Guild Wars 2

Mr Crazy Moose.5760:

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.

Ok thats kinda what i meant. you had to go to international to join up (cross server).
Or ask support to switch permanent ( i think support had better things to do tbh then to deal with transfers ^^). You could not do it yourself (after the lock down). and then later on it all became global, you could just switch districts freely.

(sorry if it sounded a bit confussed at first :P, but you get the point.)

Loosifah.4739:

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.

What are you even on about? Guesting. Allows you to swap out to play with other PvE’rs forever for free. They said they can’t allow guesting across regions because of technical limitations with out the guesting system works.

Transferring does not have that same limitation. So allowing transferring for free across regions only (with WvW locked) solves this problem. You would still have to pay to switch servers in your region or to be able to play WvW on another server.

Thank you ArenaNet for the Guesting feature, we’ve been looking forward to this!
Great job and keep up the good work

Geikamir.6329:

Loosifah.4739:

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.

What are you even on about? Guesting. Allows you to swap out to play with other PvE’rs forever for free. They said they can’t allow guesting across regions because of technical limitations with out the guesting system works.

Transferring does not have that same limitation. So allowing transferring for free across regions only (with WvW locked) solves this problem. You would still have to pay to switch servers in your region or to be able to play WvW on another server.

You’re missing one thing though. Transferring across regions also requires the selection of a world within that region. If you can transfer for free to any world in that other region, then you can transfer for free to any world back in the region you came from, effectively bypassing any need for fees.

If there was a way to lock which world you transferred to between regions as a freebie, however, that would work. You’d get 1 free NA server, 1 free EU server, and have to guest or transfer to access any others.

This is actually utterly disappointing. I was awaiting the guesting very much, but not only to guest on other EU servers but also on NA servers, since I have many friends in both regions and we actually wanted to play all together. Regardless of the technical reasons or the instability of the connection between data centres, I’d appreciate a warning pop-up being thrown that “guesting on other regions might be instable” than this absolute restriction like this. (referring to the statement, that the guesting would be way too instable if allowed cross-region and they want to ensure a stable and fluent gameplay)
I hope that this policy won’t be kept constant and some workaround will be added, that people from all regions can play together.

Rancor Chiron.6178:

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.

From the Anet post, it sounded like there’s one single character database per datacenter that all servers in the datacenter utilize. A transactional system that updates a single global database with information like level and a local data store for the dynamic, near-real time play doesn’t require database replication. Of course I’m speaking purely hypothetically and in ignorance of the application architecture.

Awesome sauce, thank you. This will allow us to do the “underflow” idea well enough. We’ll make sure the maps stay hopin with this tool, somewhere.

As someone in a guild who in GW1 had many friends from both NA and EU regions, and when guesting was mentioned in the beginning we figured we could form guilds in two servers (separate regions) and then play together once guesting was enabled. And now we find out we will never be able to play together? This is very upsetting and unacceptable from a company I’ve held it such high regard. I am more than disappointed with this announcement.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

With the ability to be part of up to 5 guilds – considering you are playing with your friends on a different server, you can be in their guild and advance that guild.

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?

The problem is that this is not a “new” issue. But it is still an “issue” that requires being solved. The simple fact that I am not earning influence for my guild if I am in an overflow is a fundamental problem. The fact that if my guild is not a cross server community then I am being a detriment to my guild if I guest is not simply an “issue” but a fundamental flaw in the design of the system.

I can understand if this has to be the way it initially works, but what we want to hear is that it will be fixed in some patch further down the line (but soon).

i blame freaking WvW and Anet’s idea of “server pride”. does anyone even really have that? i’d prefer if WvW was as seperate from PvE as PvP is. i don’t think anyone really cares about the WvW-bonuses they get in PvE.

endirasae.3015:

Geikamir.6329:

Loosifah.4739:

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.

What are you even on about? Guesting. Allows you to swap out to play with other PvE’rs forever for free. They said they can’t allow guesting across regions because of technical limitations with out the guesting system works.

Transferring does not have that same limitation. So allowing transferring for free across regions only (with WvW locked) solves this problem. You would still have to pay to switch servers in your region or to be able to play WvW on another server.

You’re missing one thing though. Transferring across regions also requires the selection of a world within that region. If you can transfer for free to any world in that other region, then you can transfer for free to any world back in the region you came from, effectively bypassing any need for fees.

If there was a way to lock which world you transferred to between regions as a freebie, however, that would work. You’d get 1 free NA server, 1 free EU server, and have to guest or transfer to access any others.

It would still work the same way. Your home server is where you can play WvW, and no other place no matter what.

