Guild Wars 2

Have you guys cleared the GW2 application support folder in the user library?

If you’re playing on the OS X client. It cannot see all of your RAM. It’s a cider port running in 32bit mode, meaning it can’t see more than 3GB of RAM, and some of that needs to be allocated to the wrapper that runs the game.
There’s unfortunately no solution for this other than waiting for the native client to come out.

Have you tried turning on ambient occlusion?

KapteinKrisa.8053:

I though the new HoT expansion probably would solve the major issues with the mac client. But no…
Now I get disconnected, and the game quits itself during events. Which is very frustrating when your in a boss fight or doing events with lots of players.

Not sure why you thought that
HoT is terribly optimised and also a whole lot more complex than central Tyria. So even people running windows have far far worse performance in HoT than they do everywhere else.

I do hope they do something soon though. It’s amazing that we’ve had problems with the OS X client for such a long time and they’re only beginning to do something about it.

psyt.9415:

Why didnt you guys chose Vulcan or Metal or something future proof? By the time this native OpenGL client comes out WoW and everyone else will be moved to low overhead APIs and Anet will be behind the times again just like with directx 9. Guess I shouldnt be complaining but I wonder why Anet never takes the time to be more future proof , if your doing it anyway why not do it on the API that gets more performance. OpenGL on OSX is still a version or two behind and with apple creating Metal I have a feeling it will be depricated on OSX.

Metal was never intended to be for larger complex games. It’s supposed to offer developers a language that will allow them to create games equivalent to iOS games for OSX. OpenGL is far more future proof than Vulcan or Metal.

It’s also worth pointing out that the only different between the 32 and 64 bit clients is the GW2.exe all the other files are the same so you can swap the exe’s out to change. I hope you didnt redownload the whole game just for the 64 bit :S

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

-snip-

Apologies, I didn’t mean to say that doing that wasn’t ok. I meant that it looks far more suspicious, and far more likely to return a false positive, than just sending someone a gift with nothing returned in exchange.

The Transaction should look less suspicious if you’re just sending the shield. If she were sending back a large amount of gold that would look suspicious. You should be fine!

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Try jumping into the displays option in OS-X “System Preferences”, and turning off “Automatically adjust brightness”, and see if that helps things. If it does, it could be an issue with the ambient light sensor hardware on your machine…

That shouldn’t impact screen gamma in any way whatsoever. Automatic Brightness is about how high the screen’s backlight is turned up. Gamma is controlled by software and is very different to brightness (though it can give the effect of lower or higher brightness).

If I remember correctly this used to happen a long long time ago, I can’t remember how it was fixed.
Are you able to check whether the colour profile changes while you’re playing the game? Or does it remain on “Colour LCD” (usually the default) regardless of what the screen gamma is doing?

I somewhat doubt it is the HDD causing the long load times for you.
My laptop has a regular HDD and load times are never longer than 2-3 minutes, which isn’t a problem.

Your CPU only has 2 cores, which might be causing a bottleneck and slow load times.
Hopefully someone else will have a little more insight.

Your connection doesn’t go straight from your ISP to Arenanet. There are points in between where it’s likely you’re experiencing package loss, resulting in a high ping at times. Arenanet doesn’t control what route your connection takes, nor are they responsible for anything other than their end. You’ll need to use a ping plotter to establish where the package loss is occurring.

You’ll need to submit a support ticket and explain the problem to them.
If you’re getting very different FPS on different accounts on the same computer then obviously something is up.
I will point out that FPS can vary greatly in different areas of the game, so you’ll need to be testing in exactly the same location. (e.g. pick a waypoint and send both characters to that waypoint to test FPS on the two accounts).

Look closely. They revoked GWAMM title because there was a bug that erroneously awarded it to people. They haven’t revoked any rewards. And unless you actually earned GWAMM in GW1 then that’s not a bug.
If you had earned it in GW1 then logging in there and visiting the HoM should fix it. If you didn’t earn it, then that mail is correct.

Fixed for me as well. I imagine there was an error with the code on the webpage which someone has ninja fixed.

Do not buy the game again. Just download it from the GW2 website.

You mean on the accounts page where it says “Game Accounts” then there’s a picture of the Guild Wars 1 logo and under that it says “Buy Now”. I’m pretty sure it’s like that for everyone regardless of whether or not your account is linked. Mine is linked and has been since launch as well, and it still says buy now down there.
However I could be wrong and potentially I have the same issue as you do?

