Playing from Australia

[LJ Dots.4261]

I'm in the 250 -300 range myself. My problem is that I have nothing else to compare it to, so I can't measure how important it is.

My only reference is I do know some very skilled US players who will log out if their ping is less than 100 since the game is seen as unplayable. But I do know some Aussies who manage to kick butt despite the high ping times in both zerg and solo situations so it's kinda a combination of factors going on

Either way, I reckon just get out there and have fun mate. IMHO it's worth it a shot and I'm sure you'll have a blast

[Deathok.2914]

Well there are still Chinese servers you can play on I guess

[Chorazin.4107]

NBN isnt really a factor, that is more bandwidth for connections within Australia.

As for overseas It can depend on your POP, i find Telstra, or anyone buying bandwidth off their international transit is best for ping to USA servers. Or for any gaming really, unless you want to invest in a GPN like WTFast.

For dueling, yeah you will probably lose to that equally skilled player with 40 ping, but GW2 is more a group game. So your group communication and play can beat out that guy with 40 ping if his group are a bit disorganised or their coms are bad.

[Tyr.7890]

@Thunderdown.1436 said:Is it worth investing in this game? WvW roaming looks like the most fun in this game but with 286ms just in the PvE world I'm kinda hesitant. I want to roam on any class that I enjoy playing while being competitive and on the same playing field with everyone else, but the skill delay is already ruining immersion for me. Are there any Pro Aussie roamers around that play with high ping? Or is it just not worth it for Australians to play this game at all really. Only MMO we can get an enjoyable experience from is WoW because it's the only game that is run by a company extravagant enough to buy Oceanic located servers :(.

In my opinion as someone that's played since vanilla launch, no. It's my favorite MMO of all time, but the server move has brought the game from being on the edge of playable (although you'd never be able to 1v1 someone in NA unless they were significantly worse than you), to being unplayable for any challenging or PvP content. I'm playing in Taiwan and I used to have 180 ping. I was rough, but still enjoyable and you'd just have to learn to dodge things earlier than the animation in pve. I still loved pvp, but dodging on react to some of the moves just wasn't possible, it was all trying to predict patterns. Now with the server move to US East coast, I've got 240-260 ping and the game is just no longer playable.

With how many AUS and Asian players the game has, I just have no idea at all why they opted for US E instead of central or even west servers. The only people outside of the US that benefit from the server move are west Europeans, but they'd just play on their own servers anyway, so I just can't find the logic behind Anet's decision. Especially since it's AWS servers and they could basically flip a switch and relocate to Chicago or any other good central node.

Anyway, the game is a great game, I guess try a free account and see how bad your lag is, but due to latency alone I can't recommend it for anyone from Asia or Australia.

[Krylo.2831]

@"Thunderdown.1436" said:Why would anyone in their right mind want to invest time into something that immediately puts them at a disadvantage by simply installing it from their location? I don't really care how or how not so effective i'll be, its the game-play experience that gets ruined. In a massively multiplayer online RPG, you expect your abilities to work as soon as you press them you shouldn't have to be predicting, waiting or hoping they go off... no, I'm sorry just no (especially when I know the other guy can press anything he wants, whenever he wants and it will work instantaneously for him). Imagine being in a Role Play guild, you'd always be known as the slow guy who was always behind on the conversation lol. When you're used to playing normal 50-100ms games the skill delay of 250ms+ just leads to an overall clunky and frustrating experience where nothing feels smooth and enjoyable. You guys saying you play at 300ms and have no issues (lmao) go play WoW at 50ms and see how much better of a player you are because you can actually react instantly to situations and everything runs smooth.

How come a 10 year old gaming company is still too stingy to invest in Oceanic servers? It's not all about the Europeans and the Yanks ya know, the Oceanic community of gamers is pretty friggen huge when you combine us... I think you'd attract a lot more people to the franchise.

9/10 game2/10 company for poor server location choices

No thank you.

