Guild Wars 2

marnick.4305:

Following tips might help to optimize your Guild Wars 2 game. I’ve collected these from Dev answers. Tried all and they either work or have no effect in my case.

• Don’t install GW2 in program folders, due to restrictions on file editing. C:\Guild Wars 2\ is highly recommended
• Make a shortcut to the GW2.exe > right click it > properties > compatibility > run as administrator.
• Turn off User Account Control (if you know what you’re doing)
  Being administrator in Windows 7/8 merely gives you the right to run stuff as administrator, it doesn’t do so by default. If Guild Wars 2 doesn’t install or update, you’ll have to trigger admin rights for a piece of software.

Firewall:

• exclude GW2.exe and awesomiumprocess.exe
• exclude tcp ports 80, 443, 6112 and 6600 in both directions

Router configuration:

• give your dedicated gaming PC a fixed IP adress
• tunnel TCP ports 80, 443, 6112 and 6600 directly to this PC in two directions

Router hardware:

• buy a new one. Old routers (5+ years) tend to not accept dozens of connections which are very common in all software nowadays
• memory leaks in firmware tend to bog down a router. Unplug it and let it rest for at least 5 minutes to clear the RAM.
• install the latest firmware or a homebrew
• especially with frequent disconnects at eg 18:00 in the evening, change wireless channel to another number. Many people logging on after work can overload any customer grade device.

Trading Post:

• awesomiumprocess.exe is the ingame browser running the Trading Post. Give it full access to TCP port 80 to run smoothly.
• delete GW2cache in temp files temp. Garbage tends to collect there, reducing access to the trading post. Can only be done before starting GW2.

Graphics:

• Update videocard drivers to at least June 2012. Intel, ATi and nVidia all implemented heavy optimization after BWE#2.

GW2.dat:

• doing a full repair can fix some issues
• if you used other languages in the past, deleting and downloading GW2.dat again could potentially shrink the file and improve performance.
• doing an image update once every so often will significantly speed up loading times.

Hall of Monuments:

• if Hall of Monuments doesn’t load properly, right click the website > properties > allow pop-ups for this website. It helped for me.

Absolute minimum system requirements:

• i5 + HD3000 graphics family
• 4 GB ram
• If you don’t mind low graphics, this is all that’s necessary.

Feel free to ask questions and PM me to let me know. I’ll update this one accordingly.

Mostly useful information besides the minimum requirements part. The absolute minimum requirements are that ArenaNet specifies at the bottom of this page:
https://buy.guildwars2.com/en/

Try this driver out:
http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/64408

Slothie.5206:

Windows 7 64 bit
and you were right I do have Nvidia, its a driver version 311.06

In other words, a driver from a while ago. I need to know the GPU though, not your driver version. Different cards require different drivers. To check what GPU you have, hit the windows key and type ‘dxdiag’ without the quotes. A new window pops up, take a screenshot of all the ‘Display’ tab information. Somewhere in that mess of information is what I need.

Flatley.1620:

Well, there are high-end lappy’s out there such as Alienware ones – my question came from the perspective that could one of these high specc’d lappy’s run the game? I.e. with a smooth FPS with quite a few option turned to high or ulta.

Depends on the definition of smooth, some people want that 60FPS and only consider that smooth, others don’t care and consider 30FPS as smooth. Then, you get people like me that think something in between is what is smooth.

It also depends what areas of the game we’re talking about, the most CPU demanding ones, large WvW battles and large dynamic events, no. There is no MOBILE CPU that will guarantee 30FPS in WvW. Now, there are laptops out there with CPUs that aren’t mobile and actual desktop CPUs in a laptop chassis. If you can amply cool those CPUs and dare I say, overclock them as well, then yes. There are laptops out there that might be able to play the game ‘smoothly’.

MakubeC.3026:

Thanks mate.
Too bad there’s no option to let you run it at whatever resolution you want without caring for your windows resolution.

Like I said, I like to have windows on 1920×1080, but I just can’t play gw2 like that!

The other option would be to get better hardware to run at 1080p :p

Flatley.1620:

Interesting. However, when I switch reflections off, I only get a 4-5 FPS increase. Are they really that demanding?

Depends on the area you’re in, even though most, if not all maps, have an initial layer of water covered by raised land, but that is another conversation altogether about Umbra’s software.

For instance, I sometimes have the reflections set to ‘All’ and cap my GPU usage out, this really hinders my frame rate in swampy areas due to the more graphical intense water effects. If I turn it down from ‘All’ to the level below that, my GPU doesn’t use 100% and goes back to my frame limit cap at 60. In this situation I gain about 25 fps, but this is an extreme, the other extreme would be what you mentioned, it’s all about where you are in the game.

Off topic:
It would be neat if this engine had a benchmark test, I’m sure the enthusiast crowd would love it and perhaps this would be a tool to better explain to people that even the most ridiculously specced machines have trouble with this engine.

Guardian of hell.4957:

My system is as follows
Amd A8 5600k 3.4 ghz
gtx 550 ti
8 gb ram
1440 by 4900
i bought this thinking eventually when i get my 1080p monitor i get could play med to high but at this res im averaging 30 to 40 on med to high . if this is right what part of the system, would need upgrading to meet my demands?

Weird resolution…but anyways your graphics card would likely need to be updated.

Do me a favor and check your GPU usage, also make sure your computer is using the 550Ti and not the GPU in the APU. If your GPU usage is 100%, then you need a better graphics card, if its well below 100, say at 90% and you aren’t capping your frame rate at 1440 by 900 and your CPU is the bottleneck.

Your APU should be fine unless we’re walking about crowded areas. The more people there are around you, the more the CPU has to work (which is already abnormally high compared to most other game engines). Eventually, there are so many people around you that the CPU can’t feed the data to the GPU fast enough and the GPU can’t create as many frames per second because it just doesn’t have the data to do so. This is when you see your frame rate suffer while your GPU isn’t working at full potential.