But yeah, even in your set up I’d be completely happy. I only need 1 server from NA. I’d even be willing to pay a one-time fee to be able to do that, too.

Disappointed is all I can say… I did choose to play on an NA server with my friends even tho I’m from EU but was hoping that when guesting comes I would be able to return to EU for better ping and to play with my friends there. Now we’re totally divided and I have no hope that I will still be able to ever play with them all again.
Considering this was a promise made before launch I can only say shame on you Anet! Stop making promises you can’t keep!

Wow I defended ArenaNet on this and still got an infraction.

Guess it’s time to remove all the friends on the “wrong” continent from the friends list then since we won’t be playing any GW2 together.

Basically you changed the name from “Free Server Transfer” to “Guesting” and called it news. :/

Delsabre.5934:

Guess it’s time to remove all the friends on the “wrong” continent from the friends list then since we won’t be playing any GW2 together.

Basically you changed the name from “Free Server Transfer” to “Guesting” and called it news. :/

Yeah, basically. Except worse, but cause we have to pay to play with people in another region and can only do it once a week (even after paying).

For those comparing guesting to free server transfers, there is a difference between being able to guest on 2 different servers per 24 hour period and changing your home server once every 7 days.

Now I can understand the frustration that guesting isn’t cross-region, and that for those with friends in both regions that guesting feels like a backwards step over what is currently available, but don’t deny that a lot of people will find this an improvement over the current situation.

Hopefully, ArenaNet will be able to eventually overcome the technical limitations, so everyone is happy.

Edit: is =/= isn’t

Astraea.6075:

For those comparing guesting to free server transfers, there is a difference between being able to guest on 2 different servers per 24 hour period and changing your home server once every 7 days.

Now I can understand the frustration that guesting isn’t cross-region, and that for those with friends in both regions that guesting feels like a backwards step over what is currently available, but don’t deny that a lot of people will find this an improvement over the current situation.

Hopefully, ArenaNet will be able to eventually overcome the technical limitations, so everyone is happy.

Edit: is =/= isn’t

They haven’t even said they are trying to work out another solution. So odds are, they aren’t.

Add another one to the list of people hugely disappointed to find out that we can’t guest across regions. As someone whose guild has had both European and American members since 2005 in GW1 we are really upset that we can’t do this. It was one of the things that attracted us to GW in the first place.

How about a compromise: let us define one server from each region as a "home"server, and allow free travel between those two. Since WvW has different leagues in each region this won’t affect WvW rankings; and it would allow us international guilds at least SOME kind of solution.

Immensely disappointing…like many I was waiting for Guesting to be able to play with friends and guildies on both continents.

well well… I don’t understand how they put their “data center” but:

Im a french player playing on NA server because of freez like 10 20 sec and lag on EU server. on the NA server theres 0 lag and freez and even a better ping. as I digged into this major problem i found it’s not only me but a majority of french player

so im not saying its Anet fault (indeed Anet and Provider reject the fault) but NA and EU seems both located in America when using ping plotter, but theres a network path or configuration to them so different..

So i started playing on EU server with my friend but the game experience is so bad and the game so unplayable that I prefer to stay on NA even if im alone and play in my corner in the guild, just because “its playable”

So I did expect a real world “guessing” like there was in GW1 as I was spending much time in America for the good ambiance in Kamadan or LA and its sad i cut myself off the part of community im from on GW2

Martin Kerstein.3071:

To answer the question about guild influence:
You will gain guild influence on the world you are guesting on.

Will we also gain the benefit of any active guild upgrades? such as “+10% Magic Find for 3 Days”?

My suggestion is that guesting ought to work like this (and perhaps this is an alternative kind of guesting to what Anet was thinking about): Someone on datacentre A requests to guest on datacentre B, so A sends a message to B to say ‘Guest request’. B either responds with ‘No’, full up’ (or other reason) or it says, "OK, please send the player’s data’. A flags the account as guesting at B and prevents the player from logging on for a while, as it sends the account data there. The player waits while B sets up the account data and tells A, ‘Got it all thanks’. The player can now log into B. At the end of the guesting period, B sends updated account data back to A, which unflags the account after successful transfer and play resumes on A as normal. It could mean that guesting wouldn’t allow fast switching between worlds on different datacentres, and may involve some time to transfer data while the player couldn’t play anywhere, but it would allow people from around the world to meet to play together. I’m sure lag/ping is not an issue or people from around the world wouldn’t all be playing by default on US servers in any case.
So this is like a world transfer but for a limited time. I would not mind if it cost some gems, but it should be cheaper than a full transfer as it wouldn’t allow WvW and is time limited (even though it may involve more account data transfer than an actual one way transfer).