This post encapsulates the feeling of OCE/SEA players. Those two regions are huge combined. Lets pretend for a second we could only fill one server with all those countries - it would still be worth it. When you ask people here "would you like to play with massive skill delay and WvW OR play the game with no WvW on one full server and have it be a smooth experience with little delay" what do you think will be their answer? I've played for years on both connections and I can tell you mine in a heartbeat - the latter. Again, this is entertaining the thought that we don't have enough players for WvW, which I strongly believe we do, especially over time as new players join and form guilds. I have played WvW on unofficial Oceanic(NA) servers during NA downtime where its basically all SEA/OCE guilds. I almost wish years ago I was smart enough to not start GW2 from Australia but in truth I had a lot of fun with the game while it lasted. It's only when it come to end-game and PvP however (especially with HoT), that I just cannot participate and eventually quit due to growing frustrations. These are areas where you need to fine-tune your skills and react quickly, so they are also areas you notice your handicap IMMENSELY. It's not that I can't do the content necessarily, it's that I don't enjoy the content or even preparation like testing rotations. We are severely disadvantaged and what should be the funnest aspects of the game for me (competitive PvP and Raids) is actually the most frustrating. I would come back if they ever brought a decent connection to us and our SEA brothers because I love this game and would love to play PoF... but until then, no thank you.

You should see WoW's post where they opened Oceanic servers (btw they have a lot of servers, about a dozen, and huge numbers. At least one of them is full with almost a million). Their post is very understanding and well worded so basically I suggest you play WoW because they care. That wasn't until 2014 though so it was a solid 10 years when WoW didn't have Oceanic. In GW2 we're just asking for a half-decent connection be it Oceanic or SEA.

[DemonSeed.3528]

I still think Anet should pipe traffic from ocx/sea through to a localised server acting as a proxy because it would drastically cut down latency/lag (even when accounting for extra network overhead) and be more stable than when we connect directly. No need to seperate them into their own world/region, just give us a closer aws server to proxy our connection into. My dream is that they proxy me into singapore's aws because then I'd get under 100ms ping instead of the avg 280-oblivion (not including the horrendous 4k lag spikes). Lag is just horrible every week now.

[Shazmataz.1423]

@DemonSeed.3528 said:I still think Anet should pipe traffic from ocx/sea through to a localised server acting as a proxy because it would drastically cut down latency/lag (even when accounting for extra network overhead) and be more stable than when we connect directly. No need to seperate them into their own world/region, just give us a closer aws server to proxy our connection into. My dream is that they proxy me into singapore's aws because then I'd get under 100ms ping instead of the avg 280-oblivion (not including the horrendous 4k lag spikes). Lag is just horrible every week now.

Agreed NZer here. So many OCX people that I used to play with and possibly players from Asia (not sure of these guys cos I don't play that TZ) have left game because the change to AWS finally tipped them into the lag is too much zone and game isn't fun anymore. OCX wvw used to have many players but since the change its dropped markedly.

It would be wonderful to have a more local proxy for sure.

[Sleepwalker.1398]

I'll leave this vid from Noody here.

[fost.9167]

I roam solo or join zergs. Sydney on aussiebroadband. Its not terrible but you might want to stick on ranged classes or classes that are a bit more forgiving in gameplay.

Disclaimer is i'm an average player though.

[bendrix.8024]

I play from Malaysia so pretty much the same deal ( although there are lag spikes up to 2k during night here for the last three weeks, ISP monopoly!).

But yeah as others have said 300ping is a really big disadvantage, leaps and auto attacks wont hit unless you predict where they will be or your character is touching them. Basically you need to be better than your enemy by a fair margin to win a head-on fight. You just have to accept it and live with the fact that you will never win fair fights, not to say it's impossible, there are 300ping high rank players that can play very well.

Although I'm not dedicated enough to get into competitive with a handicap, I still enjoy the occasional unranked and sometimes duels in wvw. The fights you do win are 'usually' because you're much better than your opponent and that's it, you will never experience a satisfying win (unless you count someone that is playing with 300 ping as well) but then both of you are not playing with your full potential and how the game is supposed to be.

PS: Don't let people know you're playing with 300 ping in pvp though since all of a suddenly there will be about 300 people that are playing with that ping popping out to tell you to git gud

[DemonSeed.3528]

@bendrix.8024 said:Are you on Unifi as well? I'm finally able to play some at this current hour but there are still lag spikes, unlike earlier where I could not play at all, where farming nodes also took few seconds.

[bendrix.8024]

@DemonSeed.3528 said:

@bendrix.8024 said:Are you on Unifi as well? I'm finally able to play some at this current hour but there are still lag spikes, unlike earlier where I could not play at all, where farming nodes also took few seconds.

Yup, the lag's been here for about 3 weeks now, and it seems to always start at 8pm and ends after midnight, sucks for the working class. Although it seems there are some areas that my guild plays at that doesn't lag but they are rare.

