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Please add an Oceania Server to make the game actually playable


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Hopefully this is the correct place to post this suggestion. I live in Perth, Australia -- pretty much the most isolated main city in the world. This means my ping is routinely over 300, and in many cases even over 400 during peak times. I played this game with friends and really enjoyed the leveling process. Unfortunately upon dipping my toes into raiding and PvP I discovered that in any 'competitive' sense, meaning DPSing raids, any jumping puzzle anywhere or literally anything to do with PvP, even with fractals suffering also; the game is simply just barely playable. Dodging any PvE mechanics is something that's simply not going to happen with 0.4 seconds delay on every input. Admittedly it doesn't help that my favourite class when I did play was the elite spec of an elementalist or my thief, which has a complex rotation and very low health but even on my warrior, ranger or revenent the game just simply isn't viable for me to play outside of basic world leveling... I really want to get back into this game with some friends but I can't justify it over other MMOs that offer an Australian server no matter how good the actual gameplay is.

I hope there's other people who have suggested this idea in the past, and I hope it's not dismissed offhandedly. In my city there's many people who I know have wanted to play this game but haven't because of this very problem. I really hope my suggestion will be considered seriously because while I'm sure there are people who have managed to do these high end activities in Australia, it's way more frustrating than it should be and that added barrier for entry is honestly worth me just finding another game to play that does offer an Australian Server.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Edit: Just want to clarify as people seem to think I'm stupid or don't understand how servers work. I do in fact understand I'd only be able to play with people from OCE. My argument is not that I don't want to play with people from other servers, instead that I think there is a large enough population in Australia and much of Asia to justify this server, as I'd guess that places such as India would likely get a better ping from an Australia server than an EU server; could be mistaken though. Some MMO's do actually have Australian servers with flourishing playerbases, if you hadn't noticed.

Furthermore, I'm aware I can do these things if I wanted to work past the barrier for entry, but constantly being at a disadvantage whilst also making my favourite class feel incredibly clunky to play instead of responsive and smooth is still enough of a downside that it makes me want to just find another MMO.

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I can't really find the reply button on these forums for some reason, but regarding Ayrilana.1396's comment:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:One of the major hurdles is whether there's a population large enough to warrant it.To a lot of people here checking if there's an Australian server is a step they take before buying the game. At least in part the absence of voices in these forums may not entirely be representative of the potential population you could reach, as why would we buy a game only to be unable to play it?

There are only a few notable MMO's that offer servers in Australia. There's a pretty significant audience here that's looking for one, and that audience may be magnified further by lack of potential other options because of these server constraints. I personally know at least a few people who'd have picked up this game if there was an Australian Server, as honestly that's a big draw for people here.

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Im in queensland.. i have nbn with top speed. Download a dvd movie takes 10 or 15 mins, but my ping is over 400 :)The thing is.. we adjusted to it. Ppl reported me hacking in pvp while i was lagging like crazy. A lot of mechanic is quite painful where we have to react faster than others and most of time need six sense. Still with all frustration, you can still get all pve achievements done.Im oceanic and playing in EU server. I manage a guild from EU server started since gw1 so i have to give up the luxury of having slightly better ping in NA. I like NA ppl better as they are more friendly and civilized (way of communication), but EU is my home in game. :)

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I was sitting in the aerodrome last night, looking to pug wing 7. Nothing came up between 7pm and 9pm. Prime time AEST on the week of a new wing. Just 3 listings, 2 sellers and 1 offering a cleared instance for cheevos. If this is a small indication of the wider population base, good luck getting a dedicated server for a population that won't be there to enjoy it.

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The way the game is built means that each region can only play with people in the same region, which is why NA players can't game with EU ones.

If a third region were opened up, it would have to be self-sufficient. That means it would have to generate enough population to cover PvP, at least 9-12 worlds worth of WvW (with some pop off-peak and lots of pop during peak), raids, fractals, four dozen different open world maps, and LS... all at the same time. That's a lot of players. And that wouldn't be just purchasers; it would have to be a lot who purchase and keep coming back.

