Guild Wars 2

The first time this happened to me, was at Jormag. After that, it’s every couple of days in WvW. I’m on Jade Quarry. I have not been able to identify any particular map being more susceptible to this. But, these have ony happened to me in the last month.

First time i was going to conquer the stonemist castle in WvW, killed the legendary guy and then woo woo woo crash!

Very frustrating.

rooster.2745:

id advise to hold off playing until is fixed , have read about this , is a virus that attacks through the sound cards an eventually infects your powerpack and or grafix card , thousands have been infected before. was eventually caught, a but not till many had to sepend cash to fix their computer

Honestly, this is the most ridiculous explanation I have ever heard for this particular bug.

Do you have any sort of proof to back-up this claim of yours?

I very much doubt it Siliconhobbit, if it was it would have to be encoded inside the game by the makers, it is therefore not true.

This is still an issue and hasn’t been fixed yet. It is an everyday occurrence during heavy sound periods. Many others complain of the same problem. Could we have an update on the expected delivery for the fix that was touted three months ago? To be honest not having any sound during these bouts would be preferable to the present situation.

Something else worth mentioning was that this bug made the Lost Shores event pretty much completely unplayable, unless you didn’t mind annoying sounds in your ear instead of expected game sounds. My suggestion to ArenaNet is to not even THINK about releasing any new events that require mass player involvement until you have this sound bug locked down and fixed so it’s not something players have to post about through two pages, much less than 13.

Thanks.

Would like to point out that the sound persists even if alt tabbed out of gw2 and game sounds should then be muted, if I remember correctly. So it seems it is corrupting or filling the sound processes as a whole operating system/sound card and not just game sounds. The sound does not stop until gw2 is shut down and unloaded from memory.

Additionally, it has been mentioned in the past to turn the sound quality down in the game and this will reduce the occurrence of this bug appearing, which again seems to link it to some sort of memory leak or the like. I have not had any problem with this since turning down the sound quality option.

Happened to me too yesterday.

This has happened to me 2 alot. Even after turning down the quality on the sound.

C’mon Anet! 3 months and still no fix??? I like your game, but this is starting to make you look like amateurs and making me think you are related to Wargaming (World Of Tanks). I’ve stopped playing that game just because of things like this, so have many of my friends. I think you see where i’m going with this. We are many people that really like/love your game, but we can only take so much.

Still going on, iv had it happen again to me 5 times today alone. its getting to the point where you cant even play the game anymore. i WvW everyday and its where i get it. Im to the point im almost ready to stop playing like most of my friends have. Please fix this.

Fury of Balthazar.2694:

Hello,

I’ve been having this really annoying sound bug issue with Guild Wars 2.
This problem occurs during large battles with a lot of people.
The sound overrides all sound and the only solution at this time is to stop the software and restart it. What is causing this?

Apparently, it is a common issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNPC3Pm8y00&feature=player_embedded

This is exactly what happened to me tonight during the Jormag dragon fight. Not once, but twice. I had to relog the client the first time it happened. The second time it happened, it was worse and I finally just rebooted my pc. Each time I logged out fixed the issue on a temporary basis.

For the reboot, it seemed to fix the issue totally. But then what I ended up doing was coming in at the end of the Jormag dragon fight. Once that was completed I submitted an in-game bug report.

So far since then I’ve not had that annoying sound bug. So it apparently is connected in some way to extreme in-game activity.

So this bug has been around for a long time. Is anything being done about it?

Jolene.7316:

The pulsating sound is the fmod audio subsystem telling the user it is out of memory:

“When the FMOD mixer thread does an allocation and it fails, it is almost impossible to recover from this gracefully (because of the threaded nature of the system, there is no function to return an error from), and sounds would start to drop out. Because we think this is fatal, and leads to subtle or not so subtle audio bugs – the mixer now emits a pulsating sine wave noise to tell you it is out of memory.”

http://www.fmod.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15120

or http://preview.tinyurl.com/fmodbug

Alright, even though I have 8gigs worth of RAM I guess it could be possible in theory that this FMOD mixer is getting messed up somehow.

However, is there a solution?

Changing my sound quality to the middle of the slider fixed this issue permanently for me, not sure what other solutions there are.

My question is: Why did it just occur on my system when it never occurred before? I’ve been playing since launch and I’ve not changed any settings in my setup.

I have this issue aswell, was gone for a couple of months then suddenly it started again. Someone said that local.dat is to huge, well I have one local_Good.dat, new created then renamed it, made a copy of it and renamed the copy to local.dat, so I see local.dat increasing, thus they said sound bug would appear if local.dat was around 40Mb, but mine is only 1.9Mb, so this is not a problem solver I’d say. Only way to fix is restart game, and it’s annoying in full WvW borders, wait time etc :/ when they are full will say

I only just experienced this ‘mythical’ sound bug yesterday myself and holy moses, it made me jump! (Before it made me grit my teeth.) It took sliding the systemwide sound down to 0 until I could finish my TA run, whereupon I could restart the game. Once the client shut down, the sound quit. So far, so good but fingers crossed this gets found and patched soon.

