South American servers, when?

[TheRev.6293]

I know this has probably been asked a thousand times, but, as the game is now listed on Steam, it's getting a lot of attention, also with the new expansion. I don't think there's a better time to bring some servers to SA. I don't have the numbers, but I imagine SA is only behind NA and EU in number of players. I know this is not related to GW2 worlds themselves, but rather to server renting.

Guild Wars 2 is one of the top MMORPGs out there, and correct me if I'm mistaken, but every other big MMORPG out there have SA servers, because it's simply more profitable to have them than to not. I know at least a dozen friends that never played GW2 or quit the game in the first week because they don't like playing a fast-paced game (PVP especially) with 180+ms, and they would rather play other games that have SA servers, now that's just my circle, imagine how many thousands players never played GW2 or are not playing today because the game doesn't have servers here.

I'm a developer myself and I know the costs of having servers hosted in other places of the world, but this is not a SA game going to NA or EU, it's the other way around. Servers hosted in SA should not be expansive for the company, and I'm pretty confident that the increase in players and those players buying in-game shop itens would be easily more than enough to cover those expanses and make profit, if that wasn't the case, then why do every other company have servers here? I really don't see the advantage in not having them, it feels like a bad company decision if they aim on profit like every other company will.

Another point, is that we are in 2022, almost 2023. I know server costing was a lot higher back then, I myself know this because I parcitipated on many server renting decisions while in my field for the companies I worked for, those are not game developing companies, even tho I worked as a game developer for a few years, but still they shouldn't be too different.

I've asked this in the support section and they told me to ask this here, as more people asking this means more chance of this happening sooner than later. And again, I know this had been asked a thousand times before, but I don't see why it's not happening yet.

[Cyninja.2954]

There are far larger MMORPGs in the westerns market which do not have SA (I'm guessing South America) nor OSX (Oceanic) servers. If developers of games that size are unwilling to commit to dedicated SA servers, it is questionable that GW2, which while popular is significantly smaller in revenue and developer wise, will commit or even be able to realize such approach.

I get and understand this must be frustrating, but unless economic circumstances change (or other beneficial relevant circumstances), this is situation will remain as is.

In case of GW2 it's not only a cost issue. Some game modes and content are dependent on specific amounts of players and splitting up the games player base into even more regions will not help with that.

Edited September 29, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[TheRev.6293]

11 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

There are far larger MMORPGs in the westerns market which do not have SA (I'm guessing South America) nor OSX (Oceanic) servers. If developers of games that size are unwilling to commit to dedicated SA servers, it is questionable that GW2, which while popular is significantly smaller in revenue and developer wise, will commit or even be able to realize such approach.

I get and understand this must be frustrating, but unless economic circumstances change (or other beneficial relevant circumstances), this is situation will remain as is.

In case of GW2 it's not only a cost issue. Some game modes and content are dependent on specific amounts of players and splitting up the games player base into even more regions will not help with that.

Can you give me some examples of big games that don't have servers in South America? Every other big MMORPG I know have servers here. This is also true for RTS/MOBA/FPS and any other genres I can think of. To be honest I don't even recall the last time I found out a game didn't have SA servers, other than GW2.

That's my point, every other company does this as this simply means more profit. If this wasn't profitable, then other companies wouldn't do it. The argument of "It's not profitable" is just outmatched by simply the reality of things and every example out there.

About game modes depending on a specific amount of players I ask of you: How many South American players you think are playing the game right now? Around 15% of the population? 10% maybe? Isn't that enough to fill a single world?

Edited September 29, 2022 by TheRev.6293

[Cyninja.2954]

17 minutes ago, TheRev.6293 said:

Can you give me some examples of big games that don't have servers in South America? Every other big MMORPG I know have servers here. This is also true for RTS/MOBA/FPS and any other genres I can think of. To be honest I don't even recall the last time I found out a game didn't have SA servers, other than GW2.