Flatley.1620:

Does GW2 run well on any lappy? My PC is a pretty high specc’d desktop and can’t really handle the game with any authority.

I feel like you answered your question with your own sentence. If you desktop is high end and can’t handle the game, what makes you think a laptop would fare out any better? Since you know, laptops are less powerful machines typically when compared to recent desktops.

Your definition of ‘well’ can be interpreted in many ways, but for my definition of well, there is no laptop worth getting that can play this game reasonably.

Slothie.5206:

the blackscreen I get is one where the music still plays in the backround but I cant do anything and its as if my account has logged off. when this happens varies from roughly 10 seconds to 10 minutes prior to me logging on

So Ive done what this thread told me to do https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Black-Screen-Issue-Nvidia

And I can’t do what this thread tells me to do for my system appears to lack a catalyst control center and I my computer won’t allow me to download one https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Black-Screen-Issue-AMD-ATI

any help would be appreciated this has been happening to me for weeks and I’ll prolly ditch this game out of frustration if I cant fix it

You can make sure your graphics drivers are up to date. I’m assuming that since you don’t have catalyst CC, and can’t get it, you likely have an Nvidia graphics card. What GPU do you have an what operating system are you on? With that information I can point you to the latest drivers for your graphics card.

MakubeC.3026:

I can’t make it full screen like that. I can only resize it up to my start bar. I want it Windowed full screen.

The only way to do this is to change the resolution of what Windows runs at to 720p. Then you can run Guild Wars 2 in Fullscreen and it will run at 720p.

(In Windows 7/Vista)
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/change-screen-resolution
(In Windows XP)
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/display_change_screen_resolution.mspx?mfr=true
(In Windows 8 )
http://www.groovypost.com/howto/windows-8-change-screen-resolution/

Wildchild.7502:

—> Crash <—
Out of Memory: arena=Environment, cat=Prop Packfile, allocBytes=717936, arenaBytes=135525864, fallbackBytes=6127214, align=0 ,
App: Gw2.exe
Pid: 1696
Cmdline:
BaseAddr: 00400000
ProgramId: 101
Build: 20941
When: 2013-07-19T16:05:01Z 2013-07-19T12:05:01-04:00
Uptime: 0 days 0:02:10
Flags: 0

Anyone can help me there? I can play when using Best Performance graphics but its fugly as hell.

I’m using a GTX 650 and all drivers are up to date.

What operating system do you use and how much RAM do you have?
I would recommend upgrading to a 64bit operating system, that usually makes this error disappear.

Kyllaa.1385:

His memory usage is quite high as well, perhaps he has too many background processes running? Because something is causing his paged files and memory usages to be consistently over 80% and even at times, 90+%.

Just a thought from reviewing the long list of crashes.

You’re right, somehow he is using 20GB+ of RAM, the only thing I would imagine is a RAM disk or RAM cache. If its a lot of programs, we’re talking excessive amounts or like 5 instances of Photoshop open at the same time.

Steve.1802:

I was hoping someone on the forums would have an answer to my problem.

I have played GW2 on this computer before with no problems. But as of recent I been having an issue trying to play.
After I put in my log in info, press play, and accept the terms I get a black screen; No audio, no video, can’t alt+tab, can’t Alt+ctrl+del. I have to hard reset my computer.

My drivers are up to date and I tried all the solutions given to me by tech support.
-wired connection
-adding -windowed at the end of the extenstion
-changing compatibility mode
-running as admin

I even went as far as to factory reset my computer to day one settings + reupdate the drivers again

I have attached my dxdiag, system info, and gw2 test

my compuer; or laptop is an Alienware M17x R3 with AMD Radeon HD 6900M Series graphics.

The only thing I can think of is that something went bad hardware wise that is causing you to have problems. You have reset everything software wise it seems, hopefully reset here is formatting your hard drive and starting over.

I would run a check disk on the hard drive Guild Wars 2 is on. To perform a check disk go to ‘My Computer’ and right click on the hard drive Guild Wars 2 is on. Click ‘Properties’ and a new window pops up. Go to the ‘Tools’ tab and then click the button labeled ‘Check now…’.

rgrwng.4072:

Since my last post, i have kept trying to play with no success yet.

this time, i was able to get past the character creation screen, but then the client promptly crashed before i could get into The Grove.

I also got a pair of dual error screens.

You might want to try a disk check. To perform a disk check, go to ‘My Computer’ and right click the hard drive that has Guild Wars 2 on it. Then click ‘Properties’ and go to the ‘Tools’ tab. Click the ‘Check now…’ button and perform the disk check.

BlackFrost.3576:

Hello guys, I’ve just recently bought the guild wars 2 and have finished installing the game, but am currently downloading the updates for the it. About 3 hours later when the download is at 60%, windows decided to update, which i did not know, and my computer was forced to restart and update. When I opened up guild wars 2 to resume the update, it was at 0% again which is really frustrating as I’ve waiting for hours to just play the game but update is right back at the start. Is there anyway to play the game without the update or make it resume back at where it currently was? Sorry if you find this question dumb.

My guess is that this update forced the client to close, as is windows update and Guild Wars 2 do not play nicely together. It’s a real shame, to be honest, that something like this where the client should recognize that it needs to close in a safe manner rather than fighting the system, happens.

Basically, anytime Guild Wars 2 is downloading or updating, if something unexpected happens then there is a very high chance that the gw2.dat file becomes corrupted. Anything from a simple crash or blue screen to a power outage will cause this. Sadly you’ll just have to download the game again since the data is corrupted and you can’t start back from where you left off. I would recommend that you make a back up of the gw2.dat file once everything is downloaded so that when you are updating the game and something bad happens, you don’t have to download the game all over again and can just replace the game with the backup and patch up from there.

Zyxzed.8041:

tnx =)
need to buy pc components , can’t replace laptop! =/

Well, I’ve already given a general idea for what processor you should get. As for a GPU, I need to ask a few questions to get a better idea what is best for you.