Australia & NZ combined have a pop of 30 million, which is 10% of the US alone (not counting Canada or Mexico) at over 325 million and over it's 6% of EU's population of ~500 million. So even if ANet opened a 3rd region, AUS would be a poor choice of location to generate the type of population the game needs to feel vibrant.

A more likely location is Singapore, which is close to Malaysia (over 30 million) and Indonesia (264 million). That would put the data center at 6300 km from Sydney, compared to 15.5k km from Sydney to Virginia. That would certainly reduce ping; it wouldn't drop it to the ~100 ms latency that people in NA or EU enjoy.

Another likely hub would be India, whose population is 75% bigger than EU & NA combined.

We have little way to estimate the potential player base of any of the above, since residency doesn't mean one is a likely gamer. What research there is out there suggests that Australia is less promising in terms of proportion of gamers per million population, compared to the other locations.


All of that ignores the actual costs of setting up and maintaining a third datacenter for the game. The actual machine costs are relatively low these days. Instead there are local laws|taxes|regulations, security, and usually some requirement for having locals involved with the business. And security. While Australia probably dominates this category, as players, we don't really have a good grasp of what this would entail.


We do, however, have a proxy to measure how good an idea this is: on multiple occasions, ANet's said they looked into and decided against the idea.

Since ANet is an international business, with years of experience running multiple data centers, presumably they are qualified to recognize a strong business opportunity. Moreover, they are a wholly-owned subsidiary of another international firm, also with such experience. Anyone considering claiming that there's big profits should consider first why ANet doesn't agree that there's money to be made this way.

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@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:You realize that if there is a Oceania server they won’t be playing with people on either NA or EU servers. There will need to be enough Oceania players to populate all PvE maps, enough for competitive sPvP and at least 3 WvW servers. That’s all you’ll ever play with and against.

FYI there is roughly an 8-hour difference in peak times between the US and Australia and their respective populations are already isolated from each other. Being on physically separated hardware changes nothing.

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I would pay a sub of 30 nz dollars a month for oce servers. In wvw currently o have 200 to 250 ping.

I cannot dodge dead eye deaths judgement . No matter how fast or "well timed" my dodge rolls or blocks are deaths judgment server side hits my character.

I am also unable to about face dodge roll.... example. I cant use about face and immediately use withdraw or roll for initiative on thief. Server registers my character as still facing a certain way, so if I don't wait 1 second after turning it will just take me on the opposite direction that the about face put me in.

Its 2019.... I want to play games on 30 ms.... not 200 - 300 ms in wow, guild wars 2, pubg.... stupid..... I was born too early:(.

I would pay so much for oceanic gw2 server...

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@Metasynaptic.1093 said:I was sitting in the aerodrome last night, looking to pug wing 7. Nothing came up between 7pm and 9pm. Prime time AEST on the week of a new wing. Just 3 listings, 2 sellers and 1 offering a cleared instance for cheevos. If this is a small indication of the wider population base, good luck getting a dedicated server for a population that won't be there to enjoy it.

Well.. also why im in EU.. they have better playing time coverage. But in NA it is more guild orientated and you can join the oceanic guild.. pug is not a good way for australian in NA. If you prefer or dont mind to get raids done with pug.. then come EU.If you havent been to EU, around 5pm raiders lfg started by 7 pm its few listed to join. But you be playing at 420 ish ping to 600 pingWhen i switched to NA temporary i do feel the huge change in game response.. everything become easier and feel being punished less

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@Leablo.2651 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:You realize that if there is a Oceania server they won’t be playing with people on either NA or EU servers. There will need to be enough Oceania players to populate all PvE maps, enough for competitive sPvP and at least 3 WvW servers. That’s all you’ll ever play with and against.

