After missing some of the Halloween events due to being on a road trip, my girlfriend and I were excited to be able to participate in this event.
When the cutscene started we were both grinning from ear to ear. Those grins very quickly turned into confused poker faces. For almost ten minutes neither of us could see anything but each other, and some particle effects. We both had no sound, and couldn’t figure out what we were supposed to be fighting.
Eventually my girlfriends computer started loading things and she was able to kill enough enemies to gather some samples. I on the other hand was not so fortunate and was unable to collect any samples.
With nothing to do, I checked Twitter and was informed to traveling and returning to LA may fix the lag. So, a few silver later, I found myself back in LA with a slightly better frame rate.
This was when Guild Wars 2 crashed and I spent five minutes or so trying to log back in. My girlfriend was luckier than I was, but was taking a beating due to lag. I eventually was able to return to the game, and after waiting a minute or two for everything to display, and the sound to come back, I ran back into the fray to fight.
Needless to say, I got worked worse than a one armed man fighting Mike Tyson. Without being able to accomplish anything, I found myself dying over and over. Eventually, I was so damaged that I couldn’t continue and so I found a repair NPC. 10 silver later I was repaired, and went back to join the fight. I was able to kill a few small creatures, but the lag, and the number of players made it nearly impossible to do anything I would consider playing a game.
In the end this event cost me more than 12 silver. I wasn’t able to see, hear, or kill anyone for the better part of the event, and the NPC’s didn’t seem to be working after the fact.
The problem is that even of the lag issues were fixed, the gameplay with that many players is just nonsense. It’s such a shame that ANet missed the opportunity to really make this event epic. They could have had these creatures running all over LA, destroying stuff, scaring NPC’s, running up buildings, etc. They could have taken advantage of the huge amount of coastline in other parts of the map, or they could have taken advantage of the huge water area as well.
I personally think this event should be cancelled. As sad as it is to say, ANet is not ready for this type of thing. They need more time to figure out how to eliminate this laggy, Zergfest, and how to spread events across the map before attempting this again. I am so, so glad none of my friends took advantage of the trial or I would never had been able to convince them to give the game a try.
My girlfriend has decided that she will be reading a book tomorrow, and if I get back from my bike ride early enough I may give part two a chance. I can’t see many people sticking around, or getting excited about events like this in the future if this continues.
Below is my short list for improving, performance and gameplay
- Spread the event out around the map
ANet doesn’t seem to get that the more you clump players together, the worse the gameplay and lag get. There is no reason why these creatures couldn’t have appeared all over the map.
- Instances
I would rather play a big open game, but due to the lag, and the amount of particle effects the solution may be to break people up a bit.
- spread the event out (time)
Having everyone log in at the same time, in the same place, is just asking for disaster. If this event had happened slowly, it would have allowed players to form smaller groups to fight.