Guild Wars 2

Dead serious, stop using this city. Not only is it naturally over populated, you put every major event in it. Portals from the mists enter Lions arch (wvw / spvp) you put all seasonal décor in this zone, and you put a large part of the living story taking place here (dragon bash, karka invasion, parts of the zephyr arrival, etc). This zone is over used and it’s also the worst zone to log into. I have better luck entering wvw in BG than I do logging into LA at any time, its horrible. I don’t know the “go-to” zone in gw1 but I know there was a ton of people in LA because it was a crossroads essentially. Well now you got 5 race cities and LA, and still LA gets all the attention. Has an anet dev gone to any of them beside Divinity’s reach? I doubt full participation in all 6 major cities is at all possible, but take some attention away from LA, I hate going there. It’s not interesting and has almost nothing to do with the personal story.

Also there is a ton of unexplored lore in the other cities between the colleges (asuran), spirits(norn), etc, why shouldn’t we explore them?

I agree. I don’t have the best computer in the world but it certainly isn’t a piece of crap either, and loading into LA is painful. I know this is more my end, but I was surprised to find out I was almost kicked from a fractal the other night because I took so long to load in, I guess the group thought I AFK’d or was trolling.

And even after I’m loaded, its elbows-to-elbows with the other players and some horrid lag. Anet made the best cities I have seen in any game ever (in my opinion) and after we get past our newbie phase we NEVER have to use them again! I have begun to make a habit since this Halloween patch to just start going to Hoelbrak when I need to craft/bank/TP since it is my favorite.

Now when I go to the racial cities instead of LA I remember how much I loved the random dialogue and and attention to detail.

And devs wonder why people rarely use racial hubs.

It took me about a minute to log into LA on my old server Gate of Madness. Then I transferred to Tarnished Coast and it now takes literally about 5 to 7 minutes to load. And then most of the time it doesn’t load fully. Things are invisible until I stand still for a couple minutes and then they appear.

But yes, I would love for other cities to be used instead of LA all day every day.

Galtrix.7369:

It took me about a minute to log into LA on my old server Gate of Madness. Then I transferred to Tarnished Coast and it now takes literally about 5 to 7 minutes to load. And then most of the time it doesn’t load fully. Things are invisible until I stand still for a couple minutes and then they appear.

But yes, I would love for other cities to be used instead of LA all day every day.

I’m afraid that sounds like a computer issue on your end. I play on a T1 server and LA is literally wall to wall with players and it never takes more than 30 seconds to load.

Karizee.8076:

Galtrix.7369:

It took me about a minute to log into LA on my old server Gate of Madness. Then I transferred to Tarnished Coast and it now takes literally about 5 to 7 minutes to load. And then most of the time it doesn’t load fully. Things are invisible until I stand still for a couple minutes and then they appear.

But yes, I would love for other cities to be used instead of LA all day every day.

I’m afraid that sounds like a computer issue on your end. I play on a T1 server and LA is literally wall to wall with players and it never takes more than 30 seconds to load.

There is proof of the servers not working for everyone on the techsupport sub-forum. It COULD be a pc issue, but it could also be a server issue. Regardless, the fact that LA often gets overflows is proof enough that it’s quite crowded. You don’t need some super sized event to know that.

I understand that throwing some décor to each of the cities isn’t easy, but that’s not the point. The point is there are now 6 major cities and only 1 of them gets major attention. 6 fully decorated cities isn’t a reasonable request, but if you look at LA only the major region of it is decorated (same with WvW and the spvp lobby). Seasonal events aren’t the only thing that bring people here, its the map chat and the nearby craft stations. Why not merge the map chat across all these cities and make exits to the mists to the corresponding race’s home city? I’m sure some things further down the road would help disperse this zone clutter but don’t force people into LA. It’s a “pretty” zone but there are many other substitutes to it that get little to no attention.

NinjaEd.3946:

Karizee.8076:

Galtrix.7369:

It took me about a minute to log into LA on my old server Gate of Madness. Then I transferred to Tarnished Coast and it now takes literally about 5 to 7 minutes to load. And then most of the time it doesn’t load fully. Things are invisible until I stand still for a couple minutes and then they appear.

But yes, I would love for other cities to be used instead of LA all day every day.

I’m afraid that sounds like a computer issue on your end. I play on a T1 server and LA is literally wall to wall with players and it never takes more than 30 seconds to load.

