Guild Wars 2

There is a startling sound while Guild Wars 2 is fully muted. It is like a random one drum beat or a scratch noise that comes every hour. Sometimes it echoes, too. It is very scary while listening to a podcast. I brought this up at the Bugs forum section but was hardly noticed.

Please take time and mute Guild Wars 2 and listen to a radio show or simply mute and play the game. Anyone will notice it. It is scary if you are living alone. It is making me anxious and paranoid. I have been hearing it only when I’m playing Guild Wars 2.

Please remove it, Arena Net.

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Edited (2/23/2014):

Hi, everyone. I figured out what the noise is like. It is similar to the sound you hear from caves such as water drop, and it echoes.

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Edited (2/25/2014):

Hi again. The sound is becoming frequent. To anyone curious, mute Guild Wars 2, and you will notice the flicking/echoing/stomping noise that comes every 5-20 minutes – but be warned it is kinda creepy.

I think this is the same bug that’s been in the game for ages.

Is it the popping sound? Or it sounds like someone’s smacked a pan? It varies in volume. It can be quiet or it can be loud and startle you, but it appears whether or not the game audio is audible/muted.

It’s not every hour for me, but it does seem to happen to me every time I play GW2 for an extended length of time.

The noise can even happen if I have the game minimized.

I sometimes get loud noises and pops when i fight in large groups (pve and wvw)
like it pops and then i have like no sounds untill i change map

Hi Keenan Sieg. JayMack and roseria pretty much described the issue I am experiencing. The sound changes sometimes and eerie.

GuidWars 1 makes a little announcement every hour that you’ve played in your current session (and suggests you might want to go out and have a life on the second full hour ).

Maybe this is some sort of holdover from that? An hourly gong tied to when you logged in rather than the top of the hour, server time, or something similar?

I’ve not noticed a pattern to the sound which is best described as someone hitting a hi-hat with a pan.

Yeah, this has been in the game for ages. It’s not a holdover from the gw1 notification of how long you’ve been playing—it’s not regular enough for that. But surely it’s not a surprise to Anet that this exists, is it? Well, it could be, but wow, the things they don’t know about their own game…

I thought it was only me ! It is happening whether or not the sound is turned off. It’s very rare though, but kitten I hate when it happens. I can’t describe exactly how the sound is, but I’d say it’s like a loud “smack!” that echoes (more like a reverberation). I’m glad it never happened alone at night – as I didn’t know it was the game and I was wondering what could possibly make that sound – I would have freaked out.

PS : Last time I heard it was like 2 days ago.

Edit : Wow, didn’t know “dam(m)n” was censored.

I updated the original post.

This has been happening in the game for a long time. I didn’t start getting it until a few months after launch, but it has been happening ever since. You can not use earphones because the sound is much too loud, most of the time, and too startling. It does not matter if you have the game muted, or even your computer audio muted. The sound happens, anyway. It has even migrated, on my computer, outside the game.
It seems something has altered the audio drivers or audio chip on the computer. I have changed computers since first purchasing and playing GW2, and still there is the annoying sound, so I know it isn’t from my computer, but from GW2.

I can’t imagine no Devs have ever experienced it; there have been several threads about it, and countless posts. I hope, some day, the cause can be found and the issue alleviated.

I’ve noticed this as well, scares the crap out of me sometimes. I’m glad I’m not going nuts haha

Just confirming that this happens with me as well, and with countless other users. I’m sure ANET is aware, but I’m also confused as to why it’s been around almost since launch without any fix.

My description of it would be a loud, empty, metallic SMACK that randomly plays and ignores all volume settings.

roseria.7695:

I sometimes get loud noises and pops when i fight in large groups (pve and wvw)
like it pops and then i have like no sounds untill i change map

This happened to me few times in past 3 weeks. Usually in combat, suddenly the game sound stops working, all other pc sounds work fine. So tried restarting the game and it doesn’t let me cos GW2 is apparently already running (but doesn’t show in task manager).

Will try the map change next time.

It happens to me as well

Come to think of it, i remember this happening every now and then. Not so strong or annoying as others mention, just a distant, echoing slap of some hard material…

I’ve heard this too. I always assumed it was just a glitch with the GW2 client. I often alt-tab out of the game to read the forums during downtime between events or to look up crafting materials or NPC locations. When I do, I’ll sometimes hear a loud sound that definitely isn’t coming from my browser, and only when the GW2 client is open. The sound is usually either 1) a dull ringing sound like a hammer hitting porcelain, 2) a sharp hi-hat cymbal that reverberates or echoes slightly, or 3) a bass drum thump that reverberates slightly. I also sometimes hear a slight echo when I alt-tab out during a certain sound being played in the game. For example, if I’m in a personal story cinematic, and alt-tab out while an NPC is saying something, the last syllable the NPC said echoes and fades out over about 1.5 to 2 seconds. The main thing that all these glitches have in common is that there’s a definite echo involved, regardless of the sound.