Had this issue once in the battle with yormag had to dc and return to get rid of it, sc is an asus xonar d2x

Just to add to the discussion. This bug triggered in W3 last night and was only resolved by exiting the client (as many have stated before me). However, upon starting the client this morning, my sound inside GW2 was completely non-existent. Took re-installing my sound drivers to get it to work again. Note that the sound was fine outside the client.

Happened to me again today, in WvW. Only temporarily solving it by restarting the game. Trying to change the sound settings in game just causes the game to crash completely for me.

think i let this go to long , over a week , and managed to get puter back up n runing , than hr later restarted ther huming sine wave, so closed out the client n tried to reboot and now nothing, it trashed my puter , which brand new and high end ,. but it eventually had destroyed something , possibly my mother board , ,. going stop playing until this is fixed, . not risking my secondary puter , bahh ,..:(

Have been playing with the sound off for a few weeks now, which makes me sad. This game has such lovely music, and it’s really hard to get into things when you can’t hear spell sounds and audio cues. There really is no fix to this yet? I’ve lowered and highered and played with my audio as much as possible, and this still persists…

This “air raid” siren is definately annoying, it has to stop!

xerca.6135:

Happened to me again today, in WvW. Only temporarily solving it by restarting the game. Trying to change the sound settings in game just causes the game to crash completely for me.

Doesn’t crash for me, if I turn off the sound when the bug has started, I can set all sound levels to 0 (in game), and the annoying sound is still loud, you can goto sound mixer (windows) and turn it off from there.

I reacted heavily first time but now, I don’t react at all now, now it’s like. Oh I got this sound bug… again, then I restart game all fine, could be worse.

More annoying is if it happens in a fight, either you die, or die cause you cannot run away and at same time lowering sound level, or you are lucky and enemy dies so you can turn off sound get to safe spot if necessary and restart game.

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Thanks for the reports, everyone! This is an issue we’ve been tracking for a while now, and I’ve heard we may have a fix for it in the next few days. If you continue seeing it, please let us know.
when, already destroyed one of my cmputers ,. not apout to lose an other one , this has happened only once long ago in another realm 4 years ago , this is unheard of ,. now i have to pay some cash for some hardware , i certainly would like a total refund for two accounts as i intend not to play anymore , its the least compensation, you can accompany ,. atleast respond to posts about this bug still on going and getting worse, this should be the highest priority, shut down until it is resolved before others computers become wrecked.

Not only sound problem but server connection issue: Last night I not only experienced losing server connection for both my keyboard and mouse, but also that horrible sound problem as well. All while running in WvWvW with a bunch of guild mates. I had to reboot my system, not just restart the client, as my entire pc froze up as it did during the Jormag fight.

I’ve not had this issue before so am not happy to see it happening now so long after launch. I certainly hope my system does not experience what some other folks have reported. I do, however, have an issue with losing server connections inexplicably during combat or high density activity (like a lot of graphics happening at the same time in the same place).

I mentioned this particular issue because it happened to me two nights ago (see my post above) just during the Jormag dragon event.

Need to have a fix for it or I may end up like a lot of other folks, not being able to play the game at all.

rooster.2745:

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Thanks for the reports, everyone! This is an issue we’ve been tracking for a while now, and I’ve heard we may have a fix for it in the next few days. If you continue seeing it, please let us know.
when, already destroyed one of my cmputers ,. not apout to lose an other one , this has happened only once long ago in another realm 4 years ago , this is unheard of ,. now i have to pay some cash for some hardware , i certainly would like a total refund for two accounts as i intend not to play anymore , its the least compensation, you can accompany ,. atleast respond to posts about this bug still on going and getting worse, this should be the highest priority, shut down until it is resolved before others computers become wrecked.

I have a feeling this sound bug isn’t what destroyed your computer.

I got it for the first time ever today though. Weird.

I’ve got this problem at the begin of the game. I’ve specialy bought a good computer to able to play in beter quality of this game. But every single time when I join Shatter, Tequal, jormag or even WVWVW, when there are more people then normal I get this anoying sound, and after around 10-20sec the PC totaly crashed.

right now I’ve already paid 50euro to repaire my PC, and reinstall Pc many time cause I always though it’s my PC problem.

Anet also already got several crash report from me.

2 silver for a waypoint transport isn’t much, but everytime after a crash and can’t get my chest loot, this is extremly frustrating.

