Guild Wars 2

Also everyone does realize that GW1 was hosted entirely in America; right?

Warder.3491:

CaptainFabulous.8410:

No, you seem to misunderstand. You cannot play with people from EU servers if you’re on an NA server, and vice versa, unless your idea of “playing” is to chat and hang out in the same party. So that restriction already exists, due to the fact you’re on separate datacenters. The datacenters cannot communicate in a way that permits playing together. This isn’t a new restriction, it’s the way it’s always been.

And let’s say they create a server on each datacenter that’s specifically designed to allow people to transfer for guesting. What happens when the free server is full and you can’t transfer? What happens when you’re finished playing with your EU friends and want to transfer back to your home NA server but it’s full too? What then?

That we can’t actually play cross-region is accurate, obviously – that’s the whole point! But where you’re claiming it’s a technical impossibility (although you at first said the servers were completely isolated from each other, when that’s clearly not the case), I’m saying that it’s not, it’s just a more difficult solution that ArenaNet seems unwilling to commit to, despite their proclaimed intentions that playing with our friends is of great importance to them.

What your second part of the post is getting at, or why you’re asking me, I’m not sure. It has very little to do with anything I’ve said, or my suggestion thread. Again, I’m not bothered by specifics. If some solutions brought up in this thread or elsewhere aren’t practical, I don’t care. Something must work. However, you seem insistant that there is no solution that will work, and you seem to actively dislike the very thought of this issue being resolved. Why is that? Why not try to come up with solutions instead?

What you don’t understand is the revenue required for what you’re wanting them to do. In order for the datacenters to communicate on the level it would take to allow players to cross between the two it would require setting up a whole new infrastructure, buying a lot of really expensive equipment, setting up the network to allow it, investing in SAN’s that can run at high speeds, potentially using VPN’s, etc.

I work at a company that does a lot of hosting and we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every time we have to update something.

Why couldn’t transfer between regions be kept free (or at a one time charge) and just block us from participating in WvW? I honestly don’t understand why this can’t be the way it’s done.

They’ve said from the start that transferring servers was going to come at a charge. Why would they give you the ability to switch between data centers for free?

I’m happy. Cross-region guesting wasn’t an issue for me. I’m still hoping some “unofficial PvE” servers pop up so zones aren’t a ghost towns like 80% of them are now, and we can get some good event chains going. I’m also happy that I can finally start participating in my RP group.

I cannot believe how many responses are negative on this. I guess they feel ripped off because some portion of their money spent on the game was allocated toward guesting on servers on the other side of the world. Talk about the vocal minority.

Loosifah.4739:

What you don’t understand is the revenue required for what you’re wanting them to do. In order for the datacenters to communicate on the level it would take to allow players to cross between the two it would require setting up a whole new infrastructure, buying a lot of really expensive equipment, setting up the network to allow it, investing in SAN’s that can run at high speeds, potentially using VPN’s, etc.

I work at a company that does a lot of hosting and we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every time we have to update something.

No. What I want to do is not what you think I want to do.

I don’t care if I can’t guest on a server in another region. I don’t care if they don’t set up International servers, or any of the other suggestions in this thread. I have no emotional attachment to those ideas. The only thing I care about is being able to play with all of my friends – however they resolve it is not really my concern, only that they do.

My own suggestion was that they give us the ability to have one Home World in each region, with free transfers between them on a timer. You know, technology that already exists and is utilized in Guild Wars 2 today and would have none of the problems you brought up, and cost nothing extra for ArenaNet. They’d potentially lose some potential profits from server transfers, but I think it’s more likely that the revenue they’d obtain from keeping their players content would make up for it.

Oh well. I’m going to bed, cause, you know. Time zones. EU. US. Yeah.

Honestly I don’t understand why they didn’t build cross-server guesting in from the ground up. Now it’s very difficult to implement it because they already have their infrastructure set up.

Sigh, I hate to join the complainers club but this is something that bugs me and probably always will. I have about half and half of friends in both regions and it’s basically making it I either have to pay gems to play with some in one region, or simply only play with only my US friends.

