Is there any chance Anet create an Asia & Australia server??

[TAIKA.1903]

Sometimes I feel painful when I play this game with 200 ping..... (for pvpers, this is a big problem)

I am Taiwanese, some of my friends who live in Japan or Australia are also have same problem.

Is there any chance Anet create gw2 server for these area?

p.s. China server is not as same as US OR EU server, you have to pay lots of money on it (like legendary weapon and so on).

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

If they did those players would only be playing with people of that region and they would need enough people on 3 servers to have a WvW. In addition, they would need enough PvP players who move to that set of servers to fill up the matches every day.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

It is unlikely considering it would split the playerbase, again.

[mercury ranique.2170]

I would suggest using Google to find some old threats. It boils down to two things.1: stretching the population over more then 2 megaservers would be considered a very undesirable side effect.2: distance has nothing to do with bad pings. The choice of provider has. Earlier threats pinpointed the issue at specific ISP's.

[Westenev.5289]

I personally think an OCE server would be cool - PvP on 260-330 ping isn't overly fun, so it would be a game changer.

Of course, if you don't live in OCE, an update like this would be bad. WvW would lose its OCE coverage, and American/European players would need to learn how to outplay players with similar ping. The horror.

[Cyninja.2954]

@mercury ranique.2170 said:

@TAIKA.1903 said:

@mercury ranique.2170 said:

2: distance has nothing to do with bad pings.I think you should ask your physical teacher before you said this......Please...

If you are ture, you could get Nobel prize and be the NEW EINSTEIN. (Because speed of signal has nothing to do with speed of light.)

First of all, please stop being so insulting. It is rude and a very bad attitude.Speed of light is 299 792 458 m / s.The length of the equator is 40,075,000So it takes light 0.13 seconds to travel around the world. This is a factor in ping times, but not the root cause, nor why it takes as long as some players from Oceanic area are experiencing. It also explains why it only happens with specific ISP's there

Well you are making some very bad assumptions, so TAIKA is not fully incorrect.

Incorrect assumption 1: packages and data for the internet infrastructure travels at the speed of light.Incorrect assumption 2: distance has no effect on the amount of rerouting which is required.Incorrect assumption 3: there is good ISP's which come close to the ping players get which are closer to the servers. The fact that there is better and worse ISP's does not change the fact that even "good" ISP's have worse pings.

Your statement that distance is not a factor is factually completely incorrect if you applied actual state of the art technology and limitations. Sorry.

[mercury ranique.2170]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@mercury ranique.2170 said:

@TAIKA.1903 said:

@mercury ranique.2170 said:

2: distance has nothing to do with bad pings.I think you should ask your physical teacher before you said this......Please...

If you are ture, you could get Nobel prize and be the NEW EINSTEIN. (Because speed of signal has nothing to do with speed of light.)

First of all, please stop being so insulting. It is rude and a very bad attitude.Speed of light is 299 792 458 m / s.The length of the equator is 40,075,000So it takes light 0.13 seconds to travel around the world. This is a factor in ping times, but not the root cause, nor why it takes as long as some players from Oceanic area are experiencing. It also explains why it only happens with specific ISP's there

Well you are making some very bad assumptions, so TAIKA is not fully incorrect.

Incorrect assumption 1: packages and data for the internet infrastructure travels at the speed of light.Incorrect assumption 2: distance has no effect on the amount of rerouting which is required.Incorrect assumption 3: there is good ISP's which come close to the ping players get which are closer to the servers. The fact that there is better and worse ISP's does not change the fact that even "good" ISP's have worse pings.

Your statement that distance is not a factor is factually completely incorrect if you applied actual state of the art technology and limitations. Sorry.

I never stated that speed of light is any factor. Taika did this. I only explained that it is not a real factor.

It is true that distance can be a factor. The distance itself is not a factor though, the extended amount of hops on the way is. The amount of data going over intercontinental connections also adds to slower traffic. Both however are due to the choice of ISP.

