Guild Wars 2

CarnivoraxSapientia.6084:

Yup exactly the same, trying to get anything through to EE is like talking to a brick wall. I’d love to switch broadband but sadly my landline is tied to EE so I’m not sure if i’d have to wait for that or not. Sad to hear the change couldn’t be made sooner but good to know in advance as I was also seriously considering switching to BT, this is getting ridiculous from EE.

BT can take over the line if you decide to switch. though if you are on contract with EE, BT will offer to pay up to £150 to cover the early termination fees. but youll have to order the broadband service over the phone with them (BT are a lot easier to talk to though at least =P)

Hi all

I have talked to Telia, EE and Anet now for almost a week with little luck.
EE and Telia continue to refuse to believe there is any sort of issue and if I try to get a supervisor I get cut off.

I recently had the idea of asking Anet to talk to EE on our behalf in the hope that EE would pay more attention to Anet than one of EE’s users.
Unfortunately, Anet have refused to help us on this.

It is looking like I will not be joining you for HOT as none of the work a-rounds work for me and I am unfortunately tied to my internet provider.
I will continue to check the forums in case you guys work out any solutions.

Thx
Kusaku

Kusaku, you are not alone.

I have just logged on for the first time this weekend ready to play this evening and can do absolutely nothing.

ping either reads 0/0 or 4k~ .

As far as it is concerned, Guild Wars 2 is essentially dead weight on my computer. A massive shame as I have not only pre-ordered HoT but I pre-ordered the ultimate edition.

I have not been able to play for a week as of today.

So Tech Support, what are your recommendations? Do I uninstall and request a refund? Or do I wait hopelessly for at least some recognition of their being a problem with the vain hope that effort is being made to sort it?

Beyond frustrated

Edit: For the record, I can play every single other game and stream every online video without a SINGLE issue.

Every other game I have works fine,
As far as I can see this is an issue anet should be working out with their isp as it looks like it is an intermittent issue that they have had with telia for a year or so now.

You could try:
Running Guild wars 2 with “-clientport 80” or “-clientport 443”

Or you could try HotSpot Shield which has helped a few people.

Thx
Kusaku

Just a friendly reminder: Internet outages affect internet usage in very strange ways. It may not be a problem between your ISP or ArenaNet’s at all. It may be on a completely different part of the network, far away from either one of ya.

Some of you may remember the headache Level 3’s outage caused widespread parts of the world across all kinds of platforms:

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500248061/Level-3-outage-slows-down-the-internet

…while many of you may NOT remember that because you weren’t affected by it.

The vast majority of lag is not caused at the server level. It is caused somewhere between the server and you – and given the hyperconnected nature of the internet, may not have anything to do with either you or ArenaNet at all. -Sid

Kusaku.9056:

Hi all

I have talked to Telia, EE and Anet now for almost a week with little luck.
EE and Telia continue to refuse to believe there is any sort of issue and if I try to get a supervisor I get cut off.

I recently had the idea of asking Anet to talk to EE on our behalf in the hope that EE would pay more attention to Anet than one of EE’s users.
Unfortunately, Anet have refused to help us on this.

It is looking like I will not be joining you for HOT as none of the work a-rounds work for me and I am unfortunately tied to my internet provider.
I will continue to check the forums in case you guys work out any solutions.

Thx
Kusaku

I fear this is also going to happen to me, getting 4k ping or 0 ping there is no inbetween 99% of the time. Our ISP is in my parents name so trying to get around that boundary is difficult enough without the fact any changes wouldn’t be made (switching broadband wise) until November, which is way past when HoT is out. This means I’d also miss out on the Halloween event, the one event I’ve always loved participating in every year in Gw2. It’s a massive shame as I love to stream Gw2 and due to issues with EE I haven’t been able to do that for almost 2 weeks now. Pre-ordering the deluxe edition of HoT and all the hype seems to have faded for me now as I know it’s going to be a struggle to play or even stream for that matter. I have tried HSS (Hotspotshield) many times now and it has helped at times, but more often than not the free trial causes constant popups when im trying to browse the internet saying i’ve reached my daily limit, I’m also stuck using HSS through US rather than UK simply because I can’t afford to upgrade to “Elite.” So this workaround doesn’t seem to work for my situation too much, not sure if this is the same for others.

Im also having same problem but the lag hits me at 7pm and goes on for a few hours, its really frustrating. I contacted anet and did all their tests and at the end of it they told me to contact my ISP and after seeing this post i honestly think there is no point in contacting them because they are not going to do anything about it. I’m probably going to revert to using HSS until it we find a solution. I also bought HoT and i want to be able to raid without lag but i definitely think that’s not going to happen. East Anglia here btw (Norwich).

