Guild Wars 2

I was just wondering if there was a reason behind the decision to not have oceanic servers. A lot of the people i know that play mmorpgs refuse to play gw2 for this reason alone they have no problem with the game its self actually most of them prefer to the games they play, but because of worries such as ping and never finding people on at the times they play refuse to get the game. If anyway one could answer this question for it would be much appreciated thanks.
P.s my understanding is that there is a large oceanic player base on a couple of existing servers such as sea of sorrow i believe has the biggest player base from the oceanic region.

knack.8475:

I was just wondering if there was a reason behind the decision to not have oceanic servers. A lot of the people i know that play mmorpgs refuse to play gw2 for this reason alone they have no problem with the game its self actually most of them prefer to the games they play, but because of worries such as ping and never finding people on at the times they play refuse to get the game. If anyway one could answer this question for it would be much appreciated thanks.
P.s my understanding is that there is a large oceanic player base on a couple of existing servers such as sea of sorrow i believe has the biggest player base from the oceanic region.

More fool them then. I’ve hardly got any problems with ping and there’s always people on my server (IoJ).

If they were going to have an Oceanic server then they would have had one at the start. Too late now.

Right now Anet is focusing on its China release. In a recent interview with a fan site, they mentioned alot of markets they might release at a later stage, though, like Brazil, Russia or SE Asia.

You’d need three servers to make Australia a viable place for a server. That’s for WvW. There wouldn’t be enough players to fill three servers and WvW would be even more dead on off hours than it is now.

Those servers would become deserted as those into WvW transferred to other servers to get a decent amount of people.

I’m in Australia and I do just fine, most of the time anyway, playing on the US servers.

Because having a singular server for Oceanic players would screw up how WvW works.
Also as someone who plays in New Zealand, I have never ever had a single latency issue.

Wanze – that’s kind of a differen’t issue. Those “markets” consist of separate markets to Western gamers, all of which require localisation etc. Oceanic countries are western countries, all of whom are already playing on the US servers and speak English as a first language.

One of my officers lives in Australia:

• the load and reaction times are almost identical to mine.
• even with the 14 hour time difference we play together almost every day
• population depends on the server but on ours there are people everywhere all the time

It sounds like your “worried” friends worries are unjustified.

In my guild, I think 40% are from SE area, mainly Singapore and Malaysia, we play on Henge of Denravi and no one complains that the game is empty when they play.
Ping isn’t an issue, only if you are trying to play tPvP in professional competitive way, otherwise having ping of 20ms or 200ms is barely noticeable at most.

Sea of Sorrows is pretty much the unofficial Oceanic server so you shouldn’t have trouble finding people to play with there. Not sure about the ping although I don’t think ping affects the game that much.

Sundar.1735:

Sea of Sorrows is pretty much the unofficial Oceanic server so you shouldn’t have trouble finding people to play with there. Not sure about the ping although I don’t think ping affects the game that much.

Actually no. This is incorrect.

I’ve played Guild Wars 2 in Australia. Then traveled to a friends place in the USA and played Guild Wars 2 there.

The difference is night and day.

No rubber banding when using things such as infiltrator’s arrow.
No delay on skill activation.
I was actually able to counter my opponent’s moves in PvP with out being handicapped by lag.

i find it funny that only 1 Oceanic player actually posted………the rest were from somewhere else telling me i don’t have a problem…..typical, and yes we are apart of western culture….but were in the south east…….just because we speak the same language doesnt mean we share the same internet connection…………. all i was saying was i think its unfair that that american and European servers get the credit for our playerbase and im sure they could fill 3 servers with players from the oceanic region we take up a good 15 servers for some other MMO’s……..look i dont really care the only reason i posted it because i thought the subject was worth some attention….but all you people trying tell me its fine when you dont even live here has annoyed me a bit.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

One of my officers lives in Australia:

• the load and reaction times are almost identical to mine.
• even with the 14 hour time difference we play together almost every day
• population depends on the server but on ours there are people everywhere all the time

It sounds like your “worried” friends worries are unjustified.

i dont think its to much to ask to be able to play at a reasonable time if your people want to stay up till 2am playing with guildies thats there prerogative but most need sleep at some point……

zenleto.6179:

knack.8475:

I was just wondering if there was a reason behind the decision to not have oceanic servers. A lot of the people i know that play mmorpgs refuse to play gw2 for this reason alone they have no problem with the game its self actually most of them prefer to the games they play, but because of worries such as ping and never finding people on at the times they play refuse to get the game. If anyway one could answer this question for it would be much appreciated thanks.
P.s my understanding is that there is a large oceanic player base on a couple of existing servers such as sea of sorrow i believe has the biggest player base from the oceanic region.

