Guild Wars 2

https://gitlab.com/Espionage724/AntiMicro-Profiles/blob/master/Guild-Wars-2.amgp

I had interest in playing Guild Wars 2 with a controller on my HTPC. My main points for figuring out how to make this happen was:

• Had to support or be adaptable to the Xbox 360 controller I already had
• Worked on Linux and was FLOSS
• Didn’t require too much investment time initially in-case it didn’t work out

With that in-mind, I ended up using AntiMicro as the controller binding software. It worked with my X360 controller, ran on Linux, and was FLOSS. In order to test it out, I looked for some pre-existing profiles. I found this one: https://redd.it/51uk51 which looks nice, but required a re-bind of most of my key in-game, and at the time, this looked like more effort than I cared to do initially. So with that, I just ended up making my own profile (which ended up taking way more time than just re-mapping my keys for the above profile, but oh well :p).

The buttons the controller map to are all labelled in AntiMicro, but here they are:

• Left-stick is WASD.
• Right-stick controls the camera the way it would if you held RMB down and moved the cursor.
• Skills are on the right-side of the controller (RB, Y, X, B, A), and without the modifier button held down, they activate skills 1-5 respectively. With the modifier button held down (LB), the same buttons activate skills 6-0 respectively.
• Jump is LS-button and Dodge is RS-button. Guide is escape.
• Left Trigger is RMB and Right Trigger is LMB.
• D-Pad handles profession skills. Holding down D-Pad down instead of pressing it will activate the 5th skill that some classes have.
• Back handles interaction and if held-down, opens the map.
• Start handles cycling of targets and if held-down, swaps weapons.

The controller layout applies directly with the default keybindings in GW2. I’ve played around casually with this layout and I find it complete, but it could be possible it’s missing something major that I haven’t thought of (I’ve done no PvP/WvW or anything outside of basic map completion). I’d appreciate hearing about any suggestions though!

For the best experience in my case, I found some in-game settings should also be adjusted:

• Adjust Camera to Character Height (immersion)
• Fast With Range Indicator Ground Targeting
• Disable Double-Tap to Evade (LS controller movement causes a bunch of false-positives)
• Disable Right-Click to Attack/Interact (RS movement can sometimes switch targets)
• Enable Snap Ground Target to Current Target (easier targeting)
• Use Free Camera (I’m not entirely sure if I like it or not but it works well either way)

Nice report

I forgot about the forwardrenderer option; last I checked though it removed some shadows and lighting effects that I can’t live without :p The assetsrv command is also interesting.

I used to play GW2 a little bit with AMD hardware; had a 7850 and a R9 380. I didn’t play around with it too much, but this is a quick performance video I did on my R9 with AMDGPU and Gallium Nine: https://youtu.be/pdgKYWh_vos?list=PL9opA5uqRNSCqcYkgEzLAtwTVUFSZygdS

Nowadays I use NVIDIA graphics. Can’t really say if GW2 handles better or not (the hardware I’m using doesn’t really compare to what I had before), but it’s playable and I’m enjoying it :p I use openSUSE Tumbleweed with GNOME.

In my sig, I have a link to my notes on getting GW2 installed on Linux. Mostly just some quick copy/paste commands.

videoboy.4162:

I’m not sure which forum to ask this on. My old laptop died and I’m not very good with computer knowledge. Is this laptop any good?

https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GL72-6QF-405-NOTEBOOK-i7-6700HQ/dp/B01AC40ODQ

Very good, spec-wise.

My current laptop is Acer (VN7-572G) with slightly lower specs than that, and GW2 handles nicely for me under Linux. That MSI laptop on Windows (what I assume you’re going to use) should have no problems at all with GW2.

As for MSI, their RMA process was a little tricky for me. At least with the GPU department, they don’t read your notes most of the time and it’s a slight gamble as to what you’ll get back.

I had a PE 7850 card, RMA’d it, got a worse card back. RMA’d it again, was told there was no more in-stock and they downgraded it to a regular 7850. I requested another RMA and specifically asked if they had any more PE cards in-stock and to swap it if so. Made sure to even ask RMA support if the request could be warranted before shipping the card out; they said yes. Got a regular 7850 back… RMA’d it a final time and got swapped to a R9 380.

The notebook and GPU RMA departments are different if I understand correctly, so maybe MSI’s RMA process for notebooks is way different.

Back when I used Windows, my software of choice for broadcasting was OBS. My software of choice for recording was MSI Afterburner.

