GW Network problems

1st Official Post
    • Official Post

    Hello everybody,

    For the past 2 weeks there have been quite a lot of issues with Guild Wars it's connectivity.

    I am currently looking into this to try and find out what is going on and how we can solve it.

    Right now there are 2 problems:
    -> People not able to get past the launcher / Connecting to ArenaNet
    -> People that are having very high pings

    For both issues I currently have a support ticket open and I hope to get it to the right team.
    In order to diagnose even more I am working on a PowerShell tool, hopefully that will be up soon (I will post it here) - I have quite a bit of networking experience (went through CCNA 1-4), so hopefully I can deliver the right information to support.

    The first issue is most likely an issue with Amazon's CDN (Cloudfront) - which makes it hard to troubleshoot since a CDN has multiple locations in the world.. So, the first thing here is that I need to know where people have these issues - is it mainly the US, and if so, where are they located?

    What the second issue looks like is a manual route that has gone lost (or malconfigured) and because of that it goes through another route which has terrible optimization. The big blame seems to lie with Telia, I guess their uplink from EU to US.
    In my test the first lagspike (nearly 90ms) came from the jump from Paris to New York (if you do a traceroute, the prs is Paris, nyk is New York etc). In my last test from that point it racks up another 37-40ms, but the big issue lies in the jump from EU to US.
    Hopefully this is something that ArenaNet can fix soon enough - this is something beyond our control and it is also not that simple - this was caused by a power failure and switches and routers really don't like those, but I hope they can fix it. We just need to get it to their network team ;).

    To help me:
    -> State if you are in the EU or US, preferably add some more details (state, country)
    -> Which problem do you have?

    You can download the tool on https://guildwarslegacy.com/gwl-connectivitytester.ps1
    Right click on the file and choose Run with PowerShell.
    This will open up a console window, press ENTER and type in EU or NA, depending on your location.

    This will create a file, gwl-networktest.txt. Please share this file with me - either here or by mail on [email protected]

    - Kev

    Hi there! I'm the Guild Wars Legacy admin, feel free to contact me if you've got issues.

    :ass: Inquisitor Karinda :der: Sunspear Elke :mes:Librarian Amber

    obey.jpg

    Edited once, last by Iaerah (August 21, 2017 at 10:25 PM).

    • Official Post

    well, I got hit today...was playing ok (magni) and then changed characters ..and got stuck trying to kick my heroes...got kicked out finally and when I did get back in (after having to re-enter my password) I got stuck on loading the area/outpost...sat there for a good long time (I did some cleaning while I waited), finally just gave up, closed gw down and restarted with no issues....but must also add, our internet here has been pretty slow of late as well, sometimes it takes a while to load websites (like legacy)....so it might be other issues as well.

    I had a situation similar to Cosy, I ran from LA to Ascalon on my sin and every time I attempted to enter Ascalonian Foothills the loading screen would freeze up, left it for a while (did some cleaning too!) and still no change. Restarted a few times and eventually got it to work. This was early on in the weekend though, I haven't really had any issues since this.
    UK based and live out in the sticks so I'm getting pretty terrible internet anyways!
    I'll try remember to have a go with the programme when I get home.

    .


    Always blame the Monk.


    .

    I play from Hawaii, so I expect 80ms+ latency on any multiplayer game I play. Attached is a screenshot of my in game ping, and an edited copy of the results of the powershell script (removed computer name, and user name, and the contents of my powershell directory save for the script and results).

    Hope this helps.

    EDIT: Your image attachment script appears to be broken.

    Download the Gw.dat file quickly - right click -> Save As ... HERE!

    My main's achievement tracking on GWW: Rickalis Tu Rivers

    Edited once, last by mauirixxx (August 22, 2017 at 10:16 PM).

    • Official Post

    Thanks all :)

    I've received word from ArenaNet that they've looked into the issue and that it should be resolved.

    Could you please check and let me know if the issues are still there?
    '
    - Kev

    Hi Kev,

    Completely forgot to download/run your tool however on Tuesday evening I attempted to log on. Got past launcher and loaded up my characters. Attempted to log into a character, got stuck at the loading screen on 0%. Restarted GW and had no further issues. I assume their resolution occurred after this so I will check again this evening and update.

    Ddraeg,

    .


