NA-EU Guesting

[Bristingr.5034]

Now that the Servers will be going away entirely with the Alliance system, will we be given the opportunity to Guest across regions for PvE stuff? I have a friend on EU servers and we can't play together at all because of the region restrictions.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

No. 

Servers are not Data Centers.  There are 2 Data Centers; one for NA and one for EU. 

And never the twain shall meet. 

[Bristingr.5034]

1 hour ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

No. 

Servers are not Data Centers.  There are 2 Data Centers; one for NA and one for EU. 

And never the twain shall meet. 

Yet you're able to send Guild Invites and Whisper to those cross-data centers...

You can also transfer from NA to EU and vice-versa for gems, so it's not like they can't exactly meet. Plus, Guesting is basically just a "temporary transfer" with restrictions (No WvW, etc.)

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

The answer is still no.  WvW has nothing to do with it.  You can't 'guest' cross-region, so there is no data transfer. 

[superkaratemonkey.7408]

2 hours ago, Bristingr.5034 said:

Yet you're able to send Guild Invites and Whisper to those cross-data centers...

You can also transfer from NA to EU and vice-versa for gems, so it's not like they can't exactly meet. Plus, Guesting is basically just a "temporary transfer" with restrictions (No WvW, etc.)

because the servers used for communication and friends are different than the in-game servers that houses your character. they run many servers for various different services within the game.

 

this is why sometimes you might dc, where everything stops moving in game but your chat still works or your chat might stop (or your friends list might malfunction for some reason and show a connection issue) but your game is still playable as in you can move around.

Edited August 31, 2021 by superkaratemonkey.7408

[Danikat.8537]

A temporary transfer is probably the only way they could do it - transfer your account to the other data centre for a day and then it automatically transfers back afterwards. But it would have the same limitations as a permanent transfer: you'd have to log out of the game while it goes through and could be waiting up to 30 minutes for the transfer to complete.

[Teratus.2859]

Transferring already exists.. but the whole playing together thing as much as i've also wanted them to "fix" that problem is likely something they will never do for a number of reasons.

[Danikat.8537]

15 minutes ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Transferring already exists.. but the whole playing together thing as much as i've also wanted them to "fix" that problem is likely something they will never do for a number of reasons.

Yes but paying 800+ gems to transfer to another server then the same again to transfer back is very expensive.

 

If they could offer a temporary transfer that works like guesting but across the two data centres that would get around the current problem that it's only possible to play with people in the same region because the game can't keep sending account data between the two and could be less expensive (or maybe even free) because it's not a permanent transfer.

 

Unless of course the cost is there because it's that expensive to send the data between data centres, but I doubt that's the case because data packets are sent across the Atlantic all the time and it's not usually an expensive process. I suspect the fee is there partially to discourage server hopping and make players think about where they want to be and partially to make a profit.

[Cyninja.2954]

17 hours ago, Bristingr.5034 said:

Yet you're able to send Guild Invites and Whisper to those cross-data centers...

Yes, and? How much character data is stored exactly for guild invites and membership? Or to be more precise, how much of this data is actually EU and NA data server center bound?

Quote

You can also transfer from NA to EU and vice-versa for gems, so it's not like they can't exactly meet. Plus, Guesting is basically just a "temporary transfer" with restrictions (No WvW, etc.)

 

You need to first "understand" what actually happens behind the scenes before making such remarks.

 

When transferring from EU to NA or vice versa, your actual character data is transferred from one data center to another. When guesting or even transfereing within a data center (aka transfering from one EU server to another EU server, same for NA), your data does not change data centers.

 

Unless you propose that every time a player "guests", his data is supposed to get sent around the world, which certainly would be possible, you should know better than to make such comparisons.

 

WvW servers allegiance has the least to do with this.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Teratus.2859]

21 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Yes but paying 800+ gems to transfer to another server then the same again to transfer back is very expensive.

Agreed.

21 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

If they could offer a temporary transfer that works like guesting but across the two data centres that would get around the current problem that it's only possible to play with people in the same region because the game can't keep sending account data between the two and could be less expensive (or maybe even free) because it's not a permanent transfer.

 

Unless of course the cost is there because it's that expensive to send the data between data centres, but I doubt that's the case because data packets are sent across the Atlantic all the time and it's not usually an expensive process. I suspect the fee is there partially to discourage server hopping and make players think about where they want to be and partially to make a profit.

Honestly i'd be for anything that opens the game up to everyone.. i'm a GW1 player and the district system is one of the things I really wish they had in Gw2.
I've also got friends and guildmates who only play NA.

The only way atm that you can transfer for free is if your an Anet partner so that's a privilege given only to a few players who create GW2 content.

[Liliana Moore.4237]

ArenaNet please allow us to Guest cross-region. I am playing at nights (shift work) and am having trouble finding a team on LFG in the EU region. The current guesting system is a relic of the past. The Western world has never been as united as it is these days, yet some MMO games still continue to foster unnecessary divisions. It's about time to rework it so that players from different regions can play together. 🌍

Edited December 3, 2022 by Liliana Moore.4237

[roederich.2716]

it would be nice to get a dropdown box in character creation screen where we can choose if we want to login to NA or EU before we select an character to login.

 

the story with different datacenters need to transfer the data each time is wrong.

We can join any guild with NA as well as EU characters already, have access to same guildbank then and can even both be in the samge guildhall together.

The tradepost is also cross atlantic already, all players regardless if NA or EU use the same tradepost already today.

its just a transfer of WvW servers cost gems today what makes it expensive to change all the time.

i think they are working with mirroring the data already today.

so we just need a dual wvw alliance function where we choose what wvw team we logon before clicking the character.

thats it.

