Asia & Europe map server

[Hans Yulian.6510]

Since the guild wars 2 can have multiple instance of the same map, wouldn't it be better if we can have instance in asia & europe? my latency to US is so high becase i am half world away in from US. A singapore instance server would be able to help me reduce the latency and also helping with fractal & raid combat also. Maybe we can have a settings to have preference in which server we prefer to play and we might also able to see which server is a group at, we can switch to that server for temporarily and move back to our prefered server when changing map again or so

[The Greyhawk.9107]

European servers already exists, if that's what you're asking for.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Keep in mind that switching to another region (currently NA or EU) can take up to 30 minutes.Also, that any new region needs a large enough population to fill six to nine different servers/worlds for WvW.

[Dawdler.8521]

Europe already have servers and Asia has an entirerly different version of GW2.

[Danikat.8537]

@Dawdler.8521 said:Europe already have servers and Asia has an entirerly different version of GW2.

China has a different version, but as far as I know it's not available to anyone outside of China, even in other parts of Asia. It might be possible to get hold of a Chinese copy in other countries but I think there's restrictions on who can create an account, because part of the reason for having a different version is so it's only people from China playing it. (The other reason being that Chinese law says the distribution has to be done through a company based in China.)

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:Since the guild wars 2 can have multiple instance of the same map, wouldn't it be better if we can have instance in asia & europe? my latency to US is so high becase i am half world away in from US. A singapore instance server would be able to help me reduce the latency and also helping with fractal & raid combat also. Maybe we can have a settings to have preference in which server we prefer to play and we might also able to see which server is a group at, we can switch to that server for temporarily and move back to our prefered server when changing map again or so

Anet could make Asian servers if they thought there were enough players in the region, but it wouldn't work like this. Having an instance labelled as Asia wouldn't help your latency, because the server running it would still be in America or Europe. They'd have to set up a new server cluster (actual physical computers running the game, somewhere in Asia) and then it would have the same restrictions as the existing North American and European regions: the Trading Post is shared between both and I think you can send mail to players in the other region but that's it. You can't play together with people in the other region like you can with people on a different server in your region unless you pay to transfer to another server, wait for that process to complete (which can take a while and involve logging out completely and back in) and then pay to transfer back again. So it can be done but it's not at all practical to do that when you're changing maps or just to play with a group temporarily, it's usually only something players do because they want to permanently move to a new server.

[Hans Yulian.6510]

you dont get the point, usually MMORPG game like this are consist of at least 3 servers: account, chat, and map/instance. That's why sometimes you can still connected to game and play normally but your chat for whatever the reason is terrible and getting errors, but you still fighting monsters normally. this means that your connection to the chat server is bad or chat server is overloaded. in other instance is that you feel super laggy but the chat seems instant, this means that your connection to the map server is shit or map server overloaded.

So account server is only one for global, this means that the account server still in US. This is where all our account informations are. The chat server can be single in US, or can be regional to, but the map server should be regional. When we select character this is where the decision on which map server to connect to, can be based on ping, which one is the lowest ping which is usually the closest map server physically to us.

The proof that they have multiple instance of map server is that we have many instance of map especially when fighting world bosses like tequatl, and if you type /ip in the chat, it will show you the ip address of the server you are connected to. Currently all of this IP address are in US.

We also know that if we are in different map server from other people, we have the option to "Join in X" and if the server is not full, then we can be moved to that instance. So they actually already have the mechanism of multiple map server, it just that they haven't make it available regionally

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:Europe already have servers and Asia has an entirerly different version of GW2.

China has a different version, but as far as I know it's not available to anyone outside of China, even in other parts of Asia. It might be possible to get hold of a Chinese copy in other countries but I think there's restrictions on who can create an account, because part of the reason for having a different version is so it's only people from China playing it. (The other reason being that Chinese law says the distribution has to be done through a company based in China.)

