Outland Expansion Incoming!

Great point!
A better option than doing nothing. I like this change than what it is now, in terms of the gvg environment.

Edit:
Although I am skeptical whether top 2 alliances on a particular continent will just expanded their alliances even more and slowly grab the new areas off the new guys ........

I like the expansion but hate more copy-pasting....

Overall unimpressed.

Bad update ever...

The problem isn't that their isnt enough territorys to take, The problem is that there is zero incentives to not join the top alliances.

This is worst update seen. disperse poblation (?) ... Come on, this update will be a greatest bullshit
-10000

BZ are cold and brutal, I like Royals.... please show some love for Royals as well

I would have appreciate bigger areas in our current map to accommodate the growing player base, but this sounds like a step in the right direction. You guys are going to have to make some of these new areas harder, with more interesting mechanics, something new, and you will need to add a few more tiers of armor at some point.

Before this game became free to play I had to do my best in order to find fights and sometimes even single people. Now I log in, port somewhere in Mercia and get a fight within minutes. More zones means fewer players per zone and currently I think there's a healthy amount of players in every zone. Why not implement this slowly? Like one Cumbria sized continent at a time? This is way too much.

Interesting... Don't know what to think yet, I do remember well the death zones beta 2 created, and the horse simulator to find any signs of life... to early to comment on weather this will follow the same progression as beta 2, but I for one support an effort to create more space for new player base to populate and have a chance to claim, just wondering if it is two much space... I will commit to trying it, then give constructive feedback...
iCampAlot

I really don't see a point in this. If anything you should be expanding royals. It will be a long time until new players join the black zone zerg fest. If ever. It doesn't make any sense to expand low pop zones(black) and not massively crowded zones(royals). Few days ago i made a run in Anglia from one shore to the other like 10 zones since i didn't have anything else to do and i literally didn't see any1. If i did that in royals i would have seen 23425245 people.

I like it.

I think this is a good change. Honestly, the majority of criticism in this thread is too short-sighted. The thousands and thousands congesting the Blue and Yellow Zones in the Royals will be moving to Black Zones, without additional space the existing Outlands would be extremely crowded.. I have only been playing about two weeks and have not found Anglia to be dead at all..

with more players for a couple months and population will have decreased by 30-40% and all zones will be dead gatherers will have risk free gathering resulting in material prices to plummet and also its boring af having dead zones

The primary two issue I see from this:
-Underpopulation
I don't have the data, but I'm guessing that Anglia & Cumbria zones are relatively unpopulated right now. Mercia has clearly been active, due to the higher level zones there resulting in better RD fame. Simply adding more low demand zones probably won't spread the actual player population out more.

-Monopolized control
There's no reason why existing powerful alliances won't simply expand their sphere of influence to swallow up all of the new areas as well. Because there's no limiting factor to what a guild/alliance can control in terms of territories, existing alliances take everything they can until they reach a border with an opponent that gives them enough of a challenge that it's not worth the cost of fighting.

The player expansion has not created any new GvG teams/GvG focused guilds that can compete with the existing ones. (Where the top players have 3-5 characters ready to play each to get around locking issues) This means there's nothing that can push back against a straight expansion from the existing power bases. You've created new zones, but you're handing them to the players that already control a lot of zones already.

The game needs a mechanism to limit how much power a guild/alliance can exert.

The game already has lots of real estate. The problem is that it's in too few hands. Here's how you can fix it:

Normalize the zone levels across the continents. Make Anglia & Cumbria attractive to fame in. Instead of Anglia being L3-6, and Cumbria 4-7, and Mercia 5-8, make them all 5-8. (Or better yet, tie zone levels to Watchtower Crystal levels. Allow a tower to go to T8, and have the tower level in Crystal determine the level of mobs/RD's) If you want to continue increasing the power of Mercia & Cumbria beyond the higher enchant rate, perhaps a slightly larger fame % boost in those continents would work. There should be no level 3 & 4 zones in the Outlands.


Find a way of limiting what a single dominant GvG team can control. You've talked about removing mercing, and reducing the GvG timeslots. These ideas need to be implemented. My preferred suggestion is to limit territory control based on crystal performance. Ie: Every guild has a built in capacity of 2 towers, and to go past that, you need crystal wins. Increase the levels for crystal towers, have increased tower levels improve the zone itself. Reward a strong GvG team by granting their guild one of the best zones in the game, with fame/gathering bonuses that reward activity for those players, rather than just having that team monopolize half of a continent.

Townplots are not evenly distributed. The number of guilds that truly control ownership of townplots is very small. Several guilds own one, but it was purchased from one of the power teams, and can be taken at will unless they're allied/supported by a powerful team. This means that some guilds have control of as many as 8 townplots, essentially erasing those zones from the map.

Mercia fights are not financially viable. The cost of fighting un-capped in 8.2 is grossly out of proportion with the value of the territory. That means that only existing powerful, rich guilds can contest Mercia, or a near unbeatable team. As a result, very little fighting happens on an ongoing basis, and breaking in to Mercia only happens when there's a major power shift. Make the Cumbria cap 1100, and add a 1200 IP cap to Mercia.

@Eltharyon
I do believe this a good move.
As I do believe the Royal Continent could be changed too to adjust the big income of new players, making the transition more soft for them.

Instead of lots of Red/Black zones at Royal, switch more of those red/black maps to yellow and some to red, leaving black maps only to our north continent..

So most of starters can wander around Royal zone without expericieng alot of deaths, while mid/high players will wander in those new zones.
This change its to adjust the new income of pve people and pvp people, giving them both chances to play as they like, I believe this can benefit those new people.

Royal -> starter and abit morepve friendly public, guilds pve.
Mercia/Cumbria/Anglia/Glouvia/Siluria -> end game stuff, full pvp, more rewards to guilds pvp, readjusting Tier maps to higher.

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I believe castles and territories should work as GuildWars2 WvWvW rotation, you just go and claim, without need GvG team. Which adds way more stuff on this too, like the ability to build tiered castles (upgrades and more defence). Mixing World Pvp with GvG seens weird, because its different style, while one its a massive fight and other its just a 5v5 (if a guild has best GvG team at albion, their alliance wont lose anything), correct me if im wrong (because this is what I heard about this features).

GW2 did a very nice division at World vs World maps, 3 maps mirrored based on 1 faction (so each faction map had same stuff), 1 map centered with all and most important fight zone.
Sure albion can't implement such things GW2 WvWvW has, but some ideas from there are nice to look into.
Classes there have way more advanced fighting tactics as mesmers that can create warp portals to invade/evade, classes that can combo aoes to give new effects to damage or buffs (boons), siege weapons etc...


This way probbly you can satisfy lots of complaints from this massive income too, coz it will allow both public to play their style.

Adding more territories without limiting how many territories an already powerful group can hold will do nearly nothing to widen the player base holding territories. The problem isn't that there's insufficient towers. The problem is that a dominant team is able to control a grossly disproportionate amount of territory.

Run 2man HGs if you're looking for a fight.

I really like this update.
Good work, as always

I hope for the best. glhf

As if there isn't already enough copy pasted content in game. I'm talking about gears, skill icons, mounts, mobs, terries, resources, maps, and so many more. How about limit alliance numbers first to reduce snowballs, maybe new guilds would actually try to venture out to occupy these lands. Stop promoting massive alliances when you know the servers couldn't handle it when they clash.