Guild Wars 2

I’ve never once heard anybody from Anet say anything about there being or not being an oceanic server.

Some tasks like PvP and bosses like Jade Maw (where you have to pick up the reflecting crystals with limited time) is quite tedious with 300-350 ping.

I live in NSW, Australia. Currently there’s a fair amount of lag for my friends and I in GW2. There’s usually at least a 1 second delay when using abilities, which may not seem like a lot, but it’s incredibly annoying when trying to do PvP.

Another problem however, is the lack of people online at suitable times throughout the day. At the moment, there’s only a large amount of people online at around 1AM-7AM (we are currently on the EU server Gandara). Without enough people online during the day, it’s very difficult to find people for dungeons etc. when the game relies so heavily on group play.

I understand that servers such as Sea of Sorrows and Isle of Janthir have a larger Australian population, but it would cost too much money for my friends and I to swap servers (300g in game, or ~$40AUD per person).

Possible Solutions:

Having oceanic servers added to the game would be ideal, especially with Heart of Thorns arriving soon, as my friends and I would be able to experience it to the fullest as these servers would solve both the lag AND the issue of not having enough people for group play.

If this is not possible, a free server swap (which was originally available at game launch) would be a great alternative for my friends and I, simply because we lack the player base needed to get things done in a game that’s all about group play.
This could be done by:

• Having a period of time in which server swaps are free (maybe for a week or so?). This could be done as an addition to the release of Heart of Thorns to allow new players coming into the game to get a feel for what server they would like to play on.
• Decreasing the cost of server swaps to make it more affordable (possibly reducing the cost of transferring to ‘very high’ population servers from 1800 gems to 800 gems? Considering that there are very few servers that are not ‘very high’ population).
• A feature that allows guesting across regions (e.g. EU to US servers). This option would allow players to play on servers in other regions without affecting WvW.
• An option that allows players to swap servers for free if they have good reasons. For example, if they play on a server in which their timezone is different to a vast amount of players on their server (hindering group play), they could submit a request, and if their request us justifiable, they could be permitted to swap servers with no cost. An example of a bad request would be wanting to swap servers for benefits in WvW.
  To avoid situations of people abusing the system, Arena Net could (using the timezone example) check statistics such as the population of players online when the player is, in comparison to when they’re offline, to see if their statement is true.
  A period of time in which WvW is unavailable to the player could also be used to discourage them from swapping servers for gain in WvW.

Summary:

I believe that oceanic servers would be a good addition to GW2, as there is a very large player base which would benefit greatly from them.
Methods of swapping servers for free would also greatly enhance the GW2 experience, as it would provide players who lack the people required for group play to truly enjoy the game to the fullest.

I’d hate to break it to you, but no Aus/Oceanic server I’ve ever seen every stayed populated for more then half a year. Aus doesn’t have enough density of players in any single game (except for maybe WoW) to sustain a server dedicated directly to them. And a Pac Rim server suffers from the same language problems as EU/Asian that potentially compartmentalize them, instead of promoting group interaction.

While I agree that the mega server should open across regions, the reason for the barrier is ping. So unless they lift the region restriction for PVE/PVP, an oceanic region would only compound the existing problems you’re seeing with Coverage.

Nothing but WvW relies on Server selection, so I’m not sure your request for free or reduced server transfer costs is necessary (you mentioned dungeons and group play; nothing really about WvW).

Remember, if an Australian/SEA data center was created, there would need be 3 Servers, and they would only be able to compete against each other in WvW….every single match. Also, they would be separate from NA or EU.

Good luck.

I feel your pain. Im from South africa where i think we have worse internet than you. But for an mmo to work they would need Thousands and thousands of users that I jsut dont think you would bea ble to sustain. IF SA has 2500 players in GW2 i would be very impressed.

yet we had enough players in dota 2 and Cs for valve to provide us with servers. But we can not reasonably justify a server for Africa for an MMO.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Nothing but WvW relies on Server selection, so I’m not sure your request for free or reduced server transfer costs is necessary (you mentioned dungeons and group play; nothing really about WvW).

Remember, if an Australian/SEA data center was created, there would need be 3 Servers, and they would only be able to compete against each other in WvW….every single match. Also, they would be separate from NA or EU.

Good luck.

You make a good point about WvW, although my request for free or reduced server transfer cost is due my friends and I being stuck on an EU server, where there aren’t a lot of people on during the times we’re online. From what I’ve seen, there are a lot more Aussies on NA servers. The problem is the costs of transferring are too much, especially since all NA servers that are available are ‘Very High’ population.