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:Since the guild wars 2 can have multiple instance of the same map, wouldn't it be better if we can have instance in asia & europe? my latency to US is so high becase i am half world away in from US. A singapore instance server would be able to help me reduce the latency and also helping with fractal & raid combat also. Maybe we can have a settings to have preference in which server we prefer to play and we might also able to see which server is a group at, we can switch to that server for temporarily and move back to our prefered server when changing map again or so

Anet could make Asian servers if they thought there were enough players in the region, but it wouldn't work like this. Having an instance labelled as Asia wouldn't help your latency, because the server running it would still be in America or Europe. They'd have to set up a new server cluster (actual physical computers running the game, somewhere in Asia) and then it would have the same restrictions as the existing North American and European regions: the Trading Post is shared between both and I think you can send mail to players in the other region but that's it. You can't play together with people in the other region like you can with people on a different server in your region unless you pay to transfer to another server, wait for that process to complete (which can take a while and involve logging out completely and back in) and then pay to transfer back again. So it can be done but it's not at all practical to do that when you're changing maps or just to play with a group temporarily, it's usually only something players do because they want to permanently move to a new server.

You get the wrong idea of what i am suggesting for, i am not asking for new complete clear instance of gw2 copy like the chinese have, but just expanding the map server regionally and this will cut the ping real alot. If you think FPS game like CSGO, overwatch, and other latency sensitive games will only have map server in a single location only? if that's the case the further away the people from the server, the less likely they will play. And if you play CSGO or Overwatch, your latency will only be likely determined by your internet connection because there always likely a map server near you, for example in asia is in singapore, europe idk where, but every player around the world can get acceptable latency even though people from asia might never met anyone from US because they play in different server. But when the asia player go to US, and play there, they still have the same account informations as their own, same level, same items, etc but just play in the map server of US

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Here's a bit of information on how Guild Wars 2 uses AWS Cloud Services:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/arenanet-guild-wars-mmorpg-migration/

I'm guessing the Engineering Team knows what works best for the studio. /shrug

[ollbirtan.2915]

As a SE Asia player who plays on EU, my advice is to get a good VPN. Before VPN I had issues similar to yours. With VPN I have stable 180-200 ping without any spikes or drops. Yes, to someone outside EU 200 ping may seem very high and 'unplayable', but it's not that at all. As long as your ping is within 240ish, is constant, uninterrupted, and spike-free, you can easily adjust your gameplay to it.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:So account server is only one for global, this means that the account server still in US.Actually, there is a separate account server for EU. It's one of the reasons why originally guesting worked for other worlds within the zone, but not between US and EU.

The proof that they have multiple instance of map server is that we have many instance of map especially when fighting world bosses like tequatl, and if you type /ip in the chat, it will show you the ip address of the server you are connected to. Currently all of this IP address are in US.Incidentally, the map i'm now on shows as 3.121.11.28. Which happens to be a part of Amazon cloud network. The German part, actually. Incidentally, we know that EU cluster is physically located in Germany.

Could it be that for you all maps show US IPs, because you are using US zone?

[Hans Yulian.6510]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Here's a bit of information on how Guild Wars 2 uses AWS Cloud Services:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/gametech/arenanet-guild-wars-mmorpg-migration/

I'm guessing the Engineering Team knows what works best for the studio. /shrug

that's the article for them to move to AWS cloud server for RELIABILITY issue, but not for AVAILABILITY issue. Technically they can configure AWS in asia and doing some tweaking in their map server and game. they already have their master map assigner server so that your game client can connect to the specific map server. Just a bit more tweaking and provide the map server in asia will help a lot> @ollbirtan.2915 said:

As a SE Asia player who plays on EU, my advice is to get a good VPN. Before VPN I had issues similar to yours. With VPN I have stable 180-200 ping without any spikes or drops. Yes, to someone outside EU 200 ping may seem very high and 'unplayable', but it's not that at all. As long as your ping is within 240ish, is constant, uninterrupted, and spike-free, you can easily adjust your gameplay to it.

oh please you can't ask every people in the region to afford additional cost on VPN. that's really unpleasant for customers, and it's not even a solution, but just some littlesomewhat improvement.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:So account server is only one for global, this means that the account server still in US.Actually, there

is

a separate account server for EU. It's one of the reasons why originally guesting worked for other worlds within the zone, but not between US and EU.

