Guild Wars 2

With last weeks patch, I started to have some disconnect issues, so I thought I would give the 64bit client a try.

I downloaded and ran and was quite surprised. Though I have not had a disconnect with the 64 bit version so far, now my loading screens take forever to load.

So as an example where the loading screen for a map would normally take ~15-30 seconds to load with the 32bit; now with the 64bit it was taking ~3 minutes to load.

Needless to say I have moved back to the 32bit version.

Why such a ridiculous increase in loading times?

You don’t have the game installed on an SSD, most likely. It has to do with the speed of the load of the game’s base data retrieved from your system. So that is based no the speed of the primary drive installed upon. In this case you most likely have a dated HDD that is running low rotations. I recommend updating that.

Add -maploadinfo to the end of your target for the GW2 shortcut ie: “C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -maploadinfo and you can actually see where it’s getting hung up. 99% of the time it’s loading models or map info and your connection speed (ping) has a lot to do with it.

I also have a tinfoil hat theory that it actually speeds it up if you keep an eye on it but my wife says i’m crazy.

smiling.9028:

Add -maploadinfo to the end of your target for the GW2 shortcut ie: “C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -maploadinfo and you can actually see where it’s getting hung up. 99% of the time it’s loading models or map info and your connection speed (ping) has a lot to do with it.

I also have a tinfoil hat theory that it actually speeds it up if you keep an eye on it but my wife says i’m crazy.

Actually you got to move your mouse in a circle motion over the loading circle to speed it up.

I just bought a 120gb SSD for 40$ from Newegg.

I put GW2 and Fallout 4 on it. Lions Arch used to take 60 sec to load. Now it’s 15 sec’s. A 120gb SSD is pretty cheap now.

I’d bet that you’re using a platter drive.

No one noticed the fact that he said the increase came from going from 32 bit to 64 bit client?

To OP, I always have long load times but didn’t notice an increase when I switched.

Mez Koo.9510:

No one noticed the fact that he said the increase came from going from 32 bit to 64 bit client?

To OP, I always have long load times but didn’t notice an increase when I switched.

Yes thank you for noticing. I went from load time of 15-30 sec with the 32bit and 180 seconds for the same map with the 64 bit.

Just makes no sense to me.

Andraus.3874:

Actually you got to move your mouse in a circle motion over the loading circle to speed it up.

I’ve actually tried this while loudly complaining at the screen, each obscenity seems to add 10s to the load time though.

You can, if you haven’t already done it of course, try to clean up your system, CCleaner/ADWCleaner and the like may help.

64 bit client uses much more memory than 32 bit. Maybe your system is running out of memory and starts using page file a lot (which is very very slow)?

Earlier this year, before Heart of Thorns, many of us noticed an increase in screen loading times. Since my PC specs haven’t changed it must be something that A-Net added in an update during that time.

Agnes.3259:

64 bit client uses much more memory than 32 bit. Maybe your system is running out of memory and starts using page file a lot (which is very very slow)?

Presumably he has more than 4gb ram or there is no point to even run the 64bit client. Any half decent gaming machine today has 16-32gb ram so I find that unlikely.

I would advice repairing GW2 and trying again. I didnt notice any difference in map load times when going 32→64bit.

Noticed at my parents who has 75 Mb that the zone loading is quicker than my 3 Mb service and I have a faster system so, yes Internet speed is important.

so for some reason when i woke up this morning and got on to guildwars 2 my loading screen took about 5 min, i did nothing yesterday the game worked fine (except for a lot of lag) but now the game loads slower than it does on my mac please help

Only LA for the 1st time takes long after entering the game. Usually maps load in 10-20s. I assume LA takes so long be cause of the kittenload of models (= aka other players) it has to load.

Rokua.6873:

so for some reason when i woke up this morning and got on to guildwars 2 my loading screen took about 5 min, i did nothing yesterday the game worked fine (except for a lot of lag) but now the game loads slower than it does on my mac please help

Necroposting makes the mods Sad Pandas.

Mine increased slightly after a recent W10 update, which also causes the screen to flicker once before it loads in. It’s no big deal at the end of the day though, it’s only a few seconds.

I remember when loading screens were made line by line to make a picture, taking 30-40 mins or more!. Then it was 50/50 whether you had set the volume right on the cassette player and had to start all over again. You learned not to worry about loading times so much after that.

Them were the days ;D

I had map loading times of about 15-20 seconds. Roughly the last 5% took the longest. I heard they increased loading times for performance reasons or something.

This has changed since last Tuesday as I’m now back to getting 4-8 seconds map load times. I had the flickering screen too if that’s where it cuts out as if the game is going to show on the screen but then cuts back to the map load screen briefly. I’m not sure if this has happened since last Tuesday but maybe I just got used to it.

I have a ticket in for the same issue. It started immediately after the windows 10 update a few days ago. I get a black screen for several minutes after login, after character select screen, and anytime I change maps. Used to take 30 sec. now its 3 or 4 minutes everytime I load a screen. Other games are fine, just GW2. Yes I’m running 64bit and had zero problems before the win10 update.

i on the other hand , have been experiencing flickering loading screen that….

I think it’s sad this game does not use the advantage of huge amounts of RAM. No matter if 32-bit or 64-bit, the memory usage is quite low. I’d almost call it “efficient”, but unlike..almost every other game I know..it does not use the data that is still in the RAM (I do not know what it is actually been called, because OSX and Windows call it differently). I think it’s “inactive” data, kept in the RAM but ready to be overwritten.

Of course, certain states have to be written again into memory, but to me it feels like I am loading everything from scratch. When I join in a League of Legends game there is a big boost when the majority of the data is still available.

Zedek.8932:

Of course, certain states have to be written again into memory, but to me it feels like I am loading everything from scratch.

I’ve noticed this also and it really bugs me. I’ll wait 2-3 min to load LA, then for whatever reason when I swap to another character also in LA, it takes the full 2-3 min to load again…But sometimes (rarely) it’ll load in around 10-15 seconds which is perplexing…??

But on topic:

You should check your system for unnecessary programs, applications, processes and/or services running in the background. Doing this may help speed up your system, but of course be sure to check what is what.

I have had loading issues in the past also, and I finally figured out why.

I’m on Windows 7 (Which by the way, OP should give us more info about his system.) and I discovered I was having a common problem with Windows Update running ALL THE TIME in the background and hogging 50% of my CPU usage. I’ve since corrected that issue, and load times are way better for me, relatively speaking.

Zoning into high player populated areas takes longer. Plus LA is very open so more of the map needs to be loaded to render since there’s limited opportunities to occlude coupled with a high poly count. Monitoring the apps use of the drive during loading shows a lot of data being read so maybe, if the game isn’t on an SSD, to give the disk (or just the game folder) a nice defrag to reduce any excess head moves on the disk, a real throughput killer.

I’ve also noticed an impact on load times with your connection speed. Likely state data related to the zone’s NPCs.

Loading times are also affected by how many other players are standing near to where you player is , and also whether the game is downloading an update, but has got past the playable limit.
This is more noticeable on low data rate Internet connections than hi speed cable or fibre.

SSDs also make a huge differance, but are more noticeable on older PCs or Laptops which still have 5400 RPM hard drives.

windows 10 has the issue of loading going black and loading again. since the last update. me and several of my friends have this issue on windows 10 only. idk if anet could fix it but it would be greatif they could