Guild Wars 2 Reddit Interview...Did He Just Say 500?

[Brytwend]

Did you notice this follow-up:

Q: I think what worries most people is the number 500. 500 out of 3 populated servers means 150ish players from each server.. this is sometimes barely a couple of guilds.

A: 500 x 4 = 2000 / 3 = 666.666666 repeating of course.... So over 650 people PER server. That is a LOT of people.


Sounds awesome!

While I'm not so worried about the numbers myself, they did sort of sidestep the question. Reddit posed that per map, only about 150 people from each server would be there. ArenaNet responded with "But 650~ people from each server will be in WvW at any given time, split between the 4 maps." It was a non-sequitur.

Am I missing some information or does someone at Reddit need to re-do their highschool math classes?

If they were trying to imply that 500 people was meant to be per world, the calculation would be: 500 x 3 = 1500 / 3 = 500. Which shows how much of a pointless calculation that is, it takes on step backward then one step forward to where you were in the first place.

They were implying that if each map can hold about 500 people, then to divide that map up by world the maximum amount of people you could get would be 1/3 of 500 (their estimate being 150~). That means that each world can send roughly 650 people into WvW at any given time, then split them up between the 4 maps. It would be better if they didn't have us dividing a number (500) by an uneven number that it isn't evenly divisible by (3). If they said 600 it would be a straightforward 200 people per server/per map.

[Centaur]

Do note that they said "at least 500" (per map). We don't know the exact maximum numbers yet... nor what will happen when you reach that maximum.

[ComplexNuber]

I'm amazed Anet even managed to get 500 people doing WvW at once - keep in mind they said this before the closed beta had begun. What that sounds like to me is that they surely must have had thousands of testers in the alpha. I'm not overly familiar with these things but from what I knew about alphas I thought they were usually much smaller than that.

[Centaur]

Actually, ANet themselves already have approx. 250 people working on GW2. If each can recruit 1 other in their family, that's already 500... piece of cake.

[Brytwend]

Yes, they did say at least 500 Centaur. They have a way of teasing us with their optimism lol it could be more for all we know. I'm very excited about that. The biggest fights that I've ever been in were usually about 3 50+ person guilds spread out through a castle with a lot of small maps on it, each vying for the ownership of the castle. My computer at the time wasn't all that fast so having all the skills and damage calculations going (roughly 40 or more per map and definitely at least 70 in one particular room) meant that at times I could barely move, or the game would freeze for 10 seconds at a time which is an eternity!!

Others had little problems, and the servers handled the issue well.

5+ years later with better computers and stronger servers I'm fully certain that they will be able to handle 500 people on an extremely large map. I'm guessing that the PvP servers, at least WvW, will be hosted separate from the PvE ones so minimize overloads and lag spikes. I could be wrong, it just seems like if they're expecting 2000 players cross server then they'll want to do it aside from the main 3 (assuming that there are 3 worlds).