Guild Wars 2

Ivienn.6354:

I have question for all of you unhappy people:

If you have so many friends you want to play with in EU and NA why didn’t you all make accounts in same server when you started playing since time zones are no problem for you?

Or why don’t you all transfer to one server now while it’s still free? Guild influence is not that hard to get.

Don’t blame ArenaNet for your bad planning of your gameplay. They are doing best they can and maybe one day we will have NA/EU guesting, but till then be happy they are trying. No game is perfect and no matter how great professionals one company has it’s impossible to have everything right away.

This is a great game and time it takes to fix stuff and bring new one is shortest possible. Instead of complaining about everything, be more thankful, because if they didn’t try you would have got no game to play today.

I’ll explain my situation and disappointment, if only to give you a perspective:

I play on the EU servers and this is where the majority of my friends and guildies are. Personally, I don’t have “so many” friends playing on the US server, I have only 3. However, these are close friends who I’ve been gaming with for nearly a decade, who have since moved around the world.

Just because they’re my friends, doesn’t mean they’re all friends with each other. Just as I had to make the choice to join a server where the majority of my friends play, so did they.

It is unrealistic to expect all your friends to roll on the same server, especially if they’re in a different part of the world and spend most of their time playing at different times.

This isn’t a feature that will make me quit the game and I’m not screaming about the sky falling, but I believe it’s perfectly legitimate to express disappointment in a polite and constructive manner.

Grey.7319:

Ivienn.6354:

I have question for all of you unhappy people:

If you have so many friends you want to play with in EU and NA why didn’t you all make accounts in same server when you started playing since time zones are no problem for you?

Or why don’t you all transfer to one server now while it’s still free? Guild influence is not that hard to get.

Don’t blame ArenaNet for your bad planning of your gameplay. They are doing best they can and maybe one day we will have NA/EU guesting, but till then be happy they are trying. No game is perfect and no matter how great professionals one company has it’s impossible to have everything right away.

This is a great game and time it takes to fix stuff and bring new one is shortest possible. Instead of complaining about everything, be more thankful, because if they didn’t try you would have got no game to play today.

I’ll explain my situation and disappointment, if only to give you a perspective:

I play on the EU servers and this is where the majority of my friends and guildies are. Personally, I don’t have “so many” friends playing on the US server, I have only 3. However, these are close friends who I’ve been gaming with for nearly a decade, who have since moved around the world.

Just because they’re my friends, doesn’t mean they’re all friends with each other. Just as I had to make the choice to join a server where the majority of my friends play, so did they.

It is unrealistic to expect all your friends to roll on the same server, especially if they’re in a different part of the world and spend most of their time playing at different times.

This isn’t a feature that will make me quit the game and I’m not screaming about the sky falling, but I believe it’s perfectly legitimate to express disappointment in a polite and constructive manner.

This goes for me as well. I can switch to another region because I have a friend there, but I cannot ask another friend from my own region to switch as well, simply because I want to switch. And the sad fact is, that I know those people because of a game made by ANet, namely Guild Wars. Where you could, from the start, play with people from all over the world. It might not have been perfect from the start, but the option was there anyway.

We should, en-mass, switch to one region and leave the other region completely empty… (and I’m talking about all active GW2 accounts here…)

flyingcats.6194:

Shinzan.2908:

I can transfer servers from EU to US now and it takes about a minute, so the technology is there. Since guesting isn’t what we were promised and they said server transfers would remain free until they get it working they should just keep transfers free instead and remove the time limit.

The technology for permanent switching is there. The technology for temporary switching isn’t. It’s really not as simple as just moving something and then moving it back afterwards.

But it really is. Using the same technology has “permanent switching” as now for EU to NA only. It takes away all the negatives that come with switching servers in the first place (spying and messing up WvW for servers you are fighting against) because NA and EU don’t fight each other in the first place.

And if they don’t want us doing WvW in another region either, also easy. Just don’t allow it. When you cross to the other region (other than you pre-determined home region) just don’t let me do it. Mark the character that says they can’t go into WvW. It really is that easy.

Chamone.6890:

I’m not sure why anyone would want to guest on another continent’s server anyway.

As European, I enjoy people being awake and online at the same time as me, I enjoy the wide variety of people and cultures that I run into on the various different servers, I’ve played with Swedes, Spanish, Dutch, Czech, French, Germans, Danes and more, the variety of different accents, cultures and attitudes one finds across the continent is second to none.

Why would I want to guest in the US, where everyone is American and every server is kind of the same?

I do think they should have some kind of Ryder Cup type deal in WvW. The top server from US vs. the Top server in EU, just leave the 3rd slot blank. That would make winning the top tier really something to go for

I have odd work hours. So some days I am on at the perfect time for EU and sometimes I’m on at the perfect time for NA. Currently, half of the time there is almost no one online when I am online to do ANYTHING. It’s very dead in the middle of the night.