There is proof of the servers not working for everyone on the techsupport sub-forum. It COULD be a pc issue, but it could also be a server issue. Regardless, the fact that LA often gets overflows is proof enough that it’s quite crowded. You don’t need some super sized event to know that.

Oh yeah, we hit overflows all the time – just about everyday.

I’m just saying a 5-7 minute loading screen would indicate that for some reason his computer isn’t playing nice with GW2 and he might want to put in a tech support ticket to resolve it.

I only go there when there is a event. I generally stay in the grove, I found once I learned my way around, it was much easier to use and less lag.

Why not merge the map chat across all these cities and make exits to the mists to the corresponding race’s home city?

Heard this before and a wonderful idea, don’t know why it hasn’t been implemented…

Lindelle.3718:

Why not merge the map chat across all these cities and make exits to the mists to the corresponding race’s home city?

Heard this before and a wonderful idea, don’t know why it hasn’t been implemented…

Goodness no. This is one reason I stay in The Grove, when I want a city for business. It seems to draw a more intelligent discussion in the occasional map chat. I certainly do not want to see the rude junk I always read in LA.

How can you over populate a virtual space? Doesn’t even make sense.

Tree.3916:

How can you over populate a virtual space? Doesn’t even make sense.

I’m no expert but I imagine it has something to do with server capacity. Hence the overflow servers, to alleviate that stress.

We’re not in the “future” yet, so I highly doubt we have the technology to satisfy 500k+ users onto one zone. Never the less, I don’t care about the zone cap. I care about the zone attention and LA gets far too much of it while forcing us in.

I just use Ebonhawke as my city of choice unless I need guild merchants it is fine. Crafting, banks and TP close together and never a crowd.

Karizee.8076:

Galtrix.7369:

It took me about a minute to log into LA on my old server Gate of Madness. Then I transferred to Tarnished Coast and it now takes literally about 5 to 7 minutes to load. And then most of the time it doesn’t load fully. Things are invisible until I stand still for a couple minutes and then they appear.

But yes, I would love for other cities to be used instead of LA all day every day.

I’m afraid that sounds like a computer issue on your end. I play on a T1 server and LA is literally wall to wall with players and it never takes more than 30 seconds to load.

It could be a computer issue, but I doubt it. I can run most games on max settings, and a lot of games I play are way more graphic-heavy than GW2. Yet I can barely run GW2 on medium settings and I get pretty low fps and massive loading screens.

just my experaince. I have a pc that is about 2 years old. takes me about 1 min to map in la. On my newer one it takes about 10 sec at most, even during peak times. On my newer pc it does have an i7/SSD ect.

I dont really like LA either.

Usually i am in a City to use the TP, the crafting stations and the Mystic Forge.
LA is usually too crowded and sometimes map chat can get annoying.
Most of the time, if I dont need the mystic forge, i exile to Ebonhawke where the TP, Bank and guild bank are so close together, that you can have all 3 of them open at once and the crafting stations are closer to these nps than in Rata Sum.

I really miss the Royal Terrace in Divnity´s Reach. I dont really know, why Anet took the Pass off the Gem Store.

I would have been happy to fork out the gems every two weeks to go there and avoid LA.

I really enjoyed the Royal Terrace, as well. You could map into it from anywhere, with only one loading screen, and everything was at hand. I, too, would purchase passes for the convenience.

Well if it were easier to get large messages out you wouldn’t need to go to LA so much. Right at server reset it’s packed for news on where the world boss train is starting. There are usually things to do there (i.e. cauldron, food fights, costume brawl, etc). It’s a major hub between race areas, PvP, WvW. I know i will see guildmatrs and friends there. It is supposed to be a HUB. I love it there. Why go to Divinty’s Reach? Nothing going on there.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Well if it were easier to get large messages out you wouldn’t need to go to LA so much. Right at server reset it’s packed for news on where the world boss train is starting. There are usually things to do there (i.e. cauldron, food fights, costume brawl, etc). It’s a major hub between race areas, PvP, WvW. I know i will see guildmatrs and friends there. It is supposed to be a HUB. I love it there. Why go to Divinty’s Reach? Nothing going on there.

The issue is LA is over crowded, you can’t have fun there. Lag issues don’t affect all but it CLEARLY affects a group of people due to the responses on the tech support sub-forum. There are things that can be made in each race city, it’s just anet doesn’t seem to really try as hard. TBH I think they over loaded the work on themselves by making soo many moving parts to this game and it’s result is rather negative. We have wvw, spvp, and pve all of which get negative criticism whether it be not enough attention or the wrong kind of attention, and I’ve seen dozens (variety not total value) of posts about reviving the race cities.

