Attention Arenanet! OCE playerbase wants to play your game!

[Thunderdown.1436]

The main reason why more SEA/OCE players don't play this game is because of the horrible skill delay and skills not connecting when they should. The SEA/OCE playerbase is a lot bigger than you may think. This video I am linking is from a small Australian Youtuber who has experienced playing Guild Wars 2 from both North America and Australia. So please Arenanet, if you have the time, consider watching this video and take into account the points they are making. Just consider the possibility of one day investing in a OCE based server. The amount of players it would bring back would revitalize this amazing game. IMHO, this is the best MMO on the market and the only thing stopping tonnes of more players is the consistent high ping.

[Noodica.5428]

Hey man, thanks for sharing my video! The support I got on that video was huge, and now all we can wait on is for arena net to open their eyes..

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

I didn’t watch the video as I’m already over my data limit for this month. Did he address the problems of WvW, sPvP and PvE being only made up of Oceanic players? It would mean that WvW would only have one or maybe two sets of 3 servers who would only ever play with each other. SPvP would only be the small group of oceanic players and all would be separated from their current NA or EU guilds. Does he think there are enough players for Oceanic players to isolate themselves like that?

[Vayne.8563]

I'm an Oceanic Player and I don't believe it would work. I would continue to remain on a US server, to play with my guild. This game required lots of people for lots of things. Are there enough people in Australia to populate WvW, Dragon Stand, Palawadan, world bosses, PvP, Fractals all at the same time? I seriously doubt it.

It's not just WvW that's an issue. It's temples in Orr. It's Silverwastes, it's Dry Top. Australia doesn't have the population to support this.

[Linken.6345]

@Vayne.8563 said:I'm an Oceanic Player and I don't believe it would work. I would continue to remain on a US server, to play with my guild. This game required lots of people for lots of things. Are there enough people in Australia to populate WvW, Dragon Stand, Palawadan, world bosses, PvP, Fractals all at the same time? I seriously doubt it.

It's not just WvW that's an issue. It's temples in Orr. It's Silverwastes, it's Dry Top. Australia doesn't have the population to support this.

I think alot of people dont take into consideration that WvW will have to be oceanic players on all 3 sides aswell.

[Mrs Lana.2506]

While I hate the skill lag as much as anyone else (I run on an average of 300 ping), I seriously doubt there's enough players to populate every map we take for granted. Think about it across all the game modes (WvW, PvP, PvE, Raid, Fractals, Dungeons), then add to that all the maps. Then add to that all the meta events. It's difficult enough to fill a dungeon group now.

[Azrielvon.7836]

I think the best thing they can do for us is to fix the network routing so we can get lower ping and stop having 3k ping spikes.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Linken.6345 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I'm an Oceanic Player and I don't believe it would work. I would continue to remain on a US server, to play with my guild. This game required lots of people for lots of things. Are there enough people in Australia to populate WvW, Dragon Stand, Palawadan, world bosses, PvP, Fractals all at the same time? I seriously doubt it.

It's not just WvW that's an issue. It's temples in Orr. It's Silverwastes, it's Dry Top. Australia doesn't have the population to support this.

I think alot of people dont take into consideration that WvW will have to be oceanic players on all 3 sides aswell.

More than 3 sides, otherwise it's the same match up week after week after week after week after...

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Azrielvon.7836 said:I think the best thing they can do for us is to fix the network routing so we can get lower ping and stop having 3k ping spikes.

ANet has nothing to do with the routing. ISPs and backbone service providers are responsible for that. And, since demand for streaming services continues to go up more quickly than they are able to increase capacity, interruptions and spikes are going to become more frequent.

[slayerking.3581]

I've said it before and will say it again I would not play on oceanic servers they would be a wasteland. Look at when blizzard caved and put oceanic servers in, Yeah the ping was great but there's no one to play with, They had to put out a cmd line so we could get back onto the populated servers. Low ping isn't good when there's no one else there.

[CETheLucid.3964]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Azrielvon.7836 said:I think the best thing they can do for us is to fix the network routing so we can get lower ping and stop having 3k ping spikes.

ANet has nothing to do with the routing. ISPs and backbone service providers are responsible for that. And, since demand for streaming services continues to go up more quickly than they are able to increase capacity, interruptions and spikes are going to become more frequent.