On top of that, I have a lot of friends in NA (I am from America) but I have been in an EU guild for a while now and really like all the friends I have met there too. Why do I have to decide who I like more? I didn’t in GW1 and I shouldn’t have to here either.

Chamone.6890:

Why would I want to guest in the US, where everyone is American and every server is kind of the same

We are on US Jadequarry because of WvW since 10/12 and still have friends on the unofficial German roleplay server.

We won’t transfer to them, because you can’t do wvw 24/7 and they won’t go to US because they can’t roleplay there and have a guild on their server.

Why should I switch to a server where no one is online, when I’m awake?

This guesting system seems a bit naff to me.
First of all, no guesting between EU and NA… Why? Does it not make sense to keep the community together instead of essentially splitting it in two?

Ok I get why you cannot WvW while guesting… It defeats the whole object of WvW. Which is why I still say that entering WvW as a neutral player (cannot attack or be attacked by other players and have no effect on the map strategically) should be implemented for the PvE aspect of it (Been their done that, jumping puzzles, pet collecting). It was a huge mistake to include these PvE aspects in WvW which is PvP but we have to live with it. Guesting does not solve this problem one bit and in fact, makes it worse. So when anet implements this then they also need to implement the neutral status I mentioned to balance this out. It is impractical otherwise.

Unfortunately, allowing “neutral” players in WvW would allow for spying which is IMHO not a great idea.

We were already able to join our friends on the same region in dungeons (except Flavour of the Month when last I tried) so really what we’re seeing is a situation that is largely unchanged from the current … other than server transfers between regions will now cost money.

I call Emperor’s New Clothes.

People here really mix up their own expectations with what -they think- has been promised /hinted at. From the beginning of the beta or the game you had to choose a region. In that region you could do server transfers, and they said you could guest on servers to play with your friends there. Just one look at that window could tell you that the servers from other regions were never even there to go guest on them.

But it totally worked in GW1 !!!
Yeah well, GW1 was another game, with another server-infrastructure, which had to handle only instanced areas. Ups they changed that for GW2, cause we wanted an open world.
Seriously how anyone expect that something that worked with instances, that (excpet for town areas) had max. 8 (or 16 in PvP) players in it, should also work for areas ten times as big with over a 100 players in it?

And the thing with ‘just make it a double account on both regions’. So basically you want all the stuff your paying for in your (chosen!) region, all the same on another one, also with free synchronization please? It’s been said here: double the data & the the data flow is nothing you can just make ‘work somehow’.

Shailyn Slay.7234:

People here really mix up their own expectations with what -they think- has been promised /hinted at.

Except they -did- promise it. As someone pointed out earlier in this thread:

“Here at ArenaNet, we’ve always held that you should be able to play with your friends, whether they’re next door or a continent away. Today we’d like to outline a number of policies and technologies we’re implementing to support this belief.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-world-of-choice-the-regions-of-guild-wars-2

Cross-region guesting was more than just implied.

Can’t believe ya’ll complaining, this is a great new feature.

If you want to play with EU then just transfer to EU, and vice-versa. I understand why it is not being done, when you transfer your data is moved completely, guesting it is not, it’s like overflow servers, non of your data moves.

Besides people exploit the heck out of world transfer, going to worlds with good WvW standing or ones with less people in specific farming spots or that have constant farm maps. So it’s good they monetize on these issues.

As i mentioned above. You don’t even need a total rework of the infrastructure to do it. Just de-couple WvW from your home server in the software and let people transfer to whatever server they want to, when they want to.

It’s all down to the importance Anet put on people being able to play with whoever and where ever they want.

JaxomNC.5381:

Unfortunately, allowing “neutral” players in WvW would allow for spying which is IMHO not a great idea.

I dont understand that. How can you “spy” on a zerg? Like I mentioned they would have no impact on the map strategically or otherwise. They would not even be able to see the status of buildings or supplies. Reporting on locations of (eg) catapults in this manner would be the same as a player in combat mode doing the same. It would be impractical to send a player in as neutral to do a job that a combat player can do just as well. It would be like slicing off your nose to spite your face.

Besides “spying” happens all the time regardless. Theres plenty of players in WvW that dual logs with two accounts to do this. I suppose that this is one problem anet hopes to solve with the guesting system and charging a gem fee to swap servers. Folks wont want to dish out cash to transfer servers every week.

This is a bit troublesome. When the game launched, I wanted guesting so I could play with my NA friends. When most of my EU friends quit, I switched to a NA server to play with them. Now some EU friends are coming back so I’d want guesting to play with them..
Ah well, guess I’ll just have to live with only being able to play with some of my friends.

Ivienn.6354:

I have question for all of you unhappy people:

If you have so many friends you want to play with in EU and NA why didn’t you all make accounts in same server when you started playing since time zones are no problem for you?