All I do know, is Lion’s Arch gets way to much attention and the exit’s to all major zone’s go to it. It’s the major hub, but it’s also a burden to load and tolerate. A better pc would only slightly make the load screen more tolerable, it won’t justify the countless events that take place in it while leaving all the other cities far in the dusty road.

I can understand what you’re saying. I’m sure I’m on a less populated server, as I never have lag and LA loads up the same as any other map for me.

I just don’t know how much resources ANet would need to get every city up to “snuff”. Also, again, there’s the communication issue. If all people on a server want or need to hear a message, you all need to be on the same map, and LA is the meeting ground for such messages.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I can understand what you’re saying. I’m sure I’m on a less populated server, as I never have lag and LA loads up the same as any other map for me.

I just don’t know how much resources ANet would need to get every city up to “snuff”. Also, again, there’s the communication issue. If all people on a server want or need to hear a message, you all need to be on the same map, and LA is the meeting ground for such messages.

Most messages are conspiracy theories and discrimination against something that gets escalated into shouting contests. Bottom line, you don’t want to hear map chat. I only suggested it because some people might want to tune in the latest non sense. With the lfg tool there is 0 use in city map chat. However you CAN teleport to LA from any major city. The sad thing is you cannot teleport to every major city from every major city, why is LA so important? Can’t asuran’s configure their portals to work in a split? I mean they can portal to the mists I’m sure they can work it out.

Tree.3916:

How can you over populate a virtual space? Doesn’t even make sense.

Goes to overflow

If Anet is serious about their “living story” they will have Scarlet Lazarus the Dire destory Lions arch. Force players to use other cities until LA is rebuilt.

They used the grove for Christmas, Adventure box for the asuran city, etc. They’re trying.

LA is still crossroad. Lore-wise too, besides that its only city you can port into for free thru mists.
Add mystic forges into all nations cities, enable city selection at mists portal and behold.

After returning to the game in July, I have stopped going to LA unless I need to use a dungeon vendor or something. I pay and go to Hoelbrak instead.

I do this for the very reasons mentioned. The load time for LA has become ridiculous due to it’s overuse as the hub of the game for glittery content and everyone dancing and costume brawling, flashing their 100g Blue Icon of Awesomeness while wearing town clothes with no shoes and holding a pineapple, every hour, of every day, unless the server goes down. Then they just patch and log back in and stand there.

I don’t know how they get around the idle timer but that should be bannable. If I did that in a borderland I am sure I would get warnings. Idle timer in LA should be 5 mins tops, and enforced.

NinjaEd.3946:

snip However you CAN teleport to LA from any major city. The sad thing is you cannot teleport to every major city from every major city, why is LA so important? Can’t asuran’s configure their portals to work in a split? I mean they can portal to the mists I’m sure they can work it out.

kRiza krimos.1637:

LA is still crossroad. Lore-wise too, besides that its only city you can port into for free thru mists.
Add mystic forges into all nations cities, enable city selection at mists portal and behold.

I’d love this idea to be put into the game. Yes, I can waypoint from anywhere to anywhere in the game by using the world map but there’s only a few Mystic Forges, bank/crafting/BLTC hubs. If there was a Mystic Forge in Rata Sum, I’d never leave. If I could “Leave the Mists” from PvP or WvW and always wind up back at Rata Sum with out having to use the LA load screen I’d be one happy kitten. When you get booted in WvW you log back in at Ft. Marriner and deal with all the awful crowding. As it is, I just make sure to log out each day at the Asuran city to save myself the load screen annoyance tomorrow.

In what lore I have read, LA is supposed to be the “melting pot” of the world, and in a sense, it is. Everybody goes there.

If the devs want to get us to use the other cities for anything, 3 things have to happen.

1. Put the crafting stations closer to the bank/TP area. I might like to use the trader in Hoelbrak, but it’s a half mile (scale mile) from the bank. And the crafting stations are on a completely different floor, so getting back and forth between the TP and the crafting area is a bit too spaced out.

2. Give us something to do other than see a random NPC for “quest” information… The cities are simply window dressing. At least DR has a group of RPers that is fun to go listen to. Not so much for all the rest.

