Guild Wars 2

I know there are a few threads about this jostling around in the great archive of queries, but not once have I actually seen a stated reason why this has not been implemented. The feature I refer to, is cross-region guesting; transferring betwixt the realms of the EU region and US region via guesting.

The fact we can change region when we ‘realm change’ suggests there is no risk in the transferring of characters between US and EU (RIFT refused US-EU character transfers due to there being a risk of ‘corrupting’ the date for the character). Also, the fact that we were able to freely transfer betwixt regions prior to the implementation of guesting and the price of transferring realms (myself and many others frequently hopped around regions to decide which we would rather have as our ‘home world’) suggests that ‘transfer traffic’ is not so much of a problem and there are very few risks when accounts hop, skip and jump betwixt regions.

So why do we not have cross-region guesting? Is it a technical nightmare to implement? Does consumer segregation not matter to ArenaNet? Will it muck up event timings or something? I just want an answer, because at the moment it feels like I am waiting for ArenaNet to implement the feature so I can play with my friends on both the US and EU side.

So I ask both the community and ArenaNet, why do we not have cross-region guesting?

Here is the official response:

’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.’

source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guesting-is-Coming/page/3#post1221430

Thanks, I didn’t see that thread. Ugh, that sucks, I guess it will never come.