Healix.5819

They should have just merged it into the UI. A little waypoint icon next to the episode in the story journal for example.

The exe is 32 MB, which is why I was using it as a test and why you've never seen it download in the KB/s range. Now if you tried downloading 1000 1 KB files, although that's only 1 MB, it'd take you much longer than a single 32 MB file. Zip up those 1000 files however, which is generally how other MMOs do patches, and you'll once again download at your normal speed. Normal patches are composed of thousands of files, with the full game being close to 500k total, all of which are downloaded and processed individually. These files can range from being 1 KB to 100 MB in size. When the game is downloading hundreds of 1 KB files in a row, you'll notice your speed drop into the KB/s range because it takes longer to actually make the requests and process them than it does to download. For normal patches, you may only notice this happen for a few seconds, but when this does happen, you should notice the file count going down much quicker. When downloading the full game, there may be strings of thousands of smaller files at a time, so you may see this happen much more regularly. There is a little randomness involved however, since GW2 downloads around 10 files at a time and all it takes is 1 large file to show your normal speed. - In short, when complaining about the download speed, first see what your top speed to the server is. Take the second number from here, which is currently 1961789, and see the below link. Unlike the one GW2 offers you normally, this is Gw2-64.exe direct from the patch server:http://assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com/program/101/1/0/1961789 If it's not actually slow, there's no point in trying other servers, because you're likely downloading a string of smaller files which is limiting your speed. There are of course other problems that may be occurring, like security software scanning what GW2 is downloading, slowing it down even further, or software hooked into the network protocols, which GW2 doesn't usually like and causes it to crash.

... when the files are only a few KB. The last patch for example had ~12k files at an average of 102 KB each and 4k of them were less than 10 KB each. You can see this problem on you own hard drive when trying to copy hundreds of smaller files vs an equivalent big one. The time it takes to process each file is longer than the data transfer, so it takes much longer to deal with. It's simply not possible to download at high speeds when the files are small. Like I said, if you want to see what the server's top speed is, you need a bigger sample, so try downloading Gw2-64.exe (32 MB) first. There's no point in trying other servers if it's not actually slow. If you want to sample what patching is like from your very own asset server, you can try my launcher, which has a lot of built-in tools. It can automatically select the best server available to you and can download patches outside of GW2, allowing GW2 to patch directly from your hard drive (tools > asset proxy / background patching).

guildwars2.com (Amazon), support.guildwars2.com -> help.guildwars2.com (Zendesk) and these forums (Vanilla) are all hosted by different companies in different locations. If you can't connect to https://help.guildwars2.com, either your DNS is outdated, or you can't connect to Zendesk (ping 192.161.156.1).

Reinstalling is a placebo. The only thing it's actually good for is shrinking Gw2.dat. Everything else can be done by copying Gw2.dat to check the drive's state, running -repair to verify it's not corrupted and deleting the %temp%/gw2cache, %appdata%/Guild Wars 2/ and Documents/Guild Wars 2/ folders. You can try deleting %appdata%/Guild Wars 2/Local.dat, and if it exists, Documents/Guild Wars 2/Local.dat, which will reset your hardware-related settings. Ensure you're not using the -nosound option and that GW2 is playing on the proper output device and isn't muted. It should appear under the volume mixer. Ensure that your speakers are configured properly, otherwise GW2 may be trying to play on a channel/speaker that you don't actually have. If you're using any additional audio mixing software, you must also ensure that it's configured properly. One of them was causing problems a while back with muting GW2, Razer maybe.

500 KB/s is normal, when the files it's downloading are only a few KB each. To test what your top speed actually is, you need a bigger sample, so try downloading Gw2-64.exe. If it's not slow, there's no point in trying to find a better server.

GW2 deals in thousands of smaller files. The overhead is huge, so it takes longer to actually make the request than to download it. It's not actually possible to download at your full speed when dealing in these smaller files, but if this is the case, you should notice the file count changing in larger amounts. If you want to try other patch servers, open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and enter:nslookup assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com You use one of the IPs with the -assetsrv option:-assetsrv 0.0.0.0 If you want to find out how close the servers are, you can trying pinging them, though not all will respond to pings. If you want to do a simple speed test, you can try downloading Gw2-64.exe (~32MB), though to try different IPs, you'll either need to edit your hosts file or edit the header (if your browser supports it):http://assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com/program/101/1/0/1944433

DigitalRiver, the payment processor GW2 uses, may be blocking you on their end. They'll reject payments they consider a risk. Only support can tell you what is actually happening.

