Guild Wars 2

I purchased the game back on release day, and due to work I had hardly any time to play up till the past couple weeks. Figured to myself, hey, at least all of the bugs should be worked out of the game by now. Sadly that’s not the case when it comes to the GW2 networking back end.

I enjoy playing many games, both FPS, MMO, and quite a few in between, most all of them requiring an online connection. I have the best internet pachage offered here by my ISP (250Mbit) and have absolutely no latency or hardware issues in any of the other games i am playing.

That being said, the GuildWars 2 is next to unplayable here when it comes to the PvP and lagging down until you flat out disconnect from the server. I have tested this even with no router and hooked right to the cable modem at 4AM when there is extremely low lvl of traffic out here and still the problem persists.

Looking into it more, i found the IP’s that GW2 is trying to connect to, ran both a graphical tracert for the duration of a short game session as well as used the windows resource meter to show the contrast in network latency and the latency the game was getting from the GW2 game server itself.

Results attached at the bottom of this post. Paraphrased it basically shows that over the entire duration of the gaming session my internet connection never had a higher latency than 140ping at the worst time in the entire session. However at the same time the GW2 servers are replying at close to 280ms…

This has absolutely nothing to do with the client side internet configuration, and is 100% caused either by networking issues on the GW2 side, or by extremely overloaded servers. I’m a certified MCSE and messed with this now for over a week trying to get to the bottom of it where this latency is occurring, even involving my ISP tech support. Frankly its out of the users hands at this point as there is nothing they can do on the client side at all to fix this.

1. Where do you live?
2. What server are you connecting to?

RPG styled games can withstand higher latency and still function, but that 280ms isn’t seeing the entire picture. Processing overhead is probably adding another 100ms (maybe more considering the scale), but without stats from the game’s data stream its still hard to tell how badly its getting stalled.

And out of curiosity, whats the reference point for the 140ms?

i’d like to know how this goes. i’ve closing in on almost 300 hours now, and i’ve loved almost every minute of it. but for the last two days the game as been almost completely unplayable due to lag. what happens is my skills stop firing, i can’t revive, enemies won’t target me… then i get d/c’ed. or, alternatively, everything i “queued” triggers at once and then the lag starts all over again. i’ve tested my connection, it’s exactly what it’s supposed to be. i’m not that technically savvy, i don’t know how to investigate it. but it’s unbelievably frustrating. it started out being basically only in spvp, then carried into dungeons, but after about five hours of fighting and only being able to complete one run of CM (and even that after my team had to four man most of the content) i finally tried pve. about forty minutes into a zone, same thing. nothing’s changed, i have no idea why this is happening, but i simply cannot play. it’s heartbreaking. if anyone has advice, please share.

i’m hoping things will magically be better after tonight’s patch but if i can’t enjoy the holiday event because of lag (which as far as i can tell is not affecting anything but GW) i’m going to be very upset

starlinvf.1358:

1. Where do you live?
2. What server are you connecting to?

RPG styled games can withstand higher latency and still function, but that 280ms isn’t seeing the entire picture. Processing overhead is probably adding another 100ms (maybe more considering the scale), but without stats from the game’s data stream its still hard to tell how badly its getting stalled.

And out of curiosity, whats the reference point for the 140ms?

The 140 reference point comes from the screenshot in of the traceroute app. The number is the highest ping achieved to any/every host during the tracert test along the line to the target server. Point being that the latency inst happening on any of these nodes and purely on the end connection (GW2 server). Also note the 70 ping connecting to one of their other servers using the same route…

Here’s what this does to game play… Like i said in the title. Unplayable.
Note the comments of the players in the game chat log.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enq0-vnNgM0

Heres some more poor saps trying to play the game, at least its playable for them untill the server fail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsBqJV-H9XQ

I also have server problems after 7 PM EST, then all through the night, the problem being isolated to gw2. Theres a chance to get alot of lag whenever i change maps, making it unplayable.

1 minute video showing me testing my skills with no lag issue, then changing maps and getting issues…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuImwYLEVJA&feature=youtu.be

ISP tech support say its gw2, gw2 tech support says its my ISP…

I’d wager they just don’t have enough servers up to handle the Halloween boom. At least for me it happens a lot more frequently at traditional peak hours. If that’s the case it will be…. interesting to see what happens at the finale.