I’m hoping if enough people contact EE many they will do something about it.
I know the internet is complex but problems can be solved and its normally the isp who has to do the work to solve it.
A good example of EE fixing a problem like this was the one with sky vegas.
Although a lot of people had to complain to get it fixed.

Thx
Kusaku

The thing im still wondering is this only happened to us after beta weekend 3 so one of these companies changed something to bring this issue.

Messaging in guild and party chat seems to work flawlessly but logging in and most actions taken in the game has extreme lag for me, makes me wonder if Guild wars 2 isn’t being categorised by EE (although my line is owned by BT) as a gaming traffic during peak times since last patch?

I’ve been able to get on fine on weekend mornings (I work in the week so I can’t check). But as soon as I get home, around 6-ish, it’s impossible to connect to GW2. Sometimes if I’m lucky, the map will load, but I won’t be able to do anything, and then I’ll get disconnected.

EE, East Midlands. I hope this all gets sorted soon :/ I pre-ordered HoT, I don’t want it to be a waste of money.

techniQue.8217:

after seeing this post i honestly think there is no point in contacting them because they are not going to do anything about it.

This is the exact opposite of what you should be doing, I just got off the phone with them again and they are monitoring the connections of the landline numbers I gave him but he reiterated that the more numbers he gets the more likely it is they will get off their butts so to speak and figure out the problem. The more customers affected the more likely they will lose business to people leaving EE, so it’s in their interests to fix it ASAP if it’s a lot of people.

Apparently the engineers are monitoring the connection today for 24 hours, so he’s calling back tomorrow with any updates they’ve found. In the meantime, continue to send any landline numbers to me via private message, or call them yourselves and report the problem with as much detail and reference to other customers as possible.

Kiwifruit.5904:

techniQue.8217:

after seeing this post i honestly think there is no point in contacting them because they are not going to do anything about it.

This is the exact opposite of what you should be doing, I just got off the phone with them again and they are monitoring the connections of the landline numbers I gave him but he reiterated that the more numbers he gets the more likely it is they will get off their butts so to speak and figure out the problem. The more customers affected the more likely they will lose business to people leaving EE, so it’s in their interests to fix it ASAP if it’s a lot of people.

Apparently the engineers are monitoring the connection today for 24 hours, so he’s calling back tomorrow with any updates they’ve found. In the meantime, continue to send any landline numbers to me via private message, or call them yourselves and report the problem with as much detail and reference to other customers as possible.

Thanks for the update.

As for me I’ve already taken the plunge and made arrangements to switch provider – the shoddy response I got from EE ‘support’ once I was able to speak to someone sealed that deal. That won’t happen til after HoT launches unfortunately, so if I’m still experiencing the same issues by the end of the week I’ll try Hotspot Shield until the switchover happens.

I literally have no more strength in me to fight with EE. Everything else runs smooth and i can download stuff with an incredible speed and i love it! So, my solution to you guys is to use anonymous VPN service. IT WORKS! Since I’ve been using VPN no more problems with lag in peak times! Might not be best solution, but it works and I can enjoy the game again!

Started using the hotspot thing too, can confirm it works, but the default location is USA, which results with around 400 ping. To switch close to say UK we gonna have to pay but I think I’m ok with the price for it.

Are y’all playing on NA servers or EU servers?

EU servers here

Ok ty. I am trying to work through this for a friend who is experiencing the same issue. Idk if it matters. She is playing on NA servers.

To the UK EE users. You do know you can terminate your contracts with EE because you are not getting the service you want from them. If they refuse, or say they will charge you, tell them you will take them to the ombudsman. The ombudsman will then look if you are being treated fairly. And it’s safe to say, you are paying for a service. You are not getting what you want from said service and you want to cancel and find a better service.

I might not be 100% right but if you go to the martin lewis web site. He’ll set you right.

Then have a look on U switch to see what is the beat ISP in your area and speeds. I’d then go for a know ISP company like BT or Virgin Media. In Swansea where I live they are the best 2. EE and Sky are just terrible in my area.

Just remember, you don’t have to honour a contract if you are not getting the service you are paying for.

Unfortunately I am not the owner of the internet connection I am using, so hotspot it is. :x

This only started happening to me 3 days ago, I’m a pretty new player. Is this common around update time? It’s extremely annoying when I just want to chill out and play for a few hours. I can’t even load into the world.

Just to clarify, my issue using EE Broadband is in every way identical to Kiwi below.