Are you guys making sure that you leave it to run for at least 10-15 minutes? Sometimes it has to download an update to the launcher and during that time it won’t actually show anything and can seem like the program isn’t running.

It seems like a lot of people are having this issue. I’d strongly recommend submitting a support ticket. There might be something wrong with the installer in which case there’s nothing anyone on the forums can recommend to fix it.

Jacques.8170:

Thanks, yeah all those cores and ram are more for Maya than anything else. Don’t fancy rendering animations on a quad core machine…

I don’t have an issue with doing the bootcamp thing at all as I have a Win 8.1 64bit Home license I can transfer from my current pc. I’ll just give Windows a whole 120gb SSD to use and keep OSX and data files completely on different drives.

Is cider like ‘wine’ for linux? I did get GW2 to run on wine under Arch Linux but the textures were often messed up.

Cider is a licensed version of Wine (well it was, the company was sold off to NVIDIA a little while ago). So performance is similar to Wine, with the difference that Wine has an active community working on it. Wine also works on OS X, though I think there’s better support for Linux.

If you’re able to bootcamp the game then do it. Performance will be far far better.

See that installer on your desktop labelled “Guild Wars 2” when you open that it should present you with a window that has the GW2 logo inside, that’s an icon that you need to drag out of the window into your Applications folder. I suspect you’ve just double clicked the logo inside the installer, and it cannot run the program from inside there.

Metallus.7690:

Lol just received this email from gw2support:

“Hello X
I’ve taken a look into your account and from the investigation I have found that your account was blocked due to a violation of our Terms of Service in the form of Bad language. The ban is not available for an appeal and will stand on the account.

Regards,"

…. bad language….. gold selling….. are you…. like…… for real?

and so I get perma-banned for gold selling because it appears someone reported me for bad language (please give SS)?

I see, it toally makes sense. Very

Contest it. Tell them that the login screen clearly tells you that you were banned for gold selling, so there’s quite an obvious mistmatch. Bad language also isn’t a first time bannable offence as far as I’m aware and should have resulted in a suspension. Contest it.

Can I ask what the specs of your mac are and what OS you’re running?

I’m sorry that there’s not more I can suggest to fix the problem. It’s a little worrying that support weren’t able to come up with anything for you.

While not ideal you could always begin the installation using something like PlayOnMac and then copy the .dat over and see if that allows the game to run?

Ok. I’ve got an idea. If it’s an issue with the .exe inside the game then replacing it with the windows .exe might actually work (they’re the same file).
So… Download the windows version of GW2 (yes I know you can’t run it, that doesn’t matter we just want the exe file). Make sure it is named Gw2.exe if it isn’t then go ahead and rename it. Right click the file and copy it.
Now open your applications folder, right click GW2 and click “Show Package Contents” (sorry, don’t know how much you do or don’t know so will just step by step it). Then go Contents>>Resources>>transgaming>>c_drive>>GW2>> and paste the Gw2.exe in there, overwriting the existing one.

Let me know if that does anything.

Alternatively – you could create another user account on your mac and try installing the game on that (yes I know that’s an annoying thing to do, but its easy to get rid of afterwards if it doesnt work). Just thinking that it might let you actually begin the installation and then you could just copy the files across.

Ascended Jewellery is purchased with Laurels and cannot be crafted, which is why Jewellery cannot be levelled above 400.

philipitoyoda.3471:

Well bye , I got other games to play if they try to take my money, this is just not me but GW2 lost half there player base with this

They’re not taking your money. They’re offering a good in exchange for money at a cost they, and anyone who buys it, have deemed it to be worth. Yes there are people for whom the cost is too steep, but that is always going to happen, no matter what the product is.

If you don’t feel that the cost is personally worth it for you, a decision you’ve made based on your own financial situation and sense of the games worth, then that’s perfectly fine. But it’s not a legitimate criticism and you’re by no means in the majority with your opinion.

Yup, OCX refers to Oceania players, which usually refers to Australia and New Zealand (and the Pacific Islands) and sometimes also includes SEA (South East Asia).

The download isn’t actually starting over. The progress bar always shows the percentage for the number of files downloaded since it was opened. Meaning that if you do a download of 17% and then close the launcher that 17% is saved on your hard drive, and the next time you open the launcher it will start from 0% again, but be downloading from where it left off last time.

So at the moment all I can suggest is keep starting the launcher again after it crashes. If it’s downloading large enough chunks then eventually it will finish.