That's my point, every other company does this as this simply means more profit. If this wasn't profitable, then other companies wouldn't do it. The argument of "It's not profitable" is just outmatched by simply the reality of things and every example out there.

About game modes depending on a specific amount of players I ask of you: How many South American players you think are playing the game right now? Around 15% of the population? 10% maybe? Isn't that enough to fill a single world?

The 2 major MMORPGS in the west, WoW and FF14 to name the 2 top dogs in this space for one.

Single world, there are no single worlds. The game operates on a mega server system. So, how does WvW work in that single server system of yours?

How "full/empty" are the maps going to be with only 15% of the current population? Think about what you are saying: it's already difficult outside of prime time or specific meta events not on timers or dailies, how would this fare with even only a fraction of the player base?

Just to be clear, in an ideal world I would hope GW2 had hundreds of thousands and even millions of payers per region. Let every region have dedicated servers so no player has to deal with 100+ ms ping, language barriers, etc. I'm just being realistic here imo.

EDIT:

Just checked on BDO, seems their SA servers are struggling according to this:

https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Forum/ForumTopic/Detail?_topicNo=20348

Literally SA servers available yet players prefer to play on NA. According to that forum post, which might be totally unreliable.

Edited September 29, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[TheRev.6293]

6 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The 2 major MMORPGS in the west, WoW and FF14 to name the 2 top dogs in this space for one.

Single world, there are no single worlds. The game operates on a mega server system. So, how does WvW work in that single server system of yours?

How "full/empty" are the maps going to be with only 15% of the current population? Think about what you are saying: it's already difficult outside of prime time or specific meta events on timers or dailies, how would this fare with even only a fraction of the player base?

So you're only talking about is WvW and open-world. And I agree that this those are the ONLY things that need to be hosted in NA for cross-realm play, WvW and open-world. But why couldn't structured PVP, raids, fractals, strikes and other instanced content be hosted in a SA server if the majority of the players are from a SA world? You don't think there are ~10 players to play those activities in SA? I bet there are thousands, probably more than a million within the 17million players that play this game.

I didn't mean they need to host every single aspect of the game here, only the content that is possible and that requires low latency. Sure WvW requires low latency but I don't see how they could host those in here.

The way I see it is that they keep every WvW and open-world instances in the US servers but let the players decide which servers they want for instanced play.

[kharmin.7683]

44 minutes ago, TheRev.6293 said:

I know this has probably been asked a thousand times,

Yes, it has.  Please use the forums search feature. 

[TheRev.6293]

2 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Yes, it has.  Please use the forums search feature. 

It's not something to search and be done. It's something that needs to be said time and time again so that it gets implemented into the game. That's why I posted it.

[TheRev.6293]

23 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The 2 major MMORPGS in the west, WoW and FF14 to name the 2 top dogs in this space for one.

Single world, there are no single worlds. The game operates on a mega server system. So, how does WvW work in that single server system of yours?

How "full/empty" are the maps going to be with only 15% of the current population? Think about what you are saying: it's already difficult outside of prime time or specific meta events not on timers or dailies, how would this fare with even only a fraction of the player base?

Just to be clear, in an ideal world I would hope GW2 had hundreds of thousands and even millions of payers per region. Let every region have dedicated servers so no player has to deal with 100+ ms ping, language barriers, etc. I'm just being realistic here imo.

EDIT:

Just checked on BDO, seems their SA servers are struggling according to this:

https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Forum/ForumTopic/Detail?_topicNo=20348

Literally SA servers available yet players prefer to play on NA. According to that forum post, which might be totally unreliable.

I never played FF14 and I'm not sure they have servers/content hosted in SA. Maybe they just have a server here but it's actually hosted in NA? If the players don't get the latency improvement, then I imagine they'll choose the higher population server, as there is not much reason to stay in a SA server if the server is actually hosted in NA, maybe only for the language in the world chat.