FYI there is roughly an 8-hour difference in peak times between the US and Australia and their respective populations are already isolated from each other. Being on physically separated hardware changes nothing.

If the population that plays on an Oceanic server is less than the off time population of the Na or Eu servers then yes it does change things but not for the better. In addition, you’ll be able to talk to your current NA or Eu guild mates but no matter what time you log on you’ll never be able to play with them.

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:The way the game is built means that each region can only play with people in the same region, which is why NA players can't game with EU ones.

If a third region were opened up, it would have to be self-sufficient. That means it would have to generate enough population to cover PvP, at least 9-12 worlds worth of WvW (with some pop off-peak and lots of pop during peak), raids, fractals, four dozen different open world maps, and LS... all at the same time. That's a lot of players. And that wouldn't be just purchasers; it would have to be a lot who purchase and keep coming back.

Australia & NZ combined have a pop of 30 million, which is 10% of the US alone (not counting Canada or Mexico) at over 325 million and over it's 6% of EU's population of ~500 million. So even if ANet opened a 3rd region, AUS would be a poor choice of location to generate the type of population the game needs to feel vibrant.

A more likely location is Singapore, which is close to Malaysia (over 30 million) and Indonesia (264 million). That would put the data center at 6300 km from Sydney, compared to 15.5k km from Sydney to Virginia. That would certainly reduce ping; it wouldn't drop it to the ~100 ms latency that people in NA or EU enjoy.

Another likely hub would be India, whose population is 75% bigger than EU & NA combined.

We have little way to estimate the potential player base of any of the above, since residency doesn't mean one is a likely gamer. What research there is out there suggests that Australia is less promising in terms of proportion of gamers per million population, compared to the other locations.


All of that ignores the actual costs of setting up and maintaining a third datacenter for the game. The actual machine costs are relatively low these days. Instead there are local laws|taxes|regulations, security, and usually some requirement for having locals involved with the business. And security. While Australia probably dominates this category, as players, we don't really have a good grasp of what this would entail.


We do, however, have a proxy to measure how good an idea this is: on multiple occasions, ANet's said they looked into and decided against the idea.

Since ANet is an international business, with years of experience running multiple data centers, presumably they are qualified to recognize a strong business opportunity. Moreover, they are a wholly-owned subsidiary of another international firm, also with such experience. Anyone considering claiming that there's big profits should consider first why ANet doesn't agree that there's money to be made this way.

Small note that even if the server was located in Australia, those in Asia would still benefit from it as they suffer the same issues we have. You are not trying to raise the population of NZ and Australia combined for a server, that server could still service all of Asia and act as a favorable option over the EU and NA regions. This has been successfully demonstrated in many other games. If we're going purely on population basis, the population of Asia last I checked is somewhere in the realm of 4.5 billion. Significantly more than both EU and NA servers combined. Naturally this doesn't take into account many factors; but neither do your own statistics.

Also regarding your final paragraph. Yes, which is why I'm posting here because I would like to find out why ANet doesn't agree there is money to be made this way. I'm a Network Engineer myself and have been playing video games for a very long time. I've seen many other games open up an Australian/Asian server to wonderful monetary benefit in the past.

Also, want to note. I'm not against adding an Asia server instead. But a large portion of the globe here is going without service, the portion of the globe in fact with the largest population. It doesn't make sense, regardless of ANets' size and ability -- I would argue against their prior decision. Yes I have no data to back that up, but if your argument is you don't think there would be a large enough population gaming to consider putting a server there I would point to any number of Asian MMO's with ridiculous player numbers.

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Btw.. while saying dps at high ping. I dont play dps class but mt husband do. He gets the expected dps i mean playing various meta dps class mirrage, dh, war, etc etc in some cases he could out perform others but ofc not with the elite team. All im saying, its really nothing we can do about or will they spend more to improve it for us. We just need to adapt. I believe you can too

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@Talindra.4958 said:

@Metasynaptic.1093 said:I was sitting in the aerodrome last night, looking to pug wing 7. Nothing came up between 7pm and 9pm. Prime time AEST on the week of a new wing. Just 3 listings, 2 sellers and 1 offering a cleared instance for cheevos. If this is a small indication of the wider population base, good luck getting a dedicated server for a population that won't be there to enjoy it.