The proof that they have multiple instance of map server is that we have many instance of map especially when fighting world bosses like tequatl, and if you type /ip in the chat, it will show you the ip address of the server you are connected to. Currently all of this IP address are in US.Incidentally, the map i'm now on shows as 3.121.11.28. Which happens to be a part of Amazon cloud network. The

German

part, actually. Incidentally, we know that EU cluster is physically located in Germany.

Could it be that for you all maps show US IPs, because you are using US zone?

Yes, that's why someone up there said that the changing region can't be done instantly which is the indicator it's not same account server.

right now my ip is 18.205.170.223 which is again US server. maybe it's possible that they try to connect us to the nearest server/most populated , you know that sometime in a very small amount of player map server, they offer us to move to more crowded region (so that they can take down that map server and save some money, AWS charge by the uptime of the EC node anyway).

maybe my connection also worse to europe than to US, who knows..

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Players have been suggesting another data center for quite some time. If the Devs thought it would be a good ROI, I'm guessing they would have done it by now.
Remember, there need be a large enough population to fill that data center and populate all modes of gameplay.

Regardless, good luck on your suggestion.

[Hans Yulian.6510]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Players have been suggesting another data center for quite some time. If the Devs thought it would be a good ROI, I'm guessing they would have done it by now.

Remember, there need be a large enough population to fill that data center and populate all modes of gameplay.

Regardless, good luck on your suggestion.

what you are saying means a completely different set of server (account, chat, map, etc). but what i am suggesting is not the entire data center, just a node to serve the map server which is a small fraction. In AWS, it's can be as cost saving as "nobody use it, just demolish it. somebody gonna use it, make one" in a split of second.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:right now my ip is 18.205.170.223 which is again US server. maybe it's possible that they try to connect us to the nearest server/most populatedOut of curiosity, are you playing on US or EU server?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

If it was so easy, and cost-efficient, why do you suppose the Devs haven't done it in the past 3 years?
Just being contrary?

[Hans Yulian.6510]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:If it was so easy, and cost-efficient, why do you suppose the Devs haven't done it in the past 3 years?

Just being contrary?

it's adding more cost, cost efficient is in the stand point compare to creating new set of server just like china or EU. And you know them well that they never add QoL changes without including income, especially something that have cost

[ollbirtan.2915]

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:t> @ollbirtan.2915 said:

As a SE Asia player who plays on EU, my advice is to get a good VPN. Before VPN I had issues similar to yours. With VPN I have stable 180-200 ping without any spikes or drops. Yes, to someone outside EU 200 ping may seem very high and 'unplayable', but it's not that at all. As long as your ping is within 240ish, is constant, uninterrupted, and spike-free, you can easily adjust your gameplay to it.

oh please you can't ask every people in the region to afford additional cost on VPN. that's really unpleasant for customers, and it's not even a solution, but just some littlesomewhat improvement.

Wow dude. Passive aggressive much? If you don't like my suggestion, you are free to come up with your own. Or maybe hope for something that won't happen - aka servers in Asia.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:right now my ip is 18.205.170.223 which is again US server. maybe it's possible that they try to connect us to the nearest server/most populated , you know that sometime in a very small amount of player map server, they offer us to move to more crowded region (so that they can take down that map server and save some money, AWS charge by the uptime of the EC node anyway).

maybe my connection also worse to europe than to US, who knows..

The game tries to connect you to a server in the datacenter you selected. What's your home world? Is it NA or EU? When you get the offer to change maps it doesn't change your region, you stay in the region of your home world, just go to a different instance of the same map. I've used the ip command multiple times and I've never seen an IP that is not a european one, this means you probably play from a home world that is in the US.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Is it "cost saving", or "adding more cost"?You've claimed both now.

(Any yes, the Devs offer us QoL improvements at no cost to us. I'm sorry to hear you missed them.)

