Guild Wars Support Available!

I read a rather alarming page on another website with advice about how to solve problems that might arise when operating Guild Wars. The problem is, some of the "solutions" are less than helpful, and of course the worry is that at some point an alleged solution might actually be harmful.

So I wanted to post to make you aware of a very handy way to get answers to technical support, functionality, account or computer system questions about Guild Wars. The best source of technical help is, naturally, the official Guild Wars Support Team. We've seen some advice from players or websites on wiping this file or downloading that patch or driver. We know that people only want to help, but sometimes the suggestions are not going to help at all; sometimes the advised solutions are more harm than help!

We do have a Technical Support Team available to assist you, and they are as close as the Support button on the Official Site or they can be contacted through this direct link: The Guild Wars Knowledge Base. Input a question or a key word or two to see if there's an existing answer. If you don't get the answer you need, use the "Ask a Question" button and send us a report.

Asking for possible solutions from other gamers is great -- often player helping player works really well. But if you get scary-sounding advice -- like anything having to do with the Registry *shudder* or downloading patches from some obscure site with lord knows what trojans or viri -- why not ask us? We'll do our best to resolve the matter and will remain available if you need subsequent assistance. If yours is a unique version of a problem, you will actually be helping other gamers by involving us in the issue and allowing us to determine the appropriate resolution to the problem. When we find the solution, we expand the Knowledge Base, making it an ever-growing and ever-useful support tool which benefits everyone.

So, don't forget we're here to help!



Added by Refyused - Taken from another topic of Gaile's, added here to cut down on the number of stickied topics.

We wanted to let you know that we now have a network and graphic diagnostic tool built into GW. If you press Shift-F10, it brings up a graph window, and TAB will cycle through the various graphs that are available to users. The network graph shows how much data is being sent over the wire, and the frame time graph shows how many milliseconds it takes to draw a frame.

That might be helpful for those of a technical nature as they do some diagnostics on their systems in the event of troubles.

Hope you guys find this of help! And we should have word on a new means of getting diagnostics from the game in the very near future. It'll make everyone's life easier.

Thank you for giving me something nice to read while I suffer another useless weekend ^.^

could this please be stickied to top.... might take care of a whole lot of "incidental problems" dealing with the gameplay and such.

Ha-ha-ha...good one...wait, it's not a joke...I AM a moron? Remember the old joke where you handed a person a peice of paper with the phrase "How do you keep a moron in suspense?" on both sides? I'm feeling a bit like I'm the guy flipping that peice of paper over and over and over...

Um, Gaile, I'd never have thought to write you directly, until now...could you please give instructions (for those of us who seem to be navigationally challenged) as to how anyone can be "contacted" in the support section of the official site?

I submit to you...No such tab exists...I think...well...I couldn't find one...I NEED PICTURES and a map and some recorded instructions and someone to hold my hand....

Right. See, I went to the Knowledge Base...some good stuff there...could be helpful, though not specifically the technical content I was hoping for...Saw I could sign up (figured I had to to pose a question), still no place to actually ask one (though there is a section to check on the status of the question) so I headed to the contact section and clicked on support...no e-mail, just sent me back to the Knowledge base...I saw a place where I could check on my answer...It actually says the answer is mine, belonging to me...but, alas, still no place to ask the question...a cruel hoax to be sure.

Can anyone actually be contacted or is it euphimistically referred to as contact due to the fact that common questions have been answered? I mean no disrespect (in spite of my odd sense of humor, I am genuinely sincere). I can actually find no way to contact anyone for technical support on these pages...I can print or e-mail answers though...I suppose that could come in handy...if I could figure out where to type a question...I see the categories and search for topics....bah...I need a brain cleansing...please, oh, goddes of the forums...enlighted this poor ingorant wretch who doth humbly ask of thee: where canst thou find support for thine issues of tachnicallity?

Really, I'm lost...

Here's a pic, Didymus.



The Ask a Question tab is in the yellow box I put around it.

That tab doesn't sho up for me in FireFox or IE. Do you have to be logged in to see it?

That's odd... I found the problem though. The tab will only appear if you click a question, any question.

Here's a link http://support.guildwars.com/cgi-bin...i=&p_topview=1

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!

I knew I was an idiot...I guess. Seems that the tab should be there if you log on, but now that I know...I can ask my stupid questions...aaaaaargh....I went all around the page and didn't think to click on a question so I could ASK a question...I feel like Jim Carrey at the end of that stupid Batman movie..."too many questions, there's just too many questions...I AM Batman!*drools*"

Yes. I believe they made that so that people will actually look for a question that is the same as theirs, instead of just asking it first.

UPDATE: I believe it now appears without first clicking on a question.