As part of an international guild I have both NA and EU friends. In GW1 we could play together in the afternoons, US time. In the evenings they were all in bed so I would play with the US. When GW2 opened we did try all playing on a EU server, but the population dropped so dramatically after 9pm ET that some group events became unplayable. In other words, time zones are an issue but we still want the opportunity to play with our European friends when they are on.

Ivienn.6354:

Don’t blame ArenaNet for your bad planning of your gameplay. They are doing best they can and maybe one day we will have NA/EU guesting, but till then be happy they are trying. No game is perfect and no matter how great professionals one company has it’s impossible to have everything right away.

This is a great game and time it takes to fix stuff and bring new one is shortest possible. Instead of complaining about everything, be more thankful, because if they didn’t try you would have got no game to play today.

Except they have made no claim that they are “fixing” anything. They promised one thing and have given us another. If they had said international guesting was still being worked on, it wouldn’t be so upsetting. Instead they just bailed on guesting and dumped this imperfect mess on us.

shogei.8015:

Ivienn.6354:

I have question for all of you unhappy people:

If you have so many friends you want to play with in EU and NA why didn’t you all make accounts in same server when you started playing since time zones are no problem for you?

As part of an international guild I have both NA and EU friends. In GW1 we could play together in the afternoons, US time. In the evenings they were all in bed so I would play with the US. When GW2 opened we did try all playing on a EU server, but the population dropped so dramatically after 9pm ET that some group events became unplayable. In other words, time zones are an issue but we still want the opportunity to play with our European friends when they are on.

Ivienn.6354:

Don’t blame ArenaNet for your bad planning of your gameplay. They are doing best they can and maybe one day we will have NA/EU guesting, but till then be happy they are trying. No game is perfect and no matter how great professionals one company has it’s impossible to have everything right away.

This is a great game and time it takes to fix stuff and bring new one is shortest possible. Instead of complaining about everything, be more thankful, because if they didn’t try you would have got no game to play today.

Except they have made no claim that they are “fixing” anything. They promised one thing and have given us another. If they had said international guesting was still being worked on, it wouldn’t be so upsetting. Instead they just bailed on guesting and dumped this imperfect mess on us.

I completely agree! As a member of MARA, a world wide guild of mature over the age of 30 gamers on Gunnar’s and Yak’s, I say we were promised the ability to play with any friend anywhere with the guesting ability – as clearly stated previously by ANet.
This is for

Don’t blame ArenaNet for your bad planning of your gameplay.

Bad game play planning? How is a guild of 600+ members living on 5 different continents being promised “international guesting” by A-Net bad planning on our part?
Guesting in Region only was not what was promised and cuts a nearly decade old guild in half on GW2.
And who can afford to pay to constantly to move servers ever 7 days? AND pay more to move to highly populated servers!
Very uncool, A-Net… very uncool.

ANet could easily make a guesting ability for PVE to international servers only. All the world transfer complaints are only from the WvW players and completely disregards the PVE environment player. Charge gems for moving WITH PvP abilities, don’t penalize PVE players/guilds/FRIENDS!

1. Guesting across EU/NA servers. As many Gw1 players have already
expressed, we have made long standing friendships with many players
across NA/EU. One of my RL EU friends of 7 years has transferred to my server
some time ago, however that was not intended to be permanent yet his EU server is dead. At that time the Stormbluff population was much higher. It has since dropped radically.

2. Rich node farming may well encourage exploitation particularly from bots

3. While Arenanet needs to cover costs and maintain a viable business I do hope the cost of server transfers will be kept to a minimum.
In Aion server transfers are US $50. This is an unreasonable fee due to the changes in server populations from which Aion has never recovered. It is not viable that players should wear the cost. It was caused by expected drop offs and fluctuations in player base. Some of which could be attributed to bad game design. Pitting race against race was never in my mind a wise design choice for many reasons. Already Aion has been forced to merge servers since release in failed attempts to resolve the imbalance and it is an issue that Arenanet would want to likewise consider before implementing a gem cost for transfer.

4. Last yet not least, I would like to relate discussions held with many of my Oceanic friends. These are serious concerns I would appreciate developers considering before implementing charges on server transfers, as being in the US it seems they may have overlooked the issues below.

On Stormbluff Isle we have seen a massive drop in server numbers in our evenings AEST.

a) In PVE it is not possible to complete world events. Low level areas
are near empty, Orr is near always contested and not enough people to complete world events.
Two nights ago we failed Arah last event on risen wizard with at most 10 of us. At launch there would be 20-30+ people for that event. Friends have expressed that they cannot gain access to armor npcs, get event karma or rewards nor complete mapping without difficulty. It seems we are at a serious disadvantage to US players. This also applies to getting groups for dungeons.

b) In WvW we have seen our best guilds already transfer to other servers with higher populations and we have dropped from R1 to R3 in a couple of months because of lack of numbers and direction.

c) Our R4 WvW legion which is a mix of US and oceanic players has talked for some time, as well as some of my Australian friends from Gw1, about transferring to a more
balanced server yet nothing has been decided as should we transfer we will lose our Guild ranking I believe?
In this regard my question is, would developers consider allowing Guilds to retain WvW ranking on transfer?