Aidan Savage.2078:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Is there a GW2 combat Visual Effects Restore mod that only effects the player’s client so that we could enjoy the original combat effects while playing our game? If so where can I get it because I miss the original visual effects like the Aura and fire ball and such =(

Thanks <3

If there is, it’s a bannable offense for using it. Such a “mod” violates the CToU and more than likely the EULA as well, as a result of modifying game files.

^- This x100.

It is against the ToS to transfer ownership of an account, meaning that your mother cannot just give you her account. It’s also not possible to transfer an account key from one account to another, so no you won’t be able to shift her HoT over to your account.
If your mother doesn’t want her account and it was purchased recently she may be able to get a refund on the purchase and if she’s kind then use that refunded money to purchase HoT for you?

cumberdale.3950:

In case of a complete uninstall and a fresh install, there are no files to be deleted at all. The Application Support folder is virtually empty and the application itself has nothing to run. For example, my Guild Wars 2 application is 98 MB big because none of the game files have been downloaded.

According to the ArenaNet.log file (in the /Contents/Resources/transgaming/c_drive/GW2/ folder), the error that happens when I try to launch Guild Wars 2 is the following:

“App: gw2.exe
Fatal error (2): Exception
When: 3/24/2016 17:30:15
File: ..\..\..\Core\Platform\Windows\Exe\Error\ExeError.cpp(409)”

Which seems to imply that this is a normal Windows error which happens somewhere beyond the cider wrapper. I can’t find the solution for this problem on Windows either.

The Application Support folder is still a very very important part of doing a clean install. The launchers files are contained within the Application Support folder and 99% of the time when the game will not start up that’s the problem. If you haven’t tried purging the GW2 App Support folder then do it.

Make sure you turn down the two settings that relate to the quality and number of characters rendered around you. The Mac client is a port and doesn’t run very well (for numerous reasons), and having to render a large number of objects at once will cause frequent crashes. You can minimise the crashing by turning down Character Model Limit, and Character Model Quality.

Baldeva.8095:

I am having the same problem. My first step was to uninstall the game, and to do a fresh install. Afterwards, when starting the launcher, nothing happens. I’ve waited hours, and nothing. I’ve tried restarting, running first aid on drives, removing and reinstalling again, launcher still does nothing. I’ve not changed anything on my system. I was is a game, and it crashed, which it did frequently anyway. I tried to restart it, like always, and nothing happened. That’s when I began the first uninstall, and reinstall. Now I have a product that I’ve paid for, that does not work.

Do this:
You can try to delete the contents of the gw2 data folder, it’s a pain to get to the right one: this step is a general fix for many tp and graphics issues, even without the previous steps however, it will lose all saved log in/password and in-game settings.

To access this:
1 Click on the “Finder” icon located in your dock or the desktop of your computer to make “Finder” the active program in the finder menu bar.
2 Hold down the “Option” key on your keyboard while clicking “Go” in the finder menu bar. A drop-down will appear.
3 While still holding down the “Option” key, click on “Library” in the “Go” drop-down.
4 Once in the Library folder click on Application Support > Guild Wars 2
5 Move the entire Guild Wars 2 folder to the trash and then empty the trash.

The next time you launch Guild Wars 2 it will recreate the recently deleted folder.

Zeljius.9703:

HippieJoel.9537:

The simple fact is that the current Mac client isn’t very efficient – it uses Cider so you’re basically having to translate DirectX API calls to OpenGL in real time, which simply isn’t efficient, especially on such a CPU bound game to begin with.

What I can suggest you try is running the game using Wine with CSMT enabled – I’ve gotten better FPS that way.

You can also try editing the game’s configuration in ~/Library/Application Support/Guild Wars 2 and I believe the file is called config – basically it has a line for the video memory which by default is set to 256M. Try raising this to 1024M or so.

Hope this helps.

Edited the config a while back already. It didn’t improve anything

I have not however tried enabling CSMT. Can that also be found in the config?

CSMT only applies if you run the game through Wine, which is another application that is commonly used for running windows applications on OSX. It is a separate thing to the GW2 client that you’d have to download. It may or may not work better. Wine also isn’t the most friendly thing for a newcomer. This is the page on the official Wiki about running the game in Wine, it might help you out if you’re interested in giving that a try: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_on_Wine

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Apple makes Overpriced and terrible computers (Hardware wise) and game developers prefer windows because Windows just works with all kinds of hardware. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel make tons of innovative and powerful hardware that Windows supports while Macs lack these kinds of support because of OSX has hardware restrictions. A game developer wants to be able to design and create games without limits, they tend to enjoy innovating where they can while a real PC gamer would rather upgrade their hardware for their PC to take full advantage for the latest tech that the developers made for them.