Could they possibly implement a single high speed server where players from both regions could join up? Similar to an overflow area.

I’m personally happy that guesting is coming, I’ve wanted to play with my friends from different US servers for quite a while. I just never wanted to take a hit in my guilds perks for switching servers.

Loosifah.4739:

They’ve said from the start that transferring servers was going to come at a charge. Why would they give you the ability to switch between data centers for free?

Or for a one-time fee, to be able to play with other regions. It would be like guesting, which is free. How is it different?

I purchased this game with the expectation that I could play with all of my friends all over the world eventually via guesting. I’d be willing to lose WvW and guild perks temporarily for that benefit, if that’s part of the issue.

Warder.3491:

CaptainFabulous.8410:

No, you seem to misunderstand. You cannot play with people from EU servers if you’re on an NA server, and vice versa, unless your idea of “playing” is to chat and hang out in the same party. So that restriction already exists, due to the fact you’re on separate datacenters. The datacenters cannot communicate in a way that permits playing together. This isn’t a new restriction, it’s the way it’s always been.

And let’s say they create a server on each datacenter that’s specifically designed to allow people to transfer for guesting. What happens when the free server is full and you can’t transfer? What happens when you’re finished playing with your EU friends and want to transfer back to your home NA server but it’s full too? What then?

That we can’t actually play cross-region is accurate, obviously – that’s the whole point! But where you’re claiming it’s a technical impossibility (although you at first said the servers were completely isolated from each other, when that’s clearly not the case), I’m saying that it’s not, it’s just a more difficult solution that ArenaNet seems unwilling to commit to, despite their proclaimed intentions that playing with our friends is of great importance to them.

What your second part of the post is getting at, or why you’re asking me, I’m not sure. It has very little to do with anything I’ve said, or my suggestion thread. Again, I’m not bothered by specifics. If some solutions brought up in this thread or elsewhere aren’t practical, I don’t care. Something must work. However, you seem insistant that there is no solution that will work, and you seem to actively dislike the very thought of this issue being resolved. Why is that? Why not try to come up with solutions instead?

It’s a technical impossibility given the current setup and infrastructure as the datacenters do not communicate in any way that allows it. If there is any communication between them it’s minimal, and I never said there wasn’t any. I said they don’t communicate, the implication being not in a way which makes cross-datacenter guesting possible. Of course they can communicate, obviously, because we can chat and transfer from one to the other. But that’s irrelevant.

To make cross-datacenter guesting possible would require no small amount of time and money along with a significant overhaul of the infrastructure, something that’s just not going to happen in order to provide a free feature. I know it’s not the answer you want to hear, but that’s the reality.

And it’s not like you’ll never be able to play with your EU friends. There are ways, albeit less convenient and requiring some gems and/or cash. But it’s completely possible to do. So making it sound like it’s impossible is incorrect. It may be inconvenient, but it’s not impossible.

A one time fee would also cost them revenue.

Think about it. If a server transfer costs say $20. Even if they upped it to a one time fee of $100 to switch indefinitely between data centers on a timer, people would be switching as often as they were allowed.

Hobocop.1508:

Bliss.1647:

Thrashbarg.9820:

It would have been nice to be able to guest between EU and NA servers, and hopefully they continue to work toward making that possible.

I’ve seen quite a few mentions of meeting in overflow in this thread. That doesn’t allow playing open world content together, only dungeons (as far as I know).

This is incorrect. You can play open world content together in overflow. You just need to form a group in an overflow region (Lions Arch) and then you can go anywhere in the world with your group.

No. Simply forming a group on an overflow in LA doesn’t allow you to play open world content with your group of cross-server members.

Currently, you must all be in the same overflow server of that particular zone, and in order to do that, an overflow needs to exist, and one member of your group has to be on an overflow in the first place so you can join on them. Most zones don’t have the player population to even have overflows in the first place, so this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often unless you happen to form a group at that particular moment with someone on a server that has overflows in the zone you want to play in.

This is again, incorrect. I very often join non-fractal groups while i’m still in overflow. Could you explain how our group gets to AC or CoF in your theory? Because that’s exactly what i’ve been doing.

