losing in WvW every day, too.

Even though I pretty much play "singleplayer mode" right now I still enjoy it, the game has such an amazing potential, and I would have so much fun if I could find some nice people to do end game content with, and make some friends. So far, I barely spoke to anyone on my road to 80...

Sorry for this wall of text, but I am so fucking sad and depressed right now. There is ton of bad shit happening to me in RL atm, and I would like to find some fun and relaxation at least in computer games, but right now I just get even more depressed from playing GW2, thanks to being on a dead server.

Any replies will be much appreciated.

[Gray_Matter]

I am on Aurora Glade and it's quite busy. I would suggest you guest to any suggestions you get and see how it goes before moving.

[draykorinee]

In WvWvW the server is dead last too, every single day (Today's score is something like 220k for the German and French server, and like 100k for us). And yes I did enter and try to help us, but there is no communication, the few ppl online are either afk at the portals or randomly running alone (probably lone wolfs like me)

Its not dead last, its matched against the top 2 servers in europe, your server is absolutely not dead in regards to wvw, using http://mos.millenium.org/matchups desolation is actually in front of the french servers youre up against now and is the 3rd best server in the EU...

Orr is dead everywhere, dead as a dodo, Anets has created zones full of group events with little to no insight in to the fact that when dead they are virtually unplayable, I like you am a late starter to Orr and its a fucking mess, a total waste of time to even contemplating doing most of the zone. I regularly go back to it shout in map chat then leave when no one replies, I swear unless I'm in a zone like queensdale or at a meta event I dont see anyone, its like badlands all over again.

[Meledelion]

dray, deso is a dead server, all our wvw guild have left. The only reason why we're still ranked 5th is because we used to be 2nd. We have lost all our battles for weeks now (and yes that means third place) with pretty significant difference in numbers. The only BG that we can somewhat defend is EB because all the noobs go there, for any other bg we simply don't have the numbers.

Deso atm is a r16ish server at best.

If you think "yea but you're doing allright now" that's simply due to french servers not playing much in the weekend, check the matchup again tuesday or wednesday, I assure you the numbers will be quite different.
Atm JS is getting 240points, VS is getting 290 and we're getting 165 where 100of our points come from EB...

[Shakadam]

I play on Gandara and it has a pretty active playerbase. Bonus chest events are always crowded and even Orr temples are done (although not 100% of the time). You'll even find some people running around in Orr on a normal day and people leveling in pretty much all other zones. Not on the same scale as when the game was new ofc but you can't expect that.

Regarding PvP, the server seems to be holding steady at rank 10-15, been like that for quite some time now.

Dunno about dungeons, it would seem most advertising in LA is done for fractal or cof groups, with the odd TA or AC thrown in here and there. I use gw2lfg.com anyways which is what pretty much everyone does, takes no time at all to find a group.

[draykorinee]

Vabbi is a dead server, Desolation may be a dying server but it is still managing to at least compete, I was on fissures of woe recently and Vabbi never held anything , I guess I may have overstated desolations ability to wvw but to say they are dead last and dead just looked bizzare when looking at the live maps. Looking at it right now they are getting slaughtered again.
Okay, Desolation may well suck now, and being on a server that sucks at WvW is no fun, people abandon it and it gets worse, much like realms in wow, servers need to be abolished to see an end to the problem. Moving to another server will give you some restbite but seing as desolation was the wvw server who is to say it wont happen again. I dont know where you go, the french and germans seems to be mad for this game, its the one place the french can actually fight. The WvW system bugs me a lot.
I'm on Ruins of sumaria, and its got a very active wvw playerbase and we generaly do well, my guild is RiOT and we have a serverwide teamspeak channel used to organise WvW during the week.

---------- Post added 2013-06-15 at 06:38 AM ----------

I play on Gandara and it has a pretty active playerbase. Bonus chest events are always crowded and even Orr temples are done (although not 100% of the time). You'll even find some people running around in Orr on a normal day and people leveling in pretty much all other zones. Not on the same scale as when the game was new ofc but you can't expect that.

Regarding PvP, the server seems to be holding steady at rank 10-15, been like that for quite some time now.

Dunno about dungeons, it would seem most advertising in LA is done for fractal or cof groups, with the odd TA or AC thrown in here and there. I use gw2lfg.com anyways which is what pretty much everyone does, takes no time at all to find a group.

This is pretty much the scene with most servers, you'll find the chest events crammed (especialy since aPI) Orr sporadically filled and otherwise everyone is scattered but mainly in lowbie zones.

[ThePotato]

far shiverpeaks is a pretty active server, meta events pretty much always have people doing them. There was about 40+ of us doing lyssa and dwayna. Theres a lot of guilds always recruiting you'll always find adverts in LA. When i was in Orr you will always find at least some people wandering around going about their business.

[Deleted]

Thanks for all the replies guys! I will defo try the Guesting feature to see how busy other servers are before transfering (can I even do WvW as a guest to see how the ppl perform?)
Aurora Glade and Gandara - are those servers also matched up against French and German servers?