Well.. also why im in EU.. they have better playing time coverage. But in NA it is more guild orientated and you can join the oceanic guild.. pug is not a good way for australian in NA. If you prefer or dont mind to get raids done with pug.. then come EU.If you havent been to EU, around 5pm raiders lfg started by 7 pm its few listed to join. But you be playing at 420 ish ping to 600 pingWhen i switched to NA temporary i do feel the huge change in game response.. everything become easier and feel being punished less

One of my guildies went to EU for the raids. Came back because the ping was unplayable.

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@Metasynaptic.1093 said:

@Metasynaptic.1093 said:I was sitting in the aerodrome last night, looking to pug wing 7. Nothing came up between 7pm and 9pm. Prime time AEST on the week of a new wing. Just 3 listings, 2 sellers and 1 offering a cleared instance for cheevos. If this is a small indication of the wider population base, good luck getting a dedicated server for a population that won't be there to enjoy it.

Well.. also why im in EU.. they have better playing time coverage. But in NA it is more guild orientated and you can join the oceanic guild.. pug is not a good way for australian in NA. If you prefer or dont mind to get raids done with pug.. then come EU.If you havent been to EU, around 5pm raiders lfg started by 7 pm its few listed to join. But you be playing at 420 ish ping to 600 pingWhen i switched to NA temporary i do feel the huge change in game response.. everything become easier and feel being punished less

One of my guildies went to EU for the raids. Came back because the ping was unplayable.

Well you can try but its manageable for me.My husband moved from EU to Australia. He suffered from having (hahahahaaa) 50 ping to now 400-600 ping (hahahahaaaa)He adjusted :)

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@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:You realize that if there is a Oceania server they won’t be playing with people on either NA or EU servers. There will need to be enough Oceania players to populate all PvE maps, enough for competitive sPvP and at least 3 WvW servers. That’s all you’ll ever play with and against.

FYI there is roughly an 8-hour difference in peak times between the US and Australia and their respective populations are already isolated from each other. Being on physically separated hardware changes nothing.

If the population that plays on an Oceanic server is less than the off time population of the Na or Eu servers then yes it does change things but not for the better. In addition, you’ll be able to talk to your current NA or Eu guild mates but no matter what time you log on you’ll never be able to play with them.

I think you forget the fact that Asia is very close to Australia -- and this server would be able to provide better ping to Asian players than any current server would. Meaning that you have a potential population reach of at the very least a few hundred million players as Asia is home to over 4.5 billion players. So yes, I understand that I wouldn't be able to play with people in NA or EU. I don't think it would be needed.

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@Teh Blair.5718 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:You realize that if there is a Oceania server they won’t be playing with people on either NA or EU servers. There will need to be enough Oceania players to populate all PvE maps, enough for competitive sPvP and at least 3 WvW servers. That’s all you’ll ever play with and against.

FYI there is roughly an 8-hour difference in peak times between the US and Australia and their respective populations are already isolated from each other. Being on physically separated hardware changes nothing.

If the population that plays on an Oceanic server is less than the off time population of the Na or Eu servers then yes it does change things but not for the better. In addition, you’ll be able to talk to your current NA or Eu guild mates but no matter what time you log on you’ll never be able to play with them.

I think you forget the fact that Asia is very close to Australia -- and this server would be able to provide better ping to Asian players than any current server would. Meaning that you have a potential population reach of at the very least a few hundred million players as Asia is home to over 4.5 billion players. So yes, I understand that I wouldn't be able to play with people in NA or EU. I don't think it would be needed.

I would consider move to oceanic server too if they created one since my current EU guild is like zero activities. GM which we swear to do weekly is gradually dying off too.