For OBS, there is/was an AMD VCE-based version that could be used for AMD GPUs (comparable to Shadowplay), but I didn’t use it (I had a FX-8350; plenty of CPU power to go around even with GW2). MSI Afterburner if I recall correctly could also use a 3rd-party codec for GPU acceleration (but I also didn’t use it there either primarily).

For Linux, I used OBS Studio.

Sylent.3165:

And a ps4 Xbox one release with servers merged. Would become such an extremely popular game.

With only 8 skills, action button, fps camera there really is no reason why this game shouldn’t have a controller

+1

I ‘ve seen very few aspects of GW2 that wouldn’t work with a standard controller. Movement and combat are pretty much good-to-go. The interfaces for the most part are good as well.

Mizukiaki.8590:

Crafting, you can learn all of them on one character, if you want, but only 2 active at a time.

I did not know this…. Hmm, how hard is it to activate crafting skills? Do I just walk up to the skill supplier and switch to that skill? I take it all my skills retain their levels/recipes regardless of which one is active at the time?

Bump. I realize my preferences may be largely restrictive, but I won’t give up hope!

I’ve been away from GW2 for about a year now and I’m trying to get back into it. I’m looking to be a part of a guild

Preferences:

• No reliance on Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Ventrilo, Skype, Steam, or TeamSpeak (I only primarily use FLOSS like Mumble and decentralized services like GNU social and XMPP)
• Active
• No trash-skipping for dungeons/raids (if you have time to try to squeeze everyone past an enemy with the potential to fail and waste time, you have the time to just kill it for some loot/XP :p)
• PvE and PvP/WvW (I don’t know much about PvP but I’d be willing to give it a shot :p)
• Patience (I have a general idea how most things work in GW2, but I’d like the opportunity to ask for further explanations if needed without disapproval)

What I can offer:

• Helpful
• IT support (I’m into sysadmin stuff)

Was looking around for some tweaks for GW2 on Linux and saw the -cuda command-line variable. The wiki claims it’s non-functional, but the CUDA API appears to be loaded with it in-use (the Compute cache directory is created and NVIDIA’s profiler confirms it uses the GPU and CUDA).

Here’s a quick video showing the above: https://youtu.be/wzyF87RdlL4

It doesn’t really seem to make any significant difference in my case though, but to be fair, I didn’t do any in-depth testing and my set-up is beyond unsupported :p Perhaps some others could verify whether or not it does anything for performance?

This requires a CUDA-capable NVIDIA GPU and proper graphics drivers installed.

Reported GPU memory at the character select screen goes up by about 20MB going from non-CUDA to CUDA.

I recently got an Intel/NVIDIA Optimus laptop, and this is basically my first real introduction to NVIDIA graphics personally (always been an AMD fan; unfortunately only higher-end I/N laptops were available for a swap I did).

Any way, I’m rolling with the 367.27 drivers currently on Ubuntu 16.04 and Wine Staging. My FPS is alright. This is my setup guide for anyone interested: https://wiki.realmofespionage.xyz/games:wine:guild_wars_2

One interesting tweak I see mentioned by some people is Threaded Optimizations. Does anyone use that option as of currently and can confirm it does anything beneficial? I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong, running into some Optimius-related thing, or maybe it’s broken currently, but if I enable it, my FPS drops significantly.

I’m also curious to know if anyone is using any other interesting tweaks that could help out performance. I also have STAGING_SHARED_MEMORY=1 and STAGING_WRITECOPY=1 on too.

Infernia.9847:

I think it looks great but the distortion on the edges makes me dizzy. Is there a way to tone done the effect? Do you get used to the distortion after a time?

It’s a bit noticeable if I haven’t played with Eyefinity for some time, but I tend to not notice it after a while.

I’m not really sure if there’s a way to tone it down though. From my understanding, it’s the fisheye effect, and I don’t think GW2 has a large enough FOV to avoid it.

aspirine.6852:

Imagine how old the engine is if they cannot implement this. :/

And on another not, I thought opengl was slow as thick kitten? I remember Unreal 1 on opengl, so sloowwwww.

Engine age has nothing to do with it. Just look at Unreal Tournament 99. You can use DX10 and even a DX11 renderer with it.

Also, OpenGL isn’t slow at all. Depends on driver support if anything though, which most vendors do really well with nowadays.

http://youtu.be/DH7eba-ZKBw

The video shows a walk through Queensdale at 5040×900. I really like the added immersion Eyefinity gives, and I can’t thank ArenaNet enough for actually implementing support for it (few games do this nowadays; especially for MMORPGs).

