Guild Wars 2

Hello,
I’m new. So new, I haven’t even picked a server yet :P I have a lot of questions about transferring and guesting, pings and potential lag and population amounts.

Firstly, I’m North American. I’ve been talking to some friends who play this game, and given the current sale, I decided to pick it up. The caveat here, being, they are all European and they play on the European servers.

I am tempted to just pick their server so I can play with them (Whiteside Ridge, for reference) but I’m having some hesitations.

1) Will I experience any problematic latency issues being in North America and playing on a European server?

2) The game indicated to me if I pick a European server it must “transfer my account”. If I choose to do so, and at a later date pay for a server transfer, can I transfer to a North American server?

3) This particular server appears to be very low on the WvWvW rankings, and is listed as population “medium”. This is setting off some alarm bells for me that the population of this server is not really in great condition. Is “Medium” actually medium, or is this a misnomer to make a “low” server seem higher than it is?.

4) It’s my understanding if I pick an NA server I simply cannot Guest to their server, correct?

All this being said I’m thinking of picking an N.A. server, even though my friends aren’t on it, and I’m kind of looking for some guidance from the community.

I know it sounds kind of jerk-like of me to say that, but you do have to understand the timezone differences. While playing with them on a weekend (if I’m even around) is certainly possible, weekdays at night they absolutely will not be online. Furthermore, if the only chance I get to play is at night on a weekday, most European servers will be virtually dead, save for a few night owls.

So I guess this leads me to the next question:

5) What would you do in my situation?

Thanks for any advice and answer to my questions

Tarnished Coast is a good server and the players are nice.

Drew.1865:

Tarnished Coast is a good server and the players are nice.

Thanks for the reply, Drew.
Not to be rude, but this does not really answer any of my questions :P

Weaver.5429:

Drew.1865:

Tarnished Coast is a good server and the players are nice.

Thanks for the reply, Drew.
Not to be rude, but this does not really answer any of my questions :P

Actually, he kinda did as I read it as an answer to your final question (#5)…sort of like saying “I’d forget about the rest of your concerns and just join TC already…it’s the best choice”

Apart from that I can only offer some basic insight into your questions.

1) Will I experience any problematic latency issues being in North America and playing on a European server?

Everything that I’ve ever read on these boards about this issue is that there’s nothing to worry about. All signs point to you not experiencing anything bad that could be contributed to being in NA and playing on an EU server or vise-versa. Having said that, I can only go by what I’ve read.

2) The game indicated to me if I pick a European server it must “transfer my account”. If I choose to do so, and at a later date pay for a server transfer, can I transfer to a North American server?

Once again, I can only go by what I’ve read and once again all signs point to yes.

3) This particular server appears to be very low on the WvWvW rankings, and is listed as population “medium”. This is setting off some alarm bells for me that the population of this server is not really in great condition. Is “Medium” actually medium, or is this a misnomer to make a “low” server seem higher than it is?.

I’ve never seen it as a misnomer but it’s a mixed bag for WvW since a high/full server will tend to have higher que times where as a medium server you could become more active more often, thereby helping your server quite a bit in the rankings.

4) It’s my understanding if I pick an NA server I simply cannot Guest to their server, correct?

5) What would you do in my situation?

Tarnished Coast is a good server and the players are nice.