Guild Wars 2

The existing game client is limited to 4GB of memory by the 32-bit addressing scheme.

I’ve seen countless posts on these forums regarding OOM issues, and the recommended solution is (more often than not) to reduce the graphics settings.
I’ve been affected by this limit myself.

It would seem to me that this expansion release might be an opportunity to rewrite the game client to take advantage of modern hardware and operating systems?

Until they give a 64bit client restarting the game after 2-3 hours helps a lot. Ever since I do that it hardly happens anymore even at maximum settings.

If wasn’t announce, so no.

It would be really needed to improve the core of the game for today computers also. Event old maps could be improved with many things with 64 bit, more players per map, bigger maps, less gaming lags, better graphics and so on. If they only working at the addon things and nothing is done to the main core of the game it would be a really mess.

Most people were already running 64-bit operating systems when the game came out. They probably have some reason to deliberately avoid it.

Most likely because WinXP was the most popular operating system and most people weren’t running the 64bit version of it.

Like 2.5 years ago? I’ve seen statistics that say otherwise. The large majority of people have been on 64-bit for some time now.
I think right now the percent of people on 32-bit is in the single digits.
They were Steam surveys, I’m trying to find them.

clarkcd.6532:

Most likely because WinXP was the most popular operating system and most people weren’t running the 64bit version of it.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

Game launched in 2012 Q3. Most ppl that use win xp doesnt use it for games, and if they do… then its their problem at this point. We cant hold back tech cus few ppl decided to play games on a museum pc.

http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-7-64-bit-now-used-by-majority-of-steam-owners
That discusses the Steam Survey from 3 years ago. At the time only ~30% of users had 32-bit systems.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/265033/proportion-of-operating-systems-used-on-the-online-gaming-platform-steam/
That’s the only link I could find to the survey from last year, but the 32-bit systems they actually list have dropped by well over half from 3 years ago.

What was the 32bit/64bit ratio when they started the development of this game?

When they started programming for GW2, it was no later than 2007, possibly earlier.
64 bit systems were pretty uncommon at the time.

In Anet’s defense, I do not know of any games that began production pre-2007 that have 64 bit clients.

I have heard that the GW2 engine is based on the GW1 engine but can not remember where. That started production in 2001.

It would be a worthy investment if they can squeeze some performance out of such a change. GW2’s performance is really disappointing compared to it’s contemporaries, whereas GW1 stood above the pack in its time.

They started development of GW2 in roughly 2007, at which point 64-bit systems were quite rare; you had XP 64-bit edition which almost nobody used because hardware drivers hardly existed, and Vista 64-bit which was a little more popular (about 30-40% of Vista users)… but had only been out for a few months and I’m sure you remember what its overall uptake was like.

So… it would be maybe 5-10% 64-bit total. Which would explain why they concentrated on 32-bit, yes. It’s still quite common for new software not to have a 64-bit version; most of the time, it isn’t really needed. Even games only occasionally ship with 64-bit binaries – GW2 is far from alone there – even though they often could use the extra memory.

Miriam.2506:

It would be really needed to improve the core of the game for today computers also. Event old maps could be improved with many things with 64 bit, more players per map, bigger maps, less gaming lags, better graphics and so on. If they only working at the addon things and nothing is done to the main core of the game it would be a really mess.

Bigger maps and more players per map has very little to do with the game client though. Better graphics aren’t necessarily improved by 64-bit either, you’re more likely to get graphical improvements by moving away from DirectX 9 (and then actually implementing better graphics).

Lucky.9421:

When they started programming for GW2, it was no later than 2007, possibly earlier.
64 bit systems were pretty uncommon at the time.

Fun fact:

32 bit processors for the PC was basicly obsolete in 2004, none where being made anymore. Just about every processor since has been 64 bit.

The only ones that has been holding back 64 bit and crippling PC memory allocation is Microsoft with their refusal to scrap the 32 bit/64 bit division of Windows. If Windows installed itself as 64 bit on a 64 bit CPU and 32 bit on a 32 bit CPU… No one would have 32 bit.

Do you how ridiculously hard is something like rewrite whole engine from 32 to 64 bit? Making whole game from scratch will be easier.

Weird, I’ve never received that error. Not even with ~max settings and 6h+ of running, not even encountered degrading performance over time.

Grimwolf.7163:

Like 2.5 years ago? I’ve seen statistics that say otherwise. The large majority of people have been on 64-bit for some time now.
I think right now the percent of people on 32-bit is in the single digits.
They were Steam surveys, I’m trying to find them.

The game launched 2.5 years ago, but was in development since 2007. Around that time, they probably wanted to target Windows XP users, but the problem was, a lot can change in 5 years.

Dawdler.8521:

Lucky.9421:

When they started programming for GW2, it was no later than 2007, possibly earlier.
64 bit systems were pretty uncommon at the time.

