[UPDATED] Guild Wars 2 is Coming to Steam - [Merged]

[Cthulhu.1432]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Cthulhu.1432 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Crono.4197" said:I don't have any of those issues, I even went out of my way one day and checked all the maps that people mentioned to be "laggy and unplayable". Everything runs super smooth anywhere in the game for me. Makes me wonder if some people maybe have bad internet or bad PCs and just blame Arena Net for no reason.

Let me guess, you are on NA. The issues are mostly EU related.

Im on EU, not a sign of lag anywhere, checked all maps, hence it is issue on users end rather than datacenter fault.

In that case, stay on the maps longer. I have never had issues in the 8 years I've played and then suddenly for the last 1.5 years some maps were unplayable. Thunderhead Keep was especially bad.

The assumption it's a datacenter is flawed by the simple premise that this issue is very widespread and affects a lot of players who never had issues before. The far more likely assumption here is your "test" was far to limited and you are drawing subjective conclusions. Especially since the developers have acknowledge the performance issues.I did - spent minimum 20 mins on each map, as I've had to get Skyscale for my GF. Not a slightest lag anywhere to be found.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Cthulhu.1432 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Cthulhu.1432 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Crono.4197" said:I don't have any of those issues, I even went out of my way one day and checked all the maps that people mentioned to be "laggy and unplayable". Everything runs super smooth anywhere in the game for me. Makes me wonder if some people maybe have bad internet or bad PCs and just blame Arena Net for no reason.

Let me guess, you are on NA. The issues are mostly EU related.

Im on EU, not a sign of lag anywhere, checked all maps, hence it is issue on users end rather than datacenter fault.

In that case, stay on the maps longer. I have never had issues in the 8 years I've played and then suddenly for the last 1.5 years some maps were unplayable. Thunderhead Keep was especially bad.

The assumption it's a datacenter is flawed by the simple premise that this issue is very widespread and affects a lot of players who never had issues before. The far more likely assumption here is your "test" was far to limited and you are drawing subjective conclusions. Especially since the developers have acknowledge the performance issues.I did - spent minimum 20 mins on each map, as I've had to get Skyscale for my GF. Not a slightest lag anywhere to be found.

In that case you are lucky. Good for you. Doesn't change the fact that a lot of players are affected, and the developers are aware of it.

[Crono.4197]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Crono.4197" said:I don't have any of those issues, I even went out of my way one day and checked all the maps that people mentioned to be "laggy and unplayable". Everything runs super smooth anywhere in the game for me. Makes me wonder if some people maybe have bad internet or bad PCs and just blame Arena Net for no reason.

Let me guess, you are on NA. The issues are mostly EU related.

No, I'm from Central Europe. And I've done this test across all maps, did events flew around, spent like 1 hour on each map or so. No issues. Plus some of the maps are maps I visit almost daily (Dragonfall, Jahai Bluffs, Kourna, Bjora's Marches, Drizzlewood) and spent hours on each of them.

[Randulf.7614]

@"Crono.4197" said:I don't have any of those issues, I even went out of my way one day and checked all the maps that people mentioned to be "laggy and unplayable". Everything runs super smooth anywhere in the game for me. Makes me wonder if some people maybe have bad internet or bad PCs and just blame Arena Net for no reason.

The issue is widespread but intermittent and doesn’t affect every shard of a map instance at all times. There are times I can get no problems and other times I will get 5 second skill lag continuously with constant map freezes in desert highlands or vabbi. I can go to drizzkewiid and never have an issue even at peak meta population

It is however absolutely not a player pc problem. When mass call outs on a map report the issue on a daily basis only in selected maops but nowhere else we know there is a game issue

It is however not affecting everyone, possibly due to the intermittent nature or other unknown factors.

But it is 100% not our end. If it was, the entire game would be affected and not by such a massive number of players.

[Teratus.2859]

@Cthulhu.1432 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Crono.4197" said:I don't have any of those issues, I even went out of my way one day and checked all the maps that people mentioned to be "laggy and unplayable". Everything runs super smooth anywhere in the game for me. Makes me wonder if some people maybe have bad internet or bad PCs and just blame Arena Net for no reason.

Let me guess, you are on NA. The issues are mostly EU related.

Im on EU, not a sign of lag anywhere, checked all maps, hence it is issue on users end rather than datacenter fault.

I think this issue is effected by country and traffic.

I've noticed spikes based on time.. usually around 5-6 PM GMT+2 lag issues start to significantly increase.

That's a hour ahead of Germany which has significantly more people than the country I live in, and where the GW2 EU servers are located as well.It's around time many people get home from school and work so the traffic would naturally spike for the game possibly causing these issues.I'm not sure what the pandemic situation is over there though but I hear lockdowns are coming back so GW2 will probably get even more laggy in the coming months if this is a contributing factor.