    Always blame the Monk.


    .

    • Official Post

    Aaaah, modest as ever Kev. Our glorious tech Admin, Kevin Petit submitted a ticket to support on behalf of GuildwarsLegacy, which was noted and passed on to the relevant team at Anet, who examined the issue, found the connectivity problem and restored service. All hail Kev.

    Unless it didn't work, in which case it's nothing to do with us..... ?

    Hello Kevin!

    First off, thank you so much for this tool! Sadly I'm still getting the connecting issues, so here is my file. Thanks again for everything you're doing!

    Edit: aaaaand I forgot to mention where I am - I'm in Lincolnshire, England :D

    Edited once, last by waterfall99 (August 24, 2017 at 2:34 PM).

    • Official Post

    Here is a response from DrStephenCW on Reddit with regards to the recent lag issues ingame, which as we suspected was due to the Frankfurt data centre problems. He is one of the Devs at Anet, and is more qualified than everyone else to comment on this.

    "We do care. The Frankfurt power outage fried some of our equipment. We merged the Frankfurt and Dallas datacenters for Guild Wars. I live in Seattle and when I play Gw1 my ping varies from 100 to 200. When I play via VPN through Zurich, my ping (after subtracting out the trip to Zurich) is about 170 to 200. Even including the time to Zurich (170 so total 370 ping) the game is still playable. Guild Wars is playable with 200 ping (the game was originally designed to run over modems!). A 500 ping is annoying and 900 is really annoying but I don't know why you are getting that. The best thing is to send a ticket to support with the output of "tracert auth1.arenanetworks.com" or the output of Game Advisor or the output of "gw.exe -diag". I hope we can rehost some game servers in the EU but we have a few weeks of "plumbing" to do before we can turn those on. Just so you know, the most we can do is adjust the /return/ route - we don't control the route from your computer to our datacenter, but we can give hints about how best to return to your computer."

    Here is the link to the thread containing his reply:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/GuildWars/co…for_eu_players/

    Max

    Quote from MaxBorken


    Here is a response from DrStephenCW on Reddit with regards to the recent lag issues ingame, which as we suspected was due to the Frankfurt data centre problems. He is one of the Devs at Anet, and is more qualified than everyone else to comment on this.

    "We do care. The Frankfurt power outage fried some of our equipment. We merged the Frankfurt and Dallas datacenters for Guild Wars. I live in Seattle and when I play Gw1 my ping varies from 100 to 200. When I play via VPN through Zurich, my ping (after subtracting out the trip to Zurich) is about 170 to 200. Even including the time to Zurich (170 so total 370 ping) the game is still playable. Guild Wars is playable with 200 ping (the game was originally designed to run over modems!). "

    This doesn't really sound like they will hurry with getting the European servers online again. Do you know or could you pressure them anyway to get it online? Having an average ping of 300 (200-500) or 100 (40-250) is a pretty big deal if you wanna play the game fluidly. It limits many playstyles, specially in PvP.

    • Official Post

    Well, not really.

    Whilst Arenanet is a huge multinational conglomerate with thousands of employees and listed on the stock market (probably), gulldwarslegacy.com is just a poky fan site with massive ambition. There are contractual negotiations and legal issues etc to navigate when it comes to routing and re-routing internet traffic, none of which we at Legacy can affect. We know it's frustrating, and I can assure you that the folks at Anet know this. I don't know if they are working as fast as they possibly can, but I do know that they are working on it. There are local and policy restraints which have to be allowed for too. We haven't been given any more information than you have already. Just got to wait it out.

    Sorry, I didn't meant to say pressure them, sounds a bit negative and immoral. Thanks for the fast reply Max!

    E: Yeah, they'd probably work on it. But I'm asking because of the reply on reddit. It sounds like they say it doesn't really limit your game experience, while it does, since it limits all the possibilities you are able to play the game at a competitive level.

    Edited once, last by Ixl Ra Ixl (September 3, 2017 at 10:32 AM).

    I asked on the reddit thread you posted earlier if there was any update regarding the euro servers and surprisingly I've gotten a reply!

    "We have significant plumbing to get in order; it's probably a month away. (I hate mentioning a time frame - we have a lot of internal restructuring going on that is all behind-the-scenes that could impact this.)" ~DrStephenCW