On top of that, several players from Oceanic area has indicated they receive good pings in earlier threads. So although distance can be a factor, it isn't the decisive one. Technically good pings are perfectly possible. It do depends on your physical location. If you live in the out back, it is less likely to find an ISP with good pings.

I actually work in IT and recently studied the speed problems with our branch in Australia. The possibility to get decent speeds there where very limited, but it had nothing to do with the distance. Part of the research was a possible relocation to a major town. This would solve the issues.

[Cyninja.2954]

@mercury ranique.2170 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@mercury ranique.2170 said:

@TAIKA.1903 said:

@mercury ranique.2170 said:

2: distance has nothing to do with bad pings.I think you should ask your physical teacher before you said this......Please...

If you are ture, you could get Nobel prize and be the NEW EINSTEIN. (Because speed of signal has nothing to do with speed of light.)

First of all, please stop being so insulting. It is rude and a very bad attitude.Speed of light is 299 792 458 m / s.The length of the equator is 40,075,000So it takes light 0.13 seconds to travel around the world. This is a factor in ping times, but not the root cause, nor why it takes as long as some players from Oceanic area are experiencing. It also explains why it only happens with specific ISP's there

Well you are making some very bad assumptions, so TAIKA is not fully incorrect.

Incorrect assumption 1: packages and data for the internet infrastructure travels at the speed of light.Incorrect assumption 2: distance has no effect on the amount of rerouting which is required.Incorrect assumption 3: there is good ISP's which come close to the ping players get which are closer to the servers. The fact that there is better and worse ISP's does not change the fact that even "good" ISP's have worse pings.

Your statement that distance is not a factor is factually completely incorrect if you applied actual state of the art technology and limitations. Sorry.

I never stated that speed of light is any factor. Taika did this. I only explained that it is not a real factor.

It is true that distance can be a factor. The distance itself is not a factor though, the extended amount of hops on the way is. The amount of data going over intercontinental connections also adds to slower traffic. Both however are due to the choice of ISP.

That is literally nitpicking since the hoops, at our current state of technology, are a direct result of distance. You did not make any distinctions as to why distance should not be a factor, ergo your plain comment: distance is not a factor, was incorrect.

@mercury ranique.2170 said:On top of that, several players from Oceanic area has indicated they receive good pings in earlier threads. So although distance can be a factor, it isn't the decisive one. Technically good pings are perfectly possible. It do depends on your physical location. If you live in the out back, it is less likely to find an ISP with good pings.

Yes, relative to other pings. I doubt you will find any one on an Oceanic server with pings sub 100-150, and that's good to them. Meanwhile I know people who play on pings of 25-30.

@mercury ranique.2170 said:I actually work in IT and recently studied the speed problems with our branch in Australia. The possibility to get decent speeds there where very limited, but it had nothing to do with the distance. Part of the research was a possible relocation to a major town. This would solve the issues.

If doubt you work in IT and make blank statements like: distance has nothing to do with bad pings.

[Taygus.4571]

I'm in Europe and often my ping is 200+(and many nights, as high as 4k)Why do you assume an oceanic server would solve it?

Ita also dependant on your internet provider.

also, do you really think there are enough players for another server?

pvp and wve already has complaints of being underpopulated, raids as well.

[mexay.3902]

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:choice of ISP.

Mate you're just plain classic vanilla yoghurt wrong. As an Australian with an academic and professional history in IT who has an "FTTP" (full fibre optic) connection, and having used many of the best ISPs available to consumers I can very confidently say ISP choice has basically nothing to do with it. You may have particularly bad ones, but even the best aren't going to get you below 200ms right out of Sydney (where just about all international traffic goes out of), and that's if you are lucky.

On a GOOD day from Brisbane I get 260ms+. This is pretty garbage to play on. Sure it's playable, but that's like saying dog food is edible. You can eat it but I can bet you wouldn't want to.