The actual "fix" is complaining to your ISP about their DNS service, pointing out that cligate.101.ncplatform.net is GW2 and being redirected by them. It might take them days to fix it however, it really depends on many people complain. If you actually want DNS protection, you'd be better off switching to a more popular secured DNS service that actually specializes in it, like Comodo, Dyn, OpenDNS or Norton. What this actually shows is that your current one blindly accepts reports without actually verifying them, so they base their decisions on quantity alone. How do you know they're not unblocking actual malicious domains in the same way? If you're not additionally running a software web filter, which you should be able to add an exception to, you can manually supply the DNS entry rather than changing your DNS provider. If you do this, just remember to undo this when you can't login again, since this IP will eventually change. Open notepad as an administrator, open the file C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, and at the bottom of the file, add a new line and enter the following, then save it:34.205.103.240 cligate.101.ncplatform.net If they say anything more, it'll either be resolved or they'll just tell you to use Google DNS or contact your ISP, which is what support will tell you to do.

That'll probably end up happening regardless. The living world isn't doing a great job at holding interest, though it'll take a few more months to really confirm it. If it doesn't keep up, they may just switch over to expansions entirely, having a new one every 1~1.5 years and actually marketing it for 6 to 12 months. Consider that expansions generally keep people active for 3 months, and as shown by HoT, its year of marketing saw better results than the living world, so although it'd be a 12 to 18 month downtime, it'd really only affect activity for 3 to 9 months. The living world was their original concept however, so they probably wouldn't abandon it entirely, though they'd likely be better off cutting it down to 3 episodes and putting the focus on having updates every other week to actually makes use of it, similar to how season 2 was done. Personally, I'd like to see them retry the season 1 style, except designed to be replayed, not on demand, but like festivals. Scarlet could have attacked every few years for example, which they could slot in as filler whenever they wanted. With enough reoccurring content, they would be able to constantly have something going on and even overlapping. It'd likely be too much upkeep however, since they have a record of breaking old content. If they really just wanted to bring back season 1 however, they could simply devote one the living world teams to it, taking the slot of every 3rd episode for example. They could even sacrifice the entire season, or turn it into a new one, not by making season 1 playable, but by having a story where you have to go or see back in time or visit an alternate universe (infinity ball) for some reason that involves the key events of season 1.

Try forcing windowed mode using the option -windowed. There's a bug where GW2 will default to an invalid resolution. Overlays and anything that hooks into the graphics can cause it. If you have multiple GPUs, ensure GW2 is using the right one by configuring it through your GPU's control panel (or possibly by renaming Gw2-64.exe to Gw2.exe).

It'll only be shown when GW2 is capable of playing sound, so once you reach the character select. Also check any other playback devices you may have, and under GW2's sound options, you can specifically set which playback device to use.

For Windows 10, this can be caused by overlays / stuff that hooks into the graphics, such as MSI Afterburner / RivaTuner, Shadowplay, Discord, Windows game bar; anything that overlays on the screen or records it. It can also happen simply by GW2 not recognizing your display resolution. Force windowed mode using -windowed, and you may also need to delete the folder %appdata%/Guild Wars 2/, which will reset your hardware-related settings.

LaunchBuddy started out as a command line assistant, then later added basic support for launching multiple accounts. I've never used it, so I only know what it can do from the reddit posts, plus the complaints about it sometimes not working and problems with patching / having to manually update. I thought they added this feature, but I didn't see it listed, so fun fact, for every launch, GW2 will create a new %temp%/gw2cache folder, which can quickly add up. Gw2Launcher is my personal launcher I made back when they did the $10 accounts, which is specifically for running multiple accounts. As such, I have features built around that, such as pre-configuring window sizes and positions, individual volume control (because the in-game master volume is bugged and applied twice to videos), the ability to cache patches (because each Local.dat file needs to be patched for ~30 MB) and download them while you're still playing. I just don't advertise.

Long version, GW2 uses a mutex (AN-Mutex-Window-Guild Wars 2) to ensure that only a single instance can be opened. You need a utility capable of killing this mutex, such as Process Explorer. When running GW2, you use the -sharearchive option, which essentially puts GW2 in read-only mode, allowing multiple processes to read Gw2.dat. All of this can be done using a power shell script, without the need of other software. Short version, Gw2Launcher, which unlike LB, was built for this.