Making server transfers cheaper to servers such as ours will not remedy the problem. It’s to be expected that after initial release many will lose interest however populations at least on Stormbluff seem to be steadily decreasing and so it seems are other servers.

At very least please allow more time for people to attempt to make informed decisions. The majority of feedback on 8 pages of this thread submitted seems mostly negative so far. Much better to delay this decision and reconsider options of server merges before complicating matters by applying charges for transfers and potentially losing more customers.
At least half of the players on two legions l am in and 3/4 of my friends lists do not play anymore or if so then very rarely. This is not a good sign of things to come at this early stage of the game and as a faithful Gw1 player for many years l want this game to succeed and am still holding hope that more suitable solutions can be found. As it is however, l am playing much less too and reading the blog post today sadly seemed like another nail in the coffin.

My main concern is the last question and I will set my alarm to be awake at 5am AEST in the hope that it will be addressed. I would also have hoped that the interview could have been a recorded broadcast so that players could review at a more suitable time.
-5.20am, just read on FB broadcast will be recorded. Back to sleep!!

From: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-world-of-choice-the-regions-of-guild-wars-2/
by Regina Buenaobra on August 16, 2012

By default, we display the worlds that are hosted in your regional data center, but you will be able to select a home world from either region at this time. So, for example, if you are a European player who prefers to play on the North American worlds, you’re free to do so.

At launch, players will be able to transfer between worlds freely. However, once server populations have largely settled and stabilized, world transfers will be restricted to once a week and cost a variable amount of gems based on the population of the world being transferred to.

In time, we’ll also introduce free “guesting,” which will allow players to visit other worlds as guests as long as they have friends on those worlds. This feature will be free, but guest players will not be able to enter World vs. World, and the Power of the Mists bonuses from their home world will continue to apply to their characters.

Zero mention of server region for guesting. ZERO.

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

From: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-world-of-choice-the-regions-of-guild-wars-2/
by Regina Buenaobra on August 16, 2012

By default, we display the worlds that are hosted in your regional data center, but you will be able to select a home world from either region at this time. So, for example, if you are a European player who prefers to play on the North American worlds, you’re free to do so.

At launch, players will be able to transfer between worlds freely. However, once server populations have largely settled and stabilized, world transfers will be restricted to once a week and cost a variable amount of gems based on the population of the world being transferred to.

In time, we’ll also introduce free “guesting,” which will allow players to visit other worlds as guests as long as they have friends on those worlds. This feature will be free, but guest players will not be able to enter World vs. World, and the Power of the Mists bonuses from their home world will continue to apply to their characters.

Zero mention of server region for guesting. ZERO.

Start with the start.

Here at ArenaNet, we’ve always held that you should be able to play with your friends, whether they’re next door or a continent away. Today we’d like to outline a number of policies and technologies we’re implementing to support this belief.

The rest of the piece shows how they were going to implement that…

Apparently, they don’t think it important anymore that you are able to play with your friends, whether they’re next door or a continent away.

One thing that just came to me with all this compliance I can’t go to Us/EU server and play… is that 1 a month Nr1 in Us and 1 in EU WvsWvsW ranking should meat to fight whit server is Nr1 in the world, this fight should be for 42hours from 18.00 Friday central time in Us (01.00 GMT) until Sunday 12.00 CT (19.00 GMT) and on New maps that is only used for this fights. No JP or PVE bosses on the map. Serve 2-3 on EU Us get 2days rest until fight start again on Sunday.

CaptainFabulous.8410:

If you allow someone to copy to another data center for guesting purposes you either have to move the data or copy the data. If you copy the data that means 1 account is taking up twice the space. Multiply that by up to 3 million accounts and that’s an awful lot of wasted space.

As someone who works with large datasets on cloned servers, 3 million account records are chicken scratch. I work with more than that on my desktop as a sample set. Even if their account records are bloated, cloning is feasable.

“Simple” solutions:

1. Implement a system like other games (LotRO comes to mind) that allows an account to create characters on multiple servers. Obvious issues would then be server capacity.

2. For account owners who want to have access to the other side of the pond, offer a drastically discounted account that is tied into existing login (to prevent lost sales).
With this, when a player logs in, they would then select if they want their EU or NA account. If there is a nominal fee to get this, it will weed out the people who don’t want the option and reduce server loads.

