Guild Wars 2

Hey, I’m thinking of playing on the EU WvW server to mix things up from playing on NA servers and wondering if there is much lag for someone connecting to an EU WvW match from the west coast NA.

I’m also wondering what a good EU server to transfer to would be. I just tried out Fort Aspenwood on the NA T2 and it’s a bunch of people just messing around and still beating the other two servers anyway. Guessing a big population imbalance?

Any good competition in EU? Looking for something that will be fun, not just a boring winfest server.

If you want a challenge then Tier 1-4 is the most active and most fun place…. If you do not want a “winfest”, stay clear of Seafarers Rest (SFR). Your best bet would be Desolation, Far Shiverpeaks or Gandara. These three is all international EU, meaning the majority of players will be communicating in english. The German and French servers do have english speaking players and guilds, but they are mostly just that, german and french.

Tier 1 and Tier 2 mingle every week. While there is a huge difference in maximum POTENTIAL coverage, the day to day coverage of these tiers are not too far apart. While during leagues T1 and T2 EU is very similar to T1 and T2 NA. In short, you aint got a chance vs the higher Tier.

As a EU player who spent almost a year in NA, and during a recent trip to the states i also played from NA on a EU server i can tell you from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, that the lag is a myth.
However!!!!
If you have bad ping with NA servers (just open the game menu, it will show in the lower right corner), you will have even worse ping lag with EU servers (because, there is a puddle of water inbetween, rather large puddle). However if your internet connection is stable and you have low ping with NA servers, then you will have perfectly playable conditions in EU.
HOWEVER!!!!!!!!!!
The distance between NA and EU does impact one major issue – Server lag.
If the game servers themselves lags (like in 3 way SMC battles) then your lag will be much worse then for EU players, this can sometimes cause you to be left behind by your train and does cause a lot of frustrating “EHRMAGAWD IM TRAPPED” moments….
My personal solution for this was to play periphery roles, elementalist with mistform and lightning flash usually allow you to get out, while still contributing to your zerg.

For roaming, EU T3 and below can be very very boring for NA players, unless you want to play during EU prime, which is around 7pm (early) to 00:30am (late) – thats 1 pm to 16:30 pm Eastern time (+6 GMT). However there is a few russian and american guilds operating in NA prime over in EU T1 and T2, they are not enough players to create a permanent zergfest, mostly it is one map blob running around, but they are enough to cause entertaining battles.

Prysin.8542:

As a EU player who spent almost a year in NA, and during a recent trip to the states i also played from NA on a EU server i can tell you from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, that the lag is a myth.

Except your “personal experience” is not representative of everyone’s personal experience, there is a reason why games use regional data centres, and it is not because of the extra hassle and expense, it is because of physics, less hubs to go through, etc.

I remember a certain PvP player streaming his first time back on NA after playing on EU for a long time, one of the points he made was, “it is so nice being able to dodge skill X again”, maybe it isn’t a problem if you are mediocre or terrible, but there is a noticeable difference if you can actually dodge / interrupt skills.

Edit: Someone in the PvP forum recently started a thread detailing the issues they have playing cross region – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Delay-Any-Plans-For-Ppl-EU-playing-on-NA

As an EU player with an NA account, my ping is around 130-160ms.
I do get more lag than I do with playing on my EU account, but I dont play on my NA account much so cannot say how it is like now or in big fights.

My guild went to NA for a season over a year ago, and though some people had trouble, most of us didnt notice that big a change and played as we would on EU servers.

In the end in this case it does also depend on your ISP, so the only way you will find out is to transfer and see.

As for which servers, I would say choose Piken or Gandara, unless you want to go with the busy T1 servers.
I doubt you want to join a german server, so the next lower options are Gunnars or Aurora; but I can tell you now you will constantly be fighting at least 1 german server each week, and in some horrendous cases 2! If you like fights, then you definately do not want to be in a matchup with these servers. They will either bore you to death or steamroll over you when they outman you 3-1 and then have the gall to laugh at defeating you with their huge zerg on to of using several ACs.

Thanks for all the info!

I think I might want to join a T2 range server. Maybe Desolation or another one?

What interests me about Desolation is that from looking at the leaderboard thing it seems that Desolation jumps back and forth between kitten a lot?

This really appeals to me as matchups are really stagnant on NA T1. I like the idea of actually playing different servers each week. :P

Between Desolation, Far Shiverpeaks, and Gandara, do they all get matched up with different servers each week?

I’m on the West Coast and have played EU. The lag can be pretty bad at times, nothing like if you were an East Coast player. It depends how the routing and your ISP is. I avg 180ms ping, but TCP latency sometimes spikes to 400ms and I’ll end up dc’ing. It seems to also change depending on the time of day with EU prime being playable but late night PST barely able to keep a connection. You’ll have to look into a VPN solution to help with routing if it gets too frustrating. I believe a lot of the OCX players have a similar experience when they play.

Btw, I recommend a T2 server for the variety. Kodash myself.

Brazilian player here attending FSP (EU) since day 1.

For the most part, the lag is pretty tolerable (ping is roughly 200-300. Many will think this unberable, but we have the kittentiest internet in the world, but its playable).

Only on very large scale fights (60 × 60) my ping skyrockets to 2.5k – 3k. and yeah, thats the gist of it: massive lag and sometimes DC.

overral: not sure if its Anet’s fault (server and stuff) or my internet, but it doesnt bother me that much.