The Fragile Dragons

Things you may have noticed, should know about by now and some tips to keep you from going crazy with the big change to Megaserver.

The Basics

How To Tell if You're On Megaserver

Open up the guild window (press 'G'). In the list of guild members (this includes both the main and roster tabs) find your name and hover over it. You will notice that it shows your account name, online status, achievement point tally, character name, level, profession and location. The location is the important part here. If you are on a map and it says "MapName (ServerName)" then you are currently on your home server. If it lists only the map name (for example: Divinity's Reach) then you are on Megaserver.



Home and story instances are currently on your server. If you walk into Salma District in Divinity's Reach you will see the following:



And, of course, your own WvW borderlands are on your home server.

All maps on Tyria have made the move to Megaserver (as far as we know).


How to Save Your FPS

If you have a hard time playing the game smoothly on a good day then you'll definitely want to change around your settings for the increase in players on maps. If you're just starting to experience issues then this shouldn't effect you too much but you can play around with these settings and see what works for you.

Game Menu > Options > Graphics Options

Once you've navigated here find "Advanced Settings" and change the following:

• Character Model Limit: Medium to Lowest
Decreases the number of players shown around you.

• Character Model Quality: Medium to Lowest
Decreases the number of high quality player models shown.

• High-Res Character Textures: Deselect
Turns off high resolution textures on NPCs and other players.

Here is an example of these settings:

The Community

Cities

Vigil Keep is the new Lion's Arch. Indeed, it is an established base in Gendarran Fields that poses as the new central hub while Lion's Arch is being rebuilt. Portals to all of the major cities are located here. As a bonus the personal bank, guild bank, trading post, merchant, mystic forge, dungeon token merchants, etc. are all relatively close together. All of those players who would constantly spam "/sit"? They inhabit this place now. It is their home away from home. Unfortunately the portal to Southsun Cove, Fractals of the Mists are south of Vigil Keep at a camp along with the activity NPC. The laurel merchant is unnecessarily absent.

Rata Sum is seemingly the most popular place to do any trading. Teleport over to [&BLYEAAA=] Accountancy Waypoint and see how busy things are in the Asura capital. Rata Sum is the most convenient place to do any trading and crafting. You aren't met with any loading screens between the trading post and your crafting station (unlike Divinity's Reach). If you're looking for an easy transmutation charge and you haven't completed this map (on your main, an alt or key farmer) you should do so.

Divinity's Reach is host to a number of roleplayers, guild recruiters and trolls. Key farmers litter the streets. This means that it is by far the most entertaining city in Tyria at the moment. There is a lot of fun to be had in this city! If you have a Royal Terrace pass you'll most likely spend more time here. Thankfully the Lion's Arch gate bug has been fixed, Royal Pass holders! As a side note: key farmers should start their easy map completion here for transmutation charges.

The Grove is slightly more populated than it previously was (which was empty). Not too much is happening in The Grove. It is a great map to complete for a transmutation charge.

Hoelbrak has a slightly higher number of players but very few. It is not a great place to craft and access the trading post and bank. However it is a decent map to complete for a transmutation.

Black Citadel is in the same boat as Hoelbrak population-wise. It is not ideal for access to the trading post, banks and crafting stations. Nor is it a great place to farm a transmutation charge. In fact its confusing layout makes it is the worst.


Chat, Trolls and You!

There are a lot more voices and opinions in map chat these days. Of course there will be trolls. Every server had their own trolls to deal with. We certainly have had our share. Now we have the rare opportunity to meet the rest. Normally the trolling is innocent enough. This should go without saying, but if someone says something that bothers or offends you then you can block them. Simply right click their name and click "block". If something worse is said (ie: racist, sexist, so horrendously inappropriate that you find yourself with your jaw on the floor) then you should choose the "report" option instead. However use caution with this 'feature'. Don't abuse the reporting system as you can be banned from the game.

There are some helpful voices in chat, once you've weeded out the trolls. More than normal with the higher population. You should use this to your advantage. Ask questions and they will most likely be answered instead of met with nothing at all. Make sure you get more than one answer. This will make sure that you're getting the right answers. Trolls aren't always so obvious. They may seem like very normal, helpful people. Until you find yourself taking a mesmer portal to a zone of death, running long and far for exactly the opposite of what you needed or spending too much gold on something you could have easily crafted. Thankfully there are more knowledgeable, helpful people around than actual trolls. Even if it sometimes seems the opposite.


If you'd like to avoid being spammed by chat then you should make a new tab for map chat. This is how I have my tabs set up (having a separate whisper tab also keeps gold seller spam segregated):


To make a new tab click on the + and name the tab whatever you'd like to. Perhaps simply "Map". Select all things you would like to see in the tab. If you only need to segregate Map Chat then select only "/map".


Roleplay

"Farah Rose caresses his face with her rough, battle-worn hands and lets out a quiet moan of approval as-"

And now you're uncomfortable, right? Or not! Maybe role play is your thing. We won't judge. Not really. You must have noticed a considerable spike in role playing activities around Tyria since the latest patch. A well known fact about Guild Wars 2 is that Tarnished Coast is one of the best servers for role playing. Now the best server for this is - that's right - the megaserver. That means you could quite literally run into an active role play story anywhere without really meaning to. It's a bit like stalking when you can see the chat bubbles of those involved but they can't see you.