3. Create an international server that both sides can guest to.
Host it in Greenland, have it maintained by Vikings. Problem solved.

Warder.3491:

Ethics.4519:

This is ridiculous. All you people sitting here whining and complaining about something great that Anet did for us. Half the people seem to not even have read the whole thing based on the ridiculous questions they are asking.

Thank you Anet for implementing it. It’s a shame we can’t NA/EU cross but it is what it is. I still appreciate the effort and the diligence to get this done.

Ridiculous? That I’m unhappy that it makes my situation worse? I have a friend in Australia who I will never be able to play with now, starting Jan 28, after ArenaNet implements this. And you suggest I should be grateful?

Know your facts before you start complaining. There will still be overflows for dungeons. How do you play with your Australian friend now? Do you switch servers every 7 days? Probably not. Do you join dungeons and go to overflows, probably. You’ll be able to do the same thing. So relax.

Roll on the 28th and the end of free transfers but still skeptical on this as no release of the cost has been set yet, if it’s to cheap as in just 100 gems then it might as well still remain free to transfer.

Shadow.3475:

One thing that just came to me with all this compliance I can’t go to Us/EU server and play… is that 1 a month Nr1 in Us and 1 in EU WvsWvsW ranking should meat to fight whit server is Nr1 in the world, this fight should be for 42hours from 18.00 Friday central time in Us (01.00 GMT) until Sunday 12.00 CT (19.00 GMT) and on New maps that is only used for this fights. No JP or PVE bosses on the map. Serve 2-3 on EU Us get 2days rest until fight start again on Sunday.

Let me see if I can translate this…
Have a battle between NA and EU #1 ranked servers…

One major problem with organizing such a battle… it’s this crazy thing called time difference. So when NA is up and running, EU is in bed, and vice versa. So the majority of play would be massive zerg rushes on a few stragglers who happen to be awake in the opposite time zone. However I could very well be wrong.

Perhaps a smaller scale EU/NA #1 server battle could be held for 3 hours, points based on kills. Runs from 5PM to 8PM GMT on every Sunday.

I have to add my voice to the choir of those less then pleased. We were told over and over again we can play with our friends anywhere in the world and once again we are getting a different story now AN has our money.

There isn’t even any room for misinterpretation here like the fanboys would have you believe. https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-world-of-choice-the-regions-of-guild-wars-2 clearly states US and Europeans can play together via guesting (outside of WvW).

Good lord, how is this BS even legal?

Main reason I’ll use guesting is cross-server groups to Fractals when there’s no overflow. But why I can guest only on 2 servers each day? Does this mean I can go to Fractals only 2 times, and then should wait evening for overflow?

Please, make 3-5 servers per day at least, or “Go to overflow” command (even when map is empty), or entering Fractals from different servers possible.

I’m also very disappointed by this announcement.

This is yet another feature making GW2 far less enjoyable than GW1 in my opinion.
ANet is simply destroying communities that were built across continents in GW1.
As some people wrote about it already, implementing this feature is basically making things worse than what we have currently, i.e. free transfer to ANY server (both EU&NA) every 7 days.

Ethics.4519:

Warder.3491:

Ethics.4519:

This is ridiculous. All you people sitting here whining and complaining about something great that Anet did for us. Half the people seem to not even have read the whole thing based on the ridiculous questions they are asking.

Thank you Anet for implementing it. It’s a shame we can’t NA/EU cross but it is what it is. I still appreciate the effort and the diligence to get this done.

Ridiculous? That I’m unhappy that it makes my situation worse? I have a friend in Australia who I will never be able to play with now, starting Jan 28, after ArenaNet implements this. And you suggest I should be grateful?

Know your facts before you start complaining. There will still be overflows for dungeons. How do you play with your Australian friend now? Do you switch servers every 7 days? Probably not. Do you join dungeons and go to overflows, probably. You’ll be able to do the same thing. So relax.

No. That doesn’t work. EU accounts can’t play with US accounts in overflow right now, and they won’t be able to afterwards either. When I play with my Australian friend right now, it requires a server transfer. Obviously the 7 day timer on transfers makes that a complete hassle, hence why we were eagerly anticipating guesting. Instead, guesting (and the subsequent removal of free transfers) effectively removed our ability to play with each other.

So yes, I do know the facts.

Warder.3491:

No. That doesn’t work. EU accounts can’t play with US accounts in overflow right now, and they won’t be able to afterwards either. When I play with my Australian friend right now, it requires a server transfer. Obviously the 7 day timer on transfers makes that a complete hassle, hence why we were eagerly anticipating guesting. Instead, guesting (and the subsequent removal of free transfers) effectively removed our ability to play with each other.

So yes, I do know the facts.

Well said. It’s amazing people are actually defending literal false advertising.