If any Germans are around, What is your experience with GW2's lag problems of late?I'm curious if being closer to the servers helps.. i've heard in most cases it does but I dunno for sure.

Only thing I can confirm is my PC has nothing to do with it, I've run this game on near max settings for years and never had regular lag issues until a few months ago.I never had any issues with lag on LW4, PoF or IBS maps either until a few months ago, they used to run flawlessly for me and now they don't.My connection is also fine, I pay for 100mbps and I get 100mbps, tested it many times.As i've said a number of times too, Gw2 is the only game that is having these issues for me.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Crono.4197 said:No, I'm from Central Europe.

Do you live close to Frankfurt by any chance?

[Crono.4197]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Crono.4197 said:No, I'm from Central Europe.

Do you live close to Frankfurt by any chance?

I live in Bucharest, Romania.

[Linken.6345]

@Crono.4197 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Crono.4197 said:No, I'm from Central Europe.

Do you live close to Frankfurt by any chance?

I live in Bucharest, Romania.

I wouldent call that central europe aint that eastern?

[Fueki.4753]

@Linken.6345 said:I wouldent call that central europe aint that eastern?Romania is split between Central and South-Eastern Europe.If I take the maps from Wikipedia as a reference, Bucharest ends up in the South-Eastern European part.

According to those maps, Eastern Europe would be Russia, as well as most of Belarus and Ukraine.

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

I couldn't agree more.I love the game, but it's currently in a questionable state. Specially the lag, borked physics and broken mechanics needs to be sorted first.Otherwise you risk getting trashed on steam. Which would do more harm than good.

Most games have bugs, and most gamers know that.But the sheer amount of bugs... the sheer amount of maps that sometimes simply stop for seconds for all players on them...Too much

Personally I would recommend Anet to a:

• Fix any bugs in storyline. New players means a new flood of people starting from scratch following all stories. A sheer amount of bugs have been persistent for YEARS and feel ignored.

• The lag HAS to be under control, which currently isn't. Toning down effects will help. Usually the interrupts increase when events with massive effects start. Again server side. yes you can improve your own FPS, but we're not talking about FPS. We're talking about single massive interrupts where the game freezes for 2 seconds (or sometimes more) then right back at performing normal. when all players notice that at the SAME time, it's serverside.

• The beginners tutorials might need an overhaul. It's silly that for most (new) questions, new players have to rely on the community for help, rather than the game. Sure indepth and experienced knowledge we're happy to give. But something as simple as a few hints when someone uses inventory or gathering tools etc for the first time would help. (just a few examples off the top of my head) also the sometimes false description or small lettering that is easely overlooked causes frustration.

[aspirine.6852]

Lets wait for daily bounty on desert highlands to see if they fixed anything.

edit, dont even have to wait, still server lag on desert highlands....

[Neeman Oria.7504]

deleted mis-post

[Neeman Oria.7504]

@Pifil.5193 said:

@Atomos.7593 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@Atomos.7593 said:

@"Neeman Oria.7504" said:On my HDD I have (sitting at 47.9GB).-addons-bin64-gw2.dat-gw2.tmp-gw2-64-gw2-64.tmp-thirdpartysoftwarereadme

I haven't been able to install on my SSD because of the issue. I found the original problem which was a dupe in the addons folder. But when installing or copying to the SSD the space will reserve the GB needed for the file (in the case of cut-paste) and slowly eat the storage, or it will quickly eat the space (when fresh downloading).

Interesting. Seems like it might be a SSD only problem. I might also consider re-installing GW2 on my SSD in the future, so if indeed this is a problem it would be nice if it is fixed.

SSD, 48gb here.

Nice, I guess it will be fine for me to download again onto my SSD then.

Not sure why the OP is having a problem installing on their SSD then. I assume that you only need the required 48 GB of space free on the SSD to be able to download and install the files, unless there is some compression done of the game files after installation?

BTW You don't need to download it again. You can just move the gw2 folder and all its contents to a folder on your SSD, update your desktop shortcuts to point to the new location and it should work fine.

Lo and behold I've found the issue that was doubling the size of the GW2 folder, and honestly everything else I move to that drive.

I'm no expert on Windows or hardware/software, but it turns out that moving files from an uncompressed drive onto a compressed drive doubles the storage use of that file. The remedy I've found is that I simply uncompressed my SSD, and copy-pasted GW2 onto the SSD. Issues in Windows forums have come up before dealing with this.

