I’ve not yet been to the Fractals, so just a couple of things on the Lost Shores event.
The idea itself is really brilliant. A one-time danger, uniting the whole server and all that. It was a real shame I couldn’t actually experience it though.
I made two attempts at trying the event. The first one – P1, Friday. The guild stands ready in LA, everybody in the same overflow, 8PM hits and the cutscene starts. Right after that, the whole LA just stops. All the PCs stopped moving and just stood there, waving their tails/leaves/appendages; NPCs didn’t answer to me right clicking them like a maniac. The game stayed like that for a couple of minutes, with most of the guild having no problems whatsoever. Eventually, I’ve apparently lost the connection to the server and got kicked out. So, I tried to get back as quickly as possible not to miss out on anything.
10 mins of watching the LA loading screen later, I pressed Alt+F4.
Attempt no 2: LA loaded as per usual. I started to feel optimistic, which lasted till the moment I realised whatever I type in chat appears after 30+ seconds. Not a good sign. As I’m on an 80Mbps connection, I never had any issues like that in GW2s WvW or any online thing really. A couple of guildies had similar problems, but we tried to join in on the event as well. Bad idea, that. The lag really kicked in then; despite having constant 60fps (please don’t tell me I should’ve reduced the graphic settings), it was unplayable. I saw people popping in and out of existence, everybody shooting at invisible mobs, 30+ seconds of delay between me trying to use a skill and it actually working… I’d die half a minute before the game even told me about it. It was atrocious, so I just waited for the event to finish, which it eventually did. The defence was fun, too, according to some of the guildies. Considering everybody was on the same overflow, I have no idea what was going on there, but for me and some others, day 1 was completely unplayable.
Frustrated, I gave up and came back for Day 3 part. This sad story continued then though.
It started off well. We got together, moved in to the bomb squad and while some had a blast, I gave up after 40 minutes. The moment we reached the mountain, some of us got a replay of Day 1 issues. Invisible mobs, the game stopping for 20 seconds, for everything to “catch up” at the same time afterwards (for example, one moment everybody’s standing, the next second we’re all dead), fluctuating between 5 and 30+ lag on input. My connection was fine, same with the framerate. It was completely and utterly unplayable, so after 40 mins of running in to see no mobs, yet everybody shooting at something, dozens of people dying in the same second, mobs appearing out of thin air or just spinning in place, I had given up.
We were all in the same overflow and some of the guild had no problems, even people living 50km away from me. For some though, myself included, the event was completely ruined as we simply couldn’t take part in it.
Shame, it looked awesome. Well, when I could actually see anything.
Once again, a brilliant idea, Anet, just could you please make sure it actually works for everyone? Pretty please with a sylvari on top.