As someone who played GW1 briefly not long after it opened, one thing I loved about that was that I could join up with a couple of Aussie friends I had who introduced me to the game (I’m in England) when they were on, then switch to a local server to play with others.

Grey.7319:

One of the best aspects of GW1 in terms of community involvement was the ability to join any of your friends anywhere in the world through use of the international districts. Different game, different infrastructure I know, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept a big step backwards in regards to connecting with our international friends.

True, different games, BUT the game which is inferior came second!

I’m amazed GW2 has regressed in terms of a ‘global community’ to the level of WOW, Rift, and all the other games who segregate regions one from another. The only thing that’s better with GW2 is that at least one can transfer between regions, but dynamic ‘on the fly’ moving like GW1 is light years ahead of that in terms of community building.

Amulrei.4973:

Well said. It’s amazing people are actually defending literal false advertising.

What I find amazing is that some people actively argue against those of us who have a problem with this implementation, when there’s absolutely no gain to be had for them. They’re arguing for the sake of arguing in an issue that obviously has a great negative impact for at least some of us, which is behavior I find appalling.

As for literal false advertising, I’m not sure I’d go that far. However, what I will say is that ArenaNet did this:

1) At the very least, very strongly implied that EU and US accounts would be able to guest with each other.

2) Did absolutely nothing to discourage that way of thinking for the months that we’ve been live and in beta. If this was the plan all along, which I strongly doubt, they could’ve said something before the game was released.

I’m not sure which I find worse, really. This isn’t what I would’ve expected from ArenaNet at all.

Why can i play with ppl. from US, Asia,Australia and from EU on any Server in Lotro ex, a game from 2007. How did they actually come up with such marvelous idea, to let everyone around the Globe join, team up and raid or simply interact with each other….. incredible such system even exist.

If we take the following into account :

As far i remember, correct me if im wrong, every Guild Wars 2 Server are somewhere in the US, including 1x Login Server (NA, Datacenter)… so WHY in the name of Quaaganindrix, did they not just add a 2nd NA LoginServer for Backup (too many Login Request aka Load)… and we could join and team up and have a cup of tea together, world wide..

I don´t understand the decision behind it, seriously. Why would you tell every EU-person to login to a EU data center server and re-direct him or her over sea to the home server (EU) on US-Territory it does make no sense to me, unless the EU server are really located in Europe somewhere.

It´s 2012/3 and for some odd reason we have to separate the player base of our upcoming MMO into 2 factions… i don´t mind if we can not Guest on diffrent Server/Regions, but come on …

Dungeons are instanced – I-N-S-T-A-N-C-E-D its the year 2-0-1-3, not 2001. Why can we not join a US Group (from EU) and run a dungeon together? I don´t get it…..

MY BEST FRIEND IS A EURO PLAYER

I’m American, but I play on a Euro server because my friend plays there. Our server (Vabbi) is the lowest ranked WvW server in the region… I am a HUGE PVP FAN so I was wanting to play on an American server for WvW purposes (plus I LIVE IN AMERICA), and use guesting to play with him…

This is inexplicitly the worst bafflement of any massive online game in my entire internet experience! I would understand and sympathize if it was a coding issue, or that it was temporary. But this is extravagently ridiculous otherwise. I LOVE this game, and would appreciate it if you didn’ completely demolish my will to play!

Martin Kerstein.3071:

The same was true when you transferred a server or were in an overflow server, so I do not see how this is perceived as a “new” issue?

Martin, while the lack of cross-region Guesting is disappointing, that’s not the root of this problem.

That comes from the expectations that ANet have laid down through (a) GW1’s world-spanning International Districts, and (b) previous GW2 blog articles that have stated in no uncertain terms we’d be able to team up with friends on other continents.

Dressed in that context, this is a “new” issue – because we were led to believe it would be more, and because ANet have done better than this already. You can call that fair or unfair as an estimation, but commenting as if you were unaware of player’s expectations for Guesting only comes across as disingenuous and won’t cool the issue.

Ivienn.6354:

I have question for all of you unhappy people:

If you have so many friends you want to play with in EU and NA why didn’t you all make accounts in same server when you started playing since time zones are no problem for you?

Or why don’t you all transfer to one server now while it’s still free? Guild influence is not that hard to get.

Don’t blame ArenaNet for your bad planning of your gameplay. They are doing best they can and maybe one day we will have NA/EU guesting, but till then be happy they are trying. No game is perfect and no matter how great professionals one company has it’s impossible to have everything right away.

This is a great game and time it takes to fix stuff and bring new one is shortest possible. Instead of complaining about everything, be more thankful, because if they didn’t try you would have got no game to play today.

Saying that we should all bring our friends to 1 server, would be implying that everyone has 1 tight group of friends with no connections to other, outside people. I don’t know if you realize, but it’s simply not gonna happen that I will get all the european players I’m friends with to switch to an American server, or vice versa. And I’m sure that I’m no exeption on that case.