This link shows that there are A LOT more NA Aussie guilds in comparison to EU:
http://gw2.guildex.org/guilds?sort=location&%3Border=asc&order=asc

Well, you can always transfer at no cost by deleting your characters and putting everything in the bank that isn’t soul-bound.

Good luck.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Well, you can always transfer at no cost by deleting your characters and putting everything in the bank that isn’t soul-bound.

Good luck.

Haha, I probably would if I didn’t have 6 lvl 80s :P

I would highly suggest saving up the gold to transfer to an NA server ASAP.

I had an alt account on SFR a few months back to test out the EU servers for WvW and my ping was absolutely atrocious. I don’t know how you guys can even play with that lag. If you’re a PvE only player, simply transfer to any random server that isn’t full.

I don’t get why any Aussie would play on the EU servers unless their work hours meant they’d play in the mornings.

we have no idea when they gonna fix the status or interested to fix them….
so…good luck

As an Oceanic player, even I’m against a local server(s). We don’t have enough dedicated population to make it work and it would be even worse than being on a EU server.

Your better off transferring to any NA server, in NZ prime time there is no shortage of players on because of the megaserver system.

I don’t see how it would be cost-effective for ANet. It’s really expensive setting up and maintaining a server farm to run a game like this. Do you think the game would end up getting so many more players from AUS/NZ to make up for the costs?

It’s not just a matter of finding an existing server farm — I’m sure that’s relatively easy these days. ANet would also need folks to be responsible 24/7 for ensuring that the game itself runs on the servers and has the same level of uptime we have in NA & EU.

On the player side, it’s not just WvW that would be affected. Remember that, due to technical limitations, NA players still can’t play in EU instances (or vice versa), so presumably any new data center wouldn’t allow people from NA or EU to be in the same instances. You’d be see even fewer players than you see now during EU-off-peak hours.

This still might be worthwhile for ANet, except that you basically killed your own idea by stating that you think the gem costs for transferring are too high. If that’s a typical opinion — that even proponents aren’t willing to pay to move — how can ANet afford to pay for the ongoing maintenance costs of having a third data center?

I’m sympathetic to the latency you must suffer, relative to the rest of us and I wish there was a simple and/or obvious solution.

Never going to happen. Unless you have like 2 million new players joining from the Oceanic and ASEAN region, don’t expect ANET to dump resources into putting up new servers.

It’s not going to happen. We are permanently boned in Australia due to physical distance limitations. It even takes LIGHT around 50ms to travel from West Australia to the ANet servers. I see the complaints about ‘high pings’ on the forums and laugh when they are 100-200ms while my average is around 320 ms and spikes into the 2,000’s.

The only solution is a subtle unfortunate one. What score would you rate Guild Wars 2? A 7 out of 10 or maybe an 8 out of 10? Well now factor into that the ‘experience’ of game play you get, given there are no local servers and the latency we experience; see the score for the game drop to a 5 or 6 out of 10.

Does it solve the problem? No. But it gives other Australian players a better indication of what the game play quality actually is.

Unlikely. Remember, there can not be just one server, but there need be three (WvW.)

There have been a couple of threads recently discussing this in the pertinent sub-forums.

Good luck.

Just curious, “Will the oceanic region ever get their own oceanic server or will we always have to use the US servers?”

don’t think so. it’s either NA or the EU server for us.

Nelzaki.3062:

Just curious, “Will the oceanic region ever get their own oceanic server or will we always have to use the US servers?”

It’s extremely unlikely.

• Servers are specific to regions, which are tied to specific data centers → ANet would have to contract with a local company to house the data center and hire local staff (for emergencies, if not for managing updates and security).
• Megaservers are region-wide only, so WvW would require a minimum of 3 servers. Further, that would be it for PvE and PvP, too, limiting the number of players in the local community.
• Latency would obviously drop considerably for people local to the data center. However, where would ANet put it? Oceanic|Asia|Pac includes a lot of countries that are spread out. Korea & Japan would be better off than currently with a Sydney data center, but would it be enough to make the expense worthwhile?
• Finally, would GW2 get many more players to sign up than it does now? I’m guessing not very many.

tl;dr the costs likely outweigh the benefits substantially — and it might introduce more issues than it solves for the Oceanic community.

I doubt there’s enough of us to justify it.

It also works better to have some oceanic population on the other servers, to keep the world alive/ ensure there are still people defending wvw objectives.

Maybe After we got like a million players.Maybe not since GW1 and lineage 2 attempt to make an Asian physical server flopped already.

Only thing we might see is a PVP only version of the server.For E-sport.