What resolution do you play at (do you have a monitor)?
What graphic settings do you want to play at (low/med/high/mix)?
What FPS do you want to get with the aforementioned settings?
What is your total budget for the computer?

Well besides the inherent problems with your computer crashing all the time when downloading games nothing is amiss.

When the client is downloading data, if anything unexpected happens; like a blue screen or a crash, or there is a power outage, there is a very high chance that the gw2.dat file will become corrupted. Therefore the entire thing needs to start over again.

What I can recommend is every 10% stopping the client and copy the partially completed file to a safe location. Then, continue to update. Once you encounter a crash that has you download all over again, copy your backup in and start from the last checkpoint you made. Continue this until you get to a playable state, then make a backup of the completed gw2.dat so that if you crash while updating, you’re not up kitten creek.

Perhaps we should look into why you are getting a blue screen in the first place. What error are you getting on your blue screen?

EverythingXen.1835:

So tonight, I suddenly cannot log into the game. The launcher sits at Downloading 0Kb and will not advance past it to the login screen. It’s incredibly frustrating as I was playing it just fine last night with no issues.

I’ve filled out a ticket with Tech Support, but I figured a try a shot at the boards to see if anyone else had this problem and corrected it.

A few things…
Yes I’ve run it as an admin.
My firewall and antivirus software is turned off (at least for getting the game running)
My computer more than meets the minimum specs.

The only thing I’ve done was uninstall some old GeForce Experience files from my old graphics card (I had recently upgraded to a Radeon HD card) that I finally got around to removing.

Any ideas?

I’ve attached my GameAdvisor report… can anyone help?

Ensure that the proper ports are open on your router for Guild Wars 2. I don’t recall what they are off the top of my head, but they are easily found if you search around. There are three if I remember correctly.

Helix.6517:

Well, the disc check did indeed work! I saw that during it, the GW2 file had something wrong, so when it finished I ran repair with no problems. The test I had no problems with too!

Thanks for the help!

Hah…maybe I shouldn’t write such long posts cause I guess some information gets lost…

A few things I would try just for kicks, is to delete the local.dat file located in your user documents. This file has been a known trouble maker for some people in the past, all it does it hold the Guild Wars 2 settings you have changed in game, so you’ll have to reset those to whatever you want likely when the game becomes playable again.

If that doesn’t do anything, you can try using the -repair switch on a Guild Wars 2 shortcut. Follow the instructions here:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

After that assuming that doesn’t fix anything, you can check your hard drive for errors using a disk check. To check the disk with Guild Wars 2 on it, go to ‘My Computer’ and right click on the hard drive that has Guild Wars 2 on it. Click ‘Properties’, a new window pops up. Go to the ‘Tools’ tab and click ‘Check now…’.

If that doesn’t work you can try checking your RAM. Just have one stick in at a time and see if you encounter the errors. If you don’t encounter the errors after a day, move onto the next stick until you find the one with errors. If none of them have errors or all of them have errors, I’m not sure what to say. If one of them has errors, it looks like you might have a bad stick of RAM.

Ashley Segovia.8276:

Hey there JarlyX! Thanks for giving us something to go off of right off the bat!

I took a look at your Speccy Snapshot and your RAM configuration caught my attention. This could just be an improper reading by Speccy, but from the sticks of RAM in your system your memory should be running at 800MHz but instead it’s running at 534,4 MHz. If you are comfortable with making changes to the BIOS, I’d recommend adjusting the settings to their intended values since the memory appears under-clocked.

It could be a ratio that got changed. The ratio settings will look like 2:8, 2:10, etc. Bumping it up by 2 levels should fix things to bring it back up to 800Mhz.

WaffleIron.3271:

Whenever I am online in GW2 I often get black and white lines flickering across my screen horizontally. It is worse in major cities and if the screen is tilted towards areas with a lot of action. Sometimes this will cause my computer to crash to a multi-colored static screen forcing a restart. This happened before and after I had my graphics drivers updated and turning on v-sync seems to outright crash my computer in the same way stated above. I do not have this issue with any other games.
My card is a nvidia gtx 260m and these issues have occured when i ran windows7 as well as windows 8. Thanks in advance

The first thought that comes to my mind is whether or not your laptop is over heating. Lets make sure your CPU and GPU temperatures are within their limits. If you don’t already have software that monitors your GPU temperature and CPU temperature then I would recommend getting HWMonitor, which can be found here:
http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.23-setup.exe
Make sure to leave Guild Wars 2 running for a little while before determining how hot your GPU or CPU get.

Kaiser.9873:

Okay here’s an odd situation. My wife and I play the game, and have since it launched. The problem is that while I can play fine for as long as I want my wife’s game crashes quite often.

She has updated all of her drivers, and is on a fairly new computer that was built for gaming(her hardware is far beyond what this game requires). She has been disconnecting quite often lately with no error code appearing, just a box saying a serious error has happened.

One of the things that caught my eye when reviewing the information was that it kept repeating Texture missing mip chain: 0×26601, and Texture missing mip chain: 0×26600. It also said White box(false) many times, whatever that means.

Today she went into borderlands and as soon as she killed something, anything, even ambients, she DCed. We tried setting her settings to the same I run and it happened again on the same ambient rabbit in North camp.

Any help would be appreciated.

I’m assuming you game within sneaker net distance of each other. Instead of performing a -repair on the gw2.dat file, you have a known good copy of the game and a known bad copy. Grab an external hard drive, if you have access to one and toss the known good gw2.dat file onto it and delete the known bad gw2.dat file. Copy the known good gw2.dat file in for the old bad gw2.dat file and hopefully that works. If you don’t have an external hard drive, you can always share the file on your internal network.

If the new gw2.dat changes nothing, then you’ll want to perform a check disk on the hard drive that contains the gw2.dat file. To do this go to ‘My Computer’, right click the hard drive and click ‘Properties’. This brings up a new window, go to the ‘Tools’ tab and hit the ‘Check now…’ button.