I am on EE Broadband, fibre connection 76mb down and 20mb up.

Great during the day, but between 5.30pm and 6pm onwards I have insane issues with lag with the same rediculous spikes in ping on the game.

Now my guild mates will hardly play if i’m on the party as they know that my part in the party will be broken. Pointless playing.

Obviously 5.30pm onwards I have arrived home from work and would appreciate a relaxing gaming session. Impossible at the moment. I am restricted to ‘off peak’ hours if I want to play. Not ideal. Not ideal at all, considering peak hours are all I have access to.

Spoken to the genius staff at EE who insist their connection is fine because I can run an unrestricted speed test at any point of the day successfully. Well that’s just fantastic. I’m paying a fortune so EE have speedtest bragging rights 24 hours a day.

I even performed my own test while I was on the phone with the EE genius, unplayable at 6.30pm, screenshotted and described what was happening on their home broadband connection. Switched to a tethered (wifi) connection to my EE mobile phone on 4G, instant map loads, no latency, everything hunky dory.

So not my pc, not my wifi, not my location, just EE crappy service traffic shaping all the wrong ports at the wrong time of day.

For clarity, EE post in their forums that they restrict downloader websites and newsgroups but actively boost online gaming during peak hours. A reet load of tosh.

Port forwarding does nothing, adding my PC ip to the DMZ on the router does nothing, QOS does nothing.

Pantaloons.

This is an extra to what I posted previously, I have very temporarily installed a VPN service to check if it is simply routing issues, and guess what? no lag whatsoever. My gaming experience is exactly what it should be.

HOWEVER. I have been informed by good members of my guild that VPN services are frowned upon as they are used by goldsellers etc and often result in user accounts being banned.

I am ONLY using the VPN to show that this service fixes my gaming experience.

I have the exact same issue with EE that everyone else here is having (Wirral, NW England). Seems to be even worse over the last week or so. Very annoying with HOT coming. I’ll send over my landline to kiwifruits if it’s still of use in two days when I am allowed to send a PM on here…
Tried port forwarding and QOS but doesn’t seem to help at all. I also tried Hotspot Shield but I can’t log in at all through that.
Called EE and got a similar response to everyone else, changed a few settings but I’m sure that won’t fix it. Ineed to test GW2 again tonight and call them tomorrow to take it further.

insomnai.2136:

This is an extra to what I posted previously, I have very temporarily installed a VPN service to check if it is simply routing issues, and guess what? no lag whatsoever. My gaming experience is exactly what it should be.

HOWEVER. I have been informed by good members of my guild that VPN services are frowned upon as they are used by goldsellers etc and often result in user accounts being banned.

I am ONLY using the VPN to show that this service fixes my gaming experience.

I’m in the same position – getting nowhere trying to address the issue with EE, downloaded and installed Hotspot Shield as a fallback measure; I’ve connected with it twice, and yes, the insane ping issues were nowhere to be found.

That said I’m very conscious of the potential pitfalls of using a VPN, and if I do resort to using Hotspot Shield during the effected hours (approx. 6 PM – midnight, BST) it will only be until the switchover from EE to BT takes effect – EE haven’t give me any indication they’ll even acknowledge the problem is on their end let alone try to resolve it, so gg, they’ve lost me as a customer.

As for GW2, until BT takes over my choices are either a) not play at all during the 6-7 hours when the problem occurs – which is the primary time of day I usually can play – or b) use Hotspot Shield and hope doing so doesn’t result in losing my account.

I have thoroughly enjoyed a gaming session tonight using the test VPN service. No issues at all and it is finally a pleasure to play the game the way it is meant to be played.

Would very much appreciate feedback from ANET support regarding the use of VPN services for my account as sadly my internet provider is waving ‘contract and fair usage policy rules’ at me while i’m threatening to leave.

EE home broadband sucks like a black-hole being paid.

Couple things I will mention to everyone here currently on EE.

Report the matter to OfCom. I called them a couple days ago and they gave me an EE executive line to call rather than the standard (unhelpful) support we have gotten so far. I won’t post the phone number here because im not sure if I’m allowed to. But give OfCom a call and they will give you their number.

Secondly, to those who are switching to BT like myself. If you have a BTWifi spot near you, logging onto that during the lag times, which seems to be from 6pm to 1am, will temporarily fix the lag issue until they finally get your new broadband set up at home. My account has already been set up with BT and I was able to use their wifi by logging in with it, no charge.

Hey guys.