Hey, so I currently play on a European server, but I live in New Zealand. I find that I lag quite often. Even the slightest amount of lag (which I normally have) makes playing a thief using evades, or Mesmer using interrupts near impossible as i am always a little behind and miss it. I just end up guessing and hoping which is not that rewarding.

I remember that when I played World of warcraft they brought out oceanic servers once there were enough players to fill them? Can we do this??

This isnt too much of an issue when it comes to pve. But it would be great for pvp and wvw. Wvw probably isnt feasibly yet with player numbers? But surely there are, at some times during the day, more that 10 people from oceania playing pvp at a time, so could we get matched against them on an oceanic server?

If none of this is possible maybe i could play on a chinese server to reduce the lag?? (how would i do this)

You can not play on China server. China is a different client. For Oceanic server arena net would not be able to make just 1. They would have to make 3 because WvW.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Unlikely. Remember, there can not be just one server, but there need be three (WvW.)

There have been a couple of threads recently discussing this in the pertinent sub-forums.

Good luck.

Actually, the cost of servers is peanuts. It is the data center where you get into the big bucks. Rather than a dedicated facility for each game they would probably lease servers at a local data center. Which means they would need a big user base there to support that cost.

Menadena.7482:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Unlikely. Remember, there can not be just one server, but there need be three (WvW.)

There have been a couple of threads recently discussing this in the pertinent sub-forums.

Good luck.

Actually, the cost of servers is peanuts. It is the data center where you get into the big bucks. Rather than a dedicated facility for each game they would probably lease servers at a local data center. Which means they would need a big user base there to support that cost.

I don’t remember mentioning anything about cost (of servers). Only that, because of WvW, there would need to be 3 servers (Worlds), rather than just one.

Be aware, also, that these threads are often merged, and sometimes posts are deleted.

But, thanks for the info. =)

Will there ever be an latinoamerica servers?

WoW recently opened oceanic servers. I would imagine Anet would do the same if the game becomes big enough.

Taiyoroku.1028:

Will there ever be an latinoamerica servers?

Probably not for the same reasons stated above:

• They’d need to open a data center and add staff to handle updates/security.
• All of the players would be segregated from the existing NA/EU regions, in terms of PvE & PvP
• All of the worlds would be similarly segregated, so it would require a minimum of 3 worlds (and then the matches would never change).

My guess is that to be cost-effective for ANet, there would need to be enough players from South/Central America (or Asia, or Oceania, etc) to populate at least 9 worlds. I don’t think any of those not-yet-established GW2 regions have 33% of GW2’s EU population or 38% of GW2’s NA population (even assuming those new regions would/could draw players from the existing regions).

Throwing some wild, speculative back-of-envelope estimates around:

• GW2 apparently sold 3 million units in its early days.
• That might divide evenly into 1.5 mil NA & 1.5 mil EU (although probably not).
• So we are talking about maybe needing 500,000 players specific to any new region.
• Most of these would have to be new, in order to justify the additional costs. (It’s not reasonable to expect ANet to open a new data center in Australia only for the existing AU/NZ etc players, unless they can expect a few hundred thousand new ones, too.)

My guess is that there isn’t anything close to this sort of demand.

The only reason I want OCX servers is because I dislike buying $50 worth of gems but costing my bank account $72 with AUD>USD conversion rates.

I’ve spent a lot more money on LoL since they released Oceanic Servers.

Ummm oceanic wouldnt just be for australia…. i have 11 friends myself that play in new zealand just one group of them, then all of asia that are around the oceanic line. Plenty of people i tell you!

But then again the people arguing against this dont have 250ping. Having to connect all the way to the middle of the USA even on a good internet on my country is a pain.

starlinvf.1358:

I’d hate to break it to you, but no Aus/Oceanic server I’ve ever seen every stayed populated for more then half a year. Aus doesn’t have enough density of players in any single game (except for maybe WoW) to sustain a server dedicated directly to them. And a Pac Rim server suffers from the same language problems as EU/Asian that potentially compartmentalize them, instead of promoting group interaction.

While I agree that the mega server should open across regions, the reason for the barrier is ping. So unless they lift the region restriction for PVE/PVP, an oceanic region would only compound the existing problems you’re seeing with Coverage.

What kind of changes did you play and how old where they?
I have played on Wow oceanic and League of legends Oceanic both big games and the community is massive….. I wouldn’t underestimate the potential of guild wars now that its free to play. The only games that have had failed oceanic servers is when the game has failed and is actually dieing …. Aion etc…

BlackBunny.3681:

But then again the people arguing against this dont have 250ping. Having to connect all the way to the middle of the USA even on a good internet on my country is a pain.