Helix.6517:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

Since your computer can have multiple configurations, I wasn’t able to decipher exactly what your specifications are. Could you please list the amount of RAM you have, whether you have a 32bit operating system or a 64bit operating system, what CPU you have, and what GPU you have.

Your laptop might be overheating when playing Guild Wars 2, what temperatures does your laptop’s CPU and GPU operate at when running Guild Wars 2 for a few minutes? If you don’t already have software that monitors your laptop’s CPU temperature and GPU temperature, then I recommend getting HWMonitor, which can be found here:
http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.23-setup.exe

Alright, I have a 64 bit operating system. Installed Memory (RAM) is 8 GB. And I screenshotted this because I honestly had no idea what a GPU value looks like http://oi43.tinypic.com/2gxfnes.jpg

Now here’s the logs from HWMonitor (which is pretty nice, thanks for showing it to me)
http://oi41.tinypic.com/2im87rn.jpg
This is while running GW2 (the character select. I was unable to get a shot while on the loading screen. refer to title for problem. Everything froze. Even HWM. Hard restart needed)
Temp numbers are an average. Top fluxed around 2 degrees while the bottoms did the same more rarely.

As a bonus, I decided to run Tera Rising with HWM on. Here’s the results:
http://oi41.tinypic.com/64f7rs.jpg
And the game runs fine there’s no lag or anything.

I’m pretty sure it’s not overheating.

You’re welcome, personally I don’t like HWMonitor, its just a really easy tool for others to install and get the information I need. A one-stop-shop so-to-speak.

Anyways, your GPU is an integrated GPU with your CPU. With your processor its the HD 3000, which is the bare minimum for Guild Wars 2.

With this, lets check and make sure your graphics drivers are up to date:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=22628&keyword=HD3000&DownloadType=Drivers&lang=eng
The above should be the latest and greatest from Intel.

You’re correct, your temperatures are well within their limits for both games. However, the temperatures on Guild Wars 2 make little sense when compared to the temperatures of Tera Rising. I would expect the higher temperatures to be present in Guild Wars 2, or if Tera Rising produced higher temperatures, it wouldn’t be by a lot. The difference is pretty big, perhaps this is because of your infinite loading screen problem.

However, I noticed your battery looks like its taken a beating. I can’t say for sure how accurate HWMonitor is for measuring battery capacities, it might be totally off. It’s just something worth noting.

You can try the -repair command line switch to repair the gw2.dat file in case that was corrupted along the lines of playing the game. There any many resources online that let you know how to do this. Just Google Guild Wars command line, and use the -repair switch.

You can delete the local.dat file located in the Guild Wars 2 folder in your user documents. This will reset all your in game settings, but is known to cause a ton of issues for some reason.

If that doesn’t work, lets check and make sure your hard drive is alright. About how much space is left on your hard drive? No need to be exact, I just want to make sure that the hard drive isn’t completely filled which would slow down the computer considerably. Go to ‘My Computer’ and right click on the hard drive Guild Wars 2 is on. Click ‘Properties’; a new window pops up. Go to the ‘Tools’ tab and click the button ‘Check now…’. This will start the disk check on your hard drive to ensure integrity.

After that report back, hopefully its fixed, else we might need to explore addition avenues to try and fix the problem.

Holy Whirlwind.2067:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

I seriously doubt the GTX 770 is your bottleneck. Maybe in other games, but not Guild Wars 2 unless you’re running a triple monitor setup at 5760 by 1080. Likely its your CPU that is your bottleneck with Guild Wars 2.

Sorry, I meant CPU above, not GPU. I know the CPU is my bottleneck. Do you know what he is using to get the fps and temps on the top left of his pictures? Is that FRAPS?

What is weird is that in his picture, it does not look like it is using much of his CPU or GPU and neither is very warm. He could overclock the CPU some, but can he force it to use more?

Judging at a glance of what was pictured, I can’t say for sure what it is, but it sure looks like some rainmeter magic.
http://rainmeter.net/cms/
I’m currently making my own blocky Guild Wars 2 skins for monitoring my CPU usage/temperature, GPU usage/temperature, RAM usage, page file usage, network upload and download monitors, a hard drive capacity monitor, and maybe others. Currently they’re using a Guild Wars font created from the fan base:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/607-guild-wars-2-based-font-v10/
and a solid red background because its hard to read otherwise. I wanted a black/white/red theme since that is what Guild Wars 2 primary color scheme seems to be.

I should also mention that it required CPU-Z to get my computer’s information to display on the skin and MSI Afterburner to get my GPU’s temperatures.

selfdisplaced.5781:

Seems about 75% of the time if I press Alt+Tab to switch out of Guild Wars 2 the game crashes when I Alt+Tab back to the game. Just when getting into the game just get a black screen with just the cursor, which changes if I hover over something, but just a black screen.

I typically press Control Alt Delete and when I do that I usually get the submit issue to ArenaNet message, which I submit every time.

Upgrade to Windows 7 :p Kidding aside, switch over to Windowed Fullscreen mode in the graphics options. It should make Alt+Tabbing easier. You can also make sure your graphics drivers are up to date in case that is the problem.

Kyllaa.1385:

What video card though? I only see a CPU listed.

He’s running a socket 478 CPU, that equates to whatever was before dinosaurs in the computer world. At this point he’ll either be smart and ask someone what to buy or go to Ebay to purchase another equally old and bad processor for more money than its worth.

It’s obvious that the person is not with the computer world, else they would look at the minimum requirements for games and notice that his/her 7 year old computer can’t play games that have come out in the past year. They’ll likely buy a prebuilt machine that will bring the CPU spec up to date and along with it either HD3000 or HD4000 graphics, which surpass the minimum requirements. Granted the game will look bad and run pretty bad, but with a 7 year old computer, that has to be the norm for them.

The key lesson here people is that the minimum specifications are there for a reason and listed on the buy page for Guild Wars 2 or are listed on the back of the box in stores.