 

Edited December 3, 2022 by roederich.2716

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Back near the start of the game, after megaservers went live, they did plan to build a bridge between the NA and EU datacenters that would allow you to play together, with the latency inherited from the host shard. How they would deal with the character data being transferred wasn't elaborated upon, but presumably it would be mirrored in every region somehow with incremental updates.

 

This was likely abandoned during the development of HoT because of "all hands on deck", and we've heard nothing of it since. Bridging the regional gap was something very important to the original devs but unfortunately it seems to've been lost with time, perhaps due to dev turnover and priority poison.

 

I personally think the plan was abandoned due to the switch to AWS, which moved the US datacenter from NCSoft to Amazon, on the other side of the country. This drastically increased the ping to the US servers from the east, and gave less control over the infastructure overall.

 

Unfortunately, this was vital work as its the only way we ever would've had an OCX server. The population would  just be too low without some kind of link to the other regions at off-hours.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Liliana Moore.4237]

2 hours ago, roederich.2716 said:

the story with different datacenters is wrong.

I have 2 game accounts both in the EU region (EU world) since creation.

My main account remains in the EU datacenter, while my alt account was moved from the EU to the NA datacenter after I asked the support to update my email address. I then asked the support to change my region back to EU but they said that there is no need to change that, because the datacenter region indicated on the website means nothing, since my account is still assigned to the EU game world.

Although both accounts are on the exact same EU game world, according to my observations there are some differences depending on the datacenter region.

• Certain, but not all, major in-game (orange star) events start and end at different hours.
• Promotional items distributed to all players by in-game mail arrive at different hours.
• E-mail newsletters arrive on different days, and although both are in English, some newsletters use slightly different wording.
• While the daily reset occurs at the same time, the daily chests (those at the end of jumping puzzles, for example) reset at different times. EU earlier, NA later.

Edit:

1 hour ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

I personally think the plan was abandoned due to the switch to AWS, which moved the US datacenter from NCSoft to Amazon, on the other side of the country. This drastically increased the ping to the US servers from the east, and gave less control over the infastructure overall.

Regarding the latency. I just tested my ping from central Europe to the NA game world and I have a stable average ping of 120 ms, no spikes or lags. Certainly playable.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Liliana Moore.4237

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

2 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

This drastically increased the ping to the US servers from the east

Do you  mean the east coast of NA?  Because the move from Texas to Virginia only made the Data Center closer. 

If you mean east as in Asia, etc., I'm not sure how much of a difference the 1300 miles made.  From either location in the US it is closer for Asia to use the EU data center, I believe.  🤷‍♂️

[roederich.2716]

2 hours ago, Liliana Moore.4237 said:

I have 2 game accounts both in the EU region (EU world) since creation.

My main account remains in the EU datacenter, while my alt account was moved from the EU to the NA datacenter after I asked the support to update my email address. I then asked the support to change my region back to EU but they said that there is no need to change that, because the datacenter region indicated on the website means nothing, since my account is still assigned to the EU game world.

Although both accounts are on the exact same EU game world, according to my observations there are some differences depending on the datacenter region.

• Certain, but not all, major in-game (orange star) events start and end at different hours.
• Promotional items distributed to all players by in-game mail arrive at different hours.
• E-mail newsletters arrive on different days, and although both are in English, some newsletters use slightly different wording.
• While the daily reset occurs at the same time, the daily chests (those at the end of jumping puzzles, for example) reset at different times. EU earlier, NA later.

Edit:

Regarding the latency. I just tested my ping from central Europe to the NA game world and I have a stable average ping of 120 ms, no spikes or lags. Certainly playable.

In such term yes, the dial in occurs into different centers ofc otherwise there wasnt the difference in ping etc.

but peeps here claimed that on every region change the data would need to moved character wise which is wrong as we see on your experience here. The support even told you that nothing needs to be moved.

Did you receive this message from first level desk or from somebody inside arenanet?

cause the first level often says „no need“ or „we cant do that“ if they lack the tools or knowledge how to do something. If you keep answering and insist to them they shall give it to arenanet second level they pass it to a person with more competences then and you get answer from their team lead after a while.

so did support just answer you or arenanet? 

[Gehenna.3625]

This puzzles me because during a meta you can use the lfg to find groups on different shards. I'm in the EU but at certain times I see US flag markers so I assume they're on the NA side and I can join them. So what am I missing here?

[Liliana Moore.4237]

2 hours ago, roederich.2716 said:

Did you receive this message from first level desk or from somebody inside arenanet?

That was several years ago, certainly not recently. I was answered by someone from the first line of contact. I didn't persist because actually the region didn't affect my gameplay. Recently I read on the Steam forums that all Steam accounts are assigned to the US datacenter and people were getting the same response from the support as I did before.

57 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

This puzzles me because during a meta you can use the lfg to find groups on different shards. I'm in the EU but at certain times I see US flag markers so I assume they're on the NA side and I can join them. So what am I missing here?

These flag icons are an optional indication of the language in which the group communicates.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

7 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Do you  mean the east coast of NA?  Because the move from Texas to Virginia only made the Data Center closer. 

If you mean east as in Asia, etc., I'm not sure how much of a difference the 1300 miles made.  From either location in the US it is closer for Asia to use the EU data center, I believe.  🤷‍♂️

Physical closeness doesn't matter, because of conflicts in the east there's very few data lines running through there.

 

For example, data from Australia goes the opposite direction, through China and Japan, then to the west coast of the United States. Since the servers were moved to Virginia (east coast of the US), the ping increased by about 80-100ms for Australians, which is alot in an action-oriented MMORPG.

 

This problem exists in many countries, because even when there's a direct link, that link has limits., and the more rerouting you have the more you have to deal with the speed of light.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508