Arenanet, I beg you to put this server guesting/paid server transfers on a hold once more, and work on a solution for all these people with cross eu/us friends. This is really just burning bridges between eu/us servers.
A possible solution might be allowing people to select 1 server on the opposite region wich they can freely hop between once every 24 hours, 7 days, or at best even no limit at all. In the earlier stages of the game when there was no server switch limit it was possible to switch cross eu/us servers in no time, so I’m not seeing any impossibilities there.

Nothing like a little Nerd Rage. Listen, ANET I’ll tell you this. Guesting as you’ve described it fixes the main issue that myself and most of my friends have had in the game. I’ve asked random people. I’d say 80% of the people I’ve talked to feel the same. Cross playing among Euro and US servers has never been something that was promised and at least you aren’t making it like other games where your character lives on one server and if you want to move servers you have to start over. Also even in games where you can transfer I’ve not seen one where you can transfer a character for free and even then you can’t play with friends on another server. But you gotta know if you change it… nerds will rage.

The lack of cross region guesting is a huge disappointment. Playing with people from other regions was possible in GW1, without any problems.

First off, the biggest mistake for GW2’s servers that I can see, was not following the Area – Region – District model from GW1. That would mean simple overflow by districts, no concerns about underflow, as everyone gets put together, instead of 5 people on each of 27 servers, and no need for a guesting system, as everyone plays together by default.

Anyway, the explanation that was given is poor, as for why we cannot have cross region guesting. Add a flag for current datacentre. I play on EU servers. When I stay on EU servers, home or guest, as long as the EU datacentre is up, all is well. Now I guest to an american server. My EU Account gets transferred to the US datacenter, and a flag is set on it, saying that my current datacenter is US. Later I log back into GW2, and select my home world back in the EU. This is where we reach a fork.

1) Everything is fine, my account with progression from the US server is synced back to the EU, and updated to current datacenter = EU.

2) If the EU server cannot talk to the US data center, to get back my account, I am told that I can wait for the connection to come back, or discard my progress, and start playing now. That is a harsh solution, and I am sure there could be some way to merge progress, but that might be asking a bit much.

Either way, it is very unpleasant to be told I have to choose between my European and American friends. Please look into making this system cross region.

As has been said before; GW1 allowed us to make and play with friends from anywhere in the world. Come GW2; we are now divided pretty much permanently unless a few people give in and change servers (that could be full anyway). Sad sad news.

Ivienn.6354:

I have question for all of you unhappy people:

If you have so many friends you want to play with in EU and NA why didn’t you all make accounts in same server when you started playing since time zones are no problem for you?

Or why don’t you all transfer to one server now while it’s still free? Guild influence is not that hard to get.

Don’t blame ArenaNet for your bad planning of your gameplay. They are doing best they can and maybe one day we will have NA/EU guesting, but till then be happy they are trying. No game is perfect and no matter how great professionals one company has it’s impossible to have everything right away.

This is a great game and time it takes to fix stuff and bring new one is shortest possible. Instead of complaining about everything, be more thankful, because if they didn’t try you would have got no game to play today.

I won’t change my home world from NA server to EU just because I have few friends who bought the game not too long time ago and they chose to play on Euroserver because of their ex-wow guild. They also have other friends on that server so I don’t believe they want to change server just because of me. And I definitely won’t change, I’m on tarnished coast for life!

Dear ANET,

I am so sorry to hear you are having difficulty in implementing replication of data across mulitple data-centres and the ability to keep data in sync to allow guesting across EU / US Servers – this to me is a excuse that the development phase has not tried hard enough to complete this.

All things are possible if you try hard enough. (Yes – I have to do this sort of thing for a living (in financial banking arena) : so databases across multiple continents are possible to be kept in sync – do you need a database architect to redesign this ability to allow this at the back-end whilst keeping your system up. If so send me a private pm !).

The ability to play with friends from GW1 has been lost if this continues, I was looking forward to playing with my friends on US Servers this should be a priority for ANET to fix in combination with the LFG mess.

Good luck – many more complaints will come until this is resolved.

Best,
D

Good that it’s in. I’d like to see cross region functionality tho. I expect it will be worked on if there is enough outcry.

Give this a few days to settle down and no one will complain. Most will just give a sigh, remember how GW1 made them feel, the fun times they had there and move on to games that do let them play together whenever and where ever their friends are.

Playing and being with friends trumps content any day of the week. Why else play an MMO if it’s not to be with people and especially friends?

Arenanet learned this in GW1, perhaps its time they need to learn it again.

Once again we see the result of poor communications planning. A series of progress blogs, alerting people to the possibility would have saved so much hassle. It would give people time to plan, say goodbyes to in game friends and even offer constructive feedback.

