Guild Wars 2

Greetings Arenanet,

I enjoy this game a great deal and really like the combat mechanics you have developed. Unfortunately, I play from New Zealand and the resulting latency simply makes PvP quite an uphill battle for me. While the latency can also be a bother in PvE as well, it really shows in PvP when I am hit with five or six skills in the time it takes for me to get two or three activated. With active defenses, this often means that while I react on time, the latency simply makes the skill activation too little, too late.

I have played MMORPGs and PvPed in them before, but most of them have some sort of global cooldown mechanism which can help (but not remove entirely) the effect of playing on servers located on the other side of the planet. Guild Wars 2 has no such mechanism to level the “latency playing field”. I had hoped from reading about the game development that players with very low latency would not enjoy the benefits in PvP that players did in Guild Wars, but alas this is not so.

Now, I know you cannot move the servers and I know you cannot do anything about physical limitations. While I would LOVE to see Australian/New Zealand servers, I know that possibility is probably quite low. So, I was wondering, do you have any plans to help people from the Oceanic time zone with this disadvantage?

Many MMORPGs designate certain servers or worlds as being “Oceanic” for players from across the ocean, but as the mists and sPvP are across all game worlds, I don’t see that as a viable solution for Guild Wars 2. You could possibly designate certain arenas as being for Oceanic players, but there would be no guarantee that only Oceanic time zone players would play them.

I enjoy this game very much, but am getting a bit frustrated in sPvP with the disadvantage my latency gives me.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

Thanks.