You also have to remember Australia is MASSIVE. Someone playing from Sydney is obviously going to get a better latency than someone from Brisbane or Dwayna-forbid, Perth.

Even if you go through the absolute best routes and are living in Sydney with a fibre connection, you're going to be pulling 200ms+ on the reg.

This is purely because of the distance. We MIGHT see an improvement with the undersea cable going direct to Guam soon, but I doubt it's going to make a difference.

You're just wrong fam.

[Dante.1508]

Its never been added in 7 years i'm pretty sure that we will never get one.. My ping in Aus is about 300-330 but can go as bad as 700-900 on a bad day.. You then double that because ping in game only shows one way to the server.. so an accurate Aussie ping is about 600 daily..

Thats a large reason i never wvw or pvp anymore.

It is physically impossible to get pings under 250ms to the USA from Australia because of the distance involved no matter how good your hardware, nodes or ISP is..

[Trise.2865]

If they, or a local ISP, can coordinate an equitable solution, then possibly. Of course, that would pull attention away from China, and China can't have that, so...

Oceanic servers are a fine idea, and I fully support them in concept, but realistically aren't likely.

[ugrakarma.9416]

i play from south america that is bit far away too(and also poor infra), and had no issues, i wonder if this is just AUS ISP bosses giving a cheap excusive to consumers.

Perhaps, a Japan server can work too, to grab all these far-east Tyrians. i had see lots of vietnamese, thay, etc etc etc..

[Astralporing.1957]

They can't even make an expansion now, and they need it way more than another datacenter.

Honestly, if they haven't made an asia datacenter at the time the game was at the height of popularity, and still had a bright future, the possibility of them doing so now is practically nil.

[Healix.5819]

It is a possibility, but it will realistically never happen. If they wanted to, they could have just the personal story for example hosted on an oceanic server for people that opted to play it that way - they've already shown this capability.

[crepuscular.9047]

@"mercury ranique.2170" said:I would suggest using Google to find some old threats. It boils down to two things.1: stretching the population over more then 2 megaservers would be considered a very undesirable side effect.2: distance has nothing to do with bad pings. The choice of provider has. Earlier threats pinpointed the issue at specific ISP's.

you are just making yourself looking bad sorry, i suggest you at least read some wiki beforehand

The measurement of a ping is milliseconds, which is how long does it take for your request to the destination to give a response back to you.

imagine you have two computers sitting next to each other, using computer A to ping computer Bone network cable is a fibre option cable that runs across the entire world (Earth circumference is 40,075km), the theoretically minimum ping you get would be 264ms (134ms for the request to reach the destination, and another 134ms to receive the response)whereas if directly just using a CAT6 cable it will be so fast that it will just register as 0ms

 

 

the communication from your PC to Anet can be simplified to this without going into too many detailsPC -> Your ISP -> Routing Centres -> Amazon's ISP -> Amazon's Servers

now, this is where some OCE people may get better pings to compare to others in their region, the Routing CentresThere are two main paths for Australia (where I'm from) to reach North America

1. via the trans-Pacific network cable, this is the premium route, mainly for businesses, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Cross_Cable
2. via Asia and Euro, then to NA, common route, cheap for ISPs to rent, but because it's a cheap common route it is very congestedthere was an incident happened right before HoT release, a routing centre in Sweden had a meltdown for multiple days, most MMO gamers were unable to play if their server is NA, some were able to get on via VPN

https://cablemap.info/_default.aspx

 

 

back to OP's question, the short answer is, Operating Cost

the running cost of a single physic server is about $10,000 and all the way up to $30,000 a year, and i'd imagine there would be at least a few of them required for the number of maps that are running, minimum 51 zone maps + all those fractal, raids, pvp, wvw maps

even someone with wallet as big as Blizzard does not have a localised OCE server, it is simply tuned for OCE players

[b k.1648]

Not this side of 2012.

