Guild Wars 2

Please be civil about Windows 8. I know some of you disgusted by Windows 8 Metro UI so do I but on the fair side there are still the Desktop there.

How is the performance with GW2 with all the beta drivers on Win8?

I’m just interested to know the result, so please ignore about the ugly Metro UI.

Yea, i’m definitely planning on upgrading, and i really would love to know too how it preforms! Hopefully well…

Is there any reason to upgrade to Windows 8 (assuming I’m not using some multimedia touchscreen monitor and therefore don’t care about Metro)?

I’m joining the Microsoft Developer Network soon and will get unlimited access to almost their entire catalog of current & historic software. But so far I can’t see why I would want to upgrade, even when I can do so, legally, for free!

I have no plans to downgrade my OS. That and most my software is downloaded from Steam, which has no plan to move over to Windows 8 unless they back off on wanting to charge people to use their horrible “appstore”.

I would kindly advice not to touch Windows 8, PC’s are open platforms and should in no way be closed and that is exactly the route Microsoft is going with windows 8.

If I want my OS to look like a tablet or moby interface then i’d use a tablet or mobile device.

Actually Veritech, steam will be completely available on the ‘normal’ editions of Windows 8. The appstore issue only really affects users of the tablet version. Like Apple, Microsoft is limiting the sale of programs/apps on portable devices running that special version of Windows. You can download and use steam just like you have before.

Back to the thread though, does windows 8 use the same drivers as 7/vista? I’d be less likely to consider upgrading ever if it has the same driver fiasco that Vista had upon launch. If it uses the same drivers I’d imagine that GW2 would perform somewhat similarly. I’d probably wait until the first service pack before upgrading though, just to help ensure that everything is nice and optimized… and fixed.

FYI the metro interface is optional.

I see it take a lot of flack, but previous versions of Windows were in no way touchscreen optimised and since it’s optional I see no problem with it.

@Shemhazazi

Last I read it was still an issue of the OS being closed unless you paid to develop your product on it.

Just to add if anyone isn’t aware of it, Microsoft have stated that they will not issue a licence for any games that are 18 certified, not saying they won’t be playable on Win 8. For me it comes across as Microsoft are trying to control what we view or play.

The reason why people like Gabe Newell are so upset is that Microsoft is going to have a central location to sell games and just about any other software from a marketplace right on your desktop, which is what Valve does. Again, only the tablet version, Windows RT, will be limited with regard to what you can install. I’m not trying to be a windows 8 fanboy or anything; I probably wont get it for at least a year if I do depending on how it might augment my productivity, but the initial response was a lot of crying wolf over the potential for revenue stream disruption, and other loud people like Notch jumped on the bandwagon.

Licensing and the Microsoft app store will not affect steam or gw2 on windows 8; the only real concern is what performance changes come with win8 and how they ’ll affect gw2 etc.

I can only imagine GW2 and pretty much every PC game for the next 5 years running better on Win 7 since thats what they’re developed on. The whole DRM / Appstore thing is a huge put off as well. Steam/Valve is also a large determining factor and they seem to dislike Win 8 with a passion.

remember even the release preview currently available from microsoft is still a beta so performance and bugs are still present in that version.

any support from graphics vendors is also in beta and the same from any motherboard manufacturer.

with all that in mind the potential performance could be limited and support will not be there just yet from other users certainly in the form of gaming support.

at the core windows 8 is by far the most superior os to come to market, the visual style aside it is trully amazing and incredibly quick, it requires less resources than current systems to perfom the same tasks which says a great deal about the operating system.

the metro ui, is fine, boring and somewhat clunky but does perform it’s task.

how games perform will entirely depend on the game in use, games that use the new dx 11.1 that windows 8 will be using will perform well above what games do now on similar hardware to a windows 7 machine, games that use dx 9 like guildwars 2 will probably be just as good as they are now with maybe slight improvments in fps and load times.

@jestunhi

the metro ui is standard and no longer optional, all versions of the os rt home and pro all have metro ui as a feature standard (metro has been challanged as a name so it will be changing) the previous beta where it was optional has since been changed in an updated beta version, in release preview you have no choice at all whether the metro ui is on or not.

the current version is also very well optimised for touch just as windows 7 is, with various tweeks to the ui you could easily make windows 7 very good on touch screen.