Cryostrike.2948:

it was working before, and i believe it needed like 200 power supply and i have like a 350 watt

As the above said, your entire computer runs off that 350W supply. Over time as it ages, the efficiency gets lower and may not actually output the full 350W anymore.

Helix.6517:

Alright I’ve had this problem before, and it started around mid-June for the first time. GW2 ran smoothly before this. Loading screens took maybe 5 seconds. I could run it through steam and it was good. Hell, I could probably run firefox and it would still not give me a single problem.

But now, the loading screens make me wait much longer. Infinitely, if I left it to it’s own devices, as a matter of fact.

I cleaned my computer in early July, and I still held off running GW2 because it obviously has given me problems… My laptop is a Toshiba p750. GW2 ran fine for maybe a week. Then I got the endless loading screens. Again.

My dad let me borrow his comp while mine was in the shop, and out of curiosity I ran GW2 on it. It ran. With no problems. His comp is a Toshiba S870, which is not that much of a upgrade.

The endless loading screens have literally made me lose so much interest of the game, because I’m constantly fearing if the next loading screen forces me to turn my computer off.

The loading screen either has the full text and the wheel keeps spinning; full text loads but the spinny wheel freezes; only the icons (vista, completion, waypoints wtc) load and the spinny keeps going; nothing loads and the spinny goes like some demented little hamster.

And once I realize I have this problem on my hands for at least the 100th time, I hit start and go to open the task manager to end the process. Gw2 closes, but the process remains for at least 10 minutes, making my whole computer lagging extremely badly. (it takes at least 2 minutes for something to register as clicked, and windows do not move after a minute after the action is taken) GW2 also has exceptionally high memory levels, spiking into 1.8 MILLION. I’ve seen it run in 450k ish.

I’m on my last legs because it’s only GW2 giving me these problems. Skyrim runs perfectly. Tera Rising manages to run with firefox and a download going with no lag whatsoever. And honestly I’m gonna play the latter more. It runs, and I’m willing to moan at magical cloths of protection for women.

I’ve sent in five tickets, but this is the first forum topic I posted. I’ve been recommended to reinstall windows, but doing it for just one game I’ve lost 70% of interest in seems like too much. I’m regretting paying money to even buy this game now lol.

What exactly is causing this?

Since your computer can have multiple configurations, I wasn’t able to decipher exactly what your specifications are. Could you please list the amount of RAM you have, whether you have a 32bit operating system or a 64bit operating system, what CPU you have, and what GPU you have.

Your laptop might be overheating when playing Guild Wars 2, what temperatures does your laptop’s CPU and GPU operate at when running Guild Wars 2 for a few minutes? If you don’t already have software that monitors your laptop’s CPU temperature and GPU temperature, then I recommend getting HWMonitor, which can be found here:
http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.23-setup.exe

What is your exact GPU? Are your graphics drivers up to date?

Jerrek.8490:

update: stopped doing it today, after about 2 hours it came back.

temps: cpu – 38.2c
gpu – 43.7c

they seem fine to me, so can rule overheating out.

Anyone have any ideas?

(another screenshot)

Graphics drivers, are they up to date?

vlorenc.8015:

Sorry but i dont know where to post this.
Somebody cheat at sanctum sprint. Or is it OK if somebody finish and time on timer is 6:00 and his final score after finishing first is 145?
Please check this and fix this exploit. By the chenge in score that person sometime skip two or more checkpoints at ones for example ma score is 30 and next second is 45.

This would probably get more reception in the bugs sub-forum since its a bug that ArenaNet allowed a map to bypass their play tests. On my 4th race, I was able to figure out that at the last checkpoint, instead of going around the mountain to the finish line, you can simply perform a super jump where the super jump power up is and you are in the finish zone. Whether this was intended or not is hard to say because the super jump crystal is right where you want to be to jump to the finish…

JarlyX.4153:

After reinstallation of Guild Wars 2 overnight and further testing, it seems the drops now only occur with more people, never when I’m by myself. Reinstallation also seems to have reduced the frequency of the drops when with about <5 people, but with larger amounts, the drops are as frequent as ever.

EDIT: Scratch everything. I just experienced a few fps drops in Just Cause 2, but they were very rare. The drops are most prominent in GW2, so maybe that can help me pinpoint the issue.

Your graphics drivers are up to date, correct?

MrTheBigBadMe.9213:

So I got guild wars 2 not long ago because it really seemed like it would be “The game that toppled World Of Warcraft”. I don’t play WOW though (I’m not willing to pay 15$ month, or 180$ a year for a game), so I didn’t really experience it. Anyways, this game was TREMENDOUS fun. And I mean tremendous! Those huge towering bosses that everyone rallies up to beat, those rewarding quests, the varied locations. It was all a shock to my system really. But now onto the main topic of this thread.

So I’m running this game on a decent system I guess. Here are the specs:
-GeForce GT 650m with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
-Intel core i7 3720QM
-8GB RAM
And the frame rate I’m getting is absolutely horrible (In my opinion). I have most settings on medium-low and maybe one on high and I’m getting anywhere from 20-49 FPS with 30-39 being my average when I’m out and about. I thought I could tolerate this extremely annoying frame rate, but 100 hours later, I just could not stand it. This is weird, since I tried the Diablo III and WOW starter editions and the performance I got was spectacular! In Diablo III, I would max everything (except for shadows. Those are on medium) and get what would look like 60 FPS (or 50-60, I don’t really know since I haven’t checked.). And on WOW, I’d get CONSTANT 60 FPS on the good settings preset (which I like to crank up to high). Is this a problem of “My system isn’t good enough”, or is this game just badly optimized? And if it is, should I take a break and wait for a performance update, or should I move on? Since I have my eyes on SWTOR at the moment. Up until now, my first impression of MMOs has been horrible. And I really hope that this problem isn’t because of my system.

