Someone have knowledge or any idea of why gw2 used directX 9 instead of 11?
Because direct11 is so full of bugs? worst directx eva...f o r e v a...my sand lot impression.
Your kidding right LOL...
GW2 uses an updated version of the engine used in GW1 as far as i know.. to code in DX11 was probally too much work..
CryEngine 2 is an updated version of the CryEngine and yet it came with improvements, so I doubt that is really true. It probably has more to do with the fact that directx 11 doesn't add anything to gaming worth implementing atm. just for the record guild wars 2 uses directx 10 and some people have even found traces of directx11 features in the client from data mining.
A lot of people still run XP (maybe even higher % than vista or 7). Making games run on XP will also run on Vista and 7. If you design a directx 11 only game, it doesn't work on vista and XP. Double the work. simple economics.
Everquest recently upgraded to it's launchpad 3 (from EQ2 and other games) and had an uproar from people running 2000 and ME that couldn't get into the game anymore. Not everyone buys a new computer every other year(or even every decade).
A lot of people still run XP (maybe even higher % than vista or 7). Making games run on XP will also run on Vista and 7. If you design a directx 11 only game, it doesn't work on vista and XP. Double the work. simple economics.
Everquest recently upgraded to it's launchpad 3 (from EQ2 and other games) and had an uproar from people running 2000 and ME that couldn't get into the game anymore. Not everyone buys a new computer every other year(or even every decade).
That is BS. Do you have any numbers to support that claim? Steam hardware survey says only ~16% of gamers on Steam use XP. With 72% of the gamer base on Windows 7.
Even if Steam is a adequate judge of OS popularity making a direct X 11 only game locks out 25% of the market. I frequently make comments about WoW's popularity partly being that it'll run on a toaster. Many MMOs have failed because they try to push the hardware limits past their key market.
Even is Steam is a adequate judge of OS popularity making a direct X 11 only game locks out 25% of the market.
I agree, but what you said was just pulling numbers out of a hat really. GW2 production started around 5 years ago, they wouldnt have picked up DX11 back then anyway because at the time it just wouldnt be feasible at all, the fact that they support DX10 shows a willingless to support newer hardware, Vista+, a game starting pre-production today I think would be aiming for DX11, with the current trend the XP, Vista crowd is gonna be pretty small its not gonna be worth the investment, when the game hits gold.
This is not to say they couldnt have invested in DX11 for GW2, but its a business decision as you say, its nothing to do with taking advantage of the hardware or limitations whatever.
I agree, but what you said was just pulling numbers out of a hat really.
I said maybe, I knew I was guessing and didn't claim otherwise. Direct X 10 and 11 require a hardware ingredient as well as the software. I'm also not convinced Steam's customer base accurately portrays MMO users, especially the quiet casual majority that don't post on forums.
I agree, but what you said was just pulling numbers out of a hat really.
I said maybe, I knew I was guessing and didn't claim otherwise. Direct X 10 and 11 require a hardware ingredient as well as the software. I'm also not convinced Steam's customer base accurately portrays MMO users, especially the quiet casual majority that don't post on forums.
I have no numbers for this and this is just my opinion but I would wager that most MMO gamers have Steam installed, not only that but it depends on your definition of MMO gamer, are those people that played WoW? People that played pre-WoW and have been played MMOs for many years? Anyone that has played an MMO? If its the latter then I would put my wage down that more people than not, have and use steam on a regular basis. There 4.5 million logged in Steam users at the moment.
Then you have to think on the business side, the gamers market is much larger than the MMO gamers market, and ANet would be aiming to sell to every gamer not to a niche market. At the moment this is seamless really besides design decisions, MMOs are pretty mainstream lots of people know about them, so I dont see why we need to make the distinction anymore. Market wise Blizzard has proven that you can sell to your old school MMO niche crowd and to people that have never been exposed to MMOs before and even people that havent been exposed to much gaming at all.