I know this may sound like a strange description, but I’ve become accustomed to these minor audio glitches and so it’s not really strange to me anymore. Hope my feedback helps in diagnosing the problem.

I just redownloaded the client (now ~18GB) and have been noticing this sound as well. I didn’t have it in my previous client (~20GB)

It’s been in the game since launch, has it not? I noticed it popping up once when my character landed from a fall. But it seems very random, and I have no way to reproduce it.

It’s been in the game even in beta, I think. I remember hearing it back then as well. One time it was so bad that I threw off my headphones and had to step away for a few minutes to calm my nerves.

It was mainly on my old pc, though. I haven’t noticed it since I switched to the new one.

It has been over a month since I posted this thread. Please, I would like to hear updates from Arena Net.

I notice this too, but if it’s been in the game since beta, I wouldn’t hold your breath for a fix any time soon.

This loud jarring noise has been researched/described before.

What it is, is when something that generates sound (such as a player or NPC) makes a sound right at the edge of the audible sound radius, it causes some kind of glitch that makes a very loud, jarring noise.

Been in the game since launch, though it’s been awhile since I’ve heard it, myself. it has become significantly less frequent for me over time.

Can anyone make a video of it? Im curious.

Hanako.1827:

Can anyone make a video of it? Im curious.

Same! I’m curious and creeped out…

Its like a GW2 bloop!

jeez, i thought my speakers broke

I’ve noticed this happens frequently during the Tequatl fight for me.

This has been in the game for nearly as long as I can remember.

There are numerous threads about this issue that go back over a year.

I’ll sum up anything I’ve posted in the threads:

Random extremely loud noise that plays randomly. It doesn’t seem to be any single repeat noise – but rather seemingly any sound, played at ridiculous volumes. The sound is unaffacted by the ingame volume slider or at the very least is on levels of several magnitudes louder. The only way I’ve found to mitigate it is to turn down my system volume, or specifically GW2.exe

It sometimes seems to trigger after I tab back into the game. Running at windowed fullscreen pretty much all the time. Most common after I’ve been playing for an extended period of time, almost once every 2-3 hours after a while.

I too often tend to listen to other things while GW2 is muted or low volume, and the noise is so startling that it still catches me off guard once in a while, makes me jump.

I’ve deleted local.dat and run -repair a few times to try and address this and unrelated problems, which seems to have no effect.

Posted system specs in one of the older thread, but relevant specs are: Onboard Realtek audio, AMD Phenom X2 550 BE.

Happens super frequently to me in areas of high CPU load. WvW, (megaserver) Heart of the Mists, world bosses, etc. Like the poster above noted, having the game fully muted doesn’t stop this from coming through.

This happens to me as well even when I have all the sounds muted.

Add my voice to it. It is loud, it is jarring, it literally physically hurts my ears since I use headphones, and it also pains me to see that it has been around for a year+ and still no reported fixes from players.

‘Live with it’ is a pretty crummy answer for something that causes actual physical pain.

Wow! I was thinking that something on my side is broken and I was too shy to bring it up on the forums. I’m also hearing that very very loud noise every now and then, it is as someone said like a pan hitting the floor. I was wondering if it’s my TeamSpeak or some other software, phew!

A while back I also heard this odd ping like sound. It was as if someone was sending you a message or some kind of notice. But I never saw anything to put the sound into context.

One night in WvW I asked if anyone ells was hearing something similar and a few people said they had.

I haven’t noticed it lately, or I might just be so used to hearing it I don’t notice it anymore!

When it occurs, it almost sounds like a half-second long error with the sound card. Like a pop/thud. It has never been frequent for me but has always happened out in WvW to my knowledge.

This seems somewhat more likely to happen when the CPU is very busy. Like in WvW or when something else in the background is eating lots of CPU time.

I can produce a similar (though not as loud) sound by opening and rapidly clicking around in the game settings while a zone is loading. When the zone load finishes and the game finally finds time to load and play the UI sounds, they all play at the same time, making a loud noise.

Maybe the sound code needs some sort of timeout after which pending sounds are either dropped, or the sound code is just run right now even if it blocks everything else.

I made the mistake of playing the game with speakers yesterday – didn’t wanna be bothered with headphones. Was playing as normal, when a huge pop plays through the speakers. It was so loud that my dog actually fled the room, scared…

I tried updating my Realtek audio drivers for arguments sake a couple weeks ago, no difference.