What you do if you want to play together inworld is that you send one group member to LA, other group members join in overflow and now you can go anywhere you want.

Oh right, just buy a whole new game, spend 60 dollars and invest time and effort in rebuilding everything you have. Everyone has the time and money to do that.

So rather than you spending another $60 they should have to spend millions to make it convenient for you?

Loosifah.4739:

Also everyone does realize that GW1 was hosted entirely in America; right?

No, it wasn’t.

There was always European servers – I think the data centre for those was in Germany. Likewise, the International districts used to be in Taiwan if I remember correctly – these were the districts to go to if you wanted to play with someone cross-region, and where trading was often done. They also gave the best ping for Australian users, so we played on them a bit for a while.

It’s changed now, but originally when you created a GW1 account, you’d select either Europe or US, and your account was locked to that region. To play cross-region, you could select to play from an International district in-game (sort of equivalent to a special server that you could ONLY guest on, you couldn’t make it your home, but everyone could guest on) – but that meant that you COULD play cross-region at any time while having your account stored at your preferred region. Transfers between regions were free – but limited to 5 times maximum in an account’s life time.

Connecting from Australia, the regional differences were very apparent. International used to be around 120-150ms ping (I think that center has closed now and is in the US), US was around 250-300ms ping, Europe was around 430-500ms ping (because most of our European communications go via the US first). As you entered a zone, the IP address being connected to would show in the top left corner – and doing a traceroute on these would very clearly show where the zone was being hosted. They were NOT all in the US.

I would say better late than never, but personally this feature is essentially useless to me and comes as a big disappointment considering what we were led to believe by ANet.

I’m in Europe, play on a NA server so I can group with my guildies but would really like to be able to play Euro servers in my evenings. After the great system in GW1 (yes, I know, network architecture is completely different), this feels like a massive letdown.

We were promised guesting as one of the main selling points of the game, which was then, for whatever reason, put on to the backburner and didn’t have the resources put in to developing it the way it was sold to us. Regardless of the process behind the scenes (and I’m sure the developers involved have worked hard on it), it really feels like we’ve been giving short shrift here. Please find a way to make it happen.

CaptainFabulous.8410:

It’s a technical impossibility given the current setup and infrastructure…

Application architecture plays a lot into it too.

Bliss.1647:

Hobocop.1508:

Bliss.1647:

Thrashbarg.9820:

It would have been nice to be able to guest between EU and NA servers, and hopefully they continue to work toward making that possible.

I’ve seen quite a few mentions of meeting in overflow in this thread. That doesn’t allow playing open world content together, only dungeons (as far as I know).

This is incorrect. You can play open world content together in overflow. You just need to form a group in an overflow region (Lions Arch) and then you can go anywhere in the world with your group.

No. Simply forming a group on an overflow in LA doesn’t allow you to play open world content with your group of cross-server members.

Currently, you must all be in the same overflow server of that particular zone, and in order to do that, an overflow needs to exist, and one member of your group has to be on an overflow in the first place so you can join on them. Most zones don’t have the player population to even have overflows in the first place, so this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often unless you happen to form a group at that particular moment with someone on a server that has overflows in the zone you want to play in.

This is again, incorrect. I very often join non-fractal groups while i’m still in overflow. Could you explain how our group gets to AC or CoF in your theory? Because that’s exactly what i’ve been doing.

To play together in open world you all need to be in the same overflow. This is not the case if you want to do fractals or dungeons, as those are instances. But in either case you can never team cross-region, meaning, if you’re on a NA server you cannot ever play with someone on an EU server.

Since most open world zones do not have overflows it’s not possible to play with people from different servers unless you’re doing fractals or dungeons. Guesting allows you to play together anywhere in the game. Currently you can only do that if an overflow exists. That’s the difference.

Bliss.1647:

Hobocop.1508:

Bliss.1647:

Thrashbarg.9820:

It would have been nice to be able to guest between EU and NA servers, and hopefully they continue to work toward making that possible.

I’ve seen quite a few mentions of meeting in overflow in this thread. That doesn’t allow playing open world content together, only dungeons (as far as I know).