My definition of MMO gamer is probably the same as Anets. Anyone that has, does, or may someday ever consider playing an MMO. There are FPS players that wouldn't even think of ever playing an MMO, and MMO players that have never played anything else (maybe angry birds). Developers wanting the biggest market program to the least common denominator, ie windows XP/Dx 9. Doing Dx10 or 11 versions and features require more development so cost analyses are done.
As for Steam, I do my best to keep that spyware off my computer. As to the reliability of it's survey, it says 19% of windows computers have IE installed. Considering how complicated it is to remove IE, I find that hard to believe. The survey is probably also opt-in skewing results to people that allow it.
DX11 should happen, and DX11 almost certainly will happen between now and the first expansion. The performance benefits on new integrated graphics are worth it alone.
My definition of MMO gamer is probably the same as Anets. Anyone that has, does, or may someday ever consider playing an MMO. There are FPS players that wouldn't even think of ever playing an MMO, and MMO players that have never played anything else (maybe angry birds). Developers wanting the biggest market program to the least common denominator, ie windows XP/Dx 9. Doing Dx10 or 11 versions and features require more development so cost analyses are done.
As for Steam, I do my best to keep that spyware off my computer. As to the reliability of it's survey, it says 19% of windows computers have IE installed. Considering how complicated it is to remove IE, I find that hard to believe. The survey is probably also opt-in skewing results to people that allow it.
Sure but until you can show me something that is more than your opinion or a more accurate survey, that is just it your opinion. Regarding the numbers and how accurate Steam is.
Also unless you have been to a ANet marketing meeting, "is probably the same as ANet" is as valid as me saying "my opinion is the probably the same as ANet". We have no idea what their internal targets, target markets and new market research really looks like, we can make an educated guess that they will target current MMO gamers and that as a business they want to sell as many copies as possible even to the guy that plays only angry birds.
There is a whole set of circunstances that makes DX9 the desirable API for ANet, 5 year old project, there is still 16% of the market on XP, but this is not as black and white as you make it seem, high end features also sell games, and it could have been possibly that it was more profitable to drop DX9 and just support DX10 and DX11 ( Vista and up ) and still make more money, obviously people that know more about market research than I do have made the maths and figured what was the best choice considering ALL of the circunstances ( see also the fact that they started development 5 years ago when DX11 wasnt even released ).
Also bear in mind that "supporting DX11" is not in itself any sort of improvement besides a few runtime performance improvements, its unlikely it would even be noticeable to a player that already has high end hardware, you have to be invested in implementing high end features aswell to actually make a difference so that comes into the equation aswell.
because it is a lot of work to learn new stuff in programming,imagine if they had to implement ,64 bit,dx11,remote differential compression ,donnybrooks,tessalation etc etc etc.that would be far too much work for the meeger gain game company make.nah lets try to dazzle player with 2003 technology instead!
they wanted older rigs to play the game seemlessly, it's why the code supports using the cpu instead of the gpu.
Really tired of microsoft blunders with Direct X is anyone else tired of it? I mean, whatever happened to competition driving the market?
Someone needs to either develope something better and take over the market or sue MS and get the ability for more code to be available and universal for more platforms and for windows games because this is getting out of hand. What's next a system that can't even handle the games coming out but is mandatory because MS decided it was so?
they wanted older rigs to play the game seemlessly, it's why the code supports using the cpu instead of the gpu.
Really tired of microsoft blunders with Direct X is anyone else tired of it? I mean, whatever happened to competition driving the market?
Someone needs to either develope something better and take over the market or sue MS and get the ability for more code to be available and universal for more platforms and for windows games because this is getting out of hand. What's next a system that can't even handle the games coming out but is mandatory because MS decided it was so?
This is a ridiculous uninformed post :P GPU in itself has nothing to do with DirectX, DirectX in its most basic form is just a standard way to talk to hardware drivers the same way as OpenGL, unless you are writting a software renderer ( which no games use or havent been using since the 80's ) all games support the CPU and the GPU.
