Guild Wars 2

There is all kinds of information on gear, and characters, and elite specializations here, but, I have not seen anything on what this HOT release is going to ask of our computers.

Like many of you, I have a frequently updated hand built gaming computer. And, I am already foreseeing some issues that I may have. The release may, in fact, upend a lot of player’s computers unexpectedly.

For starters, GW2 is currently 21.7GB. Yes, it is.

Solid State Drives:

I, like many, have a large secondary hard drive to put all my stuff on. But, as we know, the game needs to be on the SSD, along with the OS, to see any gains in load times, etc.. My 128GB SSD currently keeps going into the red, due to less than 10% free space. And, I am continually cleaning it up, and have now removed virtually everything that is not needed for my usage, except for GW2, and the OS. Programs and OS’s bloat, we can’t change that.

So, for starters; How many GB’s is HOT going to be? These kinds of details would be greatly appreciated, if they are made available to us BEFORE launch, so that we can have time to make necessary changes now, and not after the fact. Do I need to pony up for a 256K SSD, and spend all the time cloning/initializing drives, before launch? Or not? We can decide for ourselves. But only if we have some real info.

There are tons of other things that can affect all of us at launch. From chip-sets, to CPU’s, GPU’s, and internet connections. But, my point is made. If the details have been published somewhere, my apologies, I have not seen them, nor did my search find them.

If they have not, please give us some information that can truly tell us whatever we may, or may not need, to gear up our PC’s up for this release, BEFORE launch.

Cheers

scroll down all the way

http://buy.guildwars2.com/store/gw2/en_US/html/pbPage.heartofthorns?_ga=1.99932247.857709713.1443126700

Windows® XP Service Pack 3 or better
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
35 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

road range.6293:

There is all kinds of information on gear, and characters, and elite specializations here, but, I have not seen anything on what this HOT release is going to ask of our computers.

Like many of you, I have a frequently updated hand built gaming computer. And, I am already foreseeing some issues that I may have. The release may, in fact, upend a lot of player’s computers unexpectedly.

For starters, GW2 is currently 21.7GB. Yes, it is.

No upgrade on graphic card spec, but it the full HoT game is going to add an extra 13-GB or so (GW2 core game = 22-GB, GW2 core game and HoT together = 35-GB)

Thank you Jedi…

Clearly it’s definitely something people need to look at. …And there it is.

Clearly, I myself, need a new SSD before launch, or it will have to be installed on the clattering mechanical rust platter.

And thank you Sam for breaking it down to 22+13 to eliminate confusion.

Tyvm

@jediyoda
these requirements are a joke
the hit on gpu compared to old maps is insane. drytop/sw were just a prelude. i had to really lower graphic settings to achieve 60fps, whereas in vanilla maps i had stable 60 with 50-60% gpu usage at max, around 40+ in dt/sw with 99% usage. in verdant brink its 20-30 with 99% load. for 1080p you need at least gtx960, more looking toward 970 for nice framerate and game not looking like 2005 title.

zaw.6741:

@jediyoda
these requirements are a joke
the hit on gpu compared to old maps is insane. drytop/sw were just a prelude. i had to really lower graphic settings to achieve 60fps, whereas in vanilla maps i had stable 60 with 50-60% gpu usage at max, around 40+ in dt/sw with 99% usage. in verdant brink its 20-30 with 99% load. for 1080p you need at least gtx960, more looking toward 970 for nice framerate and game not looking like 2005 title.

Only during the day because of all the fog effects they put in.

I get 31-34fps in Verdant Brink during the day with a gtx660 but get the full 60fps (vertical sync) in the same local at night.

I fully expect the other maps to be a bit better and for this one to speed up once they update it to no longer contain flaming, smoke belching Pact wreckage.

Answer 1: Additional 13GB +10% of your hard drive total= Minimum Free Space needed for HOT.

I agree, those requirements listed are not for optimum game play. After all, they are: The “Minimum” requirements. But, it’s a helpful start. Clearly, that info already helped me. I would have been pretty upset when I realized I couldn’t download the expansion to my SSD. Hopefully, this info will save a few others some anguish too?

So, In the spirit of continuing it as a “what are we all going to really need” thread. (Beyond “the bare minimum requirements”) I say we solicit all the additional data we can here, while we still have a few weeks to go shopping!

WvW map is going to be a complete surprise for most of us, and I’m sure most of us would appreciate any useful PC loading data from those who have played it, or from Dev’s, or Anet. The deep Z axis, and gliding, creates some new guesswork on processing and loading variables there.