I am very excited about the guesting feature. Thank you!

I like that guesting is being implemented. I understand why they have to limit the number of worlds you can guest to. Just think of the massive amounts of rare materials you can gather as well as Meta events to get precursors and what not. I also understand why it would be to impractical to guest across data centers. What about creating a International datacenter for PvE only. A server where your player data can be temporarily transferred to while doing PvE events and dungeons with your friends across the globe. It’s probably asking to much.

WOO! Finally guesting is here. Something that should have been available on release. I don’t get why people are surprised with paid server transfers, they said that it would cost money to transfer servers, they just didn’t implement that yet because guesting wasn’t implemented yet.

Anyway, I’m gonna assume that there is now going to be some kind of unofficial 24/7 PVE servers made and basically everyone is going to PVE on that server and not there own. Which will ultimately probably end up making every server except a select few be completely dead even more so than what they are now in PVE. I suppose this could be seen as a good and bad thing.

If a dev could respond to their take on that, it would be nice to see.

“Change Home server” and “Guest” are just words placed on two buttons. What stops you to have the same " datacenter transferring procedure" behind both of them, one with a fee and one free with the “no WvW” condition?

All this time ive been waiting for guesting to come and i STILL cant play with my american friends while im on EU?! That is so bullkitten, Anet should have at least told beforehand that i can only play on EU servers.

I am not impressed at all, actually i am kinda annoyed, i can now freely throw all of my hopes of ever being able to play with my US friends. Nice, just kittening beautiful

I feel really betrayed after having high hopes of being able to play with US friends ever since the beta. We were NEVER told that there is no cross-region guesting, we were told that we can guest on EVERY world with friends in it.
This was never a problem in Guild Wars 1

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.

I’m sorry, but you did promise something before the game went live, before people chose their worlds.

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

This was posted in a blog by Regina on August 16th. I chose my world with this in mind. I picked a world where most of my European friends where, because I could play with my American friends once guesting was live. Now, you say you told a lie back then. Or at least promised something without checking if it was actually possible.

With this current limitation with guesting, I rather they not even put this in the game. That way, I can still transfer to another region’s server to play with my friends when I want to without have to pay any fees.

I think Anet’s goal with guesting is just to try to make more money by forcing players to buy gems. I agree with another poster’s comment that “guesting” is essentially “world transfers” but with a fee tacked on.

If I can’t guest across regions then you can put guesting back in the box for all I care.

I was looking forward to guesting for two reasons: some of my friends are in Europe, and my own time zone is in Asia which means the US server I play on is dead quiet for half of my prime playing times.

So whatever. As far as I’m concerned that’s another feature you were trumpeting about pre-launch that hasn’t transpired.

Kore wa Sparta.3750:

“A-net, give us guesting please!”
Months of whining and complaining about no new content later
“You’re giving us what we want but we want more!”
Babies.

It has nothing to do with us wanting more, the problem is that they gave us less than they promised, they gave us false information.

Kore wa Sparta.3750:

“A-net, give us guesting please!”
Months of whining and complaining about no new content later
“You’re giving us what we want but we want more!”
Babies.

No, they are giving us only a portion of what we want (and were led to believe).

Next time you buy a car, try receiving it without the engine and tell me how happy you’d be.

Kore wa Sparta.3750:

“A-net, give us guesting please!”
Months of whining and complaining about no new content later
“You’re giving us what we want but we want more!”
Babies.

I think majority of the people envisioned guesting to allow players to switch to any server. This version isn’t even what the players wanted so I don’t think you can say that Anet has given what the players wanted.

Rancor Chiron.6178:

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.

It’s called master-master replication and lots of databases and technologies that use databases use it. It’s certainly more complicated that single-master or non-replicated, but it’s not alien technology. It’s widely used, by companies a lot less tech-saavy than Arenanet.

Understand that I’m not advocating copying everything between both datacenters, just refuting your statement that it’s harmful or dangerous or some giant technical hurdle. It’s not.

Tim

HUGEEE recommendation, i hope this gets read.

New accounts should be eligible for free server transfers for the first 7 days. Since this game is different from many others where the first world you click is the one you are stuck with, a lot of new players will not be able to get the gems to transfer servers and if they are on a bad server, likely just give up on the game way easier.

By 7 days playing, players should have at least been able to get their foot in the door and see what the game is about, join a guild and see what server they want to play on. I accidentally clicked the wrong server when i first joined (about a week ago) and thought i was going to have to pay, was pretty upset until i realized it was free transfers.