This is incorrect. You can play open world content together in overflow. You just need to form a group in an overflow region (Lions Arch) and then you can go anywhere in the world with your group.

No. Simply forming a group on an overflow in LA doesn’t allow you to play open world content with your group of cross-server members.

Currently, you must all be in the same overflow server of that particular zone, and in order to do that, an overflow needs to exist, and one member of your group has to be on an overflow in the first place so you can join on them. Most zones don’t have the player population to even have overflows in the first place, so this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often unless you happen to form a group at that particular moment with someone on a server that has overflows in the zone you want to play in.

This is again, incorrect. I very often join non-fractal groups while i’m still in overflow. Could you explain how our group gets to AC or CoF in your theory? Because that’s exactly what i’ve been doing.

What you do if you want to play together inworld is that you send one group member to LA, other group members join in overflow and now you can go anywhere you want.

So AC and CoF are ‘anywhere in the world’ and ‘open world content’, now? Instanced dungeons are NOT open-world content, sorry to say. You can’t do things like dragons or other large DEs without being on the same overflow with your cross-server group until guesting gets put in or you all feel like free-transferring to the same server and be stuck there for 7 days.

Loosifah.4739:

Oh right, just buy a whole new game, spend 60 dollars and invest time and effort in rebuilding everything you have. Everyone has the time and money to do that.

So rather than you spending another $60 they should have to spend millions to make it convenient for you?

Well yes, obviously. He’s stated numerous times he doesn’t care what it takes to implement the feature, just that they do it.

“Guesting is coming!”

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!

“Players on North American home worlds cannot guest on European worlds or vice versa.”

Wait… what? O.o I thought that was the whole point of Guesting! It was already possible to group up with people from other servers in your region for dungeons. Granted, this new change makes it possible to do open world content as well, but it’s a real disappointment to people like me who were hoping to be able to play with our friends from EU servers as well.

I appreciate Martin’s explanation for the technical restrictions behind it that make Guesting between different regions impossible, but I really do hope that it’s something ANet can address in the future. Otherwise, I’ll just have to resign myself to never being able to play with some of my friends.

Sounds like an entitlement argument to me. “I paid the $60 for your game and have been playing for 5 months now, but YOU OWE ME THIS,….it doesn’t matter how much it costs! You aren’t delivering 100% of what you implied was going to be in this game. No it doesn’t matter that you’re still releasing new content all the time, it should have been here from the start!”

Anet representatives, my case is that i am currently in EU guild – which is my primary guild and will not move. i am from australia, technically i should be playing in NA server but i have decided to stay in EU since day 1. my other guilds which i am in are NA guilds spread across diff servers. they are all buddies from gw1 which i would love to play with from time to time.
i wished you could have inform us at day one tht you are not going to make guesting possible for cross data centres. im utterly speechless and dissapointed. bcos i hv to say good bye forever to my gw1 friends from NA

Also they never said they wouldn’t be working on making it possible in the future. I’m sure when they’ve generated enough revenue they’ll work on some solution. But I’m sure people will still find some reason to whine about it.

Seriously, thanks for letting us know it won’t work across regions after almost 5 months. Guilds have to plan and we made choices based on the info provided on guesting when the game launched. Also, no playing with my RL friend that plays GW2. I was looking forward to the day guesting arrived and we could play together. It’s unfortunately pointless as far as I’m concerned but I’m glad others will be able to take advantage of the new feature. I’ll be looking forward to content now.

For what it’s worth, I’d pay money if I could have my player data in another region thus enabling me to play either region. Think about it ArenaNet. The bandwidth needed for data replication may not make it viable but it’s an idea.

Replication would also require downtime.

sigh as I see it I will never be able to play with my old mates from another game I played, which now play on a server in US.
What I would like to see as a (maybe) addition would be a perma-guesting on a specific nonregion server – I’d even pay some bucks for it. Simple to say, if they charge me a $20 for their additional server-to-server-communication I’d be happy.
I don’t want to spend another $60 and bring all my characters back up to 80 with exotic equip , which takes looong….

