Attention Arenanet! OCE playerbase wants to play your game!

[slayerking.3581]

@Thunderdown.1436 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I'm an Oceanic Player and I don't believe it would work. I would continue to remain on a US server, to play with my guild. This game required lots of people for lots of things. Are there enough people in Australia to populate WvW, Dragon Stand, Palawadan, world bosses, PvP, Fractals all at the same time? I seriously doubt it.

It's not just WvW that's an issue. It's temples in Orr. It's Silverwastes, it's Dry Top. Australia doesn't have the population to support this.

Oceanic is not only Australia my dude. It's many other countries surrounding the area. Although I feel like a South East Asia (SEA) server would be more ideal because then you've got the entire Asian population and all of the Oceanic countries on the one server. SEA is central to the middle east, China, India, Australia... just to name a few. Like I said, the population is potentially A LOT bigger than everyone here thinks. If they market it right like other games there could be a European server, SEA server and a US server. Other games have exactly that (BDO for example has a SEA server in Taiwan where Aussies get 80ms from). Why not Anet?

Asia has it's own version of GW2 which is quite different to what we have.

[Vayne.8563]

@Thunderdown.1436 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I'm an Oceanic Player and I don't believe it would work. I would continue to remain on a US server, to play with my guild. This game required lots of people for lots of things. Are there enough people in Australia to populate WvW, Dragon Stand, Palawadan, world bosses, PvP, Fractals all at the same time? I seriously doubt it.

It's not just WvW that's an issue. It's temples in Orr. It's Silverwastes, it's Dry Top. Australia doesn't have the population to support this.

Oceanic is not only Australia my dude. It's many other countries surrounding the area. Although I feel like a South East Asia (SEA) server would be more ideal because then you've got the entire Asian population and all of the Oceanic countries on the one server. SEA is central to the middle east, China, India, Australia... just to name a few. Like I said, the population is potentially A LOT bigger than everyone here thinks. If they market it right like other games there could be a European server, SEA server and a US server. Other games have exactly that (BDO for example has a SEA server in Taiwan where Aussies get 80ms from). Why not Anet?

Except China already has a server, so those people wouldn't be counted. They're be playing the Chinese version of the game that they've been playing all along. No reason for them to switch to another server. This is a huge game now. The world is big. There will not be enough people to populate everything. I'm an Australian and even if they had an Australian server, I'd be playing on the US server to stay with my guild. Do you know how many Australians are already in guilds that they have friends in, people they play with.

It'll work for the small amount of new players, maybe. It won't work for a guy that has five years of friendships, my dude.

[zealex.9410]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Linken.6345 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I'm an Oceanic Player and I don't believe it would work. I would continue to remain on a US server, to play with my guild. This game required lots of people for lots of things. Are there enough people in Australia to populate WvW, Dragon Stand, Palawadan, world bosses, PvP, Fractals all at the same time? I seriously doubt it.

It's not just WvW that's an issue. It's temples in Orr. It's Silverwastes, it's Dry Top. Australia doesn't have the population to support this.

I think alot of people dont take into consideration that WvW will have to be oceanic players on all 3 sides aswell.

More than 3 sides, otherwise it's the same match up week after week after week after week after...

Theres no problem with it being the same matchup.

[Vayne.8563]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Linken.6345 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I'm an Oceanic Player and I don't believe it would work. I would continue to remain on a US server, to play with my guild. This game required lots of people for lots of things. Are there enough people in Australia to populate WvW, Dragon Stand, Palawadan, world bosses, PvP, Fractals all at the same time? I seriously doubt it.

It's not just WvW that's an issue. It's temples in Orr. It's Silverwastes, it's Dry Top. Australia doesn't have the population to support this.

I think alot of people dont take into consideration that WvW will have to be oceanic players on all 3 sides aswell.

More than 3 sides, otherwise it's the same match up week after week after week after week after...

Theres no problem with it being the same matchup.

Unless you're always losing the match up and there's no place to go. I recall back in the day, TC was in Tier 1 and we were up against JQ and Blackgate. They always had more WvWers than us. As in always. Our eventual solution was to stop winning so we could drop down and have a shot at winning. If there were only three servers we'd have just kept losing and our side would have spent less and less time in WvW, because losing all the time simply isn't fun.

The idea of having multiple servers in WvW means you can move up and down the scale until you find your place. Even now, we move up, lose one week, move down, win one week, which is fine. But don't think that having a static matchup is going to be okay unless all three servers are evenly matched...and what are the odds of that?

[Healix.5819]

@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:When they had PoF story and PoF main they moved people in and out of the instances based on what part of the game they were doing. If they made, for example, a second POF story and PoF main that OCE could self select into then wouldn’t they be separated from the players who remain on the first set of PoF story and main?

When they were still using NCSoft, it was basically random which data center you were on. You could be in Verdant Brink at NCSoft for example, then leave and come back to Amazon, or use LFG to hop between the two. If they used the other data centers, randomly selecting them obviously wouldn't be acceptable. They would need to change the megaserver logic to factor in your ping or allow you to select a preferred location. Additionally implementing an instance browser like GW1 would help a lot, and fix a few other problems.