Reference points like those contributed above are very helpful IMO.

If you’ve played the new maps that most of us haven’t been able to play, and know what your talking about, lay some data down for us!

I guess everyone in the game kinda knows where their PC stands in the current game. But, with largely un-experienced new content, we all have some concerns. I think any helpful comparisons and observations would be welcome to all of us. More/Less CPU intensive? More/Less GPU intensive? Not much different? Compared to the old WvW maps, I saw…?

If a thread can help everyone get a realistic “heads up” before the actual download, and we still have3 weeks to shop… Heck yeah, tell us what you know!

My 2 Cents:-

I have a number of PCs spread over a ten year period.

Regard the OPs problem, it should be borne in mind that a SDD only effects the speed of the FIRST loading of a zone – and nothing else esp. gameplay. This is because Windows operates a cache system within the computers RAM. The overall size of GW2 is a problem best solved by buying a new additional SDD and putting only ‘games’ on it. The other reason this is advisable is that SDDs work at an optimum level when only half full – so having GW2 on the main drive will slightly slow everything else.

As to general performance there are really only two factors – giving that GW2 runs on a DX9.0c graphic engine no matter how powerful your graphics card is and is essentially single core.

(a) Quality of Display
(b) Number of people in zone.

Now (a) is very subjective, me I am happy with >30Hz some will insist on 60Hz, but whatever. Choose your graphic card as you like, but remember with 9.0c there is little point in splashing out lots of cash for a super fast graphics if your only purpose is GW2.

Now (b) is the key factor imo, as this affect gameplay. It is clear that the most important factor is your processor. If you amble around PvE areas you’ll have little need for a powerful processor. The key gate is when there are lots of people within the same area – a WvW zerg for example. However bear in mind that Anet can reduce the loading here at HoT launch merely by reducing the population cap on the zone instances and spawning more. Something they are very likely to do as the initial HoT zones will be heavily used.

My overall advice therefore is too ‘wait and see’, give HoT a few months before making any changes.

Also note that the minimum spec – a Intel Duo 2 Core 2.0GHz – is really for this game – fairly powerful even though it’s about 8 years old*. There are plenty of modern processor around that are not as powerful – albeit they will be a lot cooler and less expensive to run!

All in all my best advice – if you must prepare – is to replace the fans in your computer! If the fans are two or three years old this will be worth while at a pretty low cost and may benefit all aspects of computer’s performance – then again maybe not, but at least you should have a quieter computer!

In my experience an 8 year old PC will run at half the performance of a modern PC costing at least half the original price – and be cheaper to run. Giving that, I wouldn’t spend too much on ‘upgrades’.

*The drive over the last few years have been for more power at lower running temperatures, so with low end desktop processors you basically get the same power but at lower temperatures which affect the noise levels somewhat!

I’m sitting on a nvidia 250gts ;_;

Guess its now finally time to fix that.

Lol, the game needs to be on an SSD. No it dose not. In fact I have tested the load time of my pc, vs a friends pc with an SSD, and guess what. My PC loads faster, and his PC is a better spec.

Just go’s to show, not everything is better because someone says so.

Be aware: The original requirements at launch were 25GB, but after 3 years we are still not at the max; we have added about 3-4 GB in that period. New requirements are 35GB; it may be some time before we hit that max, if ever.

Thus, I don’t foresee a 10+ GB download on release day. Much of the data has been downloaded this past months, already, I’m sure. No other reason for the size of the patches that offer little new content, recently.

I put large apps like GW2 on my HDD. Whenever you have something that large most of it is data anyway and will either be cached in an os folder (which is hopefully on an SSD if you have one) or in memory.

My SSD is no slouch (enterprise-class and 1/2 TB unformatted) but it is the most expensive on-disk real estate on my computer. Anything that can does not go on it unless it is really small.

zaw.6741:

@jediyoda
these requirements are a joke
the hit on gpu compared to old maps is insane. drytop/sw were just a prelude. i had to really lower graphic settings to achieve 60fps, whereas in vanilla maps i had stable 60 with 50-60% gpu usage at max, around 40+ in dt/sw with 99% usage. in verdant brink its 20-30 with 99% load. for 1080p you need at least gtx960, more looking toward 970 for nice framerate and game not looking like 2005 title.

Tell that to Anet they want people playing on low end systems so they can to get many as players possible playing their game. They have said it many times!