[Hans Yulian.6510]

@ollbirtan.2915 said:

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:t> @ollbirtan.2915 said:

As a SE Asia player who plays on EU, my advice is to get a good VPN. Before VPN I had issues similar to yours. With VPN I have stable 180-200 ping without any spikes or drops. Yes, to someone outside EU 200 ping may seem very high and 'unplayable', but it's not that at all. As long as your ping is within 240ish, is constant, uninterrupted, and spike-free, you can easily adjust your gameplay to it.

oh please you can't ask every people in the region to afford additional cost on VPN. that's really unpleasant for customers, and it's not even a solution, but just some littlesomewhat improvement.

Wow dude. Passive aggressive much? If you don't like my suggestion, you are free to come up with your own. Or maybe hope for something that won't happen - aka servers in Asia.

that's why im suggesting them to improve region connection, yours improve connection stability, but still 200ms latency is doing weird stuff such as mechanics unsync in fractals and raids. yes i hope they come up that's why i bring up this topic

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:right now my ip is 18.205.170.223 which is again US server. maybe it's possible that they try to connect us to the nearest server/most populated , you know that sometime in a very small amount of player map server, they offer us to move to more crowded region (so that they can take down that map server and save some money, AWS charge by the uptime of the EC node anyway).

maybe my connection also worse to europe than to US, who knows..

The game tries to connect you to a server in the datacenter you selected. What's your home world? Is it NA or EU? When you get the offer to change maps it doesn't change your region, you stay in the region of your home world, just go to a different instance of the same map. I've used the ip command multiple times and I've never seen an IP that is not a european one, this means you probably play from a home world that is in the US.

should be US.but regardless which region i use, the map server is different instance can be put all over the world.

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Is it "cost saving", or "adding more cost"?You've claimed both now.

(Any yes, the Devs offer us QoL improvements at no cost to us. I'm sorry to hear you missed them.)

i said that what i am talking about in this discussion is more cost savings than your suggestion and understanding. And my suggestion is adding more cost on the current state of how GW2 works in terms of server. If you are talkinga bout minor QoL, ofc it's no cost, but for major one like build template and equipment template, hope you know how much that costs. Now that this is even more major QoL change, how much will this cost?

sorry if this is a way too technical already

[Pacificterror.7805]

I'm in Australia and play just fine on the NA/US servers....and Australia is basically due south of SE Asia. I'd imagine SE Asia would have an enjoyable experience on the EU servers thus having no need for ones specifically located in Asia?

[firedragon.8953]

I play from Japan with about 250 ping if things are good. I really do wish this could be under 100, but thankfully it doesn't really affect most aspects of the game, except maybe sPvP. I do like the idea of making map instances that are hosted in Asia though. No need to make a whole new region, just have an overflow map that connects Asia IP addresses within the NA server mega server to a map hosted on physical servers in like Singapore or something. Sure it won't result in consistently lower ping, but it would be nice once and a while when the megaserver system is able to calculate such a move. Also adding an option for a selectable Asia PvP region may make some people happier.

But I think it is mainly a cost thing. I'm just glad ArenaNet allows Asian IPs to connect to their servers.

[Hans Yulian.6510]

@Pacificterror.7805 said:I'm in Australia and play just fine on the NA/US servers....and Australia is basically due south of SE Asia. I'd imagine SE Asia would have an enjoyable experience on the EU servers thus having no need for ones specifically located in Asia?

hi neighbor! unfortunately if i test using speedtest connection and connect to the near EU AWS, latency is still around 250, which doesn't much different from US (if you see map, they just almost the same distance to the left and the right

@firedragon.8953 said:I play from Japan with about 250 ping if things are good. I really do wish this could be under 100, but thankfully it doesn't really affect most aspects of the game, except maybe sPvP. I do like the idea of making map instances that are hosted in Asia though. No need to make a whole new region, just have an overflow map that connects Asia IP addresses within the NA server mega server to a map hosted on physical servers in like Singapore or something. Sure it won't result in consistently lower ping, but it would be nice once and a while when the megaserver system is able to calculate such a move. Also adding an option for a selectable Asia PvP region may make some people happier.