Is there going to be al ive chat available to troubleshoot when this goes live?

i have not noticed any indication of them having live customer support. perhaps they may not have that luxury in order to minimize overhead.
fortunately, that is what we are here for

This is the worst support I've Ever seen. While everyone is playing, I'm sitting out here with my game, BUT I CAN'T play! I contacted support about my problem more than 24 hours ago, and still no reply. I'm disappointed in their services.

No Fees = No Support, This Game Needs At Minimum Live Chat Support,
But Everyone Was So Happy About "no Fees', In Eq2 When I Have A Problem, I Have Live In Game Support Within A Couple Hours....good Thing I Am Still Paying Them........shows You Get What You Pay For.
Too Bad For Me I Bought Collectors Edition And It Doesnt Run.....

Yea, I agree with the two above posters.

The answers arent answered within 24 hours. Its been almost a day and a half now that I havent received a response.

I would gladly pay a monthly fee for real support.

They dont have live chat, or even a phone number to call... Not even an email address to send any inquiries to.

The most surprising part was... They dont have their own forums... They rely on fansites for that?

You can run free forums easy... Their site isnt helpful at ALL...

I bought the game, but I'm not going to be able to play it anytime soon seeing as how probably over 100k people are sending in BS things to support.

Knowing What Video Card you need to play Is less of an issue as not being able to log in at all for some unseen problem.

You can look at the community for the spec problems, you HAVE to look to the company for the login issues and game bugs. But seeing as how all inquiries are funneled into one support service, with ALL questions and concerns probably being split between the same people for everything... "Your question will be answered in the order it was received"

Oh no! There is only one support team for everything!....

Im not going to be playing anytime soon.

HI
im having problems playing the game

Spec is
1.9Ghz
512Mb Ram
Radion 9000 (the one on the box)
when i log on i just get a peach coloured screen
Thank you
could someone please help

I agree wholeheartedly, Xeno.

I understand that without monthly fees, they don't have the kind of cash to toss into a live 24 hour tech-support hotline run by genetically enhanced chimpanzees... but they should at least have something.

The Knowledge Base? Ugh. More like the Salted Wound... it really sucks when you pop by the support to see if your question has been answered, and it most certainly hasn't, but hey, look: they did answer Joe Lunchbox's question about Guild Emblems, or if you can play the game with a joystick. Gee, I'll make sure to check out those rockin emblems when I'm finally able to log into the game without it coming down with digital AIDS and crashing my PC.

Clarke667 I share your pain.
I am sooo glad i am not the only one to have this problem with trying to get any kind of meaningful support from the official website! I thought i was the only stupid one. Since paying for and reciving my pre-order i have not been able to play at all. (even tho I never had ANY prolems whatsoever in any beta weekend)

Every time I try to log in now I get asked for the Reg Key which i dutifully enter only to be given the following error ressage and code EVERY time.
'your account already has access to the rights this key provides err105'
as the 'next' key remains greyed out I cannot progress any further and i spent half a day trying all sorts of ways around it including trawling game forums.. I am just about ready to give up

Is there anybody out there who can help?

Normally i would agree with Gaile Gray wholeheartly but in this case the company "help" site is anything but helpfull. I am still waiting for a response to change this $50 coaster into a game i can play. I have set up an account and then it says there is no email address. It is "possible" i have mis typed it but i dont think so. And why isnt there a field to retype something that important (like there is for password). Please help the people that can not play the game.

Note: http://dictionary.reference.com/help...e/v/virus.html

Here is a tool that GW support recommends. Send the report along along with your initial bug report to save a bit of time.

Thank you for contacting technical support. I would like to get more information about your system than is available on the dxdiag.

There is a program called Everest Home Edition that is freeware that can give us a ton of information about your system.

The download is here:

http://www.lavalys.com/index.php?pag...ew=1&subpage=5

Once you download and install the program, open it up and click "report."

Go through the wizard and choose Hardware-related pages. Choose the plain text report format. The diag will run. When it is finished, choose "save to file" and save the file to your desktop. Then send the text file to us as an attachment to this email.

Regards,
The Guild Wars Support Team

I'm sorry I have to say that, but the GuildWars-Support really sux. I've got a problem with my connection, I posted in the Support-Area, I even got a reply within 24 hours (it told me to send the diag-info mentioned above), I sent it to them, and they told me to buy a new video card. I'm sorry, but thats the most stupid support I've ever seen! The question I asked there had NOTHING to do with ANYTHING that could be related to a video card, and I even have played GuildWars with that video card from the first day. The question was about a not working connection to ArenaNet, and they tell me to change my video card, thats just a stupid joke!

Just as a note to anyone who did read all of those negative posts, please feel free to post the problem up in the forums. Many of us can offer some type of advice that could possibley solve your problem. Theres a lot of helpful people who live and breathe computers out there.