I just found out that the cost to transfer is freaking 1800, not 800 as I had thought, so I will be staying at Deso for some more time anyway :P

If only I had at least a single friend in GW2 to play with. I swear this is the first MMO where I haven't made a single friend during months of playing it. People often complain about "toxic community" in WoW, yet I keep adding new nice ppl to Real ID pretty much every week :/

[Meledelion]

For giggles I just checked http://mos.millenium.org/matchups, my "prediction" came true...

It amazes me that eventhough we as a server have never even come close to beating VS we're teamed up against them again, even though we're now ranked 7th...

It's time to start merging servers tbh...

[Karizee]

Lol, no - overflows and wvw queues at 8:30 am on a Sunday morning, are you out of your mind?

[Meledelion]

There are no queuetimes on desolation...

I don't give a rats ass about overflows, they don't bug me at all. If you're going for world completion you can do that on OF. If you want to talk to people in LA that's great but you're talking to the same 5people and everyone else simply doesn't care. I have /all muted.

For WvW merging servers is a necessity...

[draykorinee]

Wvw queues exist?

[Karizee]

There are no queuetimes on desolation...

I don't give a rats ass about overflows, they don't bug me at all. If you're going for world completion you can do that on OF. If you want to talk to people in LA that's great but you're talking to the same 5people and everyone else simply doesn't care. I have /all muted.

For WvW merging servers is a necessity...

No, you don't merge servers for lack of participation in one feature of the game. If you're hitting overflows there's plenty of people to run wvw.

You need to attract your existing population in (we do weekly workshops for new players, keep a well organized and moderated Teamspeak with channels for all the major guilds and tactical channels for the different maps) or simply do some server recruitment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wL8pk-9Uv4

[Meledelion]

Nobody's going to join a server that's "full" because it costs way too much. You can pay shit tons and end up in a bad WvW server (since it's "full" or you can pay less and end up in a good WvW server, now as a WvW player what one will you join?

We have TS and all that stuff but nobody frigin cares and nobody will come since PvE players are "stinking up the place" and driving up the cost of transfers...
And that's another BS measurement: medium, high, very high. Just call it low, medium and high ffs. There are 7 very high servers, 5high and 15 medium servers. I don't see why you can't scrap some medium servers and merge them with "high" or threeway merge mediums so we get more very high pop servers.

Going off WvW rankings I'll try and guess what servers are low pop/high pop:
Low: vabi, fow, blacktide, whiteside ridge, arborstone, ring of fire, dzagonur, ruins of surmia, gunnar's hold, underworld, fort ranik, far shiverpeaks, drakkar lake, miller's sound, abaddon's mouth
Medium: Riverside, SFR, gandara, jade sea, kodash
High: VS, ER, Deso, BB, aurora glade,piken square, augury rock

Wanna bet I'm pretty close? There is no way as a server to draw people in, that's a-net's job...

[Karizee]

Our server hit a wall in the rankings for the longest time since we had poor nighttime aussie/oceanic coverage. Then we got serious and recruited some.

1st major guild we got, one of their officers sold a Twilight to help cover the xfer cost for his guildies (which I thought was amazing, really great people). Some servers will pay xfer costs to bring in good guilds that are tired of waiting in top tier queues. (I was in queue for over 3 hours Friday night, it never popped when I was on. Got in last night at 1 am after waiting over an hour).

One of the guilds we've been stomping the last few weeks got 3 or 4 guilds to come over this week and now they are stomping us! Does that mean we are dead now - hell no!

Looking at Desolation's history they've had their ups and downs, just like every other server. In the last month alone your server has won 2 matches, came in 2nd once and 3rd once.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/history/15

Don't panic over a bad week or two.

[Meledelion]

We lost 6weeks in a row, the last win we had was 20weeks ago.
If you're gonna use statistics at least be able to read them...

All our good WvW guilds transfered away, 90% of our good commanders are gone...

Devona's Rest is a high pop server, desolation's been full since launch, that's a major hurdle in recruiting... The other major hard part is that we've simply lost all our serious GvG guilds and nobody can start a new main GvG guild due to the lovely way that Guild Missions created a FU attittude towards new guilds.

[Karizee]

You are correct, Meldelion - my apologies. I was looking at the placement on the match and not the results.

Regardless, I do believe your server can pull out of its slump but the guilds need to work together to accomplish that. You have to think of your server as kind of a mega guild. The guild leaders need to get coordinated, it won't happen simply by throwing more people into overflow.

[Razael]

I find Seafarers Rest to be pretty decent, unless you're trying to do Orr from 6am to 14pm, theres plenty of people to do metas, group events etc.

[Deleted]

If it's the WWW side you really should change the title. I play on Deso and the pve side is far from dead? o_O

There was one huge www guild that transfered off, guess that was the effect of having to fight Viz for about 3 months straight before they changed the match up system (bit ironic that we eded up with them this week again). Easy to see how happy people are about it: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...-Deso-Jade-Sea

Abit off topic since this really is not advice. But good luck on finding a new server