But I think it is mainly a cost thing. I'm just glad ArenaNet allows Asian IPs to connect to their servers.

Finally someone who understand what i am talking about. And yes my ping is also around there (300ish 200ish at best). It's kinda fine for PVE content which the mechanics are kinda predictable. By the way it definitely will be much lower ping, from our location to singapore we can expect 50ish. Just expect some experience like if we play overwatch and CSGO, the 300ms latency is definitely unplayable for latency sensitive game.

For less latency sensitive game such as MMORPG, the impact isn't too much, but still kinda punishing. For example if there is a PVE mechanics that have 3 seconds casting time, US and SEA wont bother too much, but if the mechanic is at 500ms casting time, you know that everyone have to react instantly no matter what. Consider that the player response time 100ms, we can calculate that for US player they have spare time of:500ms (casting time) - 50ms (from server to client) - 100ms (player's reaction time) - 50ms (from client to server) = 300mswhich is still plenty of time. Now try to put your latency into equation:500ms (casting time) - 250ms (from server to client) - 100ms (player's reaction time) - 250ms (from client to server) = - 100mswhich means no matter what you will get hit by the mechanic.

At least so far i never see any mechanics with less than 1 second warning, but still that is the difference of US have spare 800ms and you have spare 400ms, we can still see a kinda big number here.

PVP really doesn't work for me, just imagine you play CSGO from asia, the server you take is the one in US region, everyone will just blinking and you die out of nowhere.

It's mainly cost of a bit development, sysops, and server. They have to develop a user-friendly mechanic to switch map server, sysops have to setup the SEA AWS cluster, and they have to pay additionally for AWS node. But i still wish they want to do this for the player's gaming experience

[maddoctor.2738]

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:should be US.but regardless which region i use, the map server is different instance can be put all over the world.

No that's not how server instances work. If your home is NA (which probably is) you will only be put in NA servers because that's where your data is. Guild Wars 2 has two data centers, one in NA and one in EU, the reason it takes 30 minutes for a region change is because your data physically migrates from one data center to another. Once the migration is complete you will only be put on the new region's instances.

If you want to play on EU IPs, simply change your homeworld to one in the EU and your problem will be solved. Everyone that plays on EU home worlds is playing on EU server instances, not NA.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:It's mainly cost of a bit development, sysops, and server. They have to develop a user-friendly mechanic to switch map server, sysops have to setup the SEA AWS cluster, and they have to pay additionally for AWS node. But i still wish they want to do this for the player's gaming experience

That's not how MMORPGs work. In order to provide instances in Asia, they'd need to add a completely new data center that is separate from the other two. The NA instances have no access to the EU data center, and the opposite. A new Asia data center would also have no access to the NA or EU data. The question then becomes if the population that will benefit from said data center would be enough to support the game in that region plus a minimum of 3 WVW servers. Then these players would need to abandon playing with their NA/EU friends, unless they pay for transfers in order to do so.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Hans Yulian.6510 said:

@"maddoctor.2738" said:The game tries to connect you to a server in the datacenter you selected. What's your home world? Is it NA or EU? When you get the offer to change maps it doesn't change your region, you stay in the region of your home world, just go to a different instance of the same map. I've used the ip command multiple times and I've never seen an IP that is not a european one, this means you probably play from a home world that is in the US.

should be US.but regardless which region i use, the map server is different instance can be put all over the world.No. In order for you to be able to play with all the

other

players on the same map instance, the game needs access to those players' data. And since you have only access to players' data from the same datacenter, you can only play on maps assigned to that datacenter. Meaning, it's

not possible

from players from different login zones to play on the same IP map instance.

So, in order to have "Asia maps", an Asian datacenter and an Asian zone would need to be created first. Which would not only require investment, but also bring about some other consequences, like introducing another splintering if the game's population - the players from that new datacenter would be separated from both EU and US.

I am not sure if PvE could take such splintering with no visible negative consequences. I am completely sure though that it would be completely disastrous for both WvW and SPvP, that are already suffering from significant problems caused by lack of population.