Apple doesn’t want their users to upgrade their computers to the latest tech. They don’t play nice with other hardware manufacturer so they lack innovation for the future of computing. A Mac user would have to buy a brand new computer for more money with less power since OSX again, doesn’t support the latest hardware. You can only use the hardware Apple wants you to use and you’re stuck with that hardware for good. The main hardware that gets upgraded for gaming is the CPU and GPU which you can’t do on the new Macs anyways.

Linux is just like Windows that the OS supports pretty much any hardware from what I read. While OSX is more popular than Linux as a general OS, I believe Linux would be more successful for GW2 and GW2 should be released on Steam to open up a more broad audiance interested in gaming. OSX has never been for gaming because hardware limitations on the OS… It’s like trying to develop a game for a console instead of a real PC. A Mac can’t even run Oculus Rift VR gaming because Apple’s computers lack raw power in the GPU department.

I hope OSX users like you would realize Windows and Linux is the future for gaming on computers. If you don’t like it blame Apple and tell them to be open to other hardware manufacturer. Tell Apple to be more open like Linux and Microsoft regarding their OS. Don’t blame the game developers. They don’t make Apple computer… Apple makes Apple computers and those computers are not a viable option for gaming for reason I stated above. I say Apple is the blame for the lack of game developer support in Macs.

Once again you’re spouting off a whole lot of completely untrue things. Mac’s have consumer level specs. So yeah, they’re worse than a dedicated gaming PC. But most Windows users don’t have a dedicated gaming PC, at which point a mac actually has better or equal specs to most mainstream consumers. There’s nothing about OSX hardware that is terrible, given that they use the exact same components found in any PC. Same graphics cards, same processors, same RAM, same motherboards. Whether or not they’re overpriced is irrelevant and based on consumer perspective.

The reason developers create games for Windows has nothing to do with Hardware limitation, but rather because Windows uses DirectX which is an industry standard, meaning that that’s what companies have traditionally supported and so continue to support. DirectX is developed by Microsoft, which is the only reason it’s not compatible with Macs. Mac’s use OpenGL, which is compatible with Windows (and is also used by the PS4…).

No you can’t upgrade the hardware in a Mac, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have good hardware… Most consumers don’t even upgrade their own computers, with the exception once again of hardcore gamers, who are not representative of any sort of majority.

We get it, you don’t like Macs. But nothing you’re saying is constructive and you’re not even halfway accurate.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

OSX has hardware limitations and thus not viable option as a gaming platform because PCs evolves every year with newer and more powerful hardware that gets released every year.

I rather ArenaNet put their resources in adding new content instead of making OSX or Linux support. Content is what keeps players and brings new players in. Sure adding another platform could help business sales but right now content is what we need. The rest can wait. Windows has always been dominant in gaming for a reason, and that reason is Windows doesn’t have hardware limitations. It just works with all the latest hardware that come out each year.

OSX doesn’t have any hardware limitations… It runs on the exact same hardware that any Windows PC runs on. Just like with Windows there are low end macs and high end macs. And in fact most OSX computers have better specs that what a lot of mainstream consumers have with their PCs… The only limitations are software, and primarily DirectX vs OpenGL.

nesh.7234:

Geiir.7603:

Game developers today need to realize that OS X are starting to take a serious market share and they need to act accordingly. Justifying it by saying that they could just use BootCamp and be fine isn’t going to work much longer.

For Linux, yeah, OSX no, it’s a niche and will stay like that forever (especially with last few releases). It will be great for GW2:mobile iOSX game tho It’s a simply waste of resources.

(OS(x) user from OS 8 )

I’m sorry but that’s a ridiculous comment. Linux is and always has been a niche OS. OS X has far greater mainstream traction and a much higher user base. There’s also been a shift towards programmers using OS X instead of Linux which effectively leaves linux with no draw over OS X or Windows. OS X is by no means niche.

There’s nothing you can do to improve the FPS or stability other than ensuring no other programs are running while you run GW2, and turning the graphics settings down. Sorry :/

Keriana.9635:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

It’s not just a business decision…
They’re trying to create content that appeals to different players. The Living World appeals to you, while Raids appeal to another set of players. It’s the same reason we have PvE content, PvP content, and WvW content. Not all players are the same. Just because they’re preparing one type of content for the next release doesn’t meant they’re neglecting other parts of the game. Likewise just because raids aren’t content you personally want doesn’t mean that it’s a business decision.