Fun fact:

32 bit processors for the PC was basicly obsolete in 2004, none where being made anymore. Just about every processor since has been 64 bit.

The only ones that has been holding back 64 bit and crippling PC memory allocation is Microsoft with their refusal to scrap the 32 bit/64 bit division of Windows. If Windows installed itself as 64 bit on a 64 bit CPU and 32 bit on a 32 bit CPU… No one would have 32 bit.

The CPU probably supported 64-bit, but operating systems were still 32-bit for people who bought prebuilt computers (most did at the time, and still do now). The only ones who probably used 64-bit OS’s were people who custom built computers (which was more expensive at the time). I bought one of the first available quad core CPUs for desktops, and that came with a 32-bit OS.

Rozbuska.5263:

Do you how ridiculously hard is something like rewrite whole engine from 32 to 64 bit? Making whole game from scratch will be easier.

Even WoW, a 10 year+ old game offers DX11 and 64 bit nowadays.

I’m really hoping for a 64bit release… My PC’s fans are spinning like crazy cats after a bag of peppermints.

Graphics card is okay, it doesn’t heat much and doesn’t keep any noise what so ever, but the other fans around the case are just screaming for the game session to stop. Anything doesn’t heat more than in kittenual gaming session along with any other game, but the fans are cooling, why in earth is this? – I can’t say, but it’s annoying and a bit concerning.

Lucky.9421:

I have heard that the GW2 engine is based on the GW1 engine but can not remember where.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars_2

Greetings.

Dawdler.8521:

The only ones that has been holding back 64 bit and crippling PC memory allocation is Microsoft with their refusal to scrap the 32 bit/64 bit division of Windows. If Windows installed itself as 64 bit on a 64 bit CPU and 32 bit on a 32 bit CPU… No one would have 32 bit.

It wasn’t totally free. The memory requirements for 64-bit Windows have always been higher than 32-bit – I don’t know exactly why this is, although at least some of it might derive from needing double the memory space for pointers. Also, 64-bit versions of Windows can’t run 16-bit applications except in a virtual machine, which may have prevented some of those fabled “enterprises” from adopting it for a while, since neither getting those old 1990s applications modernized nor setting up VDI is likely to be cheap.

Of course, even if the computing world had moved over to 64-bit faster, it probably wouldn’t have made much difference to the number of 64-bit applications coming out – the vast majority of new PCs are running a 64-bit OS these days, and almost all Windows applications are still 32-bit and only 32-bit. Presumably because compiling for 64-bit is additional work and they try not to use more than 2-3 GB of memory anyway.
But then there’s Firefox, which I could really use the additional memory capacity on, and that’s still 32-bit only (save for unofficial builds). From what I hear Chrome is the same way, but it at least uses sandboxing that splits it into multiple processes, which each have a separate virtual address space…

ProDexorite.9620:

I’m really hoping for a 64bit release… My PC’s fans are spinning like crazy cats after a bag of peppermints.

Graphics card is okay, it doesn’t heat much and doesn’t keep any noise what so ever, but the other fans around the case are just screaming for the game session to stop. Anything doesn’t heat more than in kittenual gaming session along with any other game, but the fans are cooling, why in earth is this? – I can’t say, but it’s annoying and a bit concerning.

64bit release won’t change that, it’s not somekind of magical technology that makes a game run smoother. It just allows for more memory to be allocated.

Grimwolf.7163:

http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-7-64-bit-now-used-by-majority-of-steam-owners
That discusses the Steam Survey from 3 years ago. At the time only ~30% of users had 32-bit systems.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/265033/proportion-of-operating-systems-used-on-the-online-gaming-platform-steam/
That’s the only link I could find to the survey from last year, but the 32-bit systems they actually list have dropped by well over half from 3 years ago.

~30% is still a pretty big chunk of your potential market to exclude entirely, particularly since in a number of other ways GW2 seems to have not been aimed for people with top-end rigs.

Once it’s out, it would probably be considered rather rude to kick people up by raising the minimum requirements. That said, if it’s reasonably practical to make a 64-bit client, it might be worthwhile offering one as an option for the majority that can handle it.

To keep it really short: 64-bit client will offer non-existent performance benefits if they don’t bump up the RAM requirements from 2GB. The most tangible benefit from 64-bit client comes from the ability to allocate more than 4GB of memory at once. A 64-bit processor can run 32-bit code at native speed anyway, and allocate up to 3.5GB of memory. A 32-bit system can do the same if compiled with the appropriate switches on. As it stands, the game tries to keep the allocations to that 2GB cap.

DirectX 11 would offer nearly no benefits at all unless the processor requirements are bumped to i7 levels, since the new features basically require actual HT support among other things.

Additionally all 32-bit optimizations would have to be re-designed, re-implemented and re-tested. Otherwise what’s the point when the code runs at exactly native speed on a 64-bit processor?