End of Dragons Release 'Time'

[markantbor.9130]

Is there any official source stating at what time the expansion is releasing on the 28th? And if not - could we get an answer at what time it's expected to release? Being from Europe, this might affect whether I would decide to take time off of work on the 28th of February or not! Thanks.

Edited February 17, 2022 by markantbor.9130
clarification

[kharmin.7683]

I would expect the same time as all of the other updates.

[Randulf.7614]

You probably won’t get an official one unless it is nearer the time. It will release at a time when they feel it is ready and even then, it will prob be on a hot fix cycle throughout the next 24 hours. The lesson is not to book time off for it. 

Aim for usual patch time which is shortly after they are settled into the office and the waffles are ready

Edited February 17, 2022 by Randulf.7614

[Raizel.1839]

https://thatshaman.com/tools/eod/

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

45 minutes ago, Raizel.1839 said:

https://thatshaman.com/tools/eod/

This is probably a good guess, but a guess nonetheless. It's probably somewhere between 9am and 12pm Pacific Time.  Of course, it could be later.

[Ashantara.8731]

14 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

This is probably a good guess, but a guess nonetheless. It's probably somewhere between 9am and 12pm Pacific Time.  Of course, it could be later.

True that. And to be honest, I don't recall the exact hour on which the last two expansions were released. I can imagine the whole studio being nervously busy that day to roll out the expansion with as little problems as possible, so giving an exact release time over a week ahead might not be in their own interest.

[Randulf.7614]

41 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

True that. And to be honest, I don't recall the exact hour on which the last two expansions were released. I can imagine the whole studio being nervously busy that day to roll out the expansion with as little problems as possible, so giving an exact release time over a week ahead might not be in their own interest.

I forget if it was PoF or an ls episode, but there was a heavy delay on a couple of releases. One being hours, one being the next day if memory serves.

Regardless, the moral of the story is if you are going to be around for launch, don’t expect smooth sailing. Booking a day off is certainly folly and I can’t see it being anything before late afternoon/early evening for EU/UK

[Danikat.8537]

It's almost certainly not worth booking the day off if you're in Europe, unless you work in the evening. It won't be before 9am Pacific Time, and that's 5pm GMT/UTC, so it'll be the end of the work day anyway. Depending on how long it takes them to do the update it might be late evening in Europe before it happens.

Even if you do work evenings or nights it's probably better to take the day after off rather than patch day.
 

24 minutes ago, Randulf.7614 said:

I forget if it was PoF or an ls episode, but there was a heavy delay on a couple of releases. One being hours, one being the next day if memory serves.

Regardless, the moral of the story is if you are going to be around for launch, don’t expect smooth sailing. Booking a day off is certainly folly and I can’t see it being anything before late afternoon/early evening for EU/UK

I'm not sure about PoF (I think I was away that day) but there was a Living World episode where the release got pushed until the next day for most of the world (possibly even America, or it might have been late afternoon for them) because there was some sort of technical problem with it.

[Palador.2170]

Even if the game itself has nothing go wrong, this is going to be a big download for a lot of people all at once. Expect issues. Don't plan to play at launch.

[Linken.6345]

43 minutes ago, Palador.2170 said:

Even if the game itself has nothing go wrong, this is going to be a big download for a lot of people all at once. Expect issues. Don't plan to play at launch.

You will more then likely download most of it before the release anyway, even if you dont have eod active on your account the files will still be there.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Last time my .dat file show updating is Jan. 11th, 2022. It now says 53GB.  Not sure there will be any updates between then and launch.  Could be, I guess.

[Fueki.4753]

I assume it'll be around 4 or 5 pm (UTC+1).

That aside, I would not take time off work for EoD. It's going to be a very buggy starting week (as it always is). Just dip a bit into it after work during the week and then enjoy it fully on the weekend, after (hopefully) most major issues will be fixed.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[The Boz.2038]

12 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

That aside, I would not take time off work for EoD. It's going to be a very buggy starting week (as it always is).

