Why are SEA servers not a thing yet? [Merged]

[inoriol.1250]

Hello! Three years ago I moved from Europe to Japan and after that Guild Wars 2 became highly unplayable for me. Sure, transfering to the NA servers and using WARP helped a little, but I find myself too annoyed by the delay to play the game. 

 

But I don't want to whine actually. I just want to understand what is stopping Arena Net opening a SEA server? Sure, there are probably far fewer people who like western MMORPGs in the region, but those people exist. 

 

So... What can possibly stop ArenaNet from renting a server or two in, for example, Singapore datacenter (which has relatively low ping to most of the cities in the region) to just see if they can make money in the region or not? In the worst case scenario they will be losing just a couple thousands dollars.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Because there would likely not be enough players to populate another server/data center.  You are aware that players in each data center can only play with others in the same center? 

[Zavijah.2695]

Saying SEA or Asia in general would not have the population of players to support a server, when it's most densely populated hemispheres of the planet is the most shortsighted statement I've read in awhile. 

[Serephen.3420]

Because unfortunately many other games have tried SEA/OCX servers and those always failed in the end. This would cause others in the industry to be cautious about it.

Part Because of lack in population,  also many players chose to continue playing on NA to stay with other guilds/friends. 

Just curious what kind of internet are you using? I'm living in Japan as well but my ping is pretty stable and manageable. Then again it could be adjusting from being in EU on EU servers. It'll take getting used to but so long as it doesn't fluctuate too much.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

1 hour ago, Zavijah.2695 said:

Saying SEA or Asia in general would not have the population of players to support a server, when it's most densely populated hemispheres of the planet is the most shortsighted statement I've read in awhile. 

Are you including China?  As there is already a China data center/server/client.

[SLOTH.8029]

try eu servers if u have ping issues. i experience better ping in eu than na. I get 170 on good days and 200ish on average
and I wouldnt transfer to sea server even if they introduce one now. reason 1 being i have friends in eu server and reason 2 it would be dead, especially stuff like wvw

[Danikat.8537]

I think WvW is one complication - servers can only play against others in the same region/data centre they are (and the Alliance update is not going to change that) so if there was just 1-2 SEA servers they wouldn't be able to play WvW. If there were only 3 then they'd have the same match up every week. Ideally there would need to be at least 6, but then you need enough people for 6 servers.

[Kate.3679]

I play mostly late OCX/SEA/Early EU times on the NA servers and it's exceedingly obvious that there just isn't the playerbase to support it.

[quake.9023]

PING IS GETTING WORSE BY THE DAY, NEED 3 SEA/OCE SERVER. 

[Nico.9361]

Tbh EMEA is not doing so hot either... Even living close to Frankfurt ping and refresh rate go crazy...

[Jukhy.2431]

There's probably not enough players for a fourth regional server. China has it's own regional server with a slightly different version of the game.

Saw someone from the SEA region mention that they changed to EU servers and got more stable latency. As for the reason I'd say there are more connection routes from SEA to Europe and they are easier to maintain/fix so less problems than with the undersea cables.

[Serephen.3420]

On 3/29/2022 at 2:23 PM, Serephen.3420 said:

Because unfortunately many other games have tried SEA/OCX servers and those always failed in the end. This would cause others in the industry to be cautious about it.

Part Because of lack in population,  also many players chose to continue playing on NA to stay with other guilds/friends. 

Just curious what kind of internet are you using? I'm living in Japan as well but my ping is pretty stable and manageable. Then again it could be adjusting from being in EU on EU servers. It'll take getting used to but so long as it doesn't fluctuate too much.

This coment did not age well😅

Been having massive spikes this year. I wonder if one of the undersea cables got damaged. 🙁

Edited February 13, 2023 by Serephen.3420
Typo

[Linken.6345]

52 minutes ago, Serephen.3420 said:

This coment did not age well😅

Been having massive slikes this year. I wonder if one of the undersea cables got damaged. 🙁

29. nov. 2022 — Internet users across Asia appear to be suffering from degraded performance after a major submarine cable was severed.

[Serephen.3420]

2 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

29. nov. 2022 — Internet users across Asia appear to be suffering from degraded performance after a major submarine cable was severed.

That would explain it...but unfortunate that it is taking so long to repair 😔

[Pinkeh.4207]

Asia America Gateway and 3 other under sea cables were damaged recently. It might not be Anet's fault that an undersea cable is damaged but they also don't wanna do anything for the SEA playerbase... like spinning up servers on local data centers.

My guild have players spread across Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. A lot are experiencing massive lag spikes trying to connect to NA. We decided to just play another mainstream MMOG with Asia Pacific servers, and taking the community there instead. GW2 is unplayable with 800-4000ms. 

We carried 3 of our friends through raids this week as they just stood nearby watching the laggy slideshow. That way they still progressed despite not being able to participate. 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Pinkeh.4207

[Astralporing.1957]

47 minutes ago, Pinkeh.4207 said:

Asia America Gateway and 3 other under sea cables were damaged recently. It might not be Anet's fault that an undersea cable is damaged but they also don't wanna do anything for the SEA playerbase... like spinning up servers on local data centers.

Again, do you think there would be enough players to populate at least 3 (absolute minimum) to 6 (safe minimum) OCX servers?

47 minutes ago, Pinkeh.4207 said:

My guild have players spread across Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. A lot are experiencing massive lag spikes trying to connect to NA. We decided to just play another mainstream MMOG with Asia Pacific servers, and taking the community there instead. GW2 is unplayable with 800-4000ms. 

In your case you have players spread across a lot of OCX and SEA locations and nowhere else. What would happen however if some of your players were from other locations? Would it be fine to just drop them off the guild, and not be able to play together with them? Remember, that a local OCX/SEA server would be a new zone, separate from NA and EU ones.