Never had any problems with the Texas servers before they moved to the Amazon data center. That was a mistake.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@CETheLucid.3964 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Azrielvon.7836 said:I think the best thing they can do for us is to fix the network routing so we can get lower ping and stop having 3k ping spikes.

ANet has nothing to do with the routing. ISPs and backbone service providers are responsible for that. And, since demand for streaming services continues to go up more quickly than they are able to increase capacity, interruptions and spikes are going to become more frequent.

Never had any problems with the Texas servers before they moved to the Amazon data center. That was a mistake.

First, that's not routing. And second, sure, some people ended up with more problems after the move. But more people ended up with better results. And some of the differences are coincidental. That is: if Amazon's VA servers are located such that Comcast is the local provider, then recent Comcast issues on the East Coast would have affected many people west of the Rockies, whereas there haven't been similar issues affecting Texas.

Keep in mind also that ANet is located farther from Virginia, too. So they aren't likely to have decided to move unless their network people thoroughly vetted the negative possibilities, as well as the hoped-for benefits.

I'll post some specific developer comments on the change to Amazon below.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

Regarding the move to a Virginia datacenter ...Overall, ANet's data shows better ping/uptime for more people than before, slightly worse for a few, and (as with any transition) far worse for a fraction. Additionally, in many cases, the increased latency isn't because ANet is using Amazing/AWS, but because of the transition; apparently some networks are slow to update to recognize the change.

---

GMMagister wrote on Reddit (emphasis added)one of the first things support does for connectivity/lag issues is run a ping test which shows the speeds and packet loss on every step of the way from your computer to our servers. If this test shows the AWS servers behaving poorly, the agents should be escalating the tickets to me in the main office so I can chat with the server team.

However, if they are giving you other instructions, then there's probably high ping times or packet loss on the hops within your network that we're trying to resolve first. Even if it's not the only thing at work, we still need to remove the possibility first since it can muddy the data that we get from the servers further down the line.

I can't speak for every agent since we get newbies occasionally who might still make mistakes (yes, we employ human beings - please be nice to them!), but in general this is the process that should be followed.

---

Further Reading

• Stephen Clarke-Wilson, on his own ping from Seattle (spoiler alert: his route goes through Dallas (location of old datacenter) on the way to Virginia (location of Amazon AWS) )
• Same guy, on ping for ANet devs](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7doj1l/anet_can_we_please_get_an_actual_way_of_checking/dq0g4ax/)
• Also same guy, explaining why the change to Amazon is temporarily affecting people's connection (ISP/backbone issues, not the servers themselves or their location)

---

Stephen Clarke-Wilson commenting more recently about ping (on r/guildwars, but the ideas still apply) (poster's note: I made some minor formatting changes)

We moved to AWS. The AWS servers are awesome - they are the latest generation. In addition, we spun up more than we should really need, based on CPU. In spite of all that, two things have happened:

(1) a bug in [Guild Wars 1] since launch seems to show up more often than it did, which causes some lag. Extra servers help but does not fix that.(2) Anytime we move datacenters internet routing gets messed up and it is substantially out of our control. When we moved Guild Wars from Los Angeles to Dallas, our own routes from the studio still went down to LA and then to Dallas! It’s like the internet has some kind of memory and is slow to adapt.

The best thing you can do is try a free VPN (like ProXPN) and see if it improves your connectivity and ping. Using a VPN seems to get around the bad routing effect (which also gets better over time). The internet is a complicated beast; I heard recently that about 1,000 routing changes a minute occur around the world. Oh my.

[CETheLucid.3964]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:First, that's not routing.Never said it was.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:And second, sure, some people ended up with more problems after the move.A bunch, yeah.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:But more people ended up with better results.I don't recall too many people complaining about server stability prior to the move, but I don't doubt it's helped some people.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:I'll post some specific developer comments on the change to Amazon below.I've seen most of it already from reddit but a refresher is welcome. Sure.

[Azrielvon.7836]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Azrielvon.7836 said:I think the best thing they can do for us is to fix the network routing so we can get lower ping and stop having 3k ping spikes.

