ArenaNet: Guesting is Coming!

[Izzy]

CITIZENS, I have an important announcement to make.

Previously, we’ve talked about a feature called guesting, which allows you to play with your friends on other worlds. The wait is over! Guesting is coming to a world near you with our update on January 28th!

Before I go into more detail about how it will work and what kinds of restrictions exist, I want to talk about a very important change that will come with the introduction of guesting: free world transfers will no longer be available. With the current restriction of one transfer every 7 days in place, make sure that you will be on the world you intend to play on before January 28th, because after that date, you’ll have to pay a gem fee to transfer worlds.

With that out of the way, here is how guesting works:

Guesting allows you to play on a world other than your home world. Just follow these steps:

• On the character select screen, click the “World Selection” button.

• Choose a world you would like to guest on and select the “Guest” button.

• Select any of your characters and select “Play” to log in to the world you picked.

Guesting comes with a few restrictions:

• Because (different from a world transfer) we are not moving your character between data centers, you may only guest on worlds in the same region as your home world. Players on North American home worlds cannot guest on European worlds or vice versa.
  
• You may not participate in World vs. World on your guest world. If you choose to enter World vs. World on the world you are guesting on, you’ll be moved back to your home world. If you want to play World vs. World on the world you’re guesting on, you must perform a full world transfer to that world.
  
• You’re eligible to guest on only 2 different worlds at a time. Each time you guest on a world, that world becomes one of your eligible guest worlds for the next 24 hours. After 24 hours, you may choose to guest on a different world. You may log in to any world you are eligible to guest on as many times as you wish with no restriction.
  
• Guesting on worlds that are full or highly populated increases your risk of being put into an overflow map.

As I mentioned above, with the introduction of guesting there will no longer be free world transfers:

• Transferring to a new home world will now cost a gem fee.
  
• The gem fee for world transfers is based on the population of the world you want to transfer to. Transferring to a high population world will be more expensive.
  
• Each account is still limited to one world transfer every 7 days.
  
• Players will still not be able to transfer to worlds that are “Full.”

I am sure many of you are happy to finally being able to play on other worlds with your friends without having to leave your home world, so go forth and guest to your heart’s content (and hug the next quaggan you meet).

Link to the article...

Frankly I think the fact that we won't be able to guest to European servers is BS. I have lots of friends on those servers and I feel like they're putting an unnecessary wall between us. Other than that I'm very excited to see this in action.

[Fey]

Woooooooooooo!!!!

[sidxus]

Frankly I think the fact that we won't be able to guest to European servers is BS. I have lots of friends on those servers and I feel like they're putting an unnecessary wall between us. Other than that I'm very excited to see this in action.

probly done for 1 of 3 reasons:
*they don't have enough servers dedicated to the regions , best example of this was the lost shore event slwo servers etc
* the don't want to create deserted servers because everyones has esentually migrated to europe; if 50% of people leave the other 50% will do the same if it means they have a decent party/group/friends.
* or they plan a big regional guild war!!!! (hope) go team europe!!!!

[Vayne]

They said it had something to do with server parks and lag. You'd be playing a character that exists in one server park on a server that's across an ocean from where you're playing. They said the quality and performance of the game would suffer in that instance. They might eventually have a fix for that, but no one can say for sure.

[Fey]

They said it had something to do with server parks and lag. You'd be playing a character that exists in one server park on a server that's across an ocean from where you're playing.

Bullpucky, I've been playing on the Japanese servers for PSO2 since before GW2 released. Latency is rarely an issue. And I know this is a bad example, but I've played LoL with people across the world and those servers are WAY more populated than GW2 will ever be (or any MMO for that matter).

It probably just costs too much to allow it.

[Vayne]

Bullpucky, I've been playing on the Japanese servers for PSO2 since before GW2 released. Latency is rarely an issue. And I know this is a bad example, but I've played LoL with people across the world and those servers are WAY more populated than GW2 will ever be (or any MMO for that matter).

It probably just costs too much to allow it.

So I guess they just lied about it. Nevermind then. *rolls eyes*

[Fey]

So I guess they just lied about it. Nevermind then. *rolls eyes*

Oh yeah totally, except:

Because (different from a world transfer) we are not moving your character between data centers, you may only guest on worlds in the same region as your home world. Players on North American home worlds cannot guest on European worlds or vice versa.

They said nothing about latency. That hints at cost. We don't know their specs, it's probably not possible for them to utilize the feature between NA and EU servers without upgrading the system.

[Vayne]

Let me link you to the official Anet answer. I should have linked it in the first place. From Martin Kerstein

Let me explain to you why you cannot guest on worlds in another region.

There are two databases: European player data is stored in our European datacenter, American player data is stored in our American datacenter. This is to ensure that people in these regions can still properly play in case there is an issue with the connection between the datacenters.

When you do a world transfer from the US to the EU (and vice versa) your player data is transferred from one datacenter to the other. This is not the case with guesting, as you are still “registered” on your home world.

I understand that some of you are disappointed that you cannot guest on worlds in another region, but considering the complexity of internet routing, our main priority is to ensure that players have as much of an uninterrupted game experience as possible, which is the reason why we have two datacenters.
On another note: I will try to get an answer to the guild influence question that has been posted a couple of times.


This is the reason given by Anet about why guesting isn't possible on different server parks.

Here's the link to the forum post directly.

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru.../3#post1221430

[meglobob]

* or they plan a big regional guild war!!!! (hope) go team europe!!!!

I would love this!

Its fun killing the french...but I would like to have a go at those americans too...

[Fey]

Let me link you to the official Anet answer. I should have linked it in the first place. From Martin Kerstein

Here's the link to the forum post directly.

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru.../3#post1221430

Oh okay. But that still comes down to it being too expensive. Because it's entirely possible to boost the connections to extend that far with little to no latency issues. Almost every other game out there that uses the internet does.

Not that I'm complaining. This is a feature we're getting for free with no monthly fee attached. I was just saying. It's never a question of "is it possible" it's almost always cost.