EU players on US servers, why?

A few years back the European servers were packed to the extent you would meet dozens of people even in remote outposts. Now you're lucky if there are more than 10 people in Kamadan. Did anything happen to the EU servers so people couldn't keep playing on them or what?

Those lag spikes are pissing me off to no end but there is nothing I can do to fix them at the moment (maybe except moving to America, but I can't do that either). The choice is either play with decent ping and all by yourself, or play with people and watch as your character teleports around when he casts a spell after running. It's not THAT bad as I describe it, but it's kind of annoying because the EU servers are THERE. It's just that for some unclear reason all of the EU players have decided to migrate to the US.

Help me to understand, please?

Trade.

12chars

This May help you understand a little more
I have been back ingame for around 4 weeks now after a very long break and it happend twice
Thats why i play in the American Sever


Oh yes and also trade

EU servers have been working just fine for the last couple of days. Heck, they were on earlier today when I made my Rit and it automatically started in Europe.

Are you telling me that 98% of the EU players are getting this 24/7? I bet trade wasn't that bad to make them all flee.

Actually, there are several reasons:

Some people are in mostly American guilds
Some people prefer the greater trade in the American districts
Some people are sick of people not using the language options correctly (I personally get sick of going to ENGLISH districts and seeing nothing but French etc).
Some newer people aren't aware that there are European districts.

And not ALL of the Eu players have migrated. I personally H/H most things so I prefer sticking to Eu servers for less lag. I had a guildie help me with a mission once in AD2 and I D/Ced three times in 5 mins.

1. How'd you get in an American guild if you weren't playing in America to begin with?
2. Dunno about trade, so I can't say.
3. And how does having the entire userbase play in America helps to solve this? The only languages you won't see are Japanese/Korean etc. because English districts don't allow typing of East Asian characters.
4. If you bought the game in Europe you start in Europe by default. Applies to all PEGI rated copies sold outside of Europe as well.

Maybe in PvE but in PvP.....On an HA weekend....try hanging out on the US servers in HA and see how many ppl are there. EVERYONE and their uncle is in Intl. Dist. literaly 5 ppl in US Dist. 1 on this past Sat.
It's mind boggling.

- trade
- easier to find parties if everyone plays in the same dis
- don't have ping problems in america like you describe

In short, it's just more convenient.

When I solo farm I play in EU districts for less lag, but all the rest of the time I play in US districts because it's a more social environment due to more English speakers there. The European districts are mostly French and German in Local Chat.

i still think they should remove all the language and continent districts , and just dump everyone on international dists ...

I don't know,my best drops have always been Polish.

But people tend not to write/type English even in the Euro English district. In the German district there's a lot of activity, though.

Terrible idea.

There were many reasons and euro players quickly migrated to american servers.

Euro English district was full of people speaking random-letters-like languages (scandinavian?) and the english speaking euro community was smaller than the american playerbase. One important reason not mentioned by anyone yet is that PARTY SEARCH system doesn't work across continents, so american districts became the default english speaking

The major disadvantage is the high pings and it really decreases the comfort of play if you play something more skill-intensive than C+Space or 1,2,3,4, ... 1,2,3,4.. on each target. I wish Anet did something with it but as it was never widely considered a problem I don't have my hopes high .

Possible solutions could be making PvE instances work just like PvP ones - they should be created on the server where the most players entering are closest to. The only problem with it would be when servers on either continent experience heavy lag issues, now players can just move to the less laggy continent in that case, but with a PvP-like change they would be stuck (except for parties with many players from the other region).
Another one would be improving the Party Search system into fully worldwide (it "just" requires a building a connection between 2 server sites for this service)

I only go there for ab, fa and other (pve) pugging. Whenever i'm with guildies doing something or HH i'm at euro for the better ping (usa is okayish, but ping goes orange from time to time).

I got invited to it as my guild leaders are American and I very often play during their time zone therefore it's more pleasurable for me?

Re-read what I said. People in the English language districts on the European servers very often don't speak English. They'll speak Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Polish... It's annoying when you don't know those languages. I've had this before in another MMO I played where the same thing happened. Everyone headed for the English districts because more people = better trade. It's a sad but true fact, but irritating for those who don't wish to speak those languages and can't understand them. Obviously people who DO speak English moved to American districts as a result, also because there are more Americans than Europeans :P

Actually no. I started on a trial account, inputted my country etc, got put on the American server to begin with. It was only when I wondered why the lag was so bad that I happened to notice and changed to the EU server.

Why are you so against Europeans using the American server anyway? IMO as long as the language being spoken by someone matches that of where you are, who cares?

All Scandinavians I've met have always spoken English. Never even knew they were Scandinavian until they told me, I'm Scandinavian myself.

International has always been the default gathering location for HA.

My experience is the complete opposite ! Last night I was amazed of all the people in ee1 Not just in Kamadan but many little outposts in NF. I guess its the HoM luring old players back.
But when buying or selling I always jump to America dis. No offense but if germans started typing in english in trade chat, life would be alot easier.
English is not my native language either.

I'm surprised noone has pointed out the most obvious reason:

The player base is decreasing. All the time. The game is almost 6 years old, after all. So, as fewer people play, they tend to concentrate on areas where the other players are. It's simply a matter of "where are the people nowadays?" and going there.

There doesn't actually have to be a reason for people to gather in a specific place. The fact that it's known as the place where people play alone suffices. When a person sees an empty district, they'll automatically move to the districts they perceive as populous. Of you want to play with people, you go to american districts because people who play are there. It is circular logic - because it's a self sustaining dynamic.

Why this is the american districts and not international? That's where the reasons above come in.

P.S. if the game doesn't die first, I fully expect people speaking other languages to start speaking those languages in US districts, too.

Take into account there's an event on at the moment. At Halloween EE1 was busy as hell.