WvW Map Limit Pontification

Following up on my last post, I've been thinking more about the actual numbers involved. According to some loose (it's the internet!) research, the per-map limit has been estimated by players at around 150 per world (so 450-500 total). So let's just run with that in the absence of anything concrete.

There are currently 5 maps in WvW: Eternal Battlegrounds, Edge of the Mists, and one Borderlands for each of the 3 competing worlds (Red, Green and Blue). This amounts to a maximum number of players per world equal to 5 x 150 = 750 players.

Assuming that the weekly tournament matches are indeed exactly 7 days long, then that's 168 total playable hours during a single matchup.

If a world managed to keep all 5 WvW maps entirely full for the entire time, they would be capable of exerting 126,000 player-hours towards their cause. This is a hard cap-- no world can participate more than this due to the time limit combined with the per-map player count limits.

So to restate the question from my last post in these terms: How often does a world that logs 20,000 player hours score more points than a world that logs 90,000? My guess is never.

I suspect that only at the top end of the matchups where WvW participation is high and the maps are always nor nearly always 100% full do you see true competition on "equal" grounds where skill and strategy actually come into play. The rest of the time I suspect it's merely a matter of, "who has more bodies on the ground?" Now don't get me wrong, a big part of winning a war is who can muster a larger fighting force and it's fair (to a degree) for that to be represented in the scores, but I would like to also see normalized scores in the form of (total_world_score / world_player_hours).

Guild Wars 2 World vs. World: Skill vs Participation?

In Guild Wars 2, there are massive "world vs world" battles raging (or eeking by) all the time. At the moment, the Spring 2014 Tournament is soon coming to a close. My own home server, Crystal Desert, did mediocre in the challenge. Better than about half and worse than about half. I have never been very interested in WvW since the launch of GW2...that is, until this tournament. It became a bit of an obsession, and even though I am still a relative newcomer with lots to learn, a question quickly formed in my mind by observing the peaks and lulls in how many people were logged into WvW and our performance there. Specifically: Is a world's WvW score more about raw participation than team or individual talent, or even overall strategy? Is it simply that the world with the most people in the game more of the time is able to capture and hold strategic points for more of the time and thus earn more points?

I desperately want an answer to this question even though I'm unlikely to get it. I've found ArenaNet to be pretty poor at communicating, even in spite of their otherwise applauded efforts to do so. I posted the following support request today, and I'm cross posting here for posterity.

I'm curious about the dynamics at work in WvW. The maps have player limits, which means that if there was enough participation, each of the three teams currently playing against each other would be on "equal" ground, at least in terms of manpower (let's leave aside the variable like armor/weapon quality, WvW rank, and even individual player skill for the moment.)

First, so we're clear about what I'm talking about. If I play for an hour in EBG, then that's 1 player-hour. If my guild-mate and I both play for the same hour, that's 2 player-hours. If he plays for an hour, signs off, and then I play for an hour, that's still 2 player hours.

My theory is that there is a strong correlation between the worlds that rank highly in WvW and those that have a higher WvW player-hours. In other words: Regardless of other skill factors, a world where there is a queue to enter WvW (meaning they have the max number of players in WvW) will have a competitive advantage over one that does not (meaning they do not have "full" participation) that results in a greater ability to take and hold WvW match points. So I wonder if the tournament rankings are more about, "who had more people in WvW, more of the time," than any other factor. Surely at the top of the spectrum (TC, JQ, BG) where I suspect the WvW maps are always full for every world the match is legitimately about individual and team skill, but I can't help but wonder if Kaineng and Eredon are at the bottom just because nobody plays.

My question is really this: Do you have available, and can you please release, statistics about the total WvW player-hours for each world in comparison to their ranking, per each weekly match up? What I want to see is that Crystal Desert "only" logged 8,000 hours and still managed to grab 190,000 points for the week even though Shiverpeaks logged 12,000 hours to get their 350,000 points. Normalizing for the hours would give you an idea of a world's *actual* skill.  I have a hunch the correlation is dramatic in the mid to lower tiers, but it will always only be a hunch unless you make the information public.

I'm a Collector's Edition owner, a semi-regular gem purchaser, a commander... and a believer in your original Manifesto https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/ . I support what you're trying to accomplish both in mind and out of pocket and I'm dying to know the answer to this question.

Thank you.