They'd have to rework the game to provide widespread support for solo play in events currently intended for groups, or players on a theoretical Asia/Australia server would have no chance of completing any group content aside from the most popular stuff.

I'd play there anyway because I don't really care about much of the group content anymore, but ANet is not going to want to break their game.

[Nynja.1674]

It's been 7 years. 7 years, and Australia still has no servers.

Arenanet, PLEASE. You guys are so lucky to develop in the current era, as we all have access to AWS: Cloud-based servers. Long gone are the days of physical, location based, server racks. Long gone, are the days of expensive rented buildings for on-site server hardware.

All you need is one or two machines to run thousands of servers in hundreds of countries on a cheap subscription plan. Take GW2 down for a few months to make the switch. It will only benefit you and us, your loyal consumers.

Australia has been in the dark for too long. It's time for you to recognize us, recognize that it's painful to play with 270ms ping (with NBN connections). Even WoW has oceanic servers and WoW is 15 years old.

Edit I stand corrected. Arenanet have switched to AWS but have incurred higher ping for Americans, Europeans and Australians, as the servers seem to have moved further away from prior loations.

I'm not entirely sure what to ask of Arenanet now, as my hopes were riding on adding the Sydney server datacenter but it won't happen, it seems. Ah well, I'll continue to play PvE in any case. Thank you, all, for the discussions <3

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/22554/amazon-web-services-is-ruining-the-game-for-over-seas-players

[Randulf.7614]

@Nynja.1674 said:Take GW2 down for a few months to make the switch. It will only benefit you and us, your loyal consumers.

Forum quote of the day...........

[Nynja.1674]

I forgot about Microsoft Azure too XD The Cloud truly is amazing :3 > @Randulf.7614 said:

@Nynja.1674 said:Take GW2 down for a few months to make the switch. It will only benefit you and us, your loyal consumers.

Forum quote of the day...........

Not sure what you mean by this. If it's about the downtime for taking GW2 off the physical servers to transfer to Cloud-based servers, I get that it is excessive and would not please the consumers. They would understand though, if Arenanet are transparent during the process, should they choose to do this. On the off-chance that they do consider Cloud-based/serverless services, it would most likely be done for GW3, which the world would appreciate. Let's be honest: physical servers are a waste of money and resources, now that we have access to services like AWS and Microsoft Azure, since 2015? I think.

A few months of downtime is acceptable for a massive transition like this.

[kharmin.7683]

Thread already exists: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/94157/is-there-any-chance-anet-create-an-asia-australia-server

[Nynja.1674]

@"kharmin.7683" said:Thread already exists: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/94157/is-there-any-chance-anet-create-an-asia-australia-server

Asia does indeed need the same treatment. There are enough Australians on, what we call, "Unofficial Servers" to justify Arenanet transitioning to AWS. We will easily fill the Sydney cluster, so WvW will not suffer the 'Empty Server' treatment that a few games with Australian servers have suffered (DICE's Star Wars: Battlefront 2, for example).

Oceania has been a loyal follower of Guild Wars, ever since its inception in 2005 (I bought it a few years later though) and will continue to stand by Arenanet, regardless of their choices (Australia really does love Guild Wars THAT much).

[Randulf.7614]

@Nynja.1674 said:I forgot about Microsoft Azure too XD The Cloud truly is amazing :3 > @Randulf.7614 said:

@Nynja.1674 said:Take GW2 down for a few months to make the switch. It will only benefit you and us, your loyal consumers.

Forum quote of the day...........

Not sure what you mean by this. If it's about the downtime for taking GW2 off the physical servers to transfer to Cloud-based servers, I get that it is excessive and would not please the consumers. They would understand though, if Arenanet are transparent during the process, should they choose to do this. On the off-chance that they do consider Cloud-based/serverless services, it would most likely be done for GW3, which the world would appreciate. Let's be honest: physical servers are a waste of money and resources, now that we have access to services like AWS and Microsoft Azure, since 2015? I think.