[jihm.2315]

action combat will always be ping depended

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Krylo.2831" said:This post encapsulates the feeling of OCE/SEA players. Those two regions are huge combined.The combined population of Australia + NZ is under 30 million. California alone has nearly 40 million.But Indonesia has over 260 million.

If ANet was going to invest on population alone, then they woudn't add a data center in Sydney or Melbourne; they'd put it in Jakarta. Obviously ping would be a lot better, but it would still be roughly as bad as someone from ANet playing in the EU region.

But obviously, national population isn't the important criterion. It's how many new players and new sales would they get. And it doesn't take much research to learn: there aren't these massive gamer populations just waiting to spend money on GW2 if only the ping was more reasonable. Sure, adding a server local to Australia would mean more people; it just won't be enough more to justify the cost.

Lets pretend for a second we could only fill one server with all those countries - it would still be worth it. When you ask people here "would you like to play with massive skill delay and WvW OR play the game with no WvW on one full server and have it be a smooth experience with little delay" what do you think will be their answer?I can tell you already that people in NA and EU already complain about not finding enough people. First month of a new server? yeah, plenty of people. But a year down the road, no. People would be complaining left & right about not having enough for events, HP trains, metas, fractals, and yeah, no WvW without at least 9 worlds (unless you want to play the same opponents every week forever).

---

So yeah, ping is bad for those on the other side of the world from ANet HQ. And yeah, more people would play if it that delay could be reduced. But in the end, it's still a business decision that ANet has thoroughly researched: for now, it remains too costly for too little benefit to too few people to justify the decision.

The good news is that ANet does keep trying to figure out better ways to transfer data, to decrease the costs of starting up servers and maintaining them. And they've made some progress. So it could happen. It just won't be soon.

[Sleepwalker.1398]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

The good news is that ANet does keep trying to figure out better ways to transfer data, to decrease the costs of starting up servers and maintaining them. And they've made some progress. So it could happen. It just won't be soon.

You mean like the one where they moved to Amazon servers?This is what i consider started all those random 2k-4k spike we all seem to be noticing. Well for me atleast.It wasn't like this before the move.

[Player.9621]

the only issues ive had from NZ have always turned out to be on anets end or a hop beyond my ISPs control

[Azthid.4298]

If you're playing from SEA try transfer to EU. I just transfer a month ago and i got 100 ping reduction. Nowadays my ping is around 180-200. Whereas in NA I got 300++.

[DemonSeed.3528]

For players in sea the issue affects both na/eu azthid, but it depends where in sea you are - if you are getting 180 you are of the minority, and you are very lucky :) For me there is usually a 40-60ms difference from eu->na (this is when not affected by any lag spikes or general ping problems), but EU is definitely the lower ping choice.

[Austin.2048]

Played after a year of dormancy. The ping in wvw is insane!! I used to get 230-250 but now it's at least 280 then spikes alot to 4 digits wtf.

[Zinedine Longstride.7241]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Thunderdown.1436 said:Why would anyone in their right mind want to invest time into something that immediately puts them at a disadvantage by simply installing it from their location? I don't really care how or how not so effective i'll be, its the game-play experience that gets ruined. In a massively multiplayer online RPG, you expect your abilities to work as soon as you press them you shouldn't have to be predicting, waiting or hoping they go off... no, I'm sorry just no (especially when I know the other guy can press anything he wants, whenever he wants and it will work instantaneously for him). Imagine being in a Role Play guild, you'd always be known as the slow guy who was always behind on the conversation lol. When you're used to playing normal 50-100ms games the skill delay of 250ms+ just leads to an overall clunky and frustrating experience where nothing feels smooth and enjoyable. You guys saying you play at 300ms and have no issues (lmao) go play WoW at 50ms and see how much better of a player you are because you can actually react instantly to situations and everything runs smooth.

How come a 10 year old gaming company is still too stingy to invest in Oceanic servers? It's not all about the Europeans and the Yanks ya know, the Oceanic community of gamers is pretty friggen huge when you combine us... I think you'd attract a lot more people to the franchise.

9/10 game2/10 company for poor server location choices

No thank you.

A ten year old game company with one single IP is not Blizzard. You'd need enough Australians playing to fill 3 servers. We know that only 30% of the population predominantly plays WvW and only 10% PvP. There wouldn't be enough Australians playing the game to fill three servers.