Please, put your thoughts to words, as well as give me advice if you want to. Thank you for reading, and for any future posts. Have a great day/evening :p

Comparing games to games is always a bad metric unless those games run on the same engine. Guild Wars 2 can only be compared to Guild Wars 1 really because they are the only two games to run on the Guild Wars engine. The engine used for Guild Wars 2 was derived from the original game’s engine, so in essence this is the Guild Wars Engine 1.5. This is partially the reason why we see the need for high clocked systems and really only a quad-core. Any hex cores and octa core processors won’t see too much improvement, if any.

As far as your laptop goes, its got a nice processor, better than most other laptops, but its very average, maybe even slightly below average when it comes to desktop processors.

Your CPU affects your frame rate as well as your graphics card, in more crowded areas like large dynamic events and large WvW battles, the CPU becomes the limiting factor and can’t feed your graphics card enough data fast enough, so the amount of frames per second the graphic card generates drops because it simply doesn’t have the information required to make more frames to smooth the game play. When this happens, you’ll see your FPS drop AND your GPU usage drop. That is an indication of bad hardware or (most likely) a bottle necked system caused by a slow CPU.

Your GPU is also under average since all mobile GPUs are a step behind their desktop counterparts. The GTX 650M != GTX 650. It’s more like the GTX 650M == 640GT. Assuming you play at 1080p, which according to Steam from 2012 (the most popular resolution), just over a quarter of people do. The higher the resolution the more powerful you want the GPU to be. For Guild Wars 2, I wouldn’t recommend anything less than a GTX 650Ti @ 1080p, but that is just my opinion. I got one for my siblings and they play at 1600 by 900 at 30ish FPS on a mix of medium and high settings. The GTX 650Ti does not get fully utilized because they run on the absolute minimum CPU allowed, so their CPU bottle necks their system. They’ll likely see higher FPS once they get out of circa 2007.

For a laptop, I hear people recommending at least the GTX 660M, but if the option to get the GTX 670M is there, people recommend that as well. In short, most laptops just really aren’t gaming machines yet. They get better every iteration of processor, but they’re just not quite there.

Kamata.5762:

Hello everyone,

I have an i5 2300 2.8ghz cpu and an ati radeon HD 5450 and running on 20 fps with low/medium settings. Oh and I have 4gigs of RAM

Now I want to upgrade my graphics card, probably to gtx geforce 650. Will it be able to handle gw2 on medium/high with a decent fps or am I expecting too much since my cpu is not all that.

Thanks in advance!

I’m not sure what resolution you play at, but for comparison, my siblings play on an old C2D @ 2.0 Ghz (the bare minimum) with a GTX 650Ti. They play at a resolution of 1600 by 900 with a second monitor also attached that doesn’t play the game at a resolution of 1024 by 768. They play on a mix of medium and high settings and get about 30 FPS in LA, more if you’re outside town in Gendarran Fields. However, in WvW and large dynamic events their FPS suffers because of the old and slow processor, so you can expect that as well just not nearly as much as them. Just set the WvW character detail to lowest and the culling setting to whatever you prefer or can handle. Their CPU is the bottleneck in most situations now, but since you have a faster processor and a quad core, you’ll see less CPU bottle necking than they do.

As it was said above, make sure your power supply have enough power to power the card since the HD 5450 used around 20W and a GTX 650 uses around 65W.

This one for sure:
http://www.xoticpc.com/lenovo-ideapad-y510p-59375625-eta-midaugust-p-6166.html?wconfigure=yes

dan.3618:

As the title says the launcher wants to download 250+ files was completely up to date just yesterday. Is it redownloading the whole game? anyone no the work around for this?

The game can be doing one of two things, making sure the game files are intact, this generally goes much faster than downloading the game because checking a file is a faster task.

The other thing the game can be doing is downloading the game again, perhaps your gw2.dat became corrupted due to an unexpected shutdown or power outage. When the gw2.dat file becomes corrupted, you need to download it all again. The best practice to avoid this is to have a backup of the gw2.dat file. Then, instead of downloading the game again, you can paste the backup gw2.dat file over the corrupted one and patch up to the latest patch instead of downloading the entire game.

Yayap.3180:

Hello, this is not a game breaker I don’t think, and the client still seems to be working fine, I just have a few questions about some files in the GW2 folders.

So, in my main Guild Wars 2 game folder I see Crash.dmp, Gw2.dat, Gw2.exe, and Gw2.tmp.

Is the Crash.dmp something I should delete or be concerned about?

Also, in my Documents GW2 folder, there is a file called Corrupt-b41cb9fd.dat and a CorruptArchive file.

Should I be concerned about any of these, or are they required data files for the game to correct itself or something?
I’m just wondering if I should try to verify the client, delete those files, or just leave them alone..

Aslo, I tried the GW2 Repair instructions for Windows that are in the Support but it’s not letting me do step 5. I cannot add -repair to the end of the Target line; it says it son’t find the source or it doesn’t match up, so I can’t repair..

Any explanation or suggestions are helpful, thanks!

Since the only files needed to run the game from what you listed are gw2.exe and gw2.dat, you can delete the .tmp (temporary), and .dmp (dump) files. The files may regenerate when the game launches, I forget, but the only files critical to Guild Wars 2 are gw2.exe and gw2.dat. You can delete the corrupted stuff.

Follow this:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments
Make sure to make a shortcut of the gw2.exe

Shenanigans.6927:

I have been playing guild wars since feburary, with no issues. But as of the end of june beginning of july i have been riddled with Critical Errors. i can no longer play the game for no more then 20-30 mins at a time and every time it crashes it give me a different error. My memory is good, i have 8gb of ram and a 6 core processor (AMD FX6100) and a Raydeon 9700 hd graphics card running off Windows 7 64 bit. I have uninstalled the game and re-installed it but still got the error messages. Attached is part of one of them.
______________________
—> Crash <—
Assertion: !transferRejected
File: ..\..\..\Engine\Gr\GrTex2d.cpp(4342)
App: Gw2.exe
Pid: 2668
Cmdline:
BaseAddr: 00400000
ProgramId: 101
Build: 20941
When: 2013-07-17T01:40:54Z 2013-07-16T21:40:54-04:00
Uptime: 0 days 0:19:30
Flags: 0
_______________________
Please any help will be greatly appreciated, i really enjoy playing this game but these crashes are really deterring me from playing any more.