No one is “arguing against this point” in this thread. I offered an explanation as to why it probably won’t happen, the short version being that it would hurt ANet’s bottom line.

I am very sympathetic to the latency issues when Asia/Pac folks connect to the servers in Texas. It would be great if they could enjoy the same lower ping that folks in the US & Canada get. The thing is, anyone attached to an Oceanic data center wouldn’t be able to play with the NA community anymore, in the same way that EU and NA can’t play together. We can share chat and the TP, but not WvW, PvE, or PvP.

No there won’t ever be an Oceanic server. Not going to happen. And I live in Australia.

Yep never gonna happen.

Data centre costs in Australia are very high (because of high wages), and the OCX population in game is too small to support it.

You wouldn’t want it anyway. Maps would be empty all the time.

Sube Dai.8496:

You wouldn’t want it anyway. Maps would be empty all the time.

As much as I hate the constant ~300 ping, I have to agree with this. Even at peak times in gw1 I was hard pressed to find someone on the “international” server, which was where my ping was the lowest. I gave up and moved to the American servers, just because it felt like a single-player game, and I was getting tired of it.

If oceanic servers came in I’d still be on TC. I’ve made plenty of friends here and, while I hate the ping, I can at least play with a diverse range of people across all areas of the game right where I’m at now.

I played the game back when it released, got frustrated at PvP because of 250 ping and after playing off and on for a while, and now getting back in to it AND with it going free to play It must be generating a lot of oceanic people.

But is there enough people to warrant any oceanic servers?

The obvious downside for Oceanic players is the megaserver integration. It would be safe to say americans/europeans wont want to play on oce servers getting 200+ ping so it would kind of isolate us, unless there are a few options for us to dictate when the megaserver kicks in.

Thoughts?

If there were anet would have put up 3 servers for you.
So the answer to your question is no untill anet do so

Then it would be a region like NA or Europe. Are there enough players for three servers so WvW can be done? If not, then it’s doubtful.

Even if there were 3 servers, they would never play anyone but the same 3….forever. I’m pretty sure players lament having to face the same servers week after week, already.

It seems there would need to be more than just 3 servers, so doubtful it will happen soon.

On top of Inculpatus cedo’s reasoning, there are financial reasons as well. ArenaNet owns both data centers in the US and in Germany. To set up Oceanic servers, ANet would have to purchase property, build/renovate a building, purchase and set up servers, then hire staff to tend the hardware. That is a HUGE financial burden to undertake.

I used to play in the EU servers when I lived there but when I moved back to Australia I easily had 2s + ping. I changed servers to Maguuma and typically have 260ms which isn’t horrible. Since I don’t PvP it doesn’t matter that much to me. But I too would certainly like to see an Oceanic server.

On the language side, it shouldn’t be such a huge deal. There are many Malaysian and Singaporean players as well as Australian and kiwis. Since English is the lingua franca in all those nations, language shouldn’t even need to be worried about.

“Oceana” is huge. A server in Korea is about the same distance from Australia as it is from California.

Edit: the language thing isn’t such a big deal. We just need to learn the words for “drain” and “stack” in a few languages ;-)

Wanderer.3248:

“Oceana” is huge. A server in Korea is about the same distance from Australia as it is from California.

Well, no.

• Seoul to Sydney: ~8,300 km
• Austin TX to Sydney: ~13,600 km
• Munich to Sydney: ~16,300 km

So an Aussie data center would almost certainly be better for Asia, just as the NA center is better for Aussies.

The other problems will remain, however:

• The cost of setting up and maintaining a data center can be high for a game with 24/7 connectivity & security requirements.
• Players at any new data center would still be isolated from NA & EU players, which has major implications for WvW and even for open world, sPvP, and instanced gameplay.
• A smaller issue would be the loss of players from NA & EU data centers, which would have some impact on the experience for those communities.

So if you really want to see a new data center located closer to Australia or Tokyo, you’ll have to find some way to help ANet generate hundreds and hundreds of thousands of new players for the game just by adding that data center.

pretty much means i can only play Gard/range atm. 250 Ping in spvp its impossible to play melee like warriors and theifs well. Hopefully for anets next MMO they will set up the game so it doesnt require mass amounts of people for WvW at a time so we can have some diff servers

Before the xpac Devs had talked about changes to latency etc. Was there any topic brought up about servers outside of texas around this time? Or was it just client server fixes. <<<<oceanic player(250ms here)