A few months of downtime is acceptable for a massive transition like this.

It is utterly inconceivable for several months downtime to be deemed acceptable for a 7 year old MMO. How would the devs even get an income with no one buying stuff? How many players would return after several months, flabbergasted that such a decision as made for a relatively small population's better ping? A fraction of the current population is all. Anet could be transparent about the process every minute of every day and it would still be the worst decision they would ever make.

I get wanting a better ping and wanting a better all round experience, but I can't comprehend it is genuinely a serious suggestion to put GW2 into an offline mode for months.

A few months downtime is a million miles away from ever being acceptable

[kharmin.7683]

@Randulf.7614 said:A few months downtime is a million miles away from ever being acceptableThat would definitely kill the game. Most, if not almost all, players would move on.

[Nynja.1674]

@Randulf.7614 said:

@Nynja.1674 said:I forgot about Microsoft Azure too XD The Cloud truly is amazing :3 > @Randulf.7614 said:

@Nynja.1674 said:Take GW2 down for a few months to make the switch. It will only benefit you and us, your loyal consumers.

Forum quote of the day...........

Not sure what you mean by this. If it's about the downtime for taking GW2 off the physical servers to transfer to Cloud-based servers, I get that it is excessive and would not please the consumers. They would understand though, if Arenanet are transparent during the process, should they choose to do this. On the off-chance that they do consider Cloud-based/serverless services, it would most likely be done for GW3, which the world would appreciate. Let's be honest: physical servers are a waste of money and resources, now that we have access to services like AWS and Microsoft Azure, since 2015? I think.

A few months of downtime is acceptable for a massive transition like this.

It is utterly inconceivable for several months downtime to be deemed acceptable for a 7 year old MMO. How would the devs even get an income with no one buying stuff? How many players would return after several months, flabbergasted that such a decision as made for a relatively small population's better ping? A fraction of the current population is all. Anet could be transparent about the process every minute of every day and it would still be the worst decision they would ever make.

I get wanting a better ping and wanting a better all round experience, but I can't comprehend it is genuinely a serious suggestion to put GW2 into an offline mode for months.

A few months downtime is a million miles away from ever being acceptable

I highly doubt it would take a few months to transition from physical to serverless, so take it as a slight exaggeration or even ignorance in this regard. It might even be a guesstimate, but I do understand the rammifications of a decision like this. However, do not forget that GW2 is now a F2P model with no consumer ever feeling obligated to purchase anything from their Gem store. If Arenanet ever felt the threat of bankruptcy, they would introduce a subscription model or even revert to Buy-To-Play, as GW2 initially was.

Developers are also protected by their Publishers and their day jobs, so they will never lose their homes or their livelihood from a short amount of server downtime. I would not ask of this if it meant Arenanet facing bankruptcy though. This recommendation comes from trust in them and their capabilities.

You are correct though: a few months downtime will raise the ire and irritance of the playerbase to such a degree that they would question the choices made to do this. Whether or not Arenanet chooses to support GW2 for many years to come would, inadvertently, influence the choice to transition to serverless or give Oceania official servers. It is necessary to give Australians the ping we need to become competitive in PvP though, which is a big thing for us, as we cannot compete against America/Europe with such abysmal ping.

We can only do so much as Roamers, lest we engage in combat against an equally skilled opponent with 5ms ping, versus our 270-400ms ping. Where is the fun in PvP if we cannot even survive a one-on-one duel? We need our own servers. Asia needs their own servers. Africa and India, need their own servers. AWS can do this (I'm not familiar with Azure, sorry, so I cannot account for their amount of servers in whichever countries) and is doing this, with games like The Division 2, Anthem (RIP), Tree of Savior and many MMORPGs. Ubisoft took the initiative and it has worked out for them, encouraging others to follow :3

I love Arenanet, so I won't abandon GW2 but I would appreciate a little love for Australia <3