Guild Wars 2

I just bought and downloaded the game today and I’m pretty excited to play. I want to join my friend’s server, Blackgate. But it’s full and I can’t…
Am I screwed?

I think server populations should still fluctuate. If you keep checking during off peak hours you might find the population go down from full allowing you to transfer.

If you don’t know what those off peak hours are, just do spot checks throughout the day/night.

Excellent. So I can make a character and transfer it hassle free?

At the moment you can transfer for free once every 7 days so just keep checking Blackgate (which is a great server btw) especially at weird times of day and hope to stumble upon a time when it is not full. You only need to find it less than full once and then you will always be able to log into it.

Still start on another server first though unless you intend to level side-by-side with your friend.

I had a friend buy the game a week or two after launch and Blackgate was always full but one morning he got up at like 4am to check it and it wasn’t full then so he could transfer.

Hey, thanks for the quick replies guys! Super helpful! I’m not sure if he’ll want to make a new character (he’s had it much longer than me) but I’m willing to try to catch up. But it’s free to transfer once every 7 days? Is there anything special I’ll have to do to make it free? Or will it just tell me I’m eligible (or whatever) if I haven’t transferred before?

It used to be free to transfer at any time. This upset a lot of WvW players so Anet made it so that one could only change once every 24 hours. This still wasn’t desirable so now it’s once every 7 days, still free of charge. Just keep checking the server list and attempt to change to Blackgate whenever you can. If it hasn’t been 7 days since you started in whichever server you’re currently inhabiting, then it will simply deny you the transfer. If you’re eligible to transfer (i.e. it’s been 7 days) then the transfer will be instantaneous.