Guild Wars 2

I’m considering buying the 1800 or so gems to transfer my characters to a new, more RP active server (I’ve heard good things about Tarnished Coast in this regard). However, I’ll be leaving some friends behind on the old server who I would still want to play with. I’ve heard that it’s possible to “guest” on another server with someone, and I’d like to know how this works, and how easy it is to continue to play with my friends.

Taken from http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World

Guesting

Guesting allows you to play with friends on other worlds in the same region without transferring. Guests retain guild bonuses from their home world and any influence earned will accrue to their home world’s guild.² Guests cannot participate in World versus World and do not receive any Power of the Mists bonuses. As might be expected, if you guest to a full world, you increase your chances of ending up in overflow.

Players on North American home worlds cannot guest on European worlds or vice versa.³
How to guest

From the character selection screen, choose World Selection. Choose the world to which you wish to guest and click on the Guest button (next to the Transfer button). After confirming your choice, the game will place a suitcase icon symbol next to the guest world. The next character you play will be guesting on that server and continue to do so until you logout, change characters, or restart the current character. To guest again (or with another character), repeat the same steps.

You are eligible to guest as many times as you like, but you may only choose up to two guest worlds every 24 hours.
Guesting alternatives

There are three situations in which you can play with people in other worlds without guesting to their server. You must be in the same party and everyone must be from the same region (North America or EU).⁴

Any overflow — right-click on a character’s name in the party menu and choose, join in [zone].
Dungeons and Fractals of the Mists — to enter the same instance, all five party members must be in the zone that contains the dungeon before entering.
Personal stories — with the same restriction as for dungeons.

My question was more about if anyone had experience with having friends on other servers, and if being on a different server had any effect on how convenient it was to quest with them. From the sound of the wiki’s explanation, though, it seems rather straightforward and easy.

Try it and find out. Pick a server to guest to and see what it’s like.

But basically you pick a server, pick a character and then it’s just like you’ve transferred to that server temporarily. The only thing is you can’t do WvW there and if you open the guild bank it will still show you the one for the server you’re actually on.

Oh and you need to remember to select your server each time you log in because it’s reset when you log out and if you don’t specify you go back to your home server.

Thanks! I’ll follow the suggestion.

Acheron.9370:

My question was more about if anyone had experience with having friends on other servers, and if being on a different server had any effect on how convenient it was to quest with them. From the sound of the wiki’s explanation, though, it seems rather straightforward and easy.

A member (and friend) of my guild transferred to another server to be on a better WvW battle. After about a few weeks he was perma guesting back to my server (his old server) so we could level alts, farm, dungeons, dragons, and do story lines together. When my guild would WvW, he would be miserable. Turns out, it was more fun to loose with your friends than win with strangers and PuGs. He saved his money for a couple of months to transfer back to the old server.

Long story short, it’s easy to guest and hook up with friends, as long as you don’t want to WvW together.

When I first purchased the game, I chose EB without looking into it much. I kind of wish I’d done more research first.

Later, I heard good things about Tarnished Coast so I started guesting there and really liked it, a lot more than EB.

I mainly play on TC now as a guest. It’s a slight hassle — you have to go through a few additional mouse clicks when you log in, but generally it’s no big deal.

However, as others have noted, if you can only do WvW on your home server. So I’m actually thinking about paying for the transfer to TC so I can play WvW with the friends I’m making there.