3. Add some permanent content a la Fractals that will bring people into those cities on a regular basis. Maybe the Sylvari found the ruins of the old Shards of Orr and need to explore it. Maybe the Norn have found evidence of a new land (maybe old maps that reference Thunderhead Keep or Marhan’s Grotto) that can only be accessed by going through their crypts (and maybe a new zone…hint hint beg beg…)

The thing is that until there’s a REASON to go to all these other cities, we’ll all be logging in to LA until our computers blow up.

We don’t have a Spamadan though so LA it is :P

kRiza krimos.1637:

LA is still crossroad. Lore-wise too, besides that its only city you can port into for free thru mists.
Add mystic forges into all nations cities, enable city selection at mists portal and behold.

This. Very much this.
I’d be in Black Citadel permamently if it had a mystic forge.

CatMonster.8513:

kRiza krimos.1637:

LA is still crossroad. Lore-wise too, besides that its only city you can port into for free thru mists.
Add mystic forges into all nations cities, enable city selection at mists portal and behold.

This. Very much this.
I’d be in Black Citadel permamently if it had a mystic forge.

I would be too if there were signs that they actually took those vehicles they have outside it. Maybe as a new DE? Outside the Black Citadel should look like a muddy version of Terminator flashbacks lol but we get sunshine days where we can pick flowers and vegetables.

Unfortunately Anet won’t do a thing for PR reason. Anet dont’ want someone posting screen shot of lion arch with no people on gaming site.

Just like Anet will never make better guild UI to record when people’s last logon is.

I like it the way it is. I’m on a crowded server and while LA takes some time to load it’s a great cosmopolitan feel. If you spread folks out too much you lose some of Massively part of the MMO.

Yeah you could have a world wide chat, but anyone who remembers /trade in WoW knows the problems that can have.

I look at Lion’s Arch as being a tyrian New York city. Divinity’s reach is Albany, the state capital(or if you prefer Rio de janeiro or even São Paulo compared to Brasilia) . Political/administrative centers don’t have to be the main city of a nation or state.

I’d love to see Lion’s Arch razed to the ground actually. Its not a starting city so newbies won’t go ‘what the crap happened?!’ and it would be a rather large impact tot he world.

well, time for LA to burn i guess

It’s so sad to see epic cities like Hoelbrak deserted.

Zackie.8923:

well, time for LA to burn i guess

I’d much rather see la burn and have 4 (DR gets a good amount of attention due to its close by tp/bank/craft tables) cities emerge as relevant. Aside from starting there both leveling and the personal story, it isn’t important.

They don’t necessarily have to squish all the stations together, just make a closer wp or move an existing one to a more convenient spot. In the case of holebrak, move the wp by the asuran gate closer to the tp because there already is a wp fairly close to both the stations and the bank.

Crossroads are fine, but not when its by force. By force I mean La has all the asuran gate exits/entrances, the crafting stations bank and tp are fairly condensed, overall its full of doors while the other cities don’t get nearly as much.

Grumpdogg.6910:

It’s so sad to see epic cities like Hoelbrak deserted.

Agreed. Despite the amount of crap I give this game at times, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t find the cities absolutely gorgeous. Feels like a waste that once you get past a certain point in your personal story, there’s no good reason to visit any city other than LA.

They make this big deal about a living, breathing world, but, unless you count NPCs, every last city (other than DR I guess. I go there once every billion years) is completely empty. You might see a few stragglers here and there, but that’s about it.

Personally, I would love to see the population equally split across all the cities. Obviously a pipe dream right now, but it seems like something worth striving for at some point.

I know the rule of thumb is to avoid comparing other games to this one in the forums, but I can’t help but notice how an old game I played did this quite well (ffxi).

Before abyssea (crap) was released, there was a lot of activity on each city. Why? Some craft stations were rather conveinient, but also because the ah tax (or trade post for us in GW2) were slightly different in each city. Jueno was essentially the crossroads in that game, smack dab in the middle and it connected 3 continents but due to that it’s taxes were aweful and 1 city spanning 4 zones was a pain.

Bottom line, I think the same could be done for here where the trade post representatives offer different taxes for each city with LA remaining how it is now (15% I believe).