Does anyone else use Eyefinity with GW2?

Not sure if it’ll help, but I recommend trying to check/repair the client (add -image to the shortcut).

No complains here (kind of hard pressed to see why anyone would be against such a suggestion really unless Linux killed their family or something). But I doubt it’ll happen in the foreseeable future.

They barely even have an OS X version of GW2. GW2 has no native OpenGL backend currently (afaik; the OS X version runs on a fork of Wine).

Gw2 crashes for me right before the game even renders anything (I go from the launcher, to a black screen, maybe a millisecond of audio, and then the error report).

Using a 7850 with Catalyst 14.11.2 Beta; Windows 10 TP 9879.

Edit: Only occurs when GW2 tries to start or be switched to fullscreen mode. Windowed and Fullscreen Window modes work fine.

Friend said GW2 fullscreens fine for him on NVIDIA, so maybe this is just a case of driver incompatibility with AMD currently. Can’t really place fault on AMD too harshly though considering they don’t even support the OS yet.

sirsquishy.8531:

Espionage.3685:

I’ve only done a limited test, but my temps are actually significantly lower with the 8350 than the 4670K I had; at least with a quick stress.

Would go from 30C to 70C pretty quickly on the 4670K. Go from 30C to 40-45C on the 8350. Same cooler, same paste (AS5) and I think the 4670K even had time to properly cure (8350 is about 24 hours in).

Would have figured with the 8350’s hungry power reviews that temps would be more out of hand.

Which cooler are you using?

DEEPCOOL Gamer Storm Lucifer V2.

Was using a Hyper 212 Plus on the 4670K prior to that cooler which also exhibited similar temperatures.

I’ve only done a limited test, but my temps are actually significantly lower with the 8350 than the 4670K I had; at least with a quick stress.

Would go from 30C to 70C pretty quickly on the 4670K. Go from 30C to 40-45C on the 8350. Same cooler, same paste (AS5) and I think the 4670K even had time to properly cure (8350 is about 24 hours in).

Would have figured with the 8350’s hungry power reviews that temps would be more out of hand.

Unpredictability.4086:

AMD is going to discontinue the 8350 soon and release the 8370, with slightly more clock speed (only like 100mhz at non turbo). It may be a good time to look for deals. Recently I saw it for $149.99. The energy efficient version however, the 8370E, will get comparable results to the 8350, but not as much as the 8370. Vishera is best with higher clock rates, and the 8370 being clocked lower means it performs less, until it ramps up into the turbo speed.

Yeah, seems like I just choose bad times to decide to upgrade my hardware. I paid $174 for my 8350 new, but the price will probably drop a bit.

When I had the 4670K, I purchased it about a week before the 4690K came out for the same price. I don’t have the patience to wait for things :p

sirsquishy.8531:

Espionage.3685:

sirsquishy.8531:

so..stay with the 4670K (or if you are buying, get a 4690K as the update is better then the orginal Haswell K’s)

I already sold off the 4670K, and bought the 8350. I didn’t buy it purely for gaming though, but was just wondering what to expect out of it.

Wasn’t a big fan of some of Intel’s decisions with the 4670K and H97 chipset I had (no VT-d but still charge a premium, poor temperatures, awkward chipset conditions) and decided to go with a platform free of those issues (I hear the 8350 can run hot though, but at least the contact between the IHS and die is decent).

While the 4670K and 4770K did not have VT-d, and had HIS issues under the lid, they resolved most of them with the 4690K and 4790K. Both of the kitten’s support VT-d and offer better cooling (my 4790K sits at 52-53 C’s with my giant air cooler).

My advice, in all honesty, dump the FX cpu and buy back into intel. AMD retired AM3 this year and AM3+ is next. There are no more new CPUs for the AM3+ socket. and the FX CPUs are just bad IMHO. They cost the same as a standard i5 and offer 1/2 of the performance.

I hear there are still some temperature issues (not as-bad, but still) and people delidding for significantly better temperatures with the 4690K.

As for performance, my (general) understanding is that Intel only benefits from single-threaded performance (with comparable CPUs) and AMD does great at multi-threaded. I did plan on doing some video encoding and having a transcoding server in the future, and possibly some streaming. May also play with some virtualization; but all of those things would be nice with some more CPU cores.