More fool them then. I’ve hardly got any problems with ping and there’s always people on my server (IoJ).

If they were going to have an Oceanic server then they would have had one at the start. Too late now.

I’m also on IoJ. It’s basically close to half and half NA and Oceanic.

There aren’t enough oceanic players to warrant Anet spending all that money on oceanic servers. Oceanic numbers are also the first to dry up in every online game so even if they did have it at launch, it would be pointless to have by now.

My guess is it’s too expensive to justify. For them to have Oceanic servers they would have to have at least one physical computer somewhere in the region, employ at least one person to maintain it, pay for space to house it, power etc.

I assume someone somewhere has done the maths, estimated the number of potential players who are currently put off by the connection speed (or simply the lack of a dedicated server) based on research done on other games and concluded that it’s not worth it.

Plus it’d make WvW pretty boring. As someone said there are barely enough Oceanic players to fill 3 servers, so you’d be stuck playing the same 2 opponents day in and day out. At least this way you can be a servers night squad and be the ones counted on to make a difference in a close match-up.

Azure Prower.8701:

Sundar.1735:

Sea of Sorrows is pretty much the unofficial Oceanic server so you shouldn’t have trouble finding people to play with there. Not sure about the ping although I don’t think ping affects the game that much.

Actually no. This is incorrect.

I’ve played Guild Wars 2 in Australia. Then traveled to a friends place in the USA and played Guild Wars 2 there.

The difference is night and day.

No rubber banding when using things such as infiltrator’s arrow.
No delay on skill activation.
I was actually able to counter my opponent’s moves in PvP with out being handicapped by lag.

This doesn’t really mean anything. It’s entirely possible for two people next door to each other, or even in the same house, to have different connection speeds and lag issues. It depends on many, many things other than where in the world you are. Your computer, the cable connecting it to the router, the router itself, the cable from your house to the main network, that network’s cables, how the ISP handles data (do they throttle you back at peak times for example), the weather…

Of course the same applies to everyone else posting in this thread too. Aside from going around measuring everyone’s internet connection and checking all the different factors individually all you can really do is take a general consensus.

knack.8475:

i find it funny that only 1 Oceanic player actually posted………the rest were from somewhere else telling me i don’t have a problem…..typical, and yes we are apart of western culture….but were in the south east…….just because we speak the same language doesnt mean we share the same internet connection…………. all i was saying was i think its unfair that that american and European servers get the credit for our playerbase and im sure they could fill 3 servers with players from the oceanic region we take up a good 15 servers for some other MMO’s……..look i dont really care the only reason i posted it because i thought the subject was worth some attention….but all you people trying tell me its fine when you dont even live here has annoyed me a bit.

Three Oceanics posted, at least. Myself, Vayne and FlamingFoxx.

New Zealander here – I play on Sea of Sorrows (the unofficial Oceanic server) and it’s absolutely fine.

In fact I was go so far as to say having an unofficial one is better than an official one as the mix means that the world is populated 24/7.

No lag issues at all for me.

I’m sure if I played from the states with 5 times lower ping it would give me a few extra milliseconds to react, but I can win fights just fine as I am now.

simple reason is there is not enough players to fund such a server in the area..

I haven’t had any probs – played on anvil rock NA – no probs. Playing now on Jade quarry NA and yes LA lag’s every now and then and the only thing i have seen when it really gets hammered is scarlets event when everyone was doing them… lag was amazingly massive..

Australian here. I play on Tarnished Coast.