OK, this sound bug needs to go ASAP.

Just been 30 mins at Jormag – and while I’m at it, please look into the Corrupted Ice Shield which seems bugged in going down kitten slowly…

Anyhow, towards end of event, I get the alarm sound bug twice.. once I managed to log back in time to continue fight, but the second time the fight was over when I relogged… ofc, no chest!

Sort out this bug asap, kitten annoying and blocking issue!

nope absolutely positive , sound bug , wrecked mine,. after sveral times ina week , after rebooting it was fine , and muting the sounds entirelty, perhaps it went on way to long and shouldve ADDRESSED THE problem before restarting the client again becasue the next attempt i can no Longer turn it on and i get that annoying sound for a breif moment ,.and nothing but black screen , makes totaL SENSE TO ME , . mmmm brandw new two month old 8 gigs raM AN 7950 CHIPSET,. I7 PROCESSOR ,. let you know after i can afford to get it out of the shop ,.

It just started for me about a week ago and now happens every hour or so. Lowering sound quality made no difference. Makes it very difficult to play WvW with queues

It seems the sound bug has changed character too, usually I would get it and could just mute the gw2 application in the mixer and play on. Now it causes my client to crash, and when this usually happens at huge events where there’s lots going on, it can cause some serious grief… like the 2 crashes I had last night after 30 minutes fighting Jormag, and of course, relogging after the 2nd crash Jormag had been defeated and the chest was gone.

Blocking issue, Anet, sort it out!

Me and my friend just started to get this bug. So something happent apperantly ive NEVER EVER had it before.

I had it in cof map and in ta map which i go daily for weeks. I also play with sound closed in game no help. Have to restart client to get rid of it

So afte i waited an hour to get in to WvWvW i got to play about 20 min when the sound bug crashed my client. Now i have to wait like another hour to play agien. It has been like this like 20 times this week, and it allways happen when there are alot of playes at one spot. Thats not fun any more.

Its been over 2 mounths since you last addresed this problem, could you please let us know how far you are in the process of correcting this bug, or do something so that we dont have to wait an hour before we can get in WvWvW, now if you log out, its back in the line, give us a minute or two wher ones place in WvWvW is hold, cuz standing in line is worse then the bug itself.

Happened to me 3 times so far. Two times shortly after eachother in WvW, but hasn’t happened to me there for a week or two (only got the game for about a month now).
It just happened to me now when I did my personal story and had to fight undead, while under the form of Balthazar. Hope it gets fixed soon.

Got this problem while playing WvW twice today. When I get many players on my screen I get this sounds bug and if the I don’t restart the client the client crashes.

seems somehow it knocked out my 5 volt rail to mother board after awhile , so guess to rebuilding a new mother board ,. not sure why it affected so deep ,mainly because of puter being integrated, and the 5 volt rail out in power pack also ,. i is the overload of too many sounds, and causing a massive memory leak, .for one i let it go too long ,im sure of that ignoring it, probably couldve been prevented , but for now not playing till this is confirmed and resolved, was able to play everywhere else on secondary puter m but dont dare do any crowded instances for the time being ,and if it appears again , quickly loggin out an not coming back ,

This solved it for me.
Control Panel → Manage Audio Devices. Disable all devices except the one that I was using (Speakers High Definition Audio Device) and reset audio settings in gw2.

Usually this happened after every 2-3 big fights in WvW and always sometime during the Jormag fight. Now I haven’t had any issue for a whole day.

That’s silly. You can’t claim you have a fix if it’s only worked for a day. If it was that simple, Anet would have fixed it 3 months ago. This is so random for everyone, and has been a problem long term. Seemingly, only having the size of the battles in common. The bigger the battle, the more players, the more often it happens, but it’s still utterly random. Sometimes you can go through mega battles without a problem, other times, it happens 4 times in a play session with much smaller battles.

I’ve been locked up in the middle of sieges a half a dozen times in the last week alone. But, some days it’s fine.

The software is clearly crashing due to an overload of inputs from a cacophony of weapon sounds, in some way or another. To say it will destroy your computer is hardly a professional opinion. The loading from the game itself, will stress all computers and heat things up, but calling this audio bug a computer wrecker, is ludicrous. The plausible answer is that the processor cooked itself because of the huge load this game put on it, and because you got an air bubble in the thermal coating. That would be a billion times more likely than an audio software bug mysteriously trashing a chip-set for some unknown reason.

However, we all know that it IS a game-play wrecker when it happens. When you repeately lose battles, and lose credit for battles that you were winning when it locks up, and you have to turn the audio off and play silently, and hope it doesn’t lock up your computer all together. …Before you can reboot.