So for me at least, this really changes nothing at all. From what I can tell it will simply enable people across NA/EU servers to PvE together (i.e. world exploration), but at this point I and many other players simply don’t do that anymore. Most of the endgame lies in dungeons or WvW, and given that you could already party with same region people, it’s not really a big change.

On the other hand, new players can explore with their friends now I suppose.

Loosifah.4739:

Sounds like an entitlement argument to me. “I paid the $60 for your game and have been playing for 5 months now, but YOU OWE ME THIS,….it doesn’t matter how much it costs! You aren’t delivering 100% of what you implied was going to be in this game. No it doesn’t matter that you’re still releasing new content all the time, it should have been here from the start!”

To be fair, the inability to guest between regions is a new thing. Originally the only given limitation was that you couldn’t participate in WvW on the server you were a guest on. Many of us made choices based on the the information that we were given by ArenaNet because we figured they knew how it would work and we had no reason to doubt them.

I guess what’s most disappointing is the implicaiton that it’s not an issue they’re ever going to address – sure, it’s an impossibility with the current implementation, but it’s not a total impossibility. I could stand to wait for them to get around to getting EU/NA players play together eventually, but it doesn’t sound like that’s ever going to happen.

That is an absolute crushing disappointment – there is no hyperbole that one of the major points of sale for me was the guesting system and not being segregated to one region/server ala WoW – in conjunction with level scaling, the idea that I could always play with my disparate groups of friends wherever they happened to be in the game.

I don’t understand people using the word NEVER. As in “I’ll never be able to play with my friends”. This is simply not true. You can transfer from an EU to NA server and vice versa and play with all your friends there for a week or more. Then transfer back and play with those friends for another week or more, and so on. We don’t yet know the cost of transfers, but since it will cost gems you won’t necessarily need to spend real money.

Another alternative is to buy a second copy of the game and establish yourself in the other region. Yes you’ll have to start again, but you’ll have your friends there to help you along, and you’ll be able to mail things from one account to other, including gold, to help out. This way you can play with whichever friends you want, whenever you want, no 7 day window, and for a one time flat fee and no recurring transfer costs.

So right there you have 2 options. Are they perfect? No, but either are far from NEVER.

I don’t understand those who defend Anet on this.

It’s a feature that has been promised even before the launch of the game. It was obvious people would wait for cross-continent play. OBVIOUS. They may not choose their technical difficulties but in that case why they had not been clear with that since the very beginning?

We paid for a game with features included and promised. It’s not our concern if it will cost them money to make this possible.

As stated before they are solutions and some of them doesn’t cost that much. In addition like some of us said we are ready to pay another licence that would give us a homeserver in both of the continents (and fix the really annoying region locked problem). It wouldn’t cost them a cent network wise to make us chose which character do we want to put in which server. Really, it would be the best solution for all.

And again, dungeons and fractals are instances, why do we have the same limitation for them?

Whining and complains are totally understandable in that case where things we had (possibility to move from EU to NA for free and vice versa) are just going to be removed.

Loosifah.4739:

Sounds like an entitlement argument to me. “I paid the $60 for your game and have been playing for 5 months now, but YOU OWE ME THIS,….it doesn’t matter how much it costs! You aren’t delivering 100% of what you implied was going to be in this game. No it doesn’t matter that you’re still releasing new content all the time, it should have been here from the start!”

I think it’s more like:

Anet: “Hey guys, you’re going to like our game, you can play with friends all over the world! It will be free with a system called Guesting! Don’t worry about where you choose as your home, you can play anywhere! We don’t have a release date for the game yet, but you can be sure that it’ll only come out when it’s ready! Oh, and if you pre-purchase, you’ll get into Beta!”

Beta arrives.

Anet: “So we have a fantastic game for you to try and beta test for us, guesting isn’t available yet but we’ll have it in for launch!”

Launch arrives.

Anet: “So it’s been a busy time, guesting isn’t ready yet, we’ve had some problems, so instead, server transfers are free until we have it ready for you! Until then, feel free to play on any server in the world!”