Btw, notice, that the problems you speak of most likely aren't uniform for all the locations mentioned - not all of them used the same damaged cable after all. And Australia would likely end up with issues anyway, unless the OCX servers were placed right there - in which case a lot of other locations you mentioned would have issues. The solution is not to fragment the community more. It is to fix the kitten cable. Unfortunately, that one is not up to Anet.

(also, that's asia-america cable we speak of. There's still the EU servers option, which, at this point, might be better)

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[quake.9023]

cmon anet.....its unplayable for ASIA / OCE people .....................spike 2k.....pvp n wvw is a complete joke.

[costepj.5120]

1 hour ago, quake.9023 said:

cmon anet.....its unplayable for ASIA / OCE people .....................spike 2k.....pvp n wvw is a complete joke.

Unfortunately for you, anet has long neglected underwater combat, which really inhibits their capability for working on underwater cables. Look what happened to Tonn.

[Gehenna.3625]

On 3/29/2022 at 7:14 AM, Zavijah.2695 said:

Saying SEA or Asia in general would not have the population of players to support a server, when it's most densely populated hemispheres of the planet is the most shortsighted statement I've read in awhile. 

I think you're confusing highly dense population with a player base. China's already out and other countries have different values that might not allow GW2 to be marketed there in the first place. Think of Indonesia and their stances on promiscuity and lgbt rights. And GW2 might not be really popular there in the first place as a western MMO.

So yeah, lots of people, but perhaps not lots of players.

[b k.1648]

Not lots of players used to be true, but the PC gaming population in the SEA region has been growing at such a rate that it's a sizeable market now. I don't know if ANet is very well positioned to compete for it though.

[Bromancer.6305]

Claiming the OCE/AUS regions couldn't support a player base directly conflicts with the fact that plenty of other wildly successful games have huge presences in these regions with no issue with sustainability, the only *real* counter argument to this is being confident GW2 can't compete against other online games, which the recent Steam release also totally disproves.

 

As an Aus player who still loves this game despite the ping issues, I'm somewhat hopeful the eventual WvW restructuring will reopen this particular discussion for ANet.

[SteRz.5630]

Hi, I'm a player from Thailand and currently really enjoying the game so far and do want to play this game in an optimal ping environment. 
I think it would be great if we, Asia/OCE based players can come together and reply on this thread so Anet knows that there're still people who want an Asia server.

I understand that this topic has been going around a lot, but I do want it to happen. I also reached out to the support team and they told me to post the feedback here so that developer can see them. 

Cheers

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, Bromancer.6305 said:

Claiming the OCE/AUS regions couldn't support a player base directly conflicts with the fact that plenty of other wildly successful games have huge presences in these regions with no issue with sustainability

SPvP mode (and WvW to a certain degree, at least in lower tiers) already have issues with sustainability. Splitting it further will not make things better for anyone. OCE SPvP would end up being a complete dead zone.

Apart from that, there's 24 NA WvW servers, and 27 EU ones (to a total of 51 - although if we consider that lower tier ones are underpopulated, populationwise it's at most two-thirds of that). A new OCE zone should have an absolute minimum of 3, but preferably at least 6 (or even better 9) servers to allow for sensible variations in fight rotations, so you won't end up constantly fighting the same people. Do you really think that OCE region players willing to shift zones away from their current guilds (because many would not be willing to do that) would constitute at least 10 to 15% of the current game's population? Because current OCE timezones game activity does not seem to be high enough to support that...

(of course my observations are based on EU, which can be countered by saying that most OCE players play NA servers. I have no idea if that's true, but if it were to be so, it would mean most of the WvW players would need to come from the NA side of the WvW community. That would mean having to take away at least 30% or so of the NA WvW players. I'm 100% sure OCX population is not that high).

Edited February 13, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[zefleas.7051]

Just curious, issit possible to have an Asian server but still be connected to U.S server.

 

I thinking like youtube. There's local youtube servers in your own region but somehow they all have the same content as the servers in western ones thru the use of CDN(Content Delivery Network).

 

Apparently Amazon has that service. It does not look cheap tho.

 

But that would solve most of our issues if Anet decides to do that, I also think it may actually provide lower ping.

 

All these are all assumptions that CDN could work but it depends if it will work with the way Guild Wars 2 handles/Store data and I also think the other problem is justifying the cost of getting the server.

 

 

 

Our current bad issue is like a few people already said, is from several broken undersea cable which is our only link from Asia to U.S.

But good news is ECHO undersea Cable should be done by Q3 2023(projected completion).

Edited February 14, 2023 by zefleas.7051
grammar and additional information

[Linken.6345]

42 minutes ago, zefleas.7051 said:

Just curious, issit possible to have an Asian server but still be connected to U.S server.

 

I thinking like youtube. There's local youtube servers in your own region but somehow they all have the same content as the servers in western ones thru the use of CDN(Content Delivery Network).

 

Apparently Amazon has that service. It does not look cheap tho.

 

But that would solve most of our issues if Anet decides to do that, I also think it may actually provide lower ping.

 

All these are all assumptions but i think the biggest problem is the cost don't justify getting the server.

 

 

 

Our current bad issue is like a few people already said, is from several broken undersea cable which is our only link from Asia to U.S.

But good news is ECHO undersea Cable should be done by Q3 2023(projected completion).

Anet dont have any servers anymore they rent a server cloud from another company.

So yea they could maybe put up a Asia server cluster but it would be disconnected from Na same as Eu is.

That in turn make that they have to know if there is enough people to populate 3 sides in wvw and how fun will it be to be dominated by the same server every week without fail in wvw?