This game's releases have been fairly bug-free; nothing really major bug-related happened on base, HoT, or PoF releases that I know of.

[Randulf.7614]

1 hour ago, The Boz.2038 said:

This game's releases have been fairly bug-free; nothing really major bug-related happened on base, HoT, or PoF releases that I know of.

PoF had a story progression bug which stalled people for a bit sometime during the first days. Relative to some launches though, yes, GW2 has only had a handful of major patch disasters (ancient Karka, the notorious Mordrem Bloom fiasco and the episode which was delayed for a day or so)

I would be surprised still not see some issues on an ageing mmo when such a large content drop goes live. As long as you are braced for it, it’s all good.

[Danikat.8537]

I don't think it will be unplayable in the sense of the servers being offline, constantly crashing or your progress being rolled back to fix exploits and other problems. (And of course we don't have queues to worry about, the game will just make more copies of the maps if they're full.)

 

I am expecting that (as happened with HoT and PoF) there will be a lot of updates in the first few days to fix bugs so there will be regular new builds to download if you're online during that time, and there might be relatively minor bugs which are still problematic for those who encounter them, like blocked events or story steps. So if you want a smooth run through the whole story/expansion in a relatively short space of time it's probably better to wait a day or two before starting. (Or until the weekend since that's when most people are likely to have the most free time.)

Having said that I've recently found out I'm going to be mostly off work and at home that week, so I may ignore my own advice and play anyway. But I don't mind being the one to find and report the bugs. (And if it doesn't work I've got plenty of other things I'm supposed to be getting on with.)

[grx.8714]

Just login when you are free on 28th and if you can download the patch congratz, if not wait the next day. 1 day more or less at this point who cares, you will play it eventually.

[Adzekul.3104]

So do the livestream announcements convince anyone that Anet have answered the OP's question? It still seems like it is up to us to guess the exact launch timing.

[DarcShriek.5829]

Considering this company's history, I would say the release window starts when the preshow is complete.  Sometimes releases can be delayed.  However, I think for this release they have made a special effort to make sure things go smoothly on monday.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

1 hour ago, Adzekul.3104 said:

So do the livestream announcements convince anyone that Anet have answered the OP's question? It still seems like it is up to us to guess the exact launch timing.

Since the preshow starts a 7am, and the main program starts at 8am, I'd guess launch is scheduled for 9am...the usual patch/release time (Pacific).  Of course, as noted previously, delays can happen. 

Edited February 23, 2022 by Inculpatus cedo.9234

[Healix.5819]

51 minutes ago, Adzekul.3104 said:

So do the livestream announcements convince anyone that Anet have answered the OP's question? It still seems like it is up to us to guess the exact launch timing.

The target is likely 9 AM, but they left it open in case of (Monday) problems. It's the first time they didn't give the exact time (HoT, PoF).

[Vidit.7108]

As people have said probably 9 AM Pacific time. I played PoF at launch in the morning when it came out and except for a rollback a few hours in, I didn't encounter anything that slowed my progression through the story bug-wise. Some map events might get stalled but you can usually playthrough the story fine. They're pretty good about this.

A lot of bugs in previous releases haven't pertained to actually stopping progression with the exception of LS4E3 but that was a server-side problem. HoT had a progression issue in that you needed a mastery to do the story that was super expensive xp and points-wise. It got removed that weekend.

[Money.7218]

For hot it was the morning

for pof i don't remember

[Palador.2170]

On 2/18/2022 at 12:11 AM, Linken.6345 said:

You will more then likely download most of it before the release anyway, even if you dont have eod active on your account the files will still be there.

I'm still not seeing any sort of pre-download, and I've got to admit I'm worried now.

[Healix.5819]

8 minutes ago, Palador.2170 said:

I'm still not seeing any sort of pre-download, and I've got to admit I'm worried now.

There isn't going to be a full pre-download. Expect a ~5 GB update on launch. What is made available beforehand has been downloaded over the last year, such as that large patch a while back that changed most of the world for skiffs/fishing and the betas.