I’m not sure what to try besides some things that likely won’t fix it or are in the wrong. I would first make a support ticket to ArenaNet and see what they say.

Then, do some goofy things, like delete the local.dat file since its recreated when launching the game. This will reset any changes you have made to your settings.

You can also make sure your CPU and GPU temperatures are within their limits. If you don’t already have software that monitors your CPU and GPU temperatures, then I recommend getting HWMonitor, which can be found here:
http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.23-setup.exe

Korimor.2406:

So thinking about getting this laptop, http://www.xoticpc.com/lenovo-ideapad-y510p-59375625-eta-midaugust-p-6166.html?wconfigure=yes

It’s the Lenovo Y510p Laptop running 2 GeForce GT 750m SLI with the intel i7-4700 processor in it. I will also be adding a 64gb SSD to it for the OS and GW2.

I was wanting to know how this would run GW2 on either medium or high settings?

As well as would a 64gb SSD be enough to cover my OS and GW2 together? The only 2 things I would be putting on it.

Thanks a lot!

I haven’t experienced SLI ever, but judging from this:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-750M-SLI.91280.0.html
It should do very well considering that it looks like the SLI setup will have similar performance to my GTX 560Ti 448. Likely worse due to my overclock, but you should be able to push mostly high settings besides super sampling and reflections since you’ll be at 1080p.

As far as your CPU goes, you’ll still see lower FPS in large dynamic events and large WvW battles because of the lower frequency laptops have versus their desktop counterparts. As for how low, I can’t say, but don’t expect 30FPS in these situations. You’ll want to set WvW character detail to lowest and culling to whatever you prefer. You can have a higher FPS but not see everyone (not many people I know do this) or see everyone at the cost of a lower FPS (what most people I know do).

The 64GB should handle Guild Wars 2 and a typical Windows 7 installation. Guild Wars 2 is like 18GB (on the high end) and Windows 7 can be as well (if its a bloated version). Though, you don’t want to fill up an SSD, for the most part they perform best when they have at least 20% open space.

Klinch.2964:

I’ve been noticing that when I have reflections on, I get horrible fps spikes. I looked at the stickied fps issues thread to see if there was an answer to this. In the thread it says to turn off reflections.

Why are reflections so unoptimized in this game that anet even says to turn them off? Is it a bug in the engine that they just haven’t gotten around to fix or what? Can any of you run reflections without the spikes?

It isn’t a huge deal, but the reflections look pretty and I would love to have them on without bad fps spikes.

PS: Sorry if this has been mention before, I tried searching for “reflections” but nothing was showing up.

The terms that likely bring up a lot of threads are ‘kitten’ and ‘Umbra’. Umbra software is software ArenaNet uses to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfpe2g9SexA
except its not working properly. Basically the story IIRC is that ArenaNet is pointing fingers at Umbra and Umbra is pointing fingers at Nvidia/AMD, and AMD/Nvidia are trying to help ArenaNet but someone(s) at ArenaNet decides they don’t need help, even though I guess most gaming companies invite them in to optimize the game and make drivers for the game, etc, etc. So…its a vicious cycle that I don’t see being resolved any time soon.

The problem revolves around objects behind other objects (out of sight to the player) are still being rendered. In the case of reflections, if you ever happen to get lucky and fall through a map like I have. There is water underneath the map acting as a ‘sea level’ so-to-speak. So the base level of every map (my guess) is water and land is placed on top of that to create terrain. The terrain is supposed to block water you can’t see, but the software doesn’t work so reflections are everywhere all the time. Turning them down from ‘All’ to the next level makes it bearable for most graphics cards.

martinez.5912:

Look this is the System requirements for Guild wars 2 sir,
http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=684&game=Guild%20Wars%202

as you can see having Core 2 Duo that have only 2.13 Ghz and for AMD is just 2.3 Ghz something~

so i believe my Hardware are old enough but “passed” the system requirements for guildwars 2 (recommended) and i believe i have a major problem in my VGA. but sir you didn’t answer my question precisely.. if my hardware is really the problem here why i manage to maximize all the settings without lagging/freezing in the world map even in Lion Arch having too many people there works fine on me just the zerg thing is my problem that lower my FPS.

And i dont have the Service package 1 (windows 7) x64. You think? if i installed that package can improve this problem during WvW? i just saw that fix in this forum.. and if that works any possible fix for this one and i believe even without overclocking i can play this game because its not high enough not like the other games i played in my PC.

btw thanks for fast reply sir

About Guild Wars 2’s system requirements. The minimum requirements are there to let you know that the game will launch with those specifications, not that the game will play well at those specifications. ArenaNet has not released any recommended specifications for Guild Wars 2 because there is no consumer machine out there that will perform well enough to meet the standards for what people would call recommended standards. Game debate may have made a best guess for Guild Wars 2’s recommended specifications even though officially none exist.

What most people don’t know is that the Guild Wars 2 engine is based on the Guild Wars 1 engine, which likely started being developed in 2004, maybe earlier depending how long it took them to make the game. The almost decade old engine never had to display more than 16 player avatars at once when in combat, it also had culling in more densely populated areas, examples being cities and PvP outposts. Take an engine that was never designed for having large amounts of people on screen and trying to force it to do so didn’t end up well. You can likely blame either NCSoft or ArenaNet upper management for cutting corners instead of making a whole new engine. Myths aside, the game’s engine sucks for what they advertised the game to do.

I would highly recommend updating everything to current standards, Windows above all due to the security risks from not updating Windows.