There IS a noticeable delay between your actions and those of US-based players (it’s about a 100ms difference), but most of the time it doesn’t impact meaningfully on gameplay unless you’re playing sPvP/WvW and you need precise reaction times for interrupts and the like. (And you can kind of lead opponents if you do.)

I live in NZ here, and the lag can get CRAZY. My good days still have at least a 1sec delay between inputs. Also, as someone else has already stated you get rubberband just by using normal skills on Thief. (infiltrators arrow and #3 on SB)

You’ll really only notice how much of a disadvantage you’re at in competitive PvP.

There’s no reason for them to get oceanic servers. I played on the SWTOR oceanic server and I think the GW2 oceanic servers would suffer the same fate, over paying for the service and not enough oceanic players and for two entirely different reasons. The secondary one other then the obvious lack of oceanic players, a lot of Oceanic players, including me wouldn’t move to them, because I’m use to some delay due to the location difference and It would be a ghost town.

Danikat.8537:

My guess is it’s too expensive to justify. For them to have Oceanic servers they would have to have at least one physical computer somewhere in the region, employ at least one person to maintain it, pay for space to house it, power etc.

I assume someone somewhere has done the maths, estimated the number of potential players who are currently put off by the connection speed (or simply the lack of a dedicated server) based on research done on other games and concluded that it’s not worth it.

Plus it’d make WvW pretty boring. As someone said there are barely enough Oceanic players to fill 3 servers, so you’d be stuck playing the same 2 opponents day in and day out. At least this way you can be a servers night squad and be the ones counted on to make a difference in a close match-up.

Azure Prower.8701:

Sundar.1735:

Sea of Sorrows is pretty much the unofficial Oceanic server so you shouldn’t have trouble finding people to play with there. Not sure about the ping although I don’t think ping affects the game that much.

Actually no. This is incorrect.

I’ve played Guild Wars 2 in Australia. Then traveled to a friends place in the USA and played Guild Wars 2 there.

The difference is night and day.

No rubber banding when using things such as infiltrator’s arrow.
No delay on skill activation.
I was actually able to counter my opponent’s moves in PvP with out being handicapped by lag.

This doesn’t really mean anything. It’s entirely possible for two people next door to each other, or even in the same house, to have different connection speeds and lag issues. It depends on many, many things other than where in the world you are. Your computer, the cable connecting it to the router, the router itself, the cable from your house to the main network, that network’s cables, how the ISP handles data (do they throttle you back at peak times for example), the weather…

Of course the same applies to everyone else posting in this thread too. Aside from going around measuring everyone’s internet connection and checking all the different factors individually all you can really do is take a general consensus.

Thanks Arm Chair technician.

But I think it has to do with more so the distance from the server. Seeing as it has to make a jump across an ocean.

It’s more than just distance to the server, it’s the number of gateways and the time it takes to go through each one, both ways, within a given time. 300-400ms isn’t uncommon for Australia, the US enjoys 10-150ms pretty much from anywhere on the continent. Meanwhile us Aussies have to get the signal out (around 5-10 gateways, depending on connection and provider), and a further 20-ish gateways to get to Anet once the signal crosses the pond.

Yes distance is a killer, but gateways for the signal to go through are where the real stumbling blocks are. If even one of them falls behind for any reason (it’s happened before), there’s another potential 1sec delay for us.

Mainland Australia is (arguably) the most remote place from any GW/GW2 server, and EU servers lag harder for us here than the US. Quality of Service is ridiculous for us when it comes to PvP and WvW, which is why I generally don’t bother with either. I don’t need the grief.

knack.8475:

i find it funny that only 1 Oceanic player actually posted………the rest were from somewhere else telling me i don’t have a problem…..typical, and yes we are apart of western culture….but were in the south east…….just because we speak the same language doesnt mean we share the same internet connection…………. all i was saying was i think its unfair that that american and European servers get the credit for our playerbase and im sure they could fill 3 servers with players from the oceanic region we take up a good 15 servers for some other MMO’s……..look i dont really care the only reason i posted it because i thought the subject was worth some attention….but all you people trying tell me its fine when you dont even live here has annoyed me a bit.

I count at least two Oceanic players having posted, maybe more.