So today’s update, he called and said they were still “monitoring” the line. He also said he checked all the landline numbers I gave him and none of them had called to report a problem, to which I replied that most people were either switching to another ISP or couldn’t be bothered to get through their call centre because most were so unhelpful. I got quite angry with him and said I felt like they weren’t taking the problem seriously because only 2 people had reported it, to which he basically said yeah that’s right, if only 2 people call in then only 1 person will work on the problem, if 15 people call in the team will be much bigger.

He suggested trying to get you guys to call in but I said to be honest no one can be bothered, is there a direct line I can give them so they can contact you and you actually believe that this is a widespread problem. He’s given me an email address, it seems fairly generic but I urge anyone still interested in getting this problem solved to email customer-service@ee.co.uk – he said make sure to mention your landline number, the time you are experiencing the problems and the game you’re experiencing them with, i.e. Guild Wars 2.

Hopefully if we do that, they’ll start taking it seriously.

P.S. Hype for tomorrow!:D

I think a lot of people have reported this to them, I certainly have multiple times. And I’ve got nowhere, rude and unhelpful with their idiot scripts.

Given up with EE and switched to BT Infinity. Won’t take effect until the 6th November, but at least it’s cheaper than what I’m paying now!

This makes depressing reading, but is somewhat of a relief to know I’m not alone.

EE Fibre (40+MB/s) Broadband here, Leicester (East Midlands) and getting 3000-4500 ‘ping’ or lag or whatever you call it in-game every evening. When I manage to get on the game is totally unplayable. Again – it’s ONLY GW2.

I’ll certainly email EE with my complaints using that email address, so if we all do that maybe they’ll do something about it.

I also like the idea of a Twitter account that somebody suggested so we can all pester EE with it. Not sure how that works as never used Twitter, but will certainly join in the barrage if somebody knows how to do it!

Feel free to private message me (if you can do that here?) with Twitter info.

P.S.
I think we should all email them and use the same or similar title in the subject line. I’m writing now and titling it “Serious connection problems with Guild Wars 2 game”. Surely they’ll take notice if everybody here takes a few seconds to email them with similar wording in the title.

I am having the same problem here wiltshire area. been like this for days,

0 ping – 4k ping

technical advice from EE was to buy a home hub………

ive e-mailed them for more info

Hi guys, i’ve been testing different connections today and have come across a bit of a discovery, especially for us EE users.

If you run the GW2 diagnostic on your normal connection without vpn etc check the ip list immediately prior to telia based ip’s. If it is 62.157.249.202 then this is the ip causing the issue.

I have compared logs from the GW2 diagnostic without and with VPN and all connections that successfully allow me to play the game do not cross 62.157.249.202.

I hope this helps. I will be contacting EE to see if the routing to the GW2 servers can be moved since they have to direct their traffic somewhere. I am hoping for a better path. Until then, VPN it is!

insomnai.2136:

Hi guys, i’ve been testing different connections today and have come across a bit of a discovery, especially for us EE users.

If you run the GW2 diagnostic on your normal connection without vpn etc check the ip list immediately prior to telia based ip’s. If it is 62.157.249.202 then this is the ip causing the issue.

I have compared logs from the GW2 diagnostic without and with VPN and all connections that successfully allow me to play the game do not cross 62.157.249.202.

I hope this helps. I will be contacting EE to see if the routing to the GW2 servers can be moved since they have to direct their traffic somewhere. I am hoping for a better path. Until then, VPN it is!

And now in English please – for all us oldies and technophobes! :-D

The route that our connections on EE take to be able to reach the GW2 servers kick out during peak hours if the connection takes us over the 62.157.249.202 IP address.

If you imagine your journey to work taking you a set route on a bus, one of the stops ‘might’ have a serial killer that wants to get on and kill everyone on board.

When I use a VPN, the bus goes a different way so that serial killer never sees me.

VPN is the way I get to play at the moment.

So basically, we have to convince EE to change where the bus goes ;-)

Hope that makes sense.

As I mentioned previously I’m switching from EE to BT because of this, but I’ve sent an email to the address Kiwifruit posted, which includes a link to this thread. Hopefully EE will get this sorted for the EE customers they haven’t already lost.

That makes perfect sense, Insomnai – thank you.

Now how does one go about using GW2 with a VPN? Do you just Google ‘VPN’, connect through one of their suggestions (how?), then start GW2, or is it far more complex than that?

I’ve emailed EE and linked to this thread too.

I will continue my battle with EE customer support over the phone and I have also emailed the address above with the link to this thread and the 2 on the EE boards about the same issue.

Thanks to everyone here for their efforts to try and get this resolved.

Hotspot Shield (the VPN mentioned in this thread) doesn’t work for me at all, it doesn’t allow me to log in to Guild Wars 2. Is there another one to try?