Then you'd have people complaining that there's no reason to play the game if you're in Australia because the Australian servers are dead and the company would have wasted quite a lot of money setting up a server park that served no purpose.

There are lots of people who do play from Australia, not just this game, but many games that don't have Aussie servers. If you can't take that limitation don't play the game. But that doesn't make the company a bad company for not opening servers here. It's expensive and you have to justify that cost. There's not enough population here to do it.

SEA servers. I live in Perth and play Tera SEA servers. I average 60 ping. My guildies reside in Singapore, Thailand & Malaysia. The primary spoken language in Tera SEA is English.

NCSoft have no incentive to invest in sea/oce servers because so many have already bought-into NA. If you had only refrained from purchasing GW2 products, sea/oce may have been viewed as an untapped market. Today, we are actually a partially tapped-market. We are cash-on-the-side.

[LetoII.3782]

@Zinedine Longstride.7241 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Thunderdown.1436 said:Why would anyone in their right mind want to invest time into something that immediately puts them at a disadvantage by simply installing it from their location? I don't really care how or how not so effective i'll be, its the game-play experience that gets ruined. In a massively multiplayer online RPG, you expect your abilities to work as soon as you press them you shouldn't have to be predicting, waiting or hoping they go off... no, I'm sorry just no (especially when I know the other guy can press anything he wants, whenever he wants and it will work instantaneously for him). Imagine being in a Role Play guild, you'd always be known as the slow guy who was always behind on the conversation lol. When you're used to playing normal 50-100ms games the skill delay of 250ms+ just leads to an overall clunky and frustrating experience where nothing feels smooth and enjoyable. You guys saying you play at 300ms and have no issues (lmao) go play WoW at 50ms and see how much better of a player you are because you can actually react instantly to situations and everything runs smooth.

How come a 10 year old gaming company is still too stingy to invest in Oceanic servers? It's not all about the Europeans and the Yanks ya know, the Oceanic community of gamers is pretty friggen huge when you combine us... I think you'd attract a lot more people to the franchise.

9/10 game2/10 company for poor server location choices

No thank you.

A ten year old game company with one single IP is not Blizzard. You'd need enough Australians playing to fill 3 servers. We know that only 30% of the population predominantly plays WvW and only 10% PvP. There wouldn't be enough Australians playing the game to fill three servers.

Then you'd have people complaining that there's no reason to play the game if you're in Australia because the Australian servers are dead and the company would have wasted quite a lot of money setting up a server park that served no purpose.

There are lots of people who do play from Australia, not just this game, but many games that don't have Aussie servers. If you can't take that limitation don't play the game. But that doesn't make the company a bad company for not opening servers here. It's expensive and you have to justify that cost. There's not enough population here to do it.

SEA servers. I live in Perth and play Tera SEA servers. I average 60 ping. My guildies reside in Singapore, Thailand & Malaysia. The primary spoken language in Tera SEA is English.

NCSoft have no incentive to invest in sea/oce servers because so many have already bought-into NA. If you had only refrained from purchasing GW2 products, sea/oce may have been viewed as an untapped market. Today, we are actually a partially tapped-market. We are cash-on-the-side.

NCsoft not wanting to launch competition in it's home market might have been part of it too.They'd probably rather you play lineage or something.

[HAsAsIN.6724]

less than 300 ping is alright if you're in the direct opposite of the location of the servers.

or get supermegafast VPN from Korea/Japan. it will kinda reduce your ping coz the speed of the VPN will reduce your ISP's overall internet speed.

say if your ISP is directly connecting to the server, the packets will travel at your ISP's internet speed pace. but if you connect to a short distance VPN from your country and that VPN is supermegafast and that VPN connects to the server, #youknowwhatitis.

[Vayne.8563]

@LetoII.3782 said:

@Zinedine Longstride.7241 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Thunderdown.1436 said:Why would anyone in their right mind want to invest time into something that immediately puts them at a disadvantage by simply installing it from their location? I don't really care how or how not so effective i'll be, its the game-play experience that gets ruined. In a massively multiplayer online RPG, you expect your abilities to work as soon as you press them you shouldn't have to be predicting, waiting or hoping they go off... no, I'm sorry just no (especially when I know the other guy can press anything he wants, whenever he wants and it will work instantaneously for him). Imagine being in a Role Play guild, you'd always be known as the slow guy who was always behind on the conversation lol. When you're used to playing normal 50-100ms games the skill delay of 250ms+ just leads to an overall clunky and frustrating experience where nothing feels smooth and enjoyable. You guys saying you play at 300ms and have no issues (lmao) go play WoW at 50ms and see how much better of a player you are because you can actually react instantly to situations and everything runs smooth.