ANet has nothing to do with the routing. ISPs and backbone service providers are responsible for that. And, since demand for streaming services continues to go up more quickly than they are able to increase capacity, interruptions and spikes are going to become more frequent.

Thank you very much for your reminder, I'm very well aware. However, they can also communicate with the relevant parties to get some issues fixed. ISP is not gonna listen to me or most people seriously most of the time. For me, Telia node has been shitting on me for half a year.

[CETheLucid.3964]

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:Stephen Clarke-Wilson commenting more recently about ping (on r/guildwars, but the ideas still apply) (poster's note: I made some minor formatting changes)

We moved to AWS. The AWS servers are awesome - they are the latest generation. In addition, we spun up more than we should really need, based on CPU. In spite of all that, two things have happened:

(1) a bug in [Guild Wars 1] since launch seems to show up more often than it did, which causes some lag. Extra servers help but does not fix that.(2) Anytime we move datacenters internet routing gets messed up and it is substantially out of our control. When we moved Guild Wars from Los Angeles to Dallas, our own routes from the studio still went down to LA and then to Dallas! It’s like the internet has some kind of memory and is slow to adapt.

The best thing you can do is try a free VPN (like ProXPN) and see if it improves your connectivity and ping. Using a VPN seems to get around the bad routing effect (which also gets better over time). The internet is a complicated beast; I heard recently that about 1,000 routing changes a minute occur around the world. Oh my.

That bug in GW1 is interesting. Not sure if it applies to GW2 but GW2 did come of GW1 literally. So maybe. They might try digging around for that bug either in GW1 or GW2, whichever might be easier to look into.

Because if you find it in one game, it's likely you'd be able to fix it in the other since GW2 was built from GW1. That was interesting and much newer than the other things posted. I haven't seen these recent ones from 3 months ago.

Thank you.

[Healix.5819]

@slayerking.3581 said:I've said it before and will say it again I would not play on oceanic servers they would be a wasteland. Look at when blizzard caved and put oceanic servers in, Yeah the ping was great but there's no one to play with, They had to put out a cmd line so we could get back onto the populated servers. Low ping isn't good when there's no one else there.

If they did a whole new region with its own servers, that would indeed limit the population, but they don't have to do that. They're capable of hosting individual map instances at different data centers while still being a part of the NA/EU region, though longer distances makes it riskier.

[Vayne.8563]

@Healix.5819 said:

@slayerking.3581 said:I've said it before and will say it again I would not play on oceanic servers they would be a wasteland. Look at when blizzard caved and put oceanic servers in, Yeah the ping was great but there's no one to play with, They had to put out a cmd line so we could get back onto the populated servers. Low ping isn't good when there's no one else there.

If they did a whole new region with its own servers, that would indeed limit the population, but they don't have to do that. They're capable of hosting individual map instances at different data centers while still being a part of the NA/EU region, though longer distances makes it riskier.

They'd have to revisit the architecture of the game the way it's set up to do that. It would be a very major change. All the data about your character is kept in one large server in the US if your'e on a US server and that server keeps being referenced. You can put the instance in an Oceanic server, but it would have to keep referring to that server in the US and you'd be largely in the same boat. They'd have to somehow build a new architecture that involves created a new data center that can share information with the existing data center and then figure out which signal is best at any given time and use it.

The problem is if you party with or play against people in the US, that system would not work. Everyone who's in the party, as it stands now, would need to have info on the same data center.

Right now you have a local copy of the game and a server copy. The server copy is where you really are. That's your position. Your local copy approximates that as best it can. If you've ever played a game with rubberbanding (guild wars 1 had a ton of it) that comes from your local program updating the server information and moving you back to where the server places you. What you see is always an approximation.

But if you have two severs reporting different positions because they both mark you at different locations, where is your actual position? What happens when they disagree? What do other people in your party see? It's a very hard issue to work around. That's why data centers are separated the way they are. Anet said they did try testing letting EU and NA people play together and it didn't work very well. It would be worse in Australia.

As much as I'd like better ping and the game to respond better, making another server won't happen without an extensive rewrite of the server architecture, which is not only very expensive, but you'd have to prove that the income from that can be justified.