FWIW, It’s pretty clear to me now that it affects all ranges of computers. Moderate to wild. Mine is a top of the heap, hand built predator, (for a few more days anyway) i7-3770K, P8-Z77, OC, SSD, 16Gb vengence, crossfired, 5.1 digital audio…. blah, blah, blah… Yeah, and it fails like all the rest. So don’t go buying a new computer because of this. Low settings, or high. It fails just the same as the rest, just as randomly, and unexpectedly.

It doesn’t seem to have anything in common at all, nor any real logic. A friend of mine is running some of my old spare parts, in a plain Jane clunker with no audio card, and he has never had it happen once yet. Go figure. But, I have no doubt it will startle him too, when it finally does happen to him.

Here’s what I think. At the very least, Anet really needs to step up and tell people to quit troubleshooting their computers, and quit buying new computers because of this, and give us some more info on the issue, since they clearly know it’s a big issue, and have admitted it’s a software issue. Of course, it desperately needs a fix. But, in the mean time, quit making people pull their hair out, while needlessly troubleshooting their computers, and speculating like Mayans with an empty calender and a crayon. When it’s become clear that it’s a software issue, not a computer issue.

Maybe Anet doesn’t have the solution yet. But please, tell us what you DO know, and if there ARE any things we can do to minimize it’s occurrences. Give us some facts to work with here. Sparing us the old wives tales, and snake oil solutions that are being spread on so thick now..

I did Shatterer and claw of Jormag for the first time today, i was disappointing in the loot but even more disappointing was that I had no sound while taking them down. Like in your video that was all I heard from my speakers not even 2 minutes after they spawned.
You have no idea what an immersion-killer is that :/

Also note to the people who think this is partially maybe if you have a low-end computer or even medium one because that’s not the only thing, the game is badly optimized.

The particle effects are not scaled down nor nothing during these events so everything gets rendered. Thus the lag. And memory leak happens resulting in the sound bug. I think it’s time you optimize the game well – why design a huge world with world bosses designed for many players even if most people can’t run it properly?

not sure if i am experiencing the same noise problem … mine just started after a few days of playing. the buzzing noise sounded like a film projector rolling when at the character select screen. when loading into the game, the buzzing noise goes off because there is no animation. the noise comes back on in-game. during in-game, the noise can be heard to vary in frequency, but buzz noise loudness seemed consistent. when interacting with npc, again when there are no animations, the noise gets cut-off, and it buzzes again when the animation comes in. turning off sound in-game or windows sound-mixer does not help at all.

lynspottery.6529:

My question is: Why did it just occur on my system when it never occurred before? I’ve been playing since launch and I’ve not changed any settings in my setup.

Same for me. Never had an issue until this week. Now almost daily I have to restart the client.

Just a quick thought are you all using a voice chat system at the same time as the game like teamspeak or mumble, if so there could be a slight conflict between the game and voice sound systems

no. no teamspeak or chat system while playing gw2.

I’ve been getting this a lot lately.. scared me the first time by just how loud it is.

Exiting the gw2 process fixxes the sound bug so it is definitely the game. All sound drivers up to date and this is a relatively new computer anyway.

Think it has something to do with large fight’s cause when I run in a small party it seems to work fine, but when it comes to capturing SM and defending server and the two other trying to take it (XvXvX), and fight in Lord Room, this seem to happen, not every time, but chance /risk for this to occur is greater? when there is large amount of players in the area.

Had this problem AGAIN on Friday night in WvW twice. Required complete system hard reset the first time. Was able to quit client and start over 2nd time.

The first time put me in queue for over 15 minutes, and the second time for over an hour and a half. This is frustrating. It equated to almost 2 hours of frustration.

This is with settings 1 notch down from highest. Now they are set right in the middle and the difference in sound quality is not what I paid for.

My computer is high-end. I have had the problem both with VOIP running and not, or other programs running, or not. It seems to make no difference.

Just had this happen in WvW today. Its been 4 months and still no word on a fix for this…

Got it again yesterday. It completely took my machine out and forced me to hard reboot. This is the behaviour that I experienced in the beginning, but just before Wintersday it was only sound bugging without the full crash.

I don’t recall having it happen at all over Wintersday, for me at least.

Last time it happened to me, I noticed afterwards that my local.dat file was 50mb. I deleted the file and it has now been staying on 12mb for a few days. Will keep an eye on it an see how big it is if I were to get the problem again.

Same here on the bug. Never had it until after Wintersday was over. Then I got it on the Jormag fight the day after Wintersday was over and there was an update. Didn’t lock up my machine, but it crashed the game client after some time, though.

I get this sound bug during Teq, Jormag, and now im even getting in roaming around Orr.

Eventually it leads to crashing my gw2.

Its an annoying drone noise.