5 Months later.

Anet: “Citizens! Remember guesting? It’s coming later this month! Unfortunately we can’t allow you to Guest outside your own region. Remember how you bought the game so you could play with friends all over the world? Yeah, you know that’s not even technically possible. Bummer right?! You’re probably going to want to hug the next quaggan you meet.”

At least, that’s how I remember it.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Let me explain to you why you cannot guest on worlds in another region.

There are two databases: European player data is stored in our European datacenter, American player data is stored in our American datacenter. This is to ensure that people in these regions can still properly play in case there is an issue with the connection between the datacenters.

When you do a world transfer from the US to the EU (and vice versa) your player data is transferred from one datacenter to the other. This is not the case with guesting, as you are still “registered” on your home world.

I understand that some of you are disappointed that you cannot guest on worlds in another region, but considering the complexity of internet routing, our main priority is to ensure that players have as much of an uninterrupted game experience as possible, which is the reason why we have two datacenters.

On another note: I will try to get an answer to the guild influence question that has been posted a couple of times.

Thanks for the update. Is there any reason why that data cant be copied across until the guesting is complete. Just like server moves?

As mentioned above, many of us would rather wait 5 mins for a copy and have a little more ping than to have a flat out never.

Ask any database administrator, duplicate records are not a good thing. With what you are suggesting is have two sets of the same information, now how do you handle things like gaining a level do you update the home server, guesting server or both servers. If you are doing both servers you are doubling information traffic between servers plus the regional lag time. Not just leveling but Gold, Karma, XP (which you get every 0.54 seconds in GW2), loot, etc.

You also need to look at things like if the account is hacked while guesting and a rollback is needed what do you do then? The backups are probably only going to be on the home server meaning the rollback tools will need to be changed significantly to handle this copying of data.

Many people think programming is easy but little things can cause issues across the software even when it seems unrelated. For example, this could effect things like Bug Reporting.

Lafiel.9372:

nekos.2584:

Lafiel.9372:

nekos.2584:

I’m actually appalled Anet would implement paid server transfers. There is no reason what so ever for us to be forced to pick 1 and only 1 server in the first place. Then to add insult to injury make us pay to transfer to a different server.

I’m new to the game, been playing close to 2 weeks and i have found that the server i picked was not one i want to be on. I had no way of knowing how the server would be before even playing the game and now i have to pay to change servers ? Sorry, this game might go into the garbage bin just on principal.

I understand that there is a problem with WvW and guilds transferring to lower tier servers but this is not the way to fix that problem. Hell it doesn’t do anything other than put some $$$ in Anet’s pockets. It’s ridiculous and if this is the best Anet can do … I hate to see what the next step is when they realize paid server transfers wont fix ((( their own ))) blatant and obvious oversight concerning WvW.

Paid server transfer have always existed and is vital to stop server hoppers in WvW. I think this fixes the problem perfectly and if you have a better method then by all means you should suggest it in the suggestion forum. Also, transfers are still free at the moment so you can still transfer to another world if you’re not happy with yours…

How is it going to fix the problem ? Do you think people who are so inclined can’t afford a $10 server transfer fee once a month or even once a week ?

It’s also apparent Anet has designed it this way by making it (((cheaper))) and easier for the problem guilds to hop to a lower tier / population server. This is a joke and it really makes me sad to see Anet do this. All they had to do was simply make every one who transfers servers start over from level 1 with no gold gems or anything… Problem solved.

Paid transfers are effective because it would force people to think twice now that real money is involved. If a guild is willing to spend lets say your proposed 10 bucks per member then sure by all means they can play that game if they want. I have nothing against it if they’re willing to pay the price.

In other words it doesn’t fix the problem…

And i have to be careful about what i say. I got an infraction for my reply to you. lol

It simply highlights once more the very flawed system that Guild Wars 2 uses compared to Guild Wars 1. As guest seems pretty much useless for pickup group for fractals accross servers, overflow is still the only proper way to go.

Your server infractructure has been flawed from inception even when it was first announced in 2007. Guild Wars 1 got it right: preferred continent and language regions BUT with the ability to move wherever we want whenever we want. It simply works, it’s a bliss, it’s a beautiful work of art in an online gaming market where most players are stuck on their “server”. I realy could not figure out why the hell you ended up putting this bad system back in Guild Wars 2!