Just like the fractals debacle we get a fait accompli that has only two choices. Put up with it or leave.

If the game fails to have the player retension it expects then the fault wont be so much of the game mechanics, but simply because GW2 is a tin man game. It’s looking for a heart

The reality is, people don’t have to live with this outcome. Arenanet do.

Warder.3491:

As for literal false advertising, I’m not sure I’d go that far.

“In time, we’ll also introduce free “guesting,” which will allow players to visit other worlds as guests as long as they have friends on those worlds. This feature will be free, but guest players will not be able to enter World vs. World, and the Power of the Mists bonuses from their home world will continue to apply to their characters.”

Straight from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-world-of-choice-the-regions-of-guild-wars-2 . Not even the slightest mention of a a European/US caveat or exception. Same on the offical FAQ. It says I can play with my friends on any other world outside of WvW. Except apparently now I can’t. If that isn’t bare faced false advertising, I don’t know what is.

I agree – this implementation of guesting is wrong.

What if I have even 4 friends on 4 different european servers – I cannot play with them all ! (cannot guest > 2 servers in one week). The implementation of this and information being released and prior statements just conflict.

This is not the implementation of guesting that was to be expected and I feel it needs further work before releasing.

I think we just need the districting from GW1 for everything outside of WvW. Make sure that all the gathering nodes are the same and can’t be gathered across districts.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

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.

The complexity of internet routing? Surely the problems caused by the complexity of internet routing has already been solved otherwise the internet wouldn’t work between the NA and EU continents?

When I transfer to a NA server from a EU server then you transfer my data to the NA datacentre, that apparently is no problem. So if I guest on a NA server then why can’t you copy/transfer my data to the US datacentre temporarily with flagged so that the NA servers know not to let me participate in WvW because I’m guesting and just copy/transfer my updated data back to the EU datacentre when I return to my EU home server?

This would have a similar effect and impact on your system as allowing me to transfer to a US server and then back to my own server an hour or two later. I don’t think that the volume of people guesting would place that much of a burden on your systems.

This has nothing to do with routing and everything to do with your implementation of the guesting feature. If you haven’t the time to implement a “full” guesting feature then that’s ok but blaming the “complexity of internet routing” makes it sound like nonsense.

Being in a guild with representation on both NA and EU servers, this will put a damper on our plans to run dungeons and explore together.

I have a few other concerns, some of which have been touched on already.
1. How will gathering node access be controlled? What if I party with people from two other servers, and then we run all of our characters up to the Rich Ori Vein? Or, dare I say it, bots take advantage of this (since we all know they’re in guilds too) for +200% materials. While some of the raw mats are bottoming out near vendor prices right now, I’d like to see some of them still have some value!
2. In this thread it was said that a guest will gain influence for a guild. Will that guest also get any guild bonuses from active upgrades?
3. De-partying: If I accidentally hit “leave party” while guesting, will it kick me back to my home server immediately? I am a clutz sometimes…

Please STOP, Arnet. This is not what we were promised.

I have some NA friends and EU friends. Before I could spend a week for free hanging out with my NA friends, then swap back again to my EU buddies.

Now I must chose a side, and never be able to play with my transatlantic friends ever again unless I shell out money.

It was already hard deciding which friends to play with during an event, and I was already able to do cross-EU-server dungeons.

So basically this feature adds nothing, but takes away a free-service.

You promised us the ability to play with our friends regardless of what world they were on. What happened to this?

Amulrei.4973:

Warder.3491:

As for literal false advertising, I’m not sure I’d go that far.

“In time, we’ll also introduce free “guesting,” which will allow players to visit other worlds as guests as long as they have friends on those worlds. This feature will be free, but guest players will not be able to enter World vs. World, and the Power of the Mists bonuses from their home world will continue to apply to their characters.”

Straight from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-world-of-choice-the-regions-of-guild-wars-2 . Not even the slightest mention of a a European/US caveat or exception. Same on the offical FAQ. It says I can play with my friends on any other world outside of WvW. Except apparently now I can’t. If that isn’t bare faced false advertising, I don’t know what is.

Yeah, I know, but I’d rather we focus on what ArenaNet can do to solve this than have a debate of whether or not what they’re doing is illegal, because I don’t think that’s likely to go in a good direction.

That’s why I said that even if they didn’t explicitely promise us this – which they might have at some point, mind you – they definitely constantly implied it, and did nothing to discourage or refute those expectations even though they were well aware of them.

I agree, pull the feature and rework it or at least put the guesting part in but keep the free transfers so people can still meet up in the mean time while it’s being sorted.

Many, many times we were told X is impossible in GW1. Hairdressers, Apperance changes, account restorations, retrospective legendary survivor titles etc.

All of these were solved with some innovation and inventiveness from Areanet.

Please step up to the plate and try again and implement guesting.. when it’s ready