Travelers rejoice: You can play GW2 from any location.

[Alaris]

Prices differ between EU and US based on living standards etc, so yeah, it makes sense they would want to implement a way to prevent people from working around that.

[BladeDVD]

So, this basically means that in order to play with friends at launch we'd have to be extra sure to pick the same server.

Essentially, yes, but I would think that you would be trying to get on the server with the people you plan to play with the most often anyway. Of course if you plan to focus on PVP more and you're friends don't like PVP, I can see where that will be a problem. But they will fix it, so as long as it doesn't take more than a week or so, I think most of us will be ok with picking one group of friends and settling on the same world server with them.

And in the beginning you will be able to server hop at well, so it's only after that time that it will be an issue.

Prices differ between EU and US based on living standards etc, so yeah, it makes sense they would want to implement a way to prevent people from working around that.

I think it's more about large retailers being able to undercut smaller competition via volume, such that even with duties, it would be cheaper to buy stuff from outside your home country. I could be totally wrong about that of course. lol

[Alaris]

I think it's more about large retailers being able to undercut smaller competition via volume, such that even with duties, it would be cheaper to buy stuff from outside your home country. I could be totally wrong about that of course. lol

I'd bet you that I was right, but then, I don't really know on how to go about getting that info. ANet hasn't exactly been forthcoming with the explanation.

[BladeDVD]

We should call up Jeff Bezos and see what he has to say about it.

[Jersey]

I just hope that guesting will be implemented well in time before they start charging gems for world transfers. Or I rather expect it will, how will server populations start to stabilize without guesting? And going by Anet's "community building company" statement it would be pretty counterproductive to stop free world transfer without having the guesting feature in place. I also hope we will get a notification well in time before world transfers stop being free.

This article answers one more question that I (and probably many others) have had for some time. The guesting feature "will allow players to visit other worlds as guests as long as they have friends on those worlds" (I boldened the important part). I've for sure been wondering a little about how guesting will actually work


But this clarification puzzles me a little though.. Why do you need to have friends on any given world in order to be able to visit? Wouldn't it be better to be allowed to visit any server at any time?

Imagine a European player who is all new to GW2. He doesn't have any friends in-game and does not belong to any community. But since it's an MMO he expects to make some new friends. All the more, he bought the game some time after the free world transfer period. The first thing our new player has to do after registering an account and installing the game is to select a world. He looks at server population and chooses a world with low or medium population. For some reason he thinks "Fissure of Woe" sounds awesome, and so he accidentally ends up on the unofficial Italian server. Many of the people he runs into don't speak English very well, and most of the chat around him is in Italian anyways. He's got nothing against Italians and he loves Italian food. But he doesn't understand Italian, besides various food names like pizza, lasagne and spaghetti.

Becaue of the language barrier he ends up feeling a bit lost and lonely with few or none people to talk with. Now, if he could "shop around", guesting other servers at will, until he finds one he likes all would be good. But since he doesn't know anyone on other servers he has to pay for a transfer. He chooses Ruins of Surmia because that one is a low-population server and is cheaper to transfer to. Little did he know that he ends up in what seems to be an unofficial Spanish server. Imagine his reaction when he discovers that the language barrier moved with him to the new world...

Now it seems to our lonely traveler that he's got four choices:
a) Quit playing
b) Keep playing "solo", or at least interact with people non-verbally
c) Pay for one more server transfer and pray for better luck (hopefully he'll also look around on the 'net for some information first)
d) Sign up for a Spanish language class so he will be able to talk with his fellow players...


I know, this example may be overly pessimistic. But we may end up with people feeling stuck on a server because they can't look around for greener pastures before handing down the money. So please Anet, remove the "must have friends" requirement on the guesting feature. I think that would fit better with your community building philosophy

[Смерть]

So please Anet, remove the "must have friends" requirement on the guesting feature. I think that would fit better with your community building philosophy

I am for this as well -- it makes perfect sense community-wise. Server-wise, I suppose it would: make buying server changes less needed (not completely because of WvW) -- loosing some profit, and maybe upset the balance of the game on some servers for others in ways.

...

A side-step, I would like to know how long "guesting" will be in effect.

[BladeDVD]

While I too would like a more free form ability to move between servers, I don't think your example is going to do it. From the looks of it, they don't expect Italy to have enough players to dominate a server or they would have given them one like they did Spain. And if they do, they probably will just make them a server since they have the capacity and there is no geographic requirement they haven't already met.

It is a bit of shame that Anet doesn't offer more resources on how to choose a world for new players though. A web page with some kind of rough statistics placed as a link on the server selection page would do it. # of PVX vs PVP vs PVE worlds, any special things they are known for (RP, Oceanic, Guru, Reddit) standing in WvW and sPVP. Heck they even would have the data to show which servers did dungeons more.