For god’s sake, just revert back to the Guild Wars 1 system for the openworld and sPvP and have this “server” nonsense only available for McM and call it “affilliation”, “faction”, or “guild alliance” (this way we could even pretend to have some form of GvG in Guild Wars 2) or whathever instead of “world”.

EDIT – removed wrond statement about gouping from different servers in dungeon instance.

You dont need duplicate sets of info. As people have have mentioned there are lots of ways of fixing it or that could be explored further. That’s not to say they have’nt been but there is the fact that other games, other companies do the same thing as this day in day out with far more data that is far more sensitive so we ask ourselves. If others do it there, why not here? If the same company managed to do it on servers, networks and databases many times slower than now why can’t they now?

I suspect it’s all to do with how they designed the game. To work with seperate servers for the sake of WvW.

While I agree that people should get the best performance possible, people should also be allowed to make that choice. If I guest to NA Imay get DC’s and a little more lag. GW1 veterans knew that going to international or another areas districts you’d get more lag but we didnt care. We just wanted to play with our friends no matter where in the world they were.

Which is entirely the point of an MMO. But’s it’s not really us who have to deal with it. We can go elsewhere. Anet have made their bed, and it will be interesting to see the shape of the game in 12 months time.

My gut feel is that it wont be anywhere near as ‘sticky’ as GW1 was and it’s stuff like this which will be the reason.

Honestly, as a community event organizer from the days of GW1 (Vegas from Blade Radio), the decision to release the feature without including international capabilities is -very- disappointing. I helped organize absolutely MASSIVE events that would not have been possible without international cooperation.

I can only hope that this is a temporary disappointment and it is your intent to find a way to make international guesting a reality. There are far too many international GW communities for there to be any other acceptable options.

Safe Journeys,,
Vegas

What most ppl are forgetting (or just dont know) is that GW1 was also divided in the beginning. They opend crossed servers much later then most ppl know.

And there it was not just NA & EU, but it was more like "America, Europe, Asia, International "

Eventualy Cross servers will come. its something that happens with most MMO’s. Although i hope for the ppl that really want it, that its not far away.

Lone Wolf.4129:

What most ppl are forgetting (or just dont know) is that GW1 was also divided in the beginning. They opend crossed servers much later then most ppl know.

And there it was not just NA & EU, but it was more like "America, Europe, Asia, International "

Yup. The key being international allowed anyone (except china I think) to play with anyone. Even US and EU, or EU and Asia. The only place you could’nt go were 2 special areas which depended on how well a region did at PvP.

You could even have cross region sPvP and GvG teams. Only the region associated with the guild mattered, not where the players came from.

As you said, this functionality was in on day 1. The issue I have with ‘Jam tomorrow’ is by then it will be too late. The community will be fractured apart and those who wanted to play and be part of a global MMO would either have left, given up or just beaten into a submissive silence.

So to finish my 100 World completion I will need to pay to go to the world that controls the most points since the server I’m on does not have a lot of people that PVP. That I know of. I don’t think the restrictions are feasible for all types of players.

Lone Wolf.4129:

What most ppl are forgetting (or just dont know) is that GW1 was also divided in the beginning. They opend crossed servers much later then most ppl know.

And there it was not just NA & EU, but it was more like "America, Europe, Asia, International "

Eventualy Cross servers will come. its something that happens with most MMO’s. Although i hope for the ppl that really want it, that its not far away.

You could transfer from release, you just were limited to five transfers before you got locked.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

I understand that some of you are disappointed that you cannot guest on worlds in another region, but considering the complexity of internet routing, our main priority is to ensure that players have as much of an uninterrupted game experience as possible, which is the reason why we have two datacenters.

More than just “disappointed”

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Lone Wolf.4129:

What most ppl are forgetting (or just dont know) is that GW1 was also divided in the beginning. They opend crossed servers much later then most ppl know.

