Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow WvWers, I play WvW almost exclusively and I’m from the states. I currently play from the hours of 3pm-10pm EST on weekdays and any time during the weekend. I’ll be starting a new shift and will be playing 12am-6am EST once that starts up in a month or so. Both time frames are either late OCX/Prior tp NA prime or SEA prime time.

My questions:
-Would I just be better off on an English speaking EU server?
-What are the fights like on EU?
-What servers are primarily english speaking?
-As an NA resident, would my ping be outrageous, skill lag, etc?
Should I just try and find a late night NA guild?
-Is SEA time mostly PPT (as it is in NA) on EU?

Thanks for any and all responses!

Your playing time would be prime time on EU – I don’t think you’d have to worry about night capping at all. You probably would be better off on EU (than NA) if you’re mainly into zerg fights. Roaming is more usual during the rest of the time.
Also: I played from EU on NA and my ping was around 200, from EU on EU it’s ~50. It’s ok for zerg fights but not so much as a solo roamer with little AoE.

The funny thing is that I told my friend who’s into gvg that I liked NA zerg fights a lot better as they weren’t so much “pirate ship” (but alas that has been a while ago) here on the forums it’s always “the pirate ship meta we got from NA” and his guild fought an NA guild the other day and they were a lot more melee than anything he’s ever seen.
So; It’s a lot of pirate ship around here. But if you join one of the higher ranked servers you’re probably good.

Edit: When I was on NA we usually had 24/7 coverage, although we’ve been few – on EU a lot of servers are really dead for a few hours each day. But again that might be different in gold and if you’re playing from 8 pm to 12 am it shouldn’t concern you.

Edit²: You can look up the “English” servers on millenium -the blue flags and I think the main language is also shown in game when you’re in “World selection”.
Our English isn’t perfect, but we mainly communicate in English. With quite a lot of Finnish in between.

Thanks for the info Jana! I heard 200 ping was the norm, I wonder if starting a free account there would help me get an idea of what sort of lag issues might occur before making the switch. My work shift is going to be pretty odd and I doubt I’ll be able to find a zerg or havoc guild on NA that runs when I’m on so I’ll more than likely be going EU for some fights (pending a lag test). If I can’t play there due to lag then I’d rather find an Asian guild here and just PPT lol it’d be better than waiting 3 secs for my skills to go off! Again thanks for the in depth answer

Only problem with free accounts is you have to level up to 60 to get into WvW.

If this is a brand new account you’re making, you can easily delete a lower level toon and test it out that way (paid accounts get immediate access to WvW) .. if it’s no good, delete the toon and move to EU/NA.

3-10 is also good times for NA, but it really depends on your play style.

NA tends to have bigger blobs of players for their prime time (I believe 7pm EST onward) and also at odd times outside of the time you’ve indicated. EU tends to be very quiet after 8pm EST onward for most servers (barring the top three). You still get fights, but it’s not the same activity as NA.

That said, I play EU as an NA player during your time period, and have found it’s rarely dull. In fact if you do play on later as the crowds start to go to sleep, you’ll become part of a tight-knit night community.

EU is more relaxed when it comes to the game. NA tends to be more competitive about ranks, etc., but even that’s changing. NA will have set server matches almost every week — you know going in, you’re likely to fight the same server. EU is more volatile and has changing matches nearly every week from Silver league upward.

Hey thanks for the input Jayne!! Very true, I didn’t know having separate toons on different regions was possible, I’ll give that a try! And yeah, my current 3-10pm EST schedule isn’t terrible for NA atm, though a lot of guilds on NA like to START at 9pm EST so that gives me maybe an hour of solid play. Once my work schedule changes to 2nd shift (3pm-11pm) I’ll be playing from midnight into the early morning, which will be a ghost town on NA, aside from people on my same schedule or night owls lol. This dilemma has opened up the possibility of going to an EU server in the hopes of seeing some action that late at night.

I agree most NA guilds and servers are extremely hardcore which tends to suck the fun out of WvW, and T3 up, the matches are fixed, so some change and facing different guilds and servers each week would keep it exciting.

You say it’s quiet from 8pm EST on? That’s not good :o

Mord.9237:

You say it’s quiet from 8pm EST on? That’s not good :o

Quiet in comparison to NA.

There’s still activity, a lot of it .. just smaller scale. So instead of facing a blob of 60 players, you’d be dealing with a small-blob of 20 or so. Sometimes more, depends on the server.

And, in fact, night crew on EU are coveted people, it tends to be a smaller circle of people you can actually get to know and cooperate with — eh, I just like it better. (I have accounts on both NA and EU).

But everyone’s different. NA can be awesome for some, EU can be awesome for some. The person suggesting you test both out is probably wisest — because then you’re making your mind up for yourself.

P.S. You cannot have a toon on NA and a toon on EU on the same account. You have to pick. But you CAN delete all existing toons and move to a new region without fees/issue. It’s basically starting from scratch — but if it’s a paid account, you can just create a level one toon and hang out in WvW right away to see if you like it. If it’s free to play, you have to go through the effort of levelling to 60 before you can test it out.

I’m from EU and never played on NA but I really like it here. I play on gandara, it has a very nice community and is pretty active. Prime time is from 7pm CEST till midnight. You will get many nice fights, everybody speaks english of course. Maybe some commanders (for example from scandinavia) not as well as the British but good enough.

During the day there aren’t many people but it is still fun. You’ll have to convert the time to see if it fits your schedule.
We also get many different matchups which is pretty nice.

Proof that EU WvW really IS a Monty Python sketch

My guild’s raid times start at 4-5am EST as an OCX guild. Checked out EU servers during that time. It is very, very quiet.

Your new playing time will be late NA -> OCX. It will be around 2-3 hours before SEA prime after you finish. It will be no where near EU prime.

tl;dr stay on NA servers, get into T1 or T2.