How exactly they would choose to handle the available instances however would be their choice. Megaserver logic for example currently only kicks in when the overall map population reaches a certain level, at which point it begins separating and matching people based on their world, guild and friends. If they were to use the other data centers, fixed maps are easy, whereas for the open world maps, they would either have to choose to make at least 1 instance always available or base its availability on the currently active population. It really wouldn't matter if they did have an always available empty instance, since you could just switch.

As for WvW, it likely wouldn't be available through other locations. They could make the entirety of WvW per data center and base the teams on randomly selected guilds for example, but that'd need a certain population to support it. They could just attach an extra borderland for the data center to the main match, but everyone else going there would likely complain about the ping.

@"Sojourner.4621" said:In theory this is true, but there is an extra cost associated to every new location they decide to host in, and overall when talking hosting of this type it's always "easier" from a data-stream priority standpoint to have your hosting in a single location per region... not to mention individual ISPs might STILL try and route you to the "wrong" one.

The cost would only be a problem if the the population wasn't there to justify it. It wouldn't actually cost them anything to split the servers they're currently renting from Amazon between the west and east coast for example. It would however be harder to manage the more they split them. As for the routing problems, there's always going to be general problems of course, but there's also problems specific to Amazon's own network which was for example causing spikes during certain hours for some people.

[Zedek.8932]

@Azrielvon.7836 said:For me, Telia node has been kitten on me for half a year.

Had massive (99%) package loss once, all went fine until Telia, too. What's with that? Can't they improve on that node?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Isn't there a difference between data centers (one for each region), and servers (different IP addresses we find ourselves in)?

[b k.1648]

@Vayne.8563 said:Except China already has a server, so those people wouldn't be counted. They're be playing the Chinese version of the game that they've been playing all along. No reason for them to switch to another server. This is a huge game now. The world is big. There will not be enough people to populate everything. I'm an Australian and even if they had an Australian server, I'd be playing on the US server to stay with my guild. Do you know how many Australians are already in guilds that they have friends in, people they play with.

Actually, Chinese players quite regularly play on international servers in other games, because there's usually a significant difference between versions of the game (GW2 is no exception) and many prefer the international versions.

I can't speak to GW2 specifically, but RPG players in east and southeast Asia include rapidly increasing numbers from the Philippines and Malaysia, and probably Indonesia in the not-too-distant future, on top of the already existing centres in Singapore, Hong Kong (which often uses international servers instead of mainland Chinese), Taiwan, South Korea and to a lesser extent Japan (it seems Japan tends to prefer local titles).

Even excluding mainland China, the number of players in that region (for gaming in general; GW2 may differ) is going to exceed the US in the near future. ArenaNet will be able to see how the numbers are looking for their game, and make a call on whether SEA servers are warranted based on that.

There's one caveat in this - at the moment, connections between those countries can be really patchy and it's far more common to have significant latency issues despite local servers. I'm also not sure that the quality of connections from Australia to its northern neighbours is particularly good, as I've heard players in Perth can get a better ping to the US than Singapore (which is one fifth of the distance as the crow flies).

[Azrielvon.7836]

@Zedek.8932 said:

@Azrielvon.7836 said:For me, Telia node has been kitten on me for half a year.

Had massive (99%) package loss once, all went fine until Telia, too. What's with that? Can't they improve on that node?

I'm not sure on the specifics but I think Anet needs to communicate with whoever is responsible for Telia's node to get them to do something about it. It's not something they can just 'fix' on their end.

[Westenev.5289]

I don't think European or US want OCE players to leave, because otherwise they wouldn't have anyone to beat at sPvP. :3

I'd probably join an OCE server if it were released.

[Neshane.6497]

Would be great to get at least an official response to this.Yes/NoYou try playing pvp 230+ ping and realise you can only reach Gold tier in PvP with lame Condi Builds :[The Worst and least fun play style... Slap Condi's and stack stability (cause Stun break is only 40% useful as skill lag is too late to break out before getting DPS'ed)then wait one corner hold point with our thumbs up our asses.

[starlinvf.1358]

@Thunderdown.1436 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I'm an Oceanic Player and I don't believe it would work. I would continue to remain on a US server, to play with my guild. This game required lots of people for lots of things. Are there enough people in Australia to populate WvW, Dragon Stand, Palawadan, world bosses, PvP, Fractals all at the same time? I seriously doubt it.

It's not just WvW that's an issue. It's temples in Orr. It's Silverwastes, it's Dry Top. Australia doesn't have the population to support this.

Oceanic is not only Australia my dude. It's many other countries surrounding the area. Although I feel like a South East Asia (SEA) server would be more ideal because then you've got the entire Asian population and all of the Oceanic countries on the one server. SEA is central to the middle east, China, India, Australia... just to name a few. Like I said, the population is potentially A LOT bigger than everyone here thinks. If they market it right like other games there could be a European server, SEA server and a US server. Other games have exactly that (BDO for example has a SEA server in Taiwan where Aussies get 80ms from). Why not Anet?