Initially, both NCSoft and Amazon was being used simultaneously. They're already capable of using Amazon's other locations, but they currently have no way of prioritizing which one you'd be sent to, which is why they didn't do it. (reddit)

Both the NCSoft (now shutdown) and Amazon EU datacenters are in Frankfurt, Germany. Ideally, the ping should only be around 15ms higher, but in actuality, you're likely to be routed over different, higher latency networks. If you really wanted to, you could try experimenting with VPNs to change how you're routed, but I'd only bother if you were >50ms or encountering spikes.

Compared to before PoF? That's normal. The servers were moved from Texas to Virginia (central to east coast US), which adds roughly 25-50ms to the ping in-game, for anyone that was routing through western US.

They were forced to make the 64-bit client due to hitting the 32-bit memory limitation in HoT. Other than that, it's not an improvement. It uses more memory and performs worse for some. Rewriting the engine with more recent technology would certainly improve it, but it's highly unlikely that they would do that. The native Mac client was really the only hope of seeing an upgrade, but it turned out they were only refactoring old code. They'll likely continue to support GW2 for a few more expansions, then move on to GW3 with a new engine. GW3 itself would be a big risk however, for the same reason Blizzard abandoned Titan (whereas GW1 wasn't an MMO), but it's also the only way to fix the mistakes and truly bring people in. Their biggest challenge will be deciding how to move forward, as they would potentially be starting over from scratch and having to retrain.

Was it actually using those? The live client shouldn't be using the 102+ branches, which are for testing. 101 is the live client.

The "connection error, retrying" error on the launcher means you're failing to connect to your nearest patch server. If you were using the -assetsrv option to manually choose a server, the IP probably changed. If you weren't, your DNS is probably outdated. To clear your DNS cache, open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and enter:ipconfig /flushdns You could also setup Google's DNS:https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using If you want to try the -assetsrv option, use:-assetsrv 54.156.252.61 If it still fails, you can verify your connection by opening the following web page:http://assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com... which should be a simple text page with an AssetSrv instance on the bottom. If you can see that, you likely have software on your computer that is blocking GW2 from connecting. If you can't, you're failing to connect to Amazon's server period. Try using a VPN.

If you're getting disconnect in the story at specific points, it's a repeatable problem and you don't normally get disconnected outside of the story, I've heard of 2 causes. It can be caused by an interference with your connection. You can attempt to run the game on port 80 or 443 (-clientport 80) as a potential workaround, or use a VPN to fully tunnel the connection. It can be caused by your GPU essentially turning off during cinematics or swapping to an integrated GPU if you have one. If you're running Gw2-64.exe, you can try renaming it to Gw2.exe or alternatively configuring Gw2-64.exe to only use your dedicated GPU under your GPU's control panel. You can also try to keep the GPU alive by running something else in the background, such as using GPU-Z to both monitor and run a test. This may be caused by power saving options.

Try deleting %appdata%/Guild Wars 2/Local.dat, and if it exists, Documents/Guild Wars 2/Local.dat. It can bloat with updates and cause greatly increased load times. Check the resource monitor (ctrl+shift+esc > performance) to see how the drive is doing. It may just be really slow and dying, but you'd probably notice it with slower load times in Windows. Other software could cause it, the most obvious being anti-virus software. Use the resource monitor to check for any other processes with high disk or CPU usage. Clean install your graphics drivers and try a different game or run a GPU benchmark to test it.

The 10k drinks achievement was around 800g, up to around 1400g. For the initial rush however, drinks were less than 1s each.

If ArenaNet wanted to, they could simply give you permanent boons at the start and call it story mode. An actual modifier would be better however, like -75% damage taken, +50% damage dealt. They could even take a risk and try to profit off of it, by, for example, selling overpowered heroes that can only be used in story instances. ArenaNet has never been about easy content however, so I'm not sure if they care about losing players to the difficulty wall, unlike back in 2012 when they heavily nerfed the core game. What they do offer to make the content easier is grouping, which in most cases trivialize it. The problem with that however, is that most people don't want to group, especially for the story. The other option is playing one of the easier professions, necro being the most casual overall.