Also, I thought it was mentioned somewhere that AMD had a few new FX-series CPUs being announced soon with lower TDP? I think I heard of a revised 8350 (with different model number) that used 95W, but I could be mistaken.

sirsquishy.8531:

so..stay with the 4670K (or if you are buying, get a 4690K as the update is better then the orginal Haswell K’s)

I already sold off the 4670K, and bought the 8350. I didn’t buy it purely for gaming though, but was just wondering what to expect out of it.

Wasn’t a big fan of some of Intel’s decisions with the 4670K and H97 chipset I had (no VT-d but still charge a premium, poor temperatures, awkward chipset conditions) and decided to go with a platform free of those issues (I hear the 8350 can run hot though, but at least the contact between the IHS and die is decent).

I had a 4670K (at 4GHz) and played GW2 for a short period of time (about two months ago) before selling it. Prior to that, I had a Phenom II X4 @ 3.3GHz, and the 4670K was a real nice performance boost.

I’m getting a 8350 in the near future though, and was curious as to what kind of performance I should expect from it. Will it be comparable to the 4670K?

TinkTinkPOOF.9201:

Why would you not update is the question?

This. Unless you have a known reason as to why you shouldn’t update (rare driver or program incompatibility), you should update to 8.1 as soon as possible.

With that in mind, GW2 works fine on 8.1 with no regressions.

I would love to see Mantle support as well, but I too don’t really see it happening. DX12 may be a bit more plausible, but who knows.

Is the renderer API in it’s current state really a problem though? Sure, DX9 may have a bit of CPU overheat that’s not warranted, but I’m pretty sure overall CPU usage stems from other design decisions (aren’t reflections and shadows done CPU-side, along with water being invisibly-drawn everywhere while also being reflected?)

OpenGL from my understanding would allow for compatibility with many computers, cross-platform, and can allow for some cool optimizations, along with zero overhead. Is there any reason why this wouldn’t be a better option instead of DX12 or Mantle?

lioka qiao.8734:

Is Guildwars 2 compiled on an Intel Compiler with Intel specific optimizations?

If I recall right, I’m pretty sure it’s using the generic VC++ compiler and not Intel’s (I checked the executable with some methods on Linux). I made a post/thread at some point about it.

Edit: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/GW2-s-Compiler-Reason-For-Low-FPS-on-AMD/first#post2850689

Here’s two free VPNs I recommend:

ThreatSpike: https://www.threatspike.com
Uses the built-in VPN feature on Windows, and is pretty fast.

Spotflux: http://www.spotflux.com/
Works fine (just be sure to decline the “special offer” app or whatever is offered during install, it’s probably malware).

Just to show the difference between ThreatSpike Labs vs normal Verizon (High-Speed Internet via DSL):

TSL: http://puu.sh/7rfYp.txt
Verizon: http://puu.sh/7rfYS.txt

Haven’t tested anything in-game with GW2 yet, but from my overall experience, web browsing seems a tiny bit faster, and I no longer have terrible desync problems in Path of Exile when using TSL.

Windows 8(.1) has on-paper better performance than 7, but the actual difference can be less-visible depending on what all you do. I heard a lot of cases where BF4 for instance has significantly better performance on 8 than 7.

But in any case, you shouldn’t have a negative experience on 8 performance-wise. (as long as you have proper drivers and firmware). So basically, you shouldn’t lose anything going to 8, and may even gain performance.

sirsquishy.8531:

1. it does not making Devs do ANYTHING.

2. Anet probably wont incorporate Mantle until AFTER they upgrade to DX11+. If at all.

While Mantle increases performance across all platforms, its mainly for AMD. While DirectX is stagnant, its an API that all manufacturers have followed and optimized around. And that is why companies that have their software working on older DX9, would move to DX11 before going over to mantle, if they were ever to move to mantle that is.

To word that better, I meant the developers who work on DirectX and OpenGL. The article linked is discussing how Mantle will push DirectX and OpenGL APIs to have better performance.