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@Teh Blair.5718 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:You realize that if there is a Oceania server they won’t be playing with people on either NA or EU servers. There will need to be enough Oceania players to populate all PvE maps, enough for competitive sPvP and at least 3 WvW servers. That’s all you’ll ever play with and against.

FYI there is roughly an 8-hour difference in peak times between the US and Australia and their respective populations are already isolated from each other. Being on physically separated hardware changes nothing.

If the population that plays on an Oceanic server is less than the off time population of the Na or Eu servers then yes it does change things but not for the better. In addition, you’ll be able to talk to your current NA or Eu guild mates but no matter what time you log on you’ll never be able to play with them.

I think you forget the fact that Asia is very close to Australia -- and this server would be able to provide better ping to Asian players than any current server would. Meaning that you have a potential population reach of at the very least a few hundred million players as Asia is home to over 4.5 billion players. So yes, I understand that I wouldn't be able to play with people in NA or EU. I don't think it would be needed.

potential player population isn’t actual player population.

I wonder how well gw2China is doing. We never hear about it anymore but from past posts by players who play there and posted here it doesn’t sound like it’s thriving. Possibly the game over there is mishandled but another consideration is that Asian players expect and want a different game than western players. Most games don’t cross over well as Asian players want heavy grind and pay to win features (such as buying Legendaries in the gemstore and having VIP accounts, both of which gw2China has) and western games are more casual. So just because there are a lot of players over there doesn’t mean they are or would be gw2 players.

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@"mauried.5608" said:Something wrong if you are getting 400- 500 pings.Im In the ACT and get consistant 250 - 280 pings maximum to the US Servers.If you use a service like Lowerping you can do a little better.

Services like these often don't help, and in fact make the issue worse. You're getting better ping than I am precisely because you are in Sydney. https://gyazo.com/3b22263683c4959a55ab4fe74913d63a

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@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:You realize that if there is a Oceania server they won’t be playing with people on either NA or EU servers. There will need to be enough Oceania players to populate all PvE maps, enough for competitive sPvP and at least 3 WvW servers. That’s all you’ll ever play with and against.

FYI there is roughly an 8-hour difference in peak times between the US and Australia and their respective populations are already isolated from each other. Being on physically separated hardware changes nothing.

If the population that plays on an Oceanic server is less than the off time population of the Na or Eu servers then yes it does change things but not for the better. In addition, you’ll be able to talk to your current NA or Eu guild mates but no matter what time you log on you’ll never be able to play with them.

I think you forget the fact that Asia is very close to Australia -- and this server would be able to provide better ping to Asian players than any current server would. Meaning that you have a potential population reach of at the very least a few hundred million players as Asia is home to over 4.5 billion players. So yes, I understand that I wouldn't be able to play with people in NA or EU. I don't think it would be needed.

potential player population isn’t actual player population.

I wonder how well gw2China is doing. We never hear about it anymore but from past posts by players who play there and posted here it doesn’t sound like it’s thriving. Possibly the game over there is mishandled but another consideration is that Asian players expect and want a different game than western players. Most games don’t cross over well as Asian players want heavy grind and pay to win features (such as buying Legendaries in the gemstore and having VIP accounts, both of which gw2China has) and western games are more casual. So just because there are a lot of players over there doesn’t mean they are or would be gw2 players.

Mmm. Im asian.. im so bad in grinding. I prefer good pvp and good games than grinding. So your assumption on how asian likes to grind is definately not correct hah seriously right who likes to grind?

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@Teh Blair.5718 said:people seem to think I'm stupid or don't understand how servers work.I don't think anyone has remotely implied that. You seem to be familiar with the root mechanics.

However, you seem convinced that this is a server mechanics issue. My goal was to point out that there are many other factors involved, most of which we can only guess at. If it were just a matter of setting up more servers, they would have done it because, as you know, that's not difficult conceptually or practically.

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