Credit to Vaibhav Mullick for the fix posted on March 25, 2017 on the Window's forums.And source: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files-winpc/windows-10-copy-file-to-portable-disk-take-double/6aeadb59-f7ea-44c2-b876-94e1fa1e1b33

[Atomos.7593]

@Neeman Oria.7504 said:

@Pifil.5193 said:

@Atomos.7593 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:

@Atomos.7593 said:

@Neeman Oria.7504 said:On my HDD I have (sitting at 47.9GB).-addons-bin64-gw2.dat-gw2.tmp-gw2-64-gw2-64.tmp-thirdpartysoftwarereadme

I haven't been able to install on my SSD because of the issue. I found the original problem which was a dupe in the addons folder. But when installing or copying to the SSD the space will reserve the GB needed for the file (in the case of cut-paste) and slowly eat the storage, or it will quickly eat the space (when fresh downloading).

Interesting. Seems like it might be a SSD only problem. I might also consider re-installing GW2 on my SSD in the future, so if indeed this is a problem it would be nice if it is fixed.

SSD, 48gb here.

Nice, I guess it will be fine for me to download again onto my SSD then.

Not sure why the OP is having a problem installing on their SSD then. I assume that you only need the required 48 GB of space free on the SSD to be able to download and install the files, unless there is some compression done of the game files after installation?

BTW You don't need to download it again. You can just move the gw2 folder and all its contents to a folder on your SSD, update your desktop shortcuts to point to the new location and it should work fine.

Lo and behold I've found the issue that was doubling the size of the GW2 folder, and honestly everything else I move to that drive.

I'm no expert on Windows or hardware/software, but it turns out that moving files from an uncompressed drive onto a compressed drive doubles the storage use of that file. The remedy I've found is that I simply uncompressed my SSD, and copy-pasted GW2 onto the SSD. Issues in Windows forums have come up before dealing with this.

Credit to Vaibhav Mullick for the fix posted on March 25, 2017 on the Window's forums.And source:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files-winpc/windows-10-copy-file-to-portable-disk-take-double/6aeadb59-f7ea-44c2-b876-94e1fa1e1b33

Interesting, thanks for the update and I'm glad that you got it resolved.

I can confirm that the size of GW2 on my SSD after copying recently is also 48 GB, so this is the size that it should normally be.

[Anthonev.6452]

@Sentient Anomaly.9473 said:With this in mind, we’ve made the decision to put the Guild Wars 2 Steam release on hold for the time being.

Well that's good news, guess this means you'll have more resources to finally release the Legendary Equipment and Templates or at the very least, provide some communication about it.

[erapago.4387]

Before the Steam release comes out, there's got to be a way to explain to new players why they're seeing a completely different Lion's Arch in the personal story.

[Anchoku.8142]

Prioritizing resources is something we can understand and there is return on investment to consider as well assuming Steam takes 30% of real money trades for gems and expansion packages.

[keenedge.9675]

@DeanBB.4268 said:Still shows November 2020 on Steam.

I guess this tells us they are looking to make changes before it releases on Steam. Unless it is just the time needed to correct the lag issues, I suppose.

I think it could be on hold so that fresh steam players have to buy season 5 to get any of season 5. That's still a wise choice.

EDIT: I agree with the others, I rarely see lag. Remember if you are using a lower tier ISP package, Discord, Facebook and others consume a HUGE amount of the limited UP channel for network communication. That will also give you terrible lag, drop-outs, and disconnects.

[XenMaster.7165]

@keenedge.9675 said:Why are people so insistent on getting a Steam login for Gw2. One click is too easy ?

Steam is easier to top up your money even if you dont have credit card. Especially those who are younger.

[Akneiz.8364]

I want to look forward to a Steam release because it will bring more players to the game and that is just good for the game. I love GW2 and want to see it continue to grow and flourish. But if it were to go live on Steam right now it would be catastrophic because the already pervasive latency issues would be magnified due to the spike in server volume from the influx of new players. Those new players would hate it because of everything when players describe an experience as "lag-o-riffic" they are not being complimentary. The game would get tons of bad reviews on Steam slamming it as unplayable, regardless of what one thinks of actual gameplay because the reviewers could not effectively PLAY THE GAME. Also the increased lag would drive away a lot of existing players who are already irritated with existing latency issues that Arena Net has just now acknowledged as affecting "some players."

I have a great connection and am located in the US, and I still consistently get lag every time I'm doing something with a lot of players in a given area, which should be a red flag for a "massively multiplayer" game. I came back from about five years away in March, and I first started noticing inconvenient lag issues right when ANet made a change with their servers. Because I work nights, I play with a lot of people from the other side of the planet. Most players in my main guild are from the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, etc. Thise means they have higher latency in general because they're connecting across the Pacific Ocean, and it also means that a moderate inconvenience for me is amplified for them to the point of making the game unplayable for them. We have people regularly disconnecting during open world events like Tequatl the Sunless and Triple Trouble that have large numbers of players in the same area. Add the influx of players that a Steam release will bring and you could be connected directly to the servers with a three foot long cable and you'll still have unplayable because the servers are overloaded.