It’s called competition. If Microsoft wants DirectX to still be relevant, they have to offer the best or near-best performance in-comparison to other APIs. Mantle as it stands currently, destroys DirectX (when properly implemented), and game developers are going to take (and have already taken) notice of this. Therefore, Microsoft (who still probably wants to remain relevant) will have to work out a way for DirectX to have similar or greater performance…

I too doubt GW2 will gain Mantle support in the foreseeable future. I’m almost positive this is a NVIDIA-sponsored game for the most part also (CUDA support, and I heard that NVIDIA paid money or something for better support before launch, idk), so that alone probably would eliminate hope for Mantle support. But hopefully this isn’t true…

sirsquishy.8531:

Stress.2436:

XFlyingBeeX.2836:

You will have to wait.
Thanks to AMD and Mantle
http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/directx_opengl_to_open_up_low_level_access.html

Sounds very nice mate

This isn’t going to happen. For them to include mantle will be a complete rewrite of the game. They would support DX11 before they ever bring support for Mantle.

As for game optimizations over all, they include ‘some’ about every 3 months or so (each quarter).

Did you even read the article? It mentions how Mantle is basically making developers implement bare-metal performance on DirectX and OpenGL…

Avelos.6798:

I don’t think Asus skimps on anything to be honest. The Ares II 7970X2 graphics card they released was a pretty beastly example of how much effort they put in.

I’ve had two separate occasions where ASUS disappointed me. The first was with my Xonar DG card (driver support was shoddy enough to make me use a modded driver).

The second was ridiculous, basically, it took a few hours to realize that Windows can’t allocate resources to audio properly on a UEFI install. 5 different calls to ASUS support didn’t point anywhere near this being a problem. It took a claim from a random person on some obscure forum with a different ASUS laptop to figure it out (he had the same problem). Reinstalled Windows in BIOS-mode, and all was well.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I couldn’t stop laughing after reading “delete the water under dungeons”

To be fair, if there wasn’t invisible water hidden underneath… everything, performance would skyrocket in a lot of places. But that’s not what this thread is about.

I think the last time GW2 legitimately crashed for me was early last year. Been playing a good since the recent patch (played maybe 5-7 hours straight with entering LA during the event around 5 times in a row) and a few weeks prior to that pretty heavily too without any problems; near highest settings too.

Not really too sure what would be causing the crashing though, but something to start with would be to try a client check/repair (add -repair to launch arguments of Gw2.exe).

May also want to check other things such as if the OS and drivers are up-to-date, and verify that your hardware is still stable (it does deteriorate over-time, especially the PSU and its power output; perhaps run a few stress tests and a memory check to verify). Should also make sure nothing that’s electronically noisy and/or power hungry is plugged in near or on the same power source as the computer (like an air conditioner or semi-large fan).

Might not really be helpful, but something interesting to try would be to see if the issue happens in GW2 on both Windows XP and Linux (through Wine with fglrx).

Did Eyefinity get popular all of a sudden? I barely heard mention of it in the past, and now recently I’ve seen about 4-5 different threads about it.

Makes me want to hook my setup back up.

I’ve heard in the past that computers with NVIDIA graphics that were updated from 8 to 8.1 without a clean reinstall of the graphics driver resulted in GW2 having stereoscopic enabled (as to why, no idea; just a really strange bug). I imagine there could be a few other scenarios to cause this.

As for a solution, I’d probably just try reinstalling graphics driver cleanly (a simple uninstall from the control panel usually leaves plenty of stuff behind; need something like DDU from Wagnard to find leftovers).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Or Doc Oct from Spiderman!

Or Andariel from Diablo II!

Or this concept art of Abaddon from GW1!

Or the hundreds of other beings with blades/appendages coming from the backside

I know plenty of other characters would probably have a similar look, but the main thing that made me associate it with Kerrigan is that she is… the Queen of Blades.

Adamantium.3682:

Health-tip: decapitations-reduce-optimal-health-status.

Does he actually say this at some point? I followed him around a bit around Vigil Keep and that outside hospital and didn’t notice it.

Sublimatio.6981:

ANet broke my heart because of that… I thought Tengu will help some citizens escape. Instead they shoot arrows at them! I wanted them as playable race, but.. now it seems unlikely

I thought I recall walking up to their wall one time, and one of them said something along the lines of “the first sign of trouble, and we’ll not hesitate to shoot you down”.

If that’s indeed true, I can’t say I really expect anything different then them… shooting down anything outside their wall.

Sarah Kerrigan… the “Queen of Blades”

The Spinal Blades alone look somewhat similar to the claw-arm things on Kerrigan’s back (when I first saw the item in preview, I instantly thought of Kerrigan).

Is this just a coincidence?

Also, here’s a picture for reference:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-now-on-google/?utm_source=client

:)

Scarlitty.3957:

People should know by now that ArenaNet does not have the word ‘hotfix’ in their vocabulary so spare yourselves the energy of trying.