Since some Australians already play this game a ton, it would be a hard sell to prove that enough new Australians would start to play, particularly considering the game is five years old. It's just a bad business decision.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

@Healix.5819 said:

@slayerking.3581 said:I've said it before and will say it again I would not play on oceanic servers they would be a wasteland. Look at when blizzard caved and put oceanic servers in, Yeah the ping was great but there's no one to play with, They had to put out a cmd line so we could get back onto the populated servers. Low ping isn't good when there's no one else there.

If they did a whole new region with its own servers, that would indeed limit the population, but they don't have to do that. They're capable of hosting individual map instances at different data centers while still being a part of the NA/EU region, though longer distances makes it riskier.

It’s my understanding that accounts are stored in data centers which then generate maps for those accounts. That’s why EU can’t play with NA. Information on EU accounts are in the European data center and same for the NA accounts. To play on a different data center the account information has to be transferred to the other data center’s computers. So if OCE had their own servers their accounts would be in an OCE datacenter, separate from EU and NA.

[Healix.5819]

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:It’s my understanding that accounts are stored in data centers which then generate maps for those accounts. That’s why EU can’t play with NA. Information on EU accounts are in the European data center and same for the NA accounts. To play on a different data center the account information has to be transferred to the other data center’s computers. So if OCE had their own servers their accounts would be in an OCE datacenter, separate from EU and NA.

When they were transitioning to Amazon, they were simultaneously using Amazon's and NCSoft's data centers. PoF for example launched on Amazon, while PoF's story was still at NCSoft. They could theoretically host instances at any of Amazon's centers around the world, while keeping them a part of the NA or EU region. The less reliable the connection is between the instance and master however, the higher the risk of losing data, in the same way that when the instance crashes, you lose whatever hasn't synced with the master. In the past, they've said the underseas cables were too unreliable, so maybe it'll never happen, but they could do west coast instances, which would help with a certain routing problem and reduce ping by around 40 to 80 ms.

[Sojourner.4621]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@CETheLucid.3964 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Azrielvon.7836 said:I think the best thing they can do for us is to fix the network routing so we can get lower ping and stop having 3k ping spikes.

ANet has nothing to do with the routing. ISPs and backbone service providers are responsible for that. And, since demand for streaming services continues to go up more quickly than they are able to increase capacity, interruptions and spikes are going to become more frequent.

Never had any problems with the Texas servers before they moved to the Amazon data center. That was a mistake.

First, that's not routing. And second, sure, some people ended up with more problems after the move. But

more

people ended up with better results. And some of the differences are coincidental. That is: if Amazon's VA servers are located such that Comcast is the local provider, then recent Comcast issues on the East Coast would have affected many people west of the Rockies, whereas there haven't been similar issues affecting Texas.

Keep in mind also that ANet is located

farther

from Virginia, too. So they aren't likely to have decided to move unless their network people thoroughly vetted the negative possibilities, as well as the hoped-for benefits.

I'll post some specific developer comments on the change to Amazon below.

They've mostly said that the server quality is overall better and more modern than what they were able to have with their previous hosting, but I can definitely say my own server connection speeds are much better than they were (except the first couple weeks) and the only times I really have problems are on days where for some reason TraceRT shows me being routed to the other side of the US then back again instead of more-or-less directly to like it does most of the time. (it's rare, but I can always trace it to the route it takes, so it's not the servers themselves)

[Sojourner.4621]

@Healix.5819 said:

@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:It’s my understanding that accounts are stored in data centers which then generate maps for those accounts. That’s why EU can’t play with NA. Information on EU accounts are in the European data center and same for the NA accounts. To play on a different data center the account information has to be transferred to the other data center’s computers. So if OCE had their own servers their accounts would be in an OCE datacenter, separate from EU and NA.

When they were transitioning to Amazon, they were simultaneously using Amazon's and NCSoft's data centers. PoF for example launched on Amazon, while PoF's story was still at NCSoft. They could theoretically host instances at any of Amazon's centers around the world, while keeping them a part of the NA or EU region. The less reliable the connection is between the instance and master however, the higher the risk of losing data, in the same way that when the instance crashes, you lose whatever hasn't synced with the master. In the past, they've said the underseas cables were too unreliable, so maybe it'll never happen, but they could do west coast instances, which would help with a certain routing problem and reduce ping by around 40 to 80 ms.