So again, feel free to post up your problem and if you wish, use the solutions we offer. The game was just released so you can expect a number of people like yourselves will have problems. As time goes on the cludder will clear up and your questions will be answered much more quickly then they currently are.

Sure, people might be asking "Does this video card work?", but you can't single them out for not knowing the difference between an 9800 and a x700. Some could have asked those questions like the hundreds before them on the forums, but as human nature goes, some people aren't interested in forums and solutions unless its directly from the lions mouth.

Before any more posts are made, remember, these are a team of people who have been spending a great amount of time on a game that has sold thousands already, and only so many of them can solve your problem while the others keeps those who have the game currently working happy with new content and additions. Its a tough job, but I've never actually seen a game with support that had people 'wowing' in my life of RPGs.

If it doesn't work now, try again in a week, you didn't waste your money, its just put on hold.

been waiting a few days, how long does it take to answer a question, even after updating the question every day?

I can't even put a question in to Tech Support... after filling out all the forms and hitting the "Submit Question" button, amn INternal DB Error screen came up. Bleh!!

One of the most common "complaints" lately has been the ongoing presence of lag on the ANet servers. Anyone having issues with lag should contact Technical Support. Once done, a typical response from the Support Team is as follows:

This typically comes when incomplete information is sent. To assist them to more quickly address the issue, it is recommended that you proactively include as much of the information listed in your FIRST contact.

A terrific place to head to gain this information (and a LOT more!) is http://www.pcpitstop.com This is a free online service that will test your computer for the following, among other things:

AntiVirus
Internet Speed
Spyware Scan
Disk Health
Privacy Scan
Check ActiveX
XP Readiness
Upgrade Detect

The results will assist ANet in addressing your specific concerns. Once you have reached the end of the testing segment, you can copy and paste the results into the body of your email to Technical Support. This will enable them to more quickly respond to your issue and eliminate the need for "double" contacts to supply missing information.

Does this "bad service" still happen to you guys? I've reported a problem already and after more than a day, even with requests to at least give me an update of the status, I get nothing from their support. Extremely bad support.

when i ask questions i get answers the next day, if not sooner. I love the tech support lol

Some have all the luck. 3 days I've been waiting for a reply for my problem. And I've sent them e-mails asking for updates...

maybe you are not asking the wrong questions, they are not going to release a patch for 1 person, because it's probably your end

It's a shame they have disabled the /bug command for reporting minor problems in game. I know many users would rather do a quick and easy, short /bug summary for a bug that to submit a form report on many things.

I'm sorry to say that Guild Wars Tech Support sucks beyond belief. They will bombard you with automated/cut and paste responses to the point where you will just get discouraged and find someone else to help. A few managed to annoy them to the point of no return in order to get legitimate problems fixed.

Gaile, I understand what you are saying, but it is possible that these places giving advise are only telling what your official tech team has told them. I have experienced a long e-mail over errors, lag and packet loss. During this long e-mail, I have been told to "tweek" my computer in ways I know are NOT going to solve the problem. It is very frusterating and ONGOING. I have discovered through my provider that there is a problem in some routing station someplace in the east of the US that is giving us all grief. They are unablet contact them as we are in Canada. My thoughts are that as many ppl as possible that see this post send GW tech their own ping/trace test that your tech teams gets us to do.....then only then are we going to see exactly what routing server is malfunctioning to cause all this grief and frusteration for us all. Personally, I see time wasted my going through "computer tweeking" when this is NOT and never was the issue at hand. Please please look into this. It is growing and getting out of hand.

The ANet team support team needs to have better knowledge of their things. My problems which I'm communication with them right now is that the game response because when performing an action (ie. skill/spell), it does not register on the instant it was pressed, which results in a delayed action as if this was buffered. This problem started from the 7/28 patch and has improved in every patch but not back to normal.

They asked me to perform diagnostic on my PC which was not useful because it was not the source of the problem. They also mentinoed that in the diagnostic that my ISP was having packetloss which is untrue because the data was going through fine, it is the ping which is not being return by one more nodes which is typcial for design reasons.

So far, it appears that they are down playing the situation and that is not a good way for customer loyalty.

If they do not take proper action soon, I find methods to talk to a manger or director to escalate the situation.

Sorry for bumping an old topic, but i use the search option

At this moment i wish there was a phone number to contact them.
Getting code 045 for a few days now, the problem is that i have to wait for my 14 year old niece to scan and mail me her account codes. (My niece is on my own plaync account since i did give her the game for her birthday)
Support doesnt even answer my questions as to why my account is blocked until i send everything.

So again i wish i could use phone support wich is much easier to explain everything,