[Astralporing.1957]

20 minutes ago, TheRev.6293 said:

So you're only talking about is WvW and open-world. And I agree that this those are the ONLY things that need to be hosted in NA for cross-realm play, WvW and open-world. But why couldn't structured PVP, raids, fractals, strikes and other instanced content be hosted in a SA server if the majority of the players are from a SA world?

SPvP already has severe population problems. Cutting down your pool of available players by 90% definitely would not help. And while fractals, strikes etc are generally in a better situation, that massive drop in playerbase will definitely have a major negative impact.

20 minutes ago, TheRev.6293 said:

You don't think there are ~10 players to play those activities in SA? I bet there are thousands, probably more than a million within the 17million players that play this game.

This game does not have 17 million players actively playing it. It has that many accounts. Ever created, because accounts do not have an expiration date. Most of those accounts are no longer active. Frankly, i'd be surprised if out of that number more than 10-15% accounts were still up and running.

20 minutes ago, TheRev.6293 said:

I didn't mean they need to host every single aspect of the game here, only the content that is possible and that requires low latency. Sure WvW requires low latency but I don't see how they could host those in here.

They'd have to rebuild the whole server architecture for that. For now, the only thing the EU and NA zones share is the TP. If SA zone appeared, it would be the same. You'd end up being cut off from the US and EU playerbase completely (again, apart from TP).

20 minutes ago, TheRev.6293 said:

The way I see it is that they keep every WvW and open-world instances in the US servers but let the players decide which servers they want for instanced play.

Wouldn't work. For this, you'd still need to share with US the character data server. You might gain in latency in connections to the map instance, but you would lose on the delays in data exchange between map instance and character server. In the end, you might actually end up with longer delays, not shorter ones. And for it to even work, they'd probably need to introduce some architecture changes that might negatively impact current EU and NA zones.

BTW, this discussion regularly comes up whenever someone mentions OCX servers, which happens at least once per year. All the reasons why this is impractical and unlikely have been discussed to death already.

Edited September 29, 2022 by Astralporing.1957

[TheRev.6293]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

SPvP already has severe population problems. Cutting down your pool of available players by 90% definitely would not help. And while fractals, strikes etc are generally in a better situation, that massive drop in playerbase will definitely have a major negative impact.

This game does not have 17 million players actively playing it. It has that many accounts. Ever created, because accounts do not have an expiration date. Most of those accounts are no longer active. Frankly, i'd be surprised if out of that number more than 10-15% accounts were still up and running.

They'd have to rebuild the whole server architecture for that. For now, the only thing the EU and NA zones share is the TP. If SA zone appeared, it would be the same.

Wouldn't work. For this, you'd still need to share with US the character data server. You might gain in latency in connections to the map instance, but you would lose on the delays in data exchange between map instance and character server. In the end, you might actually end up with longer delays, not shorter ones.

I assume you never played a fast-paced game with 200ms+ before, right? Because a lot of the assumptions you are making makes it look like that. I don't ever think that the transition between servers would be a bigger problem than playing every aspect of the game with 200ms, and I think that if you played with that ping you'd share the same thought.

I would happily wait 10 seconds for every instance change if that means I can play instanced content with 30ms instead of 200ms, and I'm pretty sure everyone would agree to that, do you not?

When you play games like MOBAs, you share the same login server across the world, but the instanced game is actually hosted in the location the user is trying to find that match. And again, I understand this might not be possible for WvW or open-world, but it's a reality for almost every other game when it comes to instanced content, like a MOBA/RTS/FPS match or a dungeon/raid, etc.

[Astralporing.1957]

6 minutes ago, TheRev.6293 said:

I assume you never played a fast-paced game with 200ms+ before, right? Because a lot of the assumptions you are making makes it look like that. I don't ever think that the transition between servers would be a bigger problem than playing every aspect of the game with 200ms, and I think that if you played with that ping you'd share the same thought.

I would happily wait 10 seconds for every instance change if that means I can play instanced content with 30ms instead of 200ms, and I'm pretty sure everyone would agree to that, do you not?