The bottom line is they are working on the next living world season and we have an approximate release window. It’s better for them to wait a little while so that as many people as possible can finish HoT and be up to date on the story.

The issue is that it is just too long to wait for new living world content. It would have been better if they had alternated the release of different types of content so that different types of players would all have something new to do.

Alternating content types is exactly what they are doing. They do have to allow that things may not necessarily be done when they had first expected though. You also have no idea how large the next LW content is going to be, how many people are working on it, and what kind of content they’re implementing. It may just be that they needed a bit more time to spend on it because it’s bigger than past releases or for some other reason.

They have different teams working on each thing (and the raid team is quite small).

I’m not sure you would get any developer assistance for this. There is a massive massive amount of text in the game and it is scattered across many many places. A single player game might be a better subject for that kind of thesis?
As it is you’ve also got to remember that a large amount of the game is voice acted, and often without a text equivalent, meaning that you’d be either trying to listen to hundreds of hours of dialogue in order to translate it, or just have to ignore spoken text.

If you’re wanting to translate the game and implement the translation, then that’s not really going to be possible. I don’t think you can apply changes to the client from your end (and doing so would be a breach of the EULA) and Arenanet isn’t going to use a fan translation on the actual game client as there would be legal issues with doing so.

It’s not just a business decision…
They’re trying to create content that appeals to different players. The Living World appeals to you, while Raids appeal to another set of players. It’s the same reason we have PvE content, PvP content, and WvW content. Not all players are the same. Just because they’re preparing one type of content for the next release doesn’t meant they’re neglecting other parts of the game. Likewise just because raids aren’t content you personally want doesn’t mean that it’s a business decision.

The bottom line is they are working on the next living world season and we have an approximate release window. It’s better for them to wait a little while so that as many people as possible can finish HoT and be up to date on the story.

There’s a reason you don’t really ever see MMO’s, or any other games for that matter, suddenly come out and change their graphics. It’s not a simple process nor is it worth the money and effort that it would take. GW2 is still an incredibly gorgeous game and it’s not as though it looks old, because it isn’t.

The interface on small is as small as it goes. Your screen resolution is quite low, which is why it’s proving to be an issue for you.

Honestly I don’t think there’s enough emphasis on the fact that you need to save that secret code. Yes I know it says “and save it” at the top, but they should perhaps state in the description below that you’ll need the code if you ever lose or move to another device. As someone who wasn’t very well versed on Authenticators i had no idea that it might not be simple to change to a new device.

Goratrix.8417:

Thanks a lot guys, that cleared a lot of my conceirns.. I think I’m gonna go for a fresh start and hit the revenant with a new account.. and hot.. might be a good change..

once again thanks a bunch guys

Why would you start a whole new account? If you add HoT to your existing account then you get to keep all of your characters and can still start over with a new Revenant. Paid accounts have more character slots than free accounts.

You should start with the games main/original storyline. There’s a ton to do all the way up to level 80 with the main story about fighting the Elder Dragon Zhaitan.
The Living Story updates are set after the personal story. Unfortunately as other’s have pointed out, Season 1 was temporary content. As such it’s not replayable at the moment, but hopefully will be in the future. The official wiki is a great place to read up on Season 1 though. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_1

So once you’ve finished the personal story I’d recommend reading the plot of Season 1, and then continuing on to play Season 2 (which can be purchased as you’ve seen and is replayable). Unfortunately with how things were done jumping straight into Season 2 would leave you very confused. It’s a direct continuation of S1.

Heart of Thorns, the new expansion, continues on from Season 2, so I’d leave that until last.

If you purchase HoT and apply it to a free account all restrictions will be lifted. You’ll have access to the main game/central Tyria, and all of the new HoT content with no restrictions.

Whitefang.4968:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Have you guys checked your ping? You can see that in the game’s options panel next to FPS.

Yes im fully aware of things that might be affecting it. my ping to gave has been always the same. (other than when anet servers go wonky and people get 4k ms random)

This issue has no correlation with ping. my fps is fine as shown by game and overwolf. but the screen tends to get stuck for a second or so. very visible when playing

Sorry, was worth mentioning. You can have great FPS but awful ping and it will produce stuttering/freezing, so thought I would check.

Elementalist can do this to a degree as well. You can be a pretty decent support healer with water and offer shielding/buffs with auras and earth.
Guardian is probably a better fit though.

Have you guys checked your ping? You can see that in the game’s options panel next to FPS.