Dialup/56k [MERGED]

Just wondering how well the game runs on dial up. I'm currently without my beloved cable modem but would still like to play the game when it comes out. I know most other online games you can play with dialup just get a bit of occasional lag and should avoid large groups of people.

ive played one BWE on dial up cause my cable modem got zapped, and it wasnt to bad at all. but i only played solo outside of towns, inside of towns it was a diff story, very laggy but nothing compared to other MMORPG's i guess its cause of the streaming tech.

I only played dial-up the first BWE. A trick I learnt was to "enter mission" or walk into the explorable areas but just walk in and let the files download. Go make some coffee or dinner or whatever. Once it finishes walk back into the town. Now when you join a group it has only a few small files to download usually, so you join your team within 30 seconds instead of 45 minutes later.

I didn't noticed it could take a few moments to enter a town but once in the town no real lag. GVG or PVP seemed to be troublesome even if going in to fight right after you been there.

Hope that gives you some insights.

They might run faster server on the realease. Id doubt they would need super power servers for BWEs.

I could be wrong though.

they are running on what they will use

think

ok now we switch to the real servers

WHAT

fix it because we go live in 5 minutes

*smoke fills room*

the only way to be sure it works is to use it under stress

I have played connected at 24000 bps on AOL version 9. It worked fine...little long loading...if you play PvP naah it takes to long to join up with your group. They are probably dead by the time you arrive.

I tried dial up on BTW #2 and it seemed just fine for PvE but it did lag in town due to the spamming of "junk for sale" world broadcasts. Of course, everything didn't dispay right due to the terrain appearing to have its normals inverted on my screen...

He got it right. This is how you have to do it. I did the same. I played at speed 24000 bps....YES HALF of 56K - It works great. PvP though is a little problem at that speed. At 56 you should be ok in PvP too.

You might encounter some lag the first 30 minutes when the servers go online...I did. But GW is fantastic with its streaming technology.

EDIT

Holy smoke I double posted!! Sorry!

We played on dial up for the March BWE, through a home networked setup. Base desktop connected to dial-up at 46.6 and laptop connected to desktop through WinXP home networking. Worked very well. Oh, there were the occassional bumps, but nothing major. No lag deaths. Mostly PvE. I did encounter some trouble trying to PvP in the gladiator competitions. Never could get that connected right.

And yes, I agree. If you are planning on going to a particular spot with a group, go to that place first so you can download the files first.

Is it the 27th yet?

--Vyxxen Heartstomper

I was once in a 6 man PvE group with a 28k'er. It took him a while to enter, but after that he was able to join in without any performance issues.

I like the idea of entering a mission and letting everything download. Makes absolute sense. I have a 56k and when I'm with friends I usually come in quite a few minutes after they make it and come in to hearing "Yeah, he's got dial up" or "He decided to ride the short bus... give him time". Great idea so teammates/friends aren't left twiddling thumbs, tapping feet and waiting for my molasses ass to show up!

My impression is that they are not running on their own computers, but instead renting compute power from data centers around the world. They rented the amount of power needed, so they rented a lot of power for the open E3 and PWE events, and much less for the BWE's.

The server software has not particular hardware requirements, except of course a very good network connection. Or so I imagine.

Unlike traditional MMORPG's, Guild Wars runs purely instantiated, so it should be easy to run distributed. Traditional MMORPG's require monster servers because of their shared worlds.

I really want to play GWs, but I'm not really sure that it's very playable on 56k.
I played one of the betas a while ago, and every small new area had to be downloaded separately.... which believe me takes quite some time.
But as there will be a CD to get the data from I'm hoping this won't be so much of a problem. I'm just worried about the "small" updates to areas and other parts of the game which would require huge amounts of downloading again.

Anyway, my question: Does anyone know if most of the updates will be available as zip download(s) on the website rather than just from the in game autoupdater? Then I can at least download the updates from a place that has broadband.

Pls don't just say "get broadband!!!!11"

I feel your pain. I'm on dialup too and I can't get broadband in my area.
I'm sitting here right now waiting for the latest update to download so I can actually start playing this BWE.
One solution is to install the client on someone's broadband computer and get all the updates, then copy the gw.dat file which is where all the game data is stored.

Not a bad idea actually, thanks.
But how big is the gw.dat file? Please say it's less than 512mbs!

After you get those zones loaded you don't need to load them again unless you delete GW. Im on dial-up, also, and I must say I was very dissapointed when I was told to run to Lakeside Country, and after leaving the gate, the loading screen slapped me in the face. That was after waiting 3 hours for Ascalon City to download. Dial-up friendly? Maybe for the extremly patient. I don't have my GW CD in, though... Are there zones on there, ir just extra media?

Edit: 512 MBs is how much RAM you have (Im guessing). The GW.DAT file is not stored on your RAM, its stored on your hardrive, which is much, much larger.

the dat file can grow to a few gigs or more. initial loading times may be harsh, but that is about it. i am sure the cd will have most of the resources you will need for release.

512mbs is how big my Data Stick/Pen Drive/Storage Device thingy is.
So it doesn't look like it'll be possible to transfer updates using the gw.dat file if it's a couple gigs

I'm curious about you guys saying dial-up works fine. I'm currently TRYING to play the game on a 56k dial-up connection, but I have to download Ascalon City first. I don't mind waiting a few hours for the download, but I'm currently 8.5MB in and at 0% still....how is dial-up playable when I have to download an hour and still not be at 1%?! I wanna play this, but not enough to sit around for a week just to load 1 map.

is my load bar just messing up or am I seriously downloading a GB worth of information on dial-up?!

You should be able to find a program to split it into multiple files of 512MB each.
I used to have such a program called HJ Split. Ask Google and you should find something.