“Thanks to everyone here for their efforts to try and get this resolved”

I second that. If they don’t even make the effort to do something, i’ll be moving ISP because we’re out of contract.

suprise suprise, peak time on the dot and BOOM lag, unplayable again.

Coincidence?

I really doubt it

VeX.8750:

suprise suprise, peak time on the dot and BOOM lag, unplayable again.

Coincidence?

I really doubt it

Yep. Been on for a couple of hours today, then it hits 7pm and game is totally unplayable.

Just out of interest, is there anybody here who’s changed ISP and had no issues since? I’m more than happy to leave EE if it’ll fix the problem.

Is it EE, the GW2 server in Germany or a combination of the two not working together correctly for some reason? How does one tell? From the sound of other posts, EE are blaming GW2 and vice versa, so I don’t know how we’ll get it sorted.

techniQue.8217:

Im also having same problem but the lag hits me at 7pm and goes on for a few hours, its really frustrating. I contacted anet and did all their tests and at the end of it they told me to contact my ISP and after seeing this post i honestly think there is no point in contacting them because they are not going to do anything about it. I’m probably going to revert to using HSS until it we find a solution. I also bought HoT and i want to be able to raid without lag but i definitely think that’s not going to happen. East Anglia here btw (Norwich).

The lag hit me at exactly the same time! EE, in South Wales. The game is completely unplayable.

same problems, i tried using vpn, but this forces me to “authenticate”, and mail with the link never comes
fun fun fun

Guys and girls, we really all need to get together on this.

I’ve emailed, and so have many others, but I just got the standard “Call the helpline” drivel by way of reply, which apparently leads us nowhere judging by others’ comments in here.

Isn’t there some sort of online petition we can all sign and send to EE? Or EE and ArenaNet if it’s a problem of them not working together properly?

North West England, West Lancs EE customer here. Same issues as you all. Spent all day on the phone to support yesterday to no avail. They just kept on running speed tests and telling me what I already know. Using a VPN works but I don’t want to have to use that as a long term solution…

Was logged on and playing this afternoon at like 1pm and was fine. Get home just now and my ping is at 3600 constantly. Loading screens taking upwards of 5 mins. Just trying to complete the first story quest to get into heart of Maguuma. Can’t even cast one skill!! Mobs and my pet teleporting around everywhere, all of a sudden I’m dead from full health…. Not fun to be playing at the moment. Also with EE.

A quick question too, would CyberGhost be an alright alternative instead of HSS? I can’t seem to get the game working with HSS.

It’s astonishing how anet and EE haven’t looked into this

I am having the exact same problem – Playing from Exeter, Devon. Thank you to all of you tirelessly troubleshooting with EE and Arenanet to look into this further, hopefully this can be resolved soon.

On GW2 launch I was sitting behind a Uni firewall that really didn’t like the idea of online gaming, so I missed game launch by months. I am gutted to be missing the HoT launch also as a result of a seemingly recurrent issue.

Part of me says I should be less concerned about such things, but the other (more sensible) part of me wants to wallow a little more in this pool of self pity. Roll tear.

Kiwifruit.5904:

Hey guys.

So today’s update, he called and said they were still “monitoring” the line. He also said he checked all the landline numbers I gave him and none of them had called to report a problem, to which I replied that most people were either switching to another ISP or couldn’t be bothered to get through their call centre because most were so unhelpful. I got quite angry with him and said I felt like they weren’t taking the problem seriously because only 2 people had reported it, to which he basically said yeah that’s right, if only 2 people call in then only 1 person will work on the problem, if 15 people call in the team will be much bigger.

He suggested trying to get you guys to call in but I said to be honest no one can be bothered, is there a direct line I can give them so they can contact you and you actually believe that this is a widespread problem. He’s given me an email address, it seems fairly generic but I urge anyone still interested in getting this problem solved to email customer-service@ee.co.uk – he said make sure to mention your landline number, the time you are experiencing the problems and the game you’re experiencing them with, i.e. Guild Wars 2.

Hopefully if we do that, they’ll start taking it seriously.

P.S. Hype for tomorrow!:D

what? he said none of us called? i spent like 5 hours every day for a week with ee.
I will try the email you gave me but it seems pretty generic i realy dont think it will help.

Thx
Kusaku

I got cut off just before 7pm tonight, but oddly enough I had some uptime after that. I’m back to 0 ping and nothing happening now though.

From what I can see, and from contacting them myself, I can see they just don’t care and they’ll continue to fob us off. Got to love how companies can operate nowadays.