To make things more living and rather interesting, they could add racial bounties where that race can speak with a town crier, participating in the week’s agenda. Things from collecting an event item or beating a mini dungeon in the region or even collecting a unique item from an event or boss. These would only be allowed 1 time a week so that player’s don’t get this burden for not keeping up with the tasks, and by doing them, it boosts your city income (not yours) allowing for lower city taxes when selling from that city. Cities like ebonhawke would follow DR taxes and outposts with a trade post will follow whichever region their city belongs to (the mists will follow LA with 15%). The market would still remain all tied up and accessible as is, but by doing a small chore you can sell items for cheaper, kind of like a fame system except there is no requirement in having it. If not done, you simply follow 15% as usual but if enough participate the % slowly lowers ending at say 12% or 10%(increments of .2% per X tasks), whichever seems justified for the amount of work needed to lower the tax. If player’s stop doing them, the tax will steadily rise back to 15% total.

For example, if you get the tax lowered you will have the basic 5% listing fee but if you sell it at its peak, only 5% transaction fee. If you list it at 5% and in the time of players not doing the tasks, it will sell for 10% transaction fee.

Make the WPs of our racial town free to use or cheaper to use.

<— Puts on her “I Love LA” T shirt. While I enjoy Divinitys, there is no obvious enjoyable central area. If there were, maybe more people would frequent it. But, LA is the obvious choice for the population, being that its central to ALL starter areas.

Loading indeed sounds like computer issues – I have no problems loading in.

It is the central hub city why is it surprising that it gets a lot graphic changes??

So, LA is a hub city and a lot of people find their home there. It’s not a particular problem for me, even in terms of load times. I generally log out in Rata Sum as it is an architecturally superior city that enjoys, arguably, the best layout of any city. I definitely don’t support cross-city mapchat as each city is culturally unique, at least on my server, and, and frankly, I don’t have enough room on my block list to hang out in DR’s mapchat.

Mastermavrick.2439:

It is the central hub city why is it surprising that it gets a lot graphic changes??

I’m not at all shocked at the lag I get from logging into LA, its quite obvious. The only city in the game to have overflows, not just before wvw reset. My issue is trying to avoid it altogether. We have an official lfg tool, and a global tp. I see no reason to be forced into this zone. Exiting the Labyrinths is in LA, exiting the mists from either spvp or wvw is in LA, all signs point to la. There are tricks to this like pressing “leave the mists” will port you back to where you first entered the spvp lobby, but that’s 1/3. I don’t like LA, and getting into LA main server is a nightmare before reset even hours before hand. All I want is less focus on LA which at this point, has little to no exciting news. I’ve heard that sylvari joke a million times and I’m aware of how smushed that charr’s face is, I get it. I’d much prefer an actual reason to visit/stay in the other major cities, but being able to port through an asuran gate by choice would certainly be a start.

I agree,cause of this overusing all other towns are dead except Divinity that its like half dead.This makes people that just starting the game think that game or server is dead…thats what i was thinking when i start this game and went to Divinity Reach.All towns should have people,existence of “main town” is stupid….focusing people on 1 point from entire huge world is not good thing to do.

Rata Sum is superior in every way when it comes to regular business like bank access, crafting or the TP. Also: No more “WATER CLOSETS” and “bad salad jokes”.

To be honest, I don’t get why Anet designed LA to be less convenient when it’s supposed to be the go-to place.

takes me less than 30 seconds to load LA and I play on a so called “high population” server. It shouldn’t be changed.

slurpey.6014:

takes me less than 30 seconds to load LA and I play on a so called “high population” server. It shouldn’t be changed.

So because you can log in 30 seconds, it’s not broken?

Lag is a part of the issue. It’s also the emptiness the other “major” cities have that’s sad. And rata sum/DR are more conveinient than LA for bank/tp/craft yet we are forced into la from most exits. In the main page you can actually look at all the releases thus far.

Lions Arch: 7 exclusive to LA or related to LA.

Holebrak: 1. Flame and Frost (loved that story btw).

Black citadel: 1, flame and frost.

Rata Sum: Super adventure box

DR: Queen’s Jubilee and sort of clockword chaos. Only because the instance took place there.

The grove: ….cricket….

All that work into making the dialog, the artwork, the culture and its wasted because of a center city. Such a shame.

Didn’t Tixx visit every city? Not that he was there long, but I believe he visited all the major cities.

I agree with thistopic. I said this way way way back in 2012….They used Lion’s Arch for the first few events. I said we need to utilize other cities. I love divinities reach, and Im glad it got some love during the beginning of ZergWars2…Scarlet Invasions/Queens Gauntlet. It would be nice to see The Grove get some love. Its a gorgeous city.