[2020] ANet, Glicko Needs to Go

Glicko was created as a measurement for chess players in a tortament-style setting, with numerous players. For GW2, an analogous system would be PvP.

With the introduction of the 5/4/3 scoring system for WvW, this has caused the relatively small number of servers (we can ignore the guest servers), 12 in NA, to become very close together in terms of glicko. This is now leading to lopsided match-ups due to the randomness chance from the glicko system.

I personally don't know what the best solution would be, but it is apparent glicko is no longer suitable as a system to generate match-ups. Quoting the GW2 wiki:

Worlds in WvW are matched up based on their ranking using a modified Glicko rating,[3] so that high-ranked worlds will battle other high-ranked worlds, and low-ranked worlds will battle other low-ranked worlds. This attempts to ensure that every world has a fair chance of winning matches despite differing levels of player participation or skill.

This week, we have FA (3) + SBI (5) + CD (10). Clearly this does not fit the definition of "high-ranked vs high-ranked" or "fair chance" when there are only 12 effective ranks.

These match ups just don't work and it's due to the system in place. Either ANet needs to manually create match ups, or another system needs to be put in place. Many vocal WvW'ers advocate a 1-up, 1-down system, but I'm sure there are other deterministic ways to introduce some form of randomization to keep matches fresh.

TL;DR: Glicko no longer works; it no longer generates match-ups against similarly ranked servers. A new system must be implemented.