How come a 10 year old gaming company is still too stingy to invest in Oceanic servers? It's not all about the Europeans and the Yanks ya know, the Oceanic community of gamers is pretty friggen huge when you combine us... I think you'd attract a lot more people to the franchise.

9/10 game2/10 company for poor server location choices

No thank you.

A ten year old game company with one single IP is not Blizzard. You'd need enough Australians playing to fill 3 servers. We know that only 30% of the population predominantly plays WvW and only 10% PvP. There wouldn't be enough Australians playing the game to fill three servers.

Then you'd have people complaining that there's no reason to play the game if you're in Australia because the Australian servers are dead and the company would have wasted quite a lot of money setting up a server park that served no purpose.

There are lots of people who do play from Australia, not just this game, but many games that don't have Aussie servers. If you can't take that limitation don't play the game. But that doesn't make the company a bad company for not opening servers here. It's expensive and you have to justify that cost. There's not enough population here to do it.

SEA servers. I live in Perth and play Tera SEA servers. I average 60 ping. My guildies reside in Singapore, Thailand & Malaysia. The primary spoken language in Tera SEA is English.

NCSoft have no incentive to invest in sea/oce servers because so many have already bought-into NA. If you had only refrained from purchasing GW2 products, sea/oce may have been viewed as an untapped market. Today, we are actually a partially tapped-market. We are cash-on-the-side.

NCsoft not wanting to launch competition in it's home market might have been part of it too.They'd probably rather you play lineage or something.

I should have said American companies. Terra isn't originally an American game. Lots of Asians games would have servers on this side of the world, but very few American games do.

[Vayne.8563]

@LetoII.3782 said:

@Zinedine Longstride.7241 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Thunderdown.1436 said:Why would anyone in their right mind want to invest time into something that immediately puts them at a disadvantage by simply installing it from their location? I don't really care how or how not so effective i'll be, its the game-play experience that gets ruined. In a massively multiplayer online RPG, you expect your abilities to work as soon as you press them you shouldn't have to be predicting, waiting or hoping they go off... no, I'm sorry just no (especially when I know the other guy can press anything he wants, whenever he wants and it will work instantaneously for him). Imagine being in a Role Play guild, you'd always be known as the slow guy who was always behind on the conversation lol. When you're used to playing normal 50-100ms games the skill delay of 250ms+ just leads to an overall clunky and frustrating experience where nothing feels smooth and enjoyable. You guys saying you play at 300ms and have no issues (lmao) go play WoW at 50ms and see how much better of a player you are because you can actually react instantly to situations and everything runs smooth.

How come a 10 year old gaming company is still too stingy to invest in Oceanic servers? It's not all about the Europeans and the Yanks ya know, the Oceanic community of gamers is pretty friggen huge when you combine us... I think you'd attract a lot more people to the franchise.

9/10 game2/10 company for poor server location choices

No thank you.

A ten year old game company with one single IP is not Blizzard. You'd need enough Australians playing to fill 3 servers. We know that only 30% of the population predominantly plays WvW and only 10% PvP. There wouldn't be enough Australians playing the game to fill three servers.

Then you'd have people complaining that there's no reason to play the game if you're in Australia because the Australian servers are dead and the company would have wasted quite a lot of money setting up a server park that served no purpose.

There are lots of people who do play from Australia, not just this game, but many games that don't have Aussie servers. If you can't take that limitation don't play the game. But that doesn't make the company a bad company for not opening servers here. It's expensive and you have to justify that cost. There's not enough population here to do it.

SEA servers. I live in Perth and play Tera SEA servers. I average 60 ping. My guildies reside in Singapore, Thailand & Malaysia. The primary spoken language in Tera SEA is English.

NCSoft have no incentive to invest in sea/oce servers because so many have already bought-into NA. If you had only refrained from purchasing GW2 products, sea/oce may have been viewed as an untapped market. Today, we are actually a partially tapped-market. We are cash-on-the-side.

NCsoft not wanting to launch competition in it's home market might have been part of it too.They'd probably rather you play lineage or something.

I'm not sure the people who enjoy GW 2 would enjoy Lineage and vice versa. they're very different games.