Saying that the Steam release is being delayed because the community showed such an amazing response to a short promo for EoD over two months ago is a thin smokescreen at best and a dumpsterload of stinking BS at worst, especially when they acknowledge right after that that there are pervasive latency issues which would, whether they actually say so or not, make that Steam release a complete catastrophic failure for the game. Especially when, as a member of the community, all I saw as a response was the same wild speculation about what's going to actually be in "the Cantha expansion" that we've all "unofficially" known is eventually coming for some time now. So Kuunavang is going to play some kind of role, we already suspected that. We got no gameplay footage and no solid hints at what the plot is even going to be about, just a few vague bits of dialogue that could be interpreted all sorts of ways. A week of wild mass guessing before going back to complaining about the pervasive latency is not an amazingly supportive and enthusiastic response. There isn't enough in that promo to get an overwhelmingly ANYTHING response.

"One sweeping change," switching to a budget server deal, made latency a bigger issue for a lot of players from all over the world. I get that ANet is a business and wants to make money, that's the point of business. All they have to do is invest in better servers rather than downgrading as a budget move like they did several months ago, and they will be able to release on Steam and get a lot more players who will buy the expansions and Living World content and make gem store purchases and vastly increase profits. Saying that they have multiple teams working toward a solution for known and pervasive latency issues just makes it sound like somebody in charge, who probably never reads things like this and also has no clue how the technology they work with actually functions, believes that it's possible to find some kind of magic workaround to fix the problems brought about by cutting corners on server service quality without actually investing in better servers.

I love this game. If I didn't I'd be spending my time and money on some other game(s). But seriously, Arena Net, try to make some common sense decisions and invest in better servers before releasing on Steam, and THEN work on the expansion (which we haven't seen any actual evidence of it even being properly started yet, anyway) that you can market to your vastly enlarged player base that enjoys your game that isn't a lagfest when more than five players are in the same area of any given map.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

ArenaNet 'changed servers' more than 3 years ago. I've not seen any mention of another change 'several months ago'. I'd be interested in reading the statements from the Devs about this 'downgrade'. Please post the links.

[Light Yagami.7318]

So I was all for the steam launch when I heard about it at first; however, after reading that you can't transfer your existing account to steam I see no point except for new players. I am still for them doing this because, more people can experience this game. I just wish there was a way for veterans or people who have been playing and spent money in the game to be able to also have it in steam so they could have most of their games in one location and I was looking forward to it.... This kinda sucks for anyone who has been playing a while and has legendaries etc that take time to get and would have to do again if they wanted to have it in steam. Even if it would be harder to make it to be able to transfer the accounts I feel they should postpone the update till they can figure it out or at least tell us it will come in the future as an option for steam. TL;DR: good for new players, bad for veterans, please add account transfers at some point please!

[Linken.6345]

@Light Yagami.7318 said:So I was all for the steam launch when I heard about it at first; however, after reading that you can't transfer your existing account to steam I see no point except for new players. I am still for them doing this because, more people can experience this game. I just wish there was a way for veterans or people who have been playing and spent money in the game to be able to also have it in steam so they could have most of their games in one location and I was looking forward to it.... This kinda sucks for anyone who has been playing a while and has legendaries etc that take time to get and would have to do again if they wanted to have it in steam. Even if it would be harder to make it to be able to transfer the accounts I feel they should postpone the update till they can figure it out or at least tell us it will come in the future as an option for steam. TL;DR: good for new players, bad for veterans, please add account transfers at some point please!

Why would they want to lose the % cut to steam on old players aswell as new tho?

[Light Yagami.7318]

@Linken.6345 said:

@Light Yagami.7318 said:So I was all for the steam launch when I heard about it at first; however, after reading that you can't transfer your existing account to steam I see no point except for new players. I am still for them doing this because, more people can experience this game. I just wish there was a way for veterans or people who have been playing and spent money in the game to be able to also have it in steam so they could have most of their games in one location and I was looking forward to it.... This kinda sucks for anyone who has been playing a while and has legendaries etc that take time to get and would have to do again if they wanted to have it in steam. Even if it would be harder to make it to be able to transfer the accounts I feel they should postpone the update till they can figure it out or at least tell us it will come in the future as an option for steam. TL;DR: good for new players, bad for veterans, please add account transfers at some point please!

Why would they want to lose the % cut to steam on old players aswell as new tho?

The cut would suck for anet of course but, the payoff is showing they still care about their long time players and not about just making lots of money. I am sorry but this is just businesses being businesses and I am tired of the anti-consumer ideology they try to make us go with and I wish some game companies would realize the money isn't the main point because we both know that anet isn't going to go bankrupt anytime soon same goes for many game companies. SO yes you are right that it doesn't make sense for them to do the cut for the old players but, they should regardless of the cut.

[jhern.6097]

when gw2 is finally released on steam will i be able to use my current account or will i have to create a new one? would i be able to transfer gem store skins over?