Slow Loading Screens in GW2

[Game of Bones.8975]

I've had slow loading screens for login, changing characters, rezoning, etc for a long time. It's gotten so bad that I use that time to get up, get a drink/snack and return in time to play again.There have been times fractal groups have kicked me thinking I logged out.It only happens with GW2 not Gw1 (which loads within a couple seconds).I've tried reloading the game, thinking something was messed up.I don't use 3rd party software.A while back someone suggested inserting a line of code somewhere in the GW.dat file (?), but it didn't have any impact.Any help would be appreciated.

[Sapphire.3609]

Is your GW2 installed on an SSD? It makes loading significantly faster.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Game of Bones.8975 said:A while back someone suggested inserting a line of code somewhere in the GW.dat file (?), but it didn't have any impact.Uuuuh... wat?

Anyway, loading times should be ~10-15s I guess (varies from map to map). The first thing to do is repair the game (or just delete gw2.dat manually and launch) and failing that... well you can only get a faster ssd and a faster computer to help it.

There are moments where GW2 has hiccups on good specs but I've only really seen that on some WvW resets (~120s to load a map) or on large content releases (ie when instances totally break down over the pressure).

I suppose if you have an absolutely ancient machine you could try a HDD defrag (nowadays thats obsolete).

[Game of Bones.8975]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Game of Bones.8975 said:A while back someone suggested inserting a line of code somewhere in the GW.dat file (?), but it didn't have any impact.Uuuuh... wat?

It was a while ago and I could't remember exactly what they said to do.

My computer is five years old. It is an ASUS ROG but even they go obsolete after time.I plan on replacing it this fall. Maybe your suggestions will help the problem.Thanks.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

My computer is also almost 5 years old. Here are a few of the methods I use and used in the past:

1.) LoginThis is sadly something a lot of people totally underestimate. The loading times of the client also rely on how many players are around and how much is going on at the moment. So I recommend players with older computers to use a loading friendly HQ. As a HQ I see the map you park most of your characters when you do not use them, for the majority of players those are either big towns or the convenience sections (e. g. Lily of the Elon or the Mistlock Sanctuary). Some of those locations turned out to be loading-time boosters, the Mistlock Sanctuary is just way too popular.

As far as it goes for towns, I would recommend the ones which are not so popular and rarely have community events. Divinity's Reach for example is a horrible decision, that place is almost always highly populated by players. Wintersday and the Festival of the Four Winds take place on this map, which also increase the loading times. A good pick for a town is the Grove (Sylvari town).

If you seek for an even more peaceful place, I can recommend the City of Ebonhawke in the Fields of Ruins. It has the same functionalities as the convenience sections in the starter maps, it only lacks a guildbank. There are currently no big events going on. During the weekend-evenings, it might get a little busy there as it is a map with several guild-mission activities. But except for Trilla, the players will be spread across the entire map.

There is actually one place even more remote than Ebonhawke. Skrittsburgh, the Skritt city in Brisban Wildlands. Best access is via East End Waypoint [&BGAAAAA=], following the wooden bridge west. It has vendors, an anvil, crafting stations (= bank access). Sadly no TP. But you will not find players there 95 % of the time. So the loading time might be really good. The crafting stations however have no icon on the map - that is why no one with a right mind is there XD.

2.) Breaking free a stuck characterHappens once in a while, usually to people with older computers and can be really annoying. If a LS chapter happens to start in the same map you loged off the day before, or you happen to DC during the intro instance, you sometimes find yourself with an endless loading screen. Too many players stacked on the same location, tons of visual noise to process.

Your best chances are to go back into LoginScreen. Go to World Selection and list them by Population. Pick the one with the lowest population and GUEST and try again to login your character.

The Megaserver usually forces us to stack up in already overcrowded maps, but it is not 100 % restrictive. You can trick in certain situations to let you access another map-instance. Guesting is one of the few things that still work. It is not a 100 % success rate, it often requires several tries. But we managed to break a couple of people free with that method, who would have otherwise been unable to play that night.

3.) Game boosterThose are programs, which do not interfere with the GW2 client directly. Those tools are designed to boost the performance of your games, the older your machine is, the better the result will be. What they do? They force your computer to spend the vital resources on your game, slowing down background processes, reducing visuals of your OS to an absolute minimum and optimize the usage of resources. Most of them have a button to activate or can be set up to auto-run when you start a certain game. They can be set up, so you have a functional OS once the client is closed again.

FREEWARERazer CortexWise Game Booster

4.) 5 Ghz WifiIf you use wifi to access the internet, ask the person who set it up, what frequency it runs on. Most routers run with 2.4 Ghz. It has long range and good performance. However there is an option to change the frequency or (with dual-band routers) add a second frequency. 5 Ghz is obviously more powerful in terms of bandwidth. Sadly the signal strength is a bit of a pain, it weakens drastically with walls between you and the router. If you happen to almost sit on your router or have your computer in the same room, it may be worth a try.

5.) Empty/Delete CacheThe game's cache fills up over time and slows down the performance. To access it, you can goC:\Users\your name\AppData\Roaming\Guildwars 2and delete everything inside or the entire Guildwars 2 folder. Your settings may reset as well as account-info and password.It helps most people to improve the performance of the game, both loading times and FPS.

[Khisanth.2948]

Might want to check the windows event logs to make sure there isn't an issue with the drive(such as being in the middle of dying, although when my drive was doing that I just got a lot of random crashes instead of long load times).

Also how is your memory usage? I know I can very reliably give my game very horrible loading times if I open up a bajillion Firefox tabs and use up most of my system's memory.

[Jia Shen.4217]

In just 12 minutes of playing GW2 today I looked to see just how much it was using the HD because I too have been annoyed by the longer load screens than what I remember from before I took a long term break from the game. The results: in those 12 minutes GW2 read over 8GB of data from the HD. The 12 minutes involved two long loading screens and some gathering of nodes.

[No One.3716]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Game of Bones.8975 said:A while back someone suggested inserting a line of code somewhere in the GW.dat file (?), but it didn't have any impact.Uuuuh... wat?

Likely the -maploadinfo modifier but onto the exe shortcut and not the dat file. That wouldn't fix anything but would give you a way to objectively quantify your loading times and any changes from fixes etc.

On top of the above suggestions, check how much free space you have on your hard drive. I experienced longer loading times with a small ssd drive that was also my system drive until I discovered that temp files and old windows files had pushed it to 98% full. Clearing off space returned normal performance until I added an additional drive for games.