And there it was not just NA & EU, but it was more like "America, Europe, Asia, International "

Yup. The key being international allowed anyone (except china I think) to play with anyone. Even US and EU, or EU and Asia. The only place you could’nt go were 2 special areas which depended on how well a region did at PvP.

You could even have cross region sPvP and GvG teams. Only the region associated with the guild mattered, not where the players came from.

As you said, this functionality was in on day 1. The issue I have with ‘Jam tomorrow’ is by then it will be too late. The community will be fractured apart and those who wanted to play and be part of a global MMO would either have left, given up or just beaten into a submissive silence.

The International function was there but EU could not join America or Asia directly in the beginning. (or vice versa) I remember very good that it was a hard descision to make when the game asked mle for my Server knowing the only way was using International at that time. The option to choose freely to go to any district “America, Europe, Asia” came later. thats the same time favor from the gods became tied to achievements and not how good your territory did in HoH

refference (although it does not specify the price date of the change)

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Territory

Mr Crazy Moose.5760:

Lone Wolf.4129:

What most ppl are forgetting (or just dont know) is that GW1 was also divided in the beginning. They opend crossed servers much later then most ppl know.

And there it was not just NA & EU, but it was more like "America, Europe, Asia, International "

Eventualy Cross servers will come. its something that happens with most MMO’s. Although i hope for the ppl that really want it, that its not far away.

You could transfer from release, you just were limited to five transfers before you got locked.

isnt that kinda the same now? only now you had time from release till jan 28th
(ok new players after jan 28th wont have that option though)

spybotAF.3756:

So to finish my 100 World completion I will need to pay to go to the world that controls the most points since the server I’m on does not have a lot of people that PVP. That I know of. I don’t think the restrictions are feasible for all types of players.

your not always the same color. its random every time. just do the points when you are the color of that side.

Lone Wolf.4129:

Mr Crazy Moose.5760:

Lone Wolf.4129:

What most ppl are forgetting (or just dont know) is that GW1 was also divided in the beginning. They opend crossed servers much later then most ppl know.

And there it was not just NA & EU, but it was more like "America, Europe, Asia, International "

Eventualy Cross servers will come. its something that happens with most MMO’s. Although i hope for the ppl that really want it, that its not far away.

You could transfer from release, you just were limited to five transfers before you got locked.

isnt that kinda the same now? only now you had time from release till jan 28th
(ok new players after jan 28th wont have that option though)

No, it was a constant feature right up until they changed how favor of the gods worked. The only way to get more transfers was to ask support for them.

Also there were the international districts that reduced the need to transfer, a server which I believe is hosted in the same building as the American server.

Geikamir.6329:

Why couldn’t transfer between regions be kept free (or at a one time charge) and just block us from participating in WvW? I honestly don’t understand why this can’t be the way it’s done.

Indeed, if it is not possible to let us guest between the two data centers. Why can´t you make the change transfer between EU and NA free and block us in WvW? It´s the best solution as I see it.

Like many others I’m hugely disappointed by this. I moved for study reasons in the US region and it was expecting to be able to play with my old friends in EU at some point. For me it would be enough to play at least a restricted subset of the game, but still no dungeons, no overflows, no pvp. This is a huge slap in the face to the international GW communities

Loosifah.4739:

What you don’t understand is the revenue required for what you’re wanting them to do. In order for the datacenters to communicate on the level it would take to allow players to cross between the two it would require setting up a whole new infrastructure, buying a lot of really expensive equipment, setting up the network to allow it, investing in SAN’s that can run at high speeds, potentially using VPN’s, etc.

I work at a company that does a lot of hosting and we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every time we have to update something.

I don’t understand all the work involved, so maybe you can explain.

It’s currently possible to change servers between regions.

What would be involved in arranging a default ‘home’ world in each region (eg. Blackgate for NA and Piken Square for EU) for every account, in such a way that people could always freely transfer between these two locations (barring population), then use the guest feature from there? Transfers to any other server would still incur a cost.

Would that be possible? Considering it’s already possible to change servers (which I’d presume is the hardest part) would the rest, establishing a way to link default NA/EU home worlds to every account, be too costly to be worth the effort?