@Shemhazazi

yes windows 8 uses the same drivers as windows 7 for most things, however most hardware manufacturers are already developing optimised drivers for the operating system.

vista wasn’t that much of a fiasco and you can’t blame microsoft for the failures of the hardware manufacturers to not deal with their own issues they created, they were all given ample time and warning of the changes the operating system brought and decided to ignore them of their own accord, much like the released laptops with vista were all underpowered for the os, those with high end desktops did not have anywhere near as many problems if any at all.

Shemhazazi.6972:

The reason why people like Gabe Newell are so upset is that Microsoft is going to have a central location to sell games and just about any other software from a marketplace right on your desktop, which is what Valve does. Again, only the tablet version, Windows RT, will be limited with regard to what you can install. I’m not trying to be a windows 8 fanboy or anything; I probably wont get it for at least a year if I do depending on how it might augment my productivity, but the initial response was a lot of crying wolf over the potential for revenue stream disruption, and other loud people like Notch jumped on the bandwagon.

Licensing and the Microsoft app store will not affect steam or gw2 on windows 8; the only real concern is what performance changes come with win8 and how they ’ll affect gw2 etc.

Steam still have the advantage, cross platform, PC Mac Linux and now TV with the beta feature.

I’m using Windows 8 Pro 64-bit (build 9200) since almost about a month now and I can tell you that gw2 runs perfect for me. I don’t really notice any difference between running gw2 on win7 or win8. Of course this maybe will be different on different Hardware.

P.S: I almost never use metro UI. Yes it’s the first thing I see after booting and logging in but the first thing I do is going to the normal desktop

Cod Eye.1632:

I would kindly advice not to touch Windows 8, PC’s are open platforms and should in no way be closed and that is exactly the route Microsoft is going with windows 8.

If I want my OS to look like a tablet or moby interface then i’d use a tablet or mobile device.

facepalm you must have missed the whole “desktop button” part…microsoft is in no way limiting it, only expanding and improving.

I’m going to join the others in saying if you have no specific need for Windows 8 features, then you should not “upgrade” yet, and if you aren’t sure if you need them, you probably don’t.

And I’m not only saying this because omgmetro, it’s that there will likely be a lot of issues while they get that first service pack worth of updates out. Windows 7 is perfectly functional and more widely supported in the meantime, at least for now.

I stuck with XP till last year, I’ll stick with Windows 7 just as long.

Running GW2 on Windows 8 here. Works fine with my setup.

Metro is stupid on desktop though, but that has no relation to this game so.

Yes Windows 8 will run it. The desktop mode of Windows 8 uses nearly the same software infrastructure as Windows 7. Take Windows 7, remove the start menu, put “ribbon” menus to Windows Explorer and that’s basically Windows 8’s desktop.

It won’t run on the ARM build of Windows 8 though (which I believe is called Windows RT) but it’s only for tablets and smartphones so they wouldn’t run the game anyway.

Windows 8 is actually fairly efficient from what I saw in the betas – I was able to get it to use just a tad less memory then my heavily tweaked Windows 7 setup.

Metro is annoying though. In the end if you just want to use the desktop it’s an extra click and a start menu you have to get used to all over again.

Anyway, worked pretty flawlessly for me – didn’t have any driver issues and such. Your mileage may vary though, especially with the release version when it comes out.

I’ll likely leave it until I get a new HDD and then do a complete reformat with dual booting.

It’s the same performance as Windows 7/Vista, because the main PC side of the OS (desktop etc) is basically Windows 7/Vista. So if a game runs well on Windows 7/Vista chances are the performance will be exactly the same on Windows 8.

Performance on Windows 8 is brilliant. Not having ANY issues at all. Things run smoothly, graphics are awesome and world PVP is great. I would really recommend Windows 8. Once used to it, you do not want back!

Novalitus.7382:

Once used to it, you do not want back!

As per my first post – why?

What’s actually gained by updating?

I don’t want to be told to update, I want to be told why it’s worth updating.

@Jestunhi.7429: no, its not. There is no way to disable Metro short of hacking the OS

@on-topic: the performance will be virtually the same as Windows 7

Jestunhi.7429:

Novalitus.7382:

Once used to it, you do not want back!

As per my first post – why?

What’s actually gained by updating?

I don’t want to be told to update, I want to be told why it’s worth updating.

Windows 8 has a smaller hard disk and ram footprint, and runs faster than even Win 7. Faster data transfer speeds and is just generally faster. Thats about it.

Win8 is fine once you get use to it but it crashes my GW2 Client whenever I change zones so I had to use my other computer on Win7. I’ve had other people say the same so there might be a conpatibility issue with it.