I mean seriously guys, it’s been 22 hours, and they’ve responded on that ridiculous moa escorting crap which 2/10 of the population probably barely care about.

But an inventory bug wherein EVERY single one of their player base is affected? Who gives a rat’s kitten?

Broken achievement (which affects rewards too) vs minor inconvenience at best, which one do you really expect to have higher priority?

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

I saw a lot of similar posts on forums about the 7xxx series of cards. It’s either the terrible drivers or it was an issue with the 7xxx chips themselves and they can’t handle the clockspeeds they are being shipped with.

Or it’s just specific to the user’s own hardware. I hear of plenty of issues with AMD cards in-general, meanwhile, I don’t experience majority (90-95%) of those problems. I have a 7850, and have tried drivers as low as 12.11, all the way up to 14.1 Beta.

If the problem was tied to AMD, there would be a lot more people reporting a similar problem I would think. But in any case, I haven’t seen such a thing happen with GW2, on both my 7850 and 7660G + 7670M laptop, on Windows 7, 8.1, and Linux.

Randulf.7614:

Struggling to get the Elite Aetherblade achievement. I’ve completed said event 3 times now, but nothing has registered. Is there a trick to it?

Same issue on GH with Moas and Lawson

I did Lawson about 3 times; the first two times didn’t register for me. Worked fine the third time though. On the 3rd try, I made sure I killed two enemies.

bobomb.5209:

Well I am glad Desolation saved so many citizens. Lions Arch has been saved!! And just curious, what was the population of Lions Arch to begin with?

Someone on map chat hours ago mentioned that lore text said around 50k.

Rangersix.1754:

I have the feeling that a lot of you are just complaining for the sake to complain.

They should complain about the Scarlet attacking LA to begin with… since that’s the whole reason things are the way they are.

Antara.3189:

The point is blatant. It’s the fact that an area was defined as a central point for all players to conveniently utilize any of the services that the game offers in one location without having to travel all around tyria. Everyone also had a central location to access every part of the game.

Now you’re forced to travel to different areas or pay for convenience. It should be noted that it was officially stated all essential services would be moved to the Vigil Keep. I would think Trait reset, Crafting, Laurel Merchants were all part of that line of essential services.

Also remember the point that with many players congregated in one area gave players with questions a valuable recource to quickly ask a question, now the player base is split amongst many areas. Not everyone uses wiki, so again, think outside your own preferences.

LA was catastrophically attacked and destroyed; you expect all NPCs to move everything in a convenient manner to the new ideal location just like that? Whether ArenaNet had shady intentions or not, I believe the current state of the NPCs to be pretty expected from a lore-standpoint (well, the NPCs are a bit too-managed imo if anything, but whatever).

The Captain’s Airship, not being destroyed or affected by the LA attack, is probably in the same condition it’s been in, and is only now allowing players to enter to use its services. It being the “Captain’s” Airship and it being a really convenient area designed likely only for said Captain, it makes sense for it to be a VIP area, not a “everyone enter for free anytime” zone, hence why you need to have a paid ticket to get in. Consider it an act of kindness that you’re allowed in for free if you’re lucky to get a free ticket drop :p

General point being, from a lore-standpoint, I think things are fine.

I also hardly consider trait resets and Laruel merchants essential, but that’s mainly based on my own experience (I use one or the other maybe once every two weeks or so; in other words, it’s rare).

The first 3 (possibly 4) seem to be only tied to the main server’s LA. Overflow LA is fine though.

5 is a bit annoying, but having to keep persistence of 30+ piles of rocks for every character might be a bit harder than it sounds; but if I understand right, don’t gathering nodes operate just fine with persistence?

Here’s a random shot:

I usually see one after a major patch (saw Ryebread at the entrance at Archen Foreland earlier on TC; recall seeing another at Tequatl after the patch).

From my understanding, the main servers (at least mine is; Tarnished Coast) are bugged. As for how to confirm; the civilian count is likely some outrageous number (last I checked, TC was at 5000+).

The solution for now that I found is to just use the overflow’s LA, which isn’t bugged. As for an easy way to get into the overflow, just do the pre-event that occurs before LA opens up, and wait a minute or two (or longer) for everyone else to flow into the portal (let the main LA fill first), then walk in.

May have to guest to other worlds if other people caught onto this though (TC was fine for getting into overflow about an hour ago).