Except you would not. When you play, the game constantly communicates with both character data server and the map one. That would not go away. The delays i speak of would not be limited to map transition - they would be constant. You might be faster in loading map assets on area entry, but after that you'd still get hit by he game servers need to communicate with each other.

Imagine a situation:

scenario 1: the delay between you and the character server is ~100ms (one way). map server is in the location where character server is, so the delay between them is negligible (but let's say within ~10ms both ways)

scenario 2: the delay between you and the character server is ~100ms (one way). map server is somewhere near your area, within ~20ms from you, delay between character and map server can be anywhere around ~80 to 120ms, but let's average it to ~100 one way - the same as your delay to character server

situation: you click a skill. your client sends the message to the character server, which calculates the action and communicates with the map server to implement it. After that, it sends the result to you.

In the scenario 1, the delay would be ~100 ms (message to character data server)+ ~10ms (character data communication to map data and back), + ~100ms (character data back to you).

You end up with ~210ms latency.

In the scenario 2, the delay would be ~100 ms (message to character data server)+ 2x ~100ms (character data communication to map data and back), + ~100ms (character data back to you).

You end up with ~400ms latency. almost double that of the first scenario.

See the potential problems?

6 minutes ago, TheRev.6293 said:

When you play games like MOBAs, you share the same login server across the world, but the instanced game is actually hosted in the location the user is trying to find that match.

Yes. GW2's architecture is different however. That's because your character data is never stored clientside, even during instanced play.

6 minutes ago, TheRev.6293 said:

And again, I understand this might not be possible for WvW or open-world, but it's a reality for almost every other game when it comes to instanced content, like a MOBA/RTS/FPS match or a dungeon/raid, etc.

See above. Good luck doing a raid without access to your character data.

[Freya.9075]

I don’t think aion, elder scrolls online or blade and soul have South America servers either. ESO had one but it had a lot of issues. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. 
 

i understand wanting a server, but it’s not that easy. 

[TheRev.6293]

20 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Except you would not. When you play, the game constantly communicates with both character data server and the map one. That would not go away. The delays i speak of would not be limited to map transition - they would be constant. You might be faster in loading map assets on area entry, but after that you'd still get hit by he game servers need to communicate with each other.

Imagine a situation:

scenario 1: the delay between you and the character server is ~100ms (one way). map server is in the location where character server is, so the delay between them is negligible (but let's say within ~10ms both ways)

scenario 2: the delay between you and the character server is ~100ms (one way). map server is somewhere near your area, within ~20ms from you, delay between character and map server can be anywhere around ~80 to 120ms, but let's average it to ~100 one way - the same as your delay to character server

situation: you click a skill. your client sends the message to the character server, which calculates the action and communicates with the map server to implement it. After that, it sends the result to you.

In the scenario 1, the delay would be ~100 ms (message to character data server)+ ~10ms (character data communication to map data and back), + ~100ms (character data back to you).

You end up with ~210ms latency.

In the scenario 2, the delay would be ~100 ms (message to character data server)+ 2x ~100ms (character data communication to map data and back), + ~100ms (character data back to you).

You end up with ~400ms latency. almost double that of the first scenario.

See the potential problems?

Yes. GW2's architecture is different however. That's because your character data is never stored clientside, even during instanced play.

See above. Good luck doing a raid without access to your character data.

This makes perfect sense. Thank you. I've never worked on MMORPGs but the idea of it having to communicate with a character data server and also the instance which is hosted in another server makes total sense.

So I'm guessing they would need to have everything here in the SA server if they wanted to do that, but this would reduce the shared-servers population by removing the SA players, and the SA server would be low population due to not having that many players in here, right.

It's a tough call for sure. But it's still awful to play with 200+ms. I'd rather play on an empty server and have long instance queues TBH. I'd wait 30 minutes to play a dungeon or fraktal as long as I don't play with 200ms, but maybe not everyone prefers that. And also WvW would probably not have enough people at all, which is also a key feature from this game. So I understand this better now. Thanks again!