My siblings have one of the lowest end processors that can run Guild Wars 2 (C2D E6320 overclocked to 2.0Ghz) and had a similar model 9800GT 512MB version. The 9800GT held them back to 10FPS or so on lowest settings at 1600 by 900 while having a secondary screen driven at the same time at 1024 by 768, once I got them a GTX 650Ti, their FPS in LA is around 30ish FPS on a mix of medium and high settings at the resolutions mentioned above. The game is played on the better resolution. However, they still experience extremely low FPS in dragon events and other large dynamic events and large WvW battles because of their CPU. Proof of this is when in these situations you will see the GPU usage drop to a smaller percentage because the CPU can’t feed it enough data fast enough. Therefore the GPU can’t process as many frames in a second and can’t give you a nice FPS.

sicco.7014:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265:

sicco.7014:

iAsuno.9654:

thats weird. try running as admin.

I tried that, doesnt work.

No fix for this? I played GW2 back in release day, now I reinstalled it and this error occurs… it was fresh clean install..

Try deleting the local.dat file located in the user documents.

Try moving the game to the root directory of the drive instead of inside the Program Files directory, this might alleviate any read/write protection your computer decides to put on the Program Files directory.

Usually a memory error like that means something is wonky with your RAM. I found I had a stick slowly going bad. Guild Wars 2 was the first thing to notice it, then Firefox was crashing randomly and I would eventually get blue screens. I tested the RAM and it was alright according to memtest. However, once I was able to narrow down which stick was bad by using a single stick of RAM, I was able to replace it and haven’t had problems since.

I tried to delete the local.dat and launched the launcher again. downloaded ~2gigs (dat file was 40mb?!). Still the same error. I never had any issues with RAM or any bluescreens. So I wont check RAM, obviously the client is the issue, not my hardware.

I never had problems either until shortly after Guild Wars 2 launched…if you’re not willing to test or consider your hardware is faulty, then I recommend submitting an ArenaNet support ticket and talking to them about it. Good luck!

phi.4372:

Thanks I will just get a new processor. Happy playing!

Just making a note here for you, the minimum requirements are there to let you know what the game can be launched on. This means that the game may run terrible on the minimum specifications. To get a solid game experience a desktop quad-core is recommended.

Holy Whirlwind.2067:

Ilithis Mithilander.3265, thanks for the great insight. Would the i7 be helpful if I’m running raidcall or mumble and GW2stuff in the background or i5 is still enough? I assume the K models allow for more overclocking if I recall correct?

Because right now going from a 3550 to a 3570 would not be a big gain unless the K model is the key to getting as much out of overclocking as possible. Are any of the graphics options CPU dependant or heavy (so that I can turn them down)?

For smaller applications like that I don’t see them consuming much CPU, so the i5 would be plenty.

You are correct with your assumption that the ‘K’ models allow for higher overclocks. This is because of their unlocked multiplier that Intel so kindly let us have (wish they did this on most/all of their processors like AMD does). Gripes aside, the gain would be minimal without overclocking, only .1Ghz. However, assuming you overclock the 3570K to 4.5Ghz, the extra .8Ghz is a pretty significant difference. This would be about a 20% increase in frequency over your current processor.

I’m assuming the areas you mentioned above where you got your lower FPS are in large dynamic events and WvW battles, right? If its just during normal play, there might be something else wrong with your computer. I’m assuming you see 60 FPS in open world PvE.

Jonva.5967:

Holy Whirlwind.2067:

Does your computer have a graphics card like an Nvidia or Radeon or is it built in.
What processor?
How much RAM
Powersupply

Is anything new, did it work at all before?…etc, anything that can help us help you.

Yes Nvidia i’ve got, saw it before on my computer. Going to sleep right now, i will answer the other questions you will send tomorrow. Please help me! I really love the game but the flickering have to stop.

Since you have Windows 7, you can follow these instructions to get us the information we need:
-At the normal desktop state, hit the Windows key to bring up the stuff inside the Windows menu.
-Type ‘dxdiag’ without the quotes, then hit enter.
-A new window appears with loads of information, hit the button labeled ‘Save All Information…’ and save the resulting .txt somewhere so you can find it.
-Upload the .txt file generated from this so we can look at it.

sicco.7014:

iAsuno.9654:

thats weird. try running as admin.

I tried that, doesnt work.

No fix for this? I played GW2 back in release day, now I reinstalled it and this error occurs… it was fresh clean install..

Try deleting the local.dat file located in the user documents.

Try moving the game to the root directory of the drive instead of inside the Program Files directory, this might alleviate any read/write protection your computer decides to put on the Program Files directory.

Usually a memory error like that means something is wonky with your RAM. I found I had a stick slowly going bad. Guild Wars 2 was the first thing to notice it, then Firefox was crashing randomly and I would eventually get blue screens. I tested the RAM and it was alright according to memtest. However, once I was able to narrow down which stick was bad by using a single stick of RAM, I was able to replace it and haven’t had problems since.

Zyxzed.8041:

Thanks all for replies!! I would be replacing (I contacted the shop and asked if I can return) this laptop for pc dekstop parts (mbo,ram,vga,etc) and they say to come back tumorrow to check with the boss of the shop is it possible to change… =)

if so, I buy desktop pc =)

with powerfull cpu! =) thanks guys!

Depending on your budget and what their prices are, common processors to game on are:
AMD: FX-8300/FX-8320/FX-8350
Intel: i5-4670K/i7-4770K
If you’re doing just gaming and not video/audio encoding or streaming what you play, then the i5 is suitable. Otherwise, consider getting one of the AMD solutions or the i7.

phi.4372:

Windows 7 32bit
Intel Core Duo Cpu T2250 @1.73 GHz
2.50 GB RAM

There is your problem, the minimum requirements to be able to launch the game is a dual core processor at least with 2.0Ghz. Yours falls shy of that mark. Time to get a new desktop (or laptop if you really want the worse performance).

Cowrex.9564:

Thanks alot! I’ll go try it out! Not sure why but a year ago I can play GW2 on high with 30-40 FPS.

In one year, a lot of dust can gather in one place. :p