You can automatically count out China (the single biggest demographic), because Guildwars 2 is already being hosted there through an arrangement for a Chinese run host, and services China exclusively. And if I go conspiracy theorist, the Chinese hosting company might threaten if Anet were to open up another service in reach of their market. A lot of Chinese players DO NOT like most of hosting services they're usually forced to use, and would rather VPN out if possible to servers which are less restrictive and tend to have better communities if you speak at least a little English.

That market region also brings with a lot of problems the US servers tend to overlook. Hackers and Scammers run rampant the closer you get to central Eurasia, and much of the Asian markets has a very different view of whats acceptable behavior compared to most western aligned cultures; and this has a significant impact on what goes on there. Even the EU servers are not happy with the people they have to play with..... and this story is pretty common for a lot of games with a multi-national presence. For all the garbage thats associated with US players, I've quite a few AUS, EU, JP, TW, KR, BR, and even Chinese players who would rather play on the US servers, because the community is less dangerous and generally more easy going. Thats one of the big reasons any player who can speak English is much, much more likely to tolerate the ping to a US West server then play on their own server. And when you're dealing with Shooters, which are very latency sensitive, thats pretty telling.

Even if its a Technical success, will it be a Community success that people will want to stay on for more then a few months? I remember when Planetside 2 opened their Aus server..... its highest peak was barely half the US West server's lowest recorded prime time population. And thats a game that came close to dying a couple years into its life.

[Krylo.2831]

I have played plenty of WvW during Oceanic times and I know there's a population to support Oceanic/SEA servers. I've been in and out of competitive WvW fighting guilds that were strictly AU/NZ and were big enough to fill the bulk of havoc groups in NA downtimes. I ultimately quit because 250-300ms is not a fun disadvantage for high-level PvE or PvP. Why would I bother when there's an alternative MMO that plays at or below 50ms (WoW)?

NA wants us because we keep their servers active in downtime. Some players even argue against us having local servers so we stay in this role. but I wonder if they know the feeling of constant 250 ping. Most NA/EU players I've talked to seem to think 150ms is unplayable. Just ask in global chat what people think and most will say above 150 is too much.

Nobody wants their region's purpose to be filling shoes for somewhere across the globe. We have the numbers across SEA/OCE and we want to experience this game without shackles. If you belong to this region you shouldn't be arguing against that just because you don't want to move yourself.

[Krylo.2831]

My thoughts are that since Gw2 has introduced more endgame content with HoT, those of us from these regions notice our poor connections even more as timing and rotations become crucial to the content. Endgame PvE content like Raids and high-level Fractals is a big draw for players, but for many of us in these regions its mostly just frustrating. That's saying nothing about the 250ms (on a good day) in PvP/WvW. This is not a connection players will every truly get used to and the desire won't go away, OCE/SEA are just asking for a smoother experience with the game we love.

[Pifil.5193]

This was already posted, there's a thread a little down the page:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/46841/attention-arenanet-oce-playerbase-wants-to-play-your-game#latest

[Krylo.2831]

@"Pifil.5193" said:This was already posted, there's a thread a little down the page:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/46841/attention-arenanet-oce-playerbase-wants-to-play-your-game#latest

Edited. MB if we can't share a video twice on the forum but it is a very informative video and I think people entering this discussion should watch it. If I can share though, I'd gladly post the link again to save people a few clicks.

Edit: If there is a technical reason or otherwise that is a barrier for Arenanet to provide decent connection to these regions, can they not communicate it to the players? Have they ever responded to this topic? I've never seen them show an interest... it just adds to the frustration we are feeling.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Krylo.2831 said:Edit: If there is a technical reason or otherwise that is a barrier for Arenanet to provide decent connection to these regions, can they not communicate it to the players? Have they ever responded to this topic? I've never seen them show an interest... it just adds to the frustration we are feeling.They have responded several times.And the issues are mentioned in this thread (as well as all the others on the topic) haven't changed.

• There's no current way to share data between data centers that is fast enough for playing.
• There aren't enough people to justify splitting up players (since OCE wouldn't be able to play with NA, just as NA & EU cannot play together).

PS it's not possible for any of us to claim that there is (or isn't) enough population based on our own observations. We just see too few maps, too few worlds, too few instances. Remember that not only does WvW have to have enough population for a minimum of 9 worlds (so that there are at least 3 match ups, not just one), but there need to be enough people to support the metas going on all over Tyria.

And it's not just enough people, it's enough new people to justify the expense of making it happen, the disruption to NA & EU of losing OCE, and all the contingency plans in case things don't go well.

tl;dr it's not just about being able to physically run the game from an OCE server; that's the easy part.

[crepuscular.9047]

would really love to see this happen with the Steam release to alleviate the server load on US servers, and of course us APAC players benefits from lower ping

[Konrad Curze.5130]

@crepuscular.9047 said:would really love to see this happen with the Steam release to alleviate the server load on US servers, and of course us APAC players benefits from lower ping

The points raised in the beginning of this thread still stand. I seriously doubt Oceania has enough playerbase to support their own server. Anet won't throw good money after bad if it's destined to fail