Edited September 29, 2022 by TheRev.6293

[ugrakarma.9416]

1. I live in brazil, and play wvw(the game mode most sensible to lag) for years, and I've never seen any problems that justify a server here.
2. South American population that play gw2 is far behind even OCX.
3. The competitive game modes(www, pvp) will become a wasteland.
4. The South America prime-time is close to NA prime-time, the most populated time in game, "wise" players will prefer stick with NA, because they will never experience problems due to lack of people.

[TheRev.6293]

16 minutes ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

1. I live in brazil, and play wvw(the game mode most sensible to lag) for years, and I've never seen any problems that justify a server here.
2. South American population that play gw2 is far behind even OCX.
3. The competitive game modes(www, pvp) will become a wasteland.
4. The South America prime-time is close to NA prime-time, the most populated time in game, "wise" players will prefer stick with NA, because they will never experience problems due to lack of people.

Those are good takes, but I wouldn't say that playing with 180 or 200ms doesn't justify a server here. 180 or 200ms is a lot compared to 10 or 20 ms which is what I get in games that have servers in here (São Paulo usually). Especially for pvp, for me it's unplayable with that ping, but in PVE I can manage, even tho it bothers me a lot.

Also a lot of friends of mine will not play GW2 because they would rather play other MMORPGs with 30ms than to play GW2 with 200ms. So again, I think it justifies a lot, as I believe this is one of the reasons the game doesn't have more people playing it. If you don't reach for other continents then you're not going to have a lot of players anyway.

I still think they should do the test of opening servers here and seeing how it goes over a few months. If it doesn't have enough people than they could ask the community if they'd prefer to play with 180-220ms on US servers, or to play with 20ms on a lower population server. A simple poll for SA players could get that sorted out.

Edited September 29, 2022 by TheRev.6293

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, TheRev.6293 said:

It's not something to search and be done. It's something that needs to be said time and time again so that it gets implemented into the game. That's why I posted it.

No, because repeating it is against the forums CoC.

[TheRev.6293]

3 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

No, because repeating it is against the forums CoC.

The question might be the same, but the situation is different now in my view. I also didn't find other posts that talk about it under the same angle that I did. Thank you for your concerns with the CoC though.

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, TheRev.6293 said:

So I'm guessing they would need to have everything here in the SA server if they wanted to do that, but this would reduce the shared-servers population by removing the SA players, and the SA server would be low population due to not having that many players in here, right.

Yes. And it would be even worse, actually, because not every SA player would go to those servers. Some would stay where they are now (mostly NA, but there are some playing EU due to the existence of the spanish community there).

[devastoscz.9851]

6 hours ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

1. I live in brazil, and play wvw(the game mode most sensible to lag) for years, and I've never seen any problems that justify a server here.
2. South American population that play gw2 is far behind even OCX.
3. The competitive game modes(www, pvp) will become a wasteland.
4. The South America prime-time is close to NA prime-time, the most populated time in game, "wise" players will prefer stick with NA, because they will never experience problems due to lack of people.

 

I live in Bolivia, been playing for about 8 years now. Yes it sucks to PvP / WvW with high ping, and until recently I was playing with 200+ ms. PVE is really a non-issue. You learn the encounters and the timing and it makes no real difference. I do fractal dailies every day and can carry on Heal FB or am usually top 1-2 in DPS if playing DPS class.

 

That said, I talked to my ISP, had them check their connections and stuff and now play with around 150 ping. Still high sure, but it makes a considerable difference. I command in WvW at least 3 times a week and its really not THAT bad.

 

Unfortunately the posts made here about splitting the community make sense. I wouldn't switch to a SA server at this point, I have too many friends and time invested in those relationships to switch and start from scratch. Even if that means carrying over my progression. Not to mention it would be extremely low population servers, especially at first.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Remember, right now, there would need to be enough players to populate 6 worlds (or more) for WvW, unless (with just 3 worlds) one would want to fight against the same 2 other worlds every match.