SO. What should you do? Nothing. Try not to bother the role players and they will, I'm sure, try and respect your wishes to not participate (I don't think they'll be throwing themselves at you - that's much more befitting of a troll). If you see some role playing going on and you're uncomfortable with it you can do the same thing as with map chat. Make a separate tab for it. I currently have a tab set up for everything other than Guild & Whispers. So while I'm roaming around I don't see "/me caresses his face with her-" or "/map TROLLOLOLOLOL". It's quite a useful feature.


Language Barriers

You may have noticed that there are now more people speaking in different languages in chat. Northern Shiverpeaks is a mostly North America based server and the three most common spoken languages have been English, French and Spanish up to date. Now that everything has been shifted to Megaserver you will see a lot of people who used to be focused on other servers. We're all in the same boat. Hopefully this doesn't bother you. A diverse community is a wonderful thing. If you're made uncomfortable by it or you find yourself wondering "what the heck is this person saying?" then you should embrace that curiosity and, perhaps, learn a few words of another language. Make Google Translate your friend.


Or, if you'd prefer, just ignore what you don't understand. Nothing states you have to interact with anyone in the game or read map chat.


There is an option for languages as well. Click on the cog on the far left of your chat box. The very last option here is what you want to select. For me it states "Show Only English". This is different depending on your default language in game. By default it is turned on and so you may not have noticed any difference here as far as languages go!



Guesting

The future of guesting is uncertain but seemingly useless with the new system in place. The way that it is supposed to work and with the ability to join a friend on a different map will make the guesting feature obsolete.



Home Server

Don't forget which server you joined. Whether it's Northern Shiverpeaks or Ehmry Bay, you should still feel pride when you think about your own server. The other servers still do. And so should you!

Events

Champ Train choo choo

Why would I bring up the champ train, you ask? Because this is certainly effected by the megaserver. Not every server's train has the same tracks. That is to say, when your character has levelled up on Northern Shiverpeaks you know that the Queensdale Champ Train's order is Boar -> Oak -> Troll -> Bandit. Other servers, other players, disagree. The order may be in a constant state of change for a little while, at least, as things settle down in the aftermath of the introduction of the megaserver.


So if you're in Queensdale and you're looking for some champions to kill or a train to catch... Don't be surprised if it veers off course and takes you for a crazy ride from Oak -> Boar -> Troll -> Bandit.





World Events

A great farm to join in on right now is the World Event train. Take a peek at the scheduled times (here or on Dulfy) and hop from boss to boss in the world.

The plus here is that there are more people on each map and thus more players doing these events. The Shatterer no longer cries alone. A major con is that you are only eligible for rewards from each boss once per day. However you can still farm the karma, experience and some champion loot bags (such as from the Svanir Shaman) as often as you'd like or are capable of fitting into your day.

Guild Specific

Guild Recruitement

If you're in the market for a new or additional guild then you may have been paying attention to these announcements and noticed that guilds that are currently recruiting also now make mention of their server as well. If they don't, and you're interested in what they have to offer, simply ask! Guild banks are still server specific. So if this is a deal breaker for you then you should focus on NSP only (or Ehmry Bay, as the case may be) guilds for the time being.



Guild Activated World Events

With the new static world event list in place, there was room for something a little more for guilds. Guild activated events! Unfortunately these are only the Triple Trouble, Karka Queen and Tequatl events.

This is fortunate news for guilds such as TTS: which is a community with the sole purpose of farming the Tequatl and Wurm (and sometimes Karka) events.

For smaller guilds this is not a useful addition to the guild upgrades.

People versus People

World versus World

There is no secrecy now with the megaserver firmly in place. Certainly not in regards to open discussions on strategy and recruitment for Northern Shiverpeaks defense and offense in WvW.

If you'd some information on current WvW plans of attack just head on over to nothernshiverpeaks.org or listen in on the NSP team speak (you can find access info. on the site after registration). Alternatively you can join a battleground to see if there are any active commanders roaming the borderlands.


Person versus Person

The Heart of the Mists is now teeming with your potential allies and enemies. If you stand around you'll almost feel like you're back in Lion's Arch, standing in front of the bank; the mystic forge; at the trading post. A lot of people are AFK. This is also a great place to ask questions about PvP if you have any. Though if you ask which profession is the best you'll likely be told "thief". Ask around a little more before you take this as gospel.

Miscellaneous

Gathering

You still have the ability to guest to another server. However with all of the maps working as a megaserver you will not really be guesting from one map to another. If you mined all of the ore in Lornar's Pass and guested over to Gunnar's Hold, you would probably not see any new nodes to mine. Unless Lornar's Pass was suddenly hard-capped, another map was generated and you were transported to that new map, you would most likely not see anything different. Nodes are not as easily track-able. If you used any community powered gathering node map site these will most likely not be as accurate. This is sad news for hardcore gathering farmers.

Some good news: those reliable rich nodes are still very much in place.



That's it for the Megaserver Survival Guide.

Hopefully you found some of this information helpful or at the very least a little bit entertaining. If you can think of any other topics of interest specifically tied into the new megaserver system don't hesitate to leave a comment and let everyone know!