So what’s the point in guesting if it’s region locked? Our NA friends can’t play with us when this goes live.

Probably many other said this…but i gotta say it too…
this guesting function is quiet useless as it is now <.< it was already possible to play dungeon and pvp with ppl on the same server region, now what ? we can also run toghether killing skritt and centaurs ? …. meh, yet EU ppl in NA servers will still be cut out from EU communities and vice versa; a real use of a guesting function should be to fix this problem <.<
I usually dont QQ but this time is a must.

I totally understand and accept that this first implementation of the system will not allow for guesting between regions. I do however, hope and somewhat expect that ArenaNet will be able to overcome the difficulties they are facing with this feature, and that it will be implemented somewhere down the line in the coming months.

It’s common practice to not make potential statements, that can be taken as promises, if you are not certain about if and/or when you are able to resolve an issue you are facing with the development of a feature. They may very well be working on it.

I would very much like to guest over to my american friends, but are nonetheless welcoming the changes they are introducing, as they are presented for the time being. It will be interesting to see how it affects “server hopping” and World vs. World.
__

To the devs of the feature, stability of the connections between regions and so on forth are obvious concerns with a cross-region feature like this. Have you considered plastering up a disclaimer Accept/Decline window, when you are on a Europe server and attempt to guest to a North America server, or vice versa? A message saying this may cause latency issues, connection instability, that you recommend against it, etc.?

rubbish, i’m in an EU region with local friends who have a guild and also a USA guild based around an mmo podcast. The whole point of guesting was to enable people to play together, this is creating barriers :-(

I honestly saw this coming. I’ve been telling all my American friends I look forward to playing with them when guesting is here, but at the same time, I knew this restriction would be there. Anybody who has any programming experience whatsoever, will understand that cross-region guesting is probably way too much to ask. Alas…

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.

I have a question – what is disabling free world transfer good for ? (for players)

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.

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.

I would be fine with server transfers as they are minus the cost and time restriction. Could meet up with someone on US servers then just transfer back to EU manually.

Very bad news. I think I’ll quit.

Shinzan.2908:

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.

I would be fine with server transfers as they are minus the cost and time restriction. Could meet up with someone on US servers then just transfer back to EU manually.

The only fly in the ointment here is WvW. If you transfer server it copies across everything so it does’nt know you from a resident.

The best solution is to decouple WvW from your server so where you are in game is indepedent to your WvW loyalty. This can be done in so many different ways I am very curious as to why it’s not done that way in the first place.

For example, a new field in the database called ‘loyalty’ this field holds the name of your chosen WvW server. To stop you WvW elsewhere the loyalty field is checked against your actual server. If the two match great.

Buffs are calculated on this loyalty field, as is every other WvW restriction. If everyone chooses the same loyalty then either cap it (just like servers are), or they accept they will have to wait longer(just like now).

Disable the ability to harvest and get Dragon loot from any server that’s not your loyal one and let people jump to whatever server they want to whenever they like. Just like they did at release.

If the server you want to go back to is full, then either wait or go to a mutually agreed server until it is.

All the issues with guesting, population in open world and the spectre of server mergers down the line go away.

The thing is, it’s a fundimental design issue. Somewhere along the development line the question ‘how do we get people playing together no matter where they live’ was either discarded as unimportant or pushed into the ‘well guesting will fix it’ bucket.

For a so called next-gen MMO, the server mechanic is as outdated as it is frustrating. What’s surprising me is that this community focussed, innovative and talented group of designers can’t find a way around it.

It’s strange that they allowed free server transfers for such a long time if it was costing them.

It makes me wonder whether this paid transfer fee is there because of WvW alone. If it is, I find it a bad idea. If there’s more to it, then I can understand why their hands are bound.

Still it’s a bit disappointing that the guesting feature isn’t much use to me. I have many friends on many servers. So even two guesting worlds wouldn’t really be enough, for me. But since i can switch those guesting worlds every 24 hours I think that should be all fine.

I guess I don’t get to play with any of my American friends again, sadly. Because I’m not gonna pay to make a choice between friends for a week. (and back)

Really I wonder why anet decided to go with servers at all. They should have stuck with a single “server” and overflows generated as needed, seeing that’s how they did it in GW1 it’s puzzling they would go back to an outdated system like this again.

For those of us with friends in other regions, this solution is actually worse than the current free transfer on a 7 day CD. I am very disappointed with this implementation and hope that at some point we will be able to play with our friends, no matter where they live.

I think the suggestion of allowing us two home servers (one on each region), with free transfers between just those two, seems like a nice compromise. Especially if it is kept on a 7 day cooldown.

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.

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.