In theory this is true, but there is an extra cost associated to every new location they decide to host in, and overall when talking hosting of this type it's always "easier" from a data-stream priority standpoint to have your hosting in a single location per region... not to mention individual ISPs might STILL try and route you to the "wrong" one.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

@Healix.5819 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:It’s my understanding that accounts are stored in data centers which then generate maps for those accounts. That’s why EU can’t play with NA. Information on EU accounts are in the European data center and same for the NA accounts. To play on a different data center the account information has to be transferred to the other data center’s computers. So if OCE had their own servers their accounts would be in an OCE datacenter, separate from EU and NA.

When they were transitioning to Amazon, they were simultaneously using Amazon's and NCSoft's data centers. PoF for example launched on Amazon, while PoF's story was still at NCSoft. They could theoretically host instances at any of Amazon's centers around the world, while keeping them a part of the NA or EU region. The less reliable the connection is between the instance and master however, the higher the risk of losing data, in the same way that when the instance crashes, you lose whatever hasn't synced with the master. In the past, they've said the underseas cables were too unreliable, so maybe it'll never happen, but they could do west coast instances, which would help with a certain routing problem and reduce ping by around 40 to 80 ms.

What you’re saying then is that the computer then moved your account and everyone else’s seamlessly together according to what part of the game you were playing. A problem I’m wondering about with your suggestion is one of account selection into the instance. How would they set it up so that you choose to be on this map shard but not that map shard and stay there. If you select this map shard based on being OCE but others stayed with everyone else, wouldn’t that separate you from the rest of the players even if it’s only while you’re choosing to do so? If it’s based on what you’re playing then how can player A be on this instance for OCE on WvW while others are on another instance on WvW (and that goes for everything else, PvE and sPvP).

Edit: I probably wasn’t very clear so I’ll try again...

When they had PoF story and PoF main they moved people in and out of the instances based on what part of the game they were doing. If they made, for example, a second POF story and PoF main that OCE could self select into then wouldn’t they be separated from the players who remain on the first set of PoF story and main?

[Thunderdown.1436]

@Vayne.8563 said:I'm an Oceanic Player and I don't believe it would work. I would continue to remain on a US server, to play with my guild. This game required lots of people for lots of things. Are there enough people in Australia to populate WvW, Dragon Stand, Palawadan, world bosses, PvP, Fractals all at the same time? I seriously doubt it.

It's not just WvW that's an issue. It's temples in Orr. It's Silverwastes, it's Dry Top. Australia doesn't have the population to support this.

Oceanic is not only Australia my dude. It's many other countries surrounding the area. Although I feel like a South East Asia (SEA) server would be more ideal because then you've got the entire Asian population and all of the Oceanic countries on the one server. SEA is central to the middle east, China, India, Australia... just to name a few. Like I said, the population is potentially A LOT bigger than everyone here thinks. If they market it right like other games there could be a European server, SEA server and a US server. Other games have exactly that (BDO for example has a SEA server in Taiwan where Aussies get 80ms from). Why not Anet?

[Azrielvon.7836]

@Thunderdown.1436 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I'm an Oceanic Player and I don't believe it would work. I would continue to remain on a US server, to play with my guild. This game required lots of people for lots of things. Are there enough people in Australia to populate WvW, Dragon Stand, Palawadan, world bosses, PvP, Fractals all at the same time? I seriously doubt it.

It's not just WvW that's an issue. It's temples in Orr. It's Silverwastes, it's Dry Top. Australia doesn't have the population to support this.

Oceanic is not only Australia my dude. It's many other countries surrounding the area. Although I feel like a South East Asia (SEA) server would be more ideal because then you've got the entire Asian population and all of the Oceanic countries on the one server. SEA is central to the middle east, China, India, Australia... just to name a few. Like I said, the population is potentially A LOT bigger than everyone here thinks. If they market it right like other games there could be a European server, SEA server and a US server. Other games have exactly that (BDO for example has a SEA server in Taiwan where Aussies get 80ms from). Why not Anet?

Quite frankly speaking, I don't even know if SEA's population is justifiable to create its own server.