First of all, this post only applies to NA east as that’s the only place I play.
Second, TL:DR - The war scene on NA east is made up mostly of basically 150 people with 3+ alts or multiple steam accounts.
I have dozens of war rosters spanning multiple months with proof across the remaining 4 legacy servers (Val, CoS, Mar, Oro). BUT I know it’s against ToS to post SS involving the names of individuals, so I can’t share unless I get express approval to do so from a mod. Mods if you see this LMK.
There were times when servers had a healthy rotation of new players coming in, gearing up, and eventually participating in end-game content. What I’ve seen across 4 servers and 4k+ hours is that most of end-game (specifically pvp) is the same roughly 150 people across the remaining 4 legacy NA servers.
I have no idea of the implications of this on the experience of the average player. I am a veteran war player, won 300+ wars on mostly T1/T2 competitive servers, but I imagine this has an extremely negative impact on the casual community as well. I know the overwhelming majority of players in this game are casuals and that’s totally okay - everyone deserves to play the game in the way that they enjoy. I am however concerned about the ability of like 150 people to corner half a region.
The issue of denying content to randoms with shell companies seems to have been replaced with just denying them content via alts and/or multiple steam accounts.
Or is this just a symptom of the low population? No idea. Hope my analysis brings attention to this issue.
You’re completely right, alts already existed before shell company mitigation. But it only made it worse, the dwindling population didn’t help either. As the less servers, the more obvious the alt issue.
What’s funny is its the war players that killed the war scene. They do be clueless to the real problem.
The war scene is treated like a competitive esport for some reason and is effectively dead because of the gatekeeping with alts. The general population has no interest in war anymore. People just don’t care about wars. Don’t think there’s anything the devs could do to bring back the interest either. The war scene is dead.
I have a high interest in it. I just can’t afford $1M per gear item to get slotted (on my server, they check your gear before the war camp even opens).
I totally understand that war is taken seriously by people because of the amount of time put in and the amount of gold that is earned by owning territories. However, it’s clearly unhealthy to see the lengths people go to be in that position. Why would any sane person want to suck up to a lot of guys who control the war scene when wars havent been interesting content since a few months after launch. Just watch any war stream you realize you aren’t missing anything and it isn’t worth dealing with the lame culture surrounding it.
Best way is to shut down the game, erase all form of gold and rewards from war and territory, work on the game for 1-3 months , then re-open it without bugs and better weapon balance or a whole new level of gameplay mechanic.
Oh and a better TP system with no cancelling orders per account and Alts included. total of 50 or 100 buy/sell orders uncancellable !
But i don t think AGS devs are smart to understand these concept ! sadly
With the upcoming Season 1 Patch, Every Player will only be able to participate in Wars on the same server with a single character. No Alts on the same server anymore fighting for multiple territories.
sadly