You may not agree with Microsoft's decision on enforcing Vista and Win7, but it is their proprietary technology, the reason it is so widely used its because it is prefered by game developers, dont want to get into a OpenGL vs DirectX discussion but DirectX does own more market share and developers are free to use OpenGL if they want to, as a matter of fact OpenGL supported tesselation and a lot of the bells and whistles DirectX 11 supports now before DX11 was released and it can run on XP, just some food for thought.
I really do advise you to do some reading so you can actually contribute to the discussion.
High end features sell games like Crysis which is all about being pretty. Vanguard and AoC both tried being pretty as a selling point and both had so many issues just playing well that people left in droves. GW2 is much smoother and better programmed. Maybe they could of made pretty work but I play MMOs for the story and the community, not cause the leaves move independantly from the trees. I still return to EQ twice a year with it's 10 year old graphics. Using your software to sell hardware upgrades you better get a kickback from the hardware manufacturers (like MS not releasing Dx10 or 11 on XP). Dx11 features will probably be rolled out over the coming years but I am glad they chose to focus on making the game launch as smooth as possible for as many people as possible.
High end features sell games like Crysis which is all about being pretty. Vanguard and AoC both tried being pretty as a selling point and both had so many issues just playing well that people left in droves. GW2 is much smoother and better programmed. Maybe they could of made pretty work but I play MMOs for the story and the community, not cause the leaves move independantly from the trees. I still return to EQ twice a year with it's 10 year old graphics. Using your software to sell hardware upgrades you better get a kickback from the hardware manufacturers (like MS not releasing Dx10 or 11 on XP). Dx11 features will probably be rolled out over the coming years but I am glad they chose to focus on making the game launch as smooth as possible for as many people as possible.
Sure but there is nothing saying that they need to choose between animated leaves and good story line that is again your assumption that ANet one of the best software houses in the world that can hire pretty much the best programmers, artists, designers in the world, cannot take advantage of better hardware to add immersion on top of the great story and gameplay they already have to enrich the experience.
I dunno if you follow E3, GDC, etc.. but at E3 all of the tech demos we have seen, from Square Enix new engine, to Ubisoft Watch Dogs, all of this stuff announced for the next generation of consoles, was all running in their booths on current gen PCs, the experience just simply could be much better, the expertise is there, the tech is there, maybe just not the business incentive to spent more money when you are gonna sell the same and can get away with providing less. The "they didnt spend time on this, cause they made X better" is a fallacy, specially for a world class game studio. Its all about conscious decisions conditioned by budget, direction, market, it will never be because they cannot achieve it ( Within the realms of possibility ofc, but even then most big studios have pretty big R&D departments which come up with pretty amazing stuff way ahead of its time plus the hundreds of other research papers that come out each year from various sources ).
Budgets and release dates aren't arbitrary numbers made up out of thin air. A lot of calculation goes into how much can be spent and for how long. Eventually, features, graphics, and other systems have to be triaged and cut or delayed to release a game and start recouping some of the vast costs of development. In MMOs programmers are the highest paid employees and their time is the most heavily budgetted. A quest designer can't add graphics systems, neither can an artist. Sure they could hire (or try) more programmers but accountants frown upon that. You can't spend more than your projected sales and increasing the target market increases sales with less cost than adding fluff.
E3 is all about flash...making their showcases and video's look as good as possible whether their products are playable like that or not. It's marketting, not programming. It's not as hard to make a 3 minute demo run smoothly on the hardware you own then to make a multi hour MMO run smoothly on 2 million PCs with all different configurations.
Budgets and release dates aren't arbitrary numbers made up out of thin air. A lot of calculation goes into how much can be spent and for how long. Eventually, features, graphics, and other systems have to be triaged and cut or delayed to release a game and start recouping some of the vast costs of development. In MMOs programmers are the highest paid employees and their time is the most heavily budgetted. A quest designer can't add graphics systems, neither can an artist. Sure they could hire (or try) more programmers but accountants frown upon that. You can't spend more than your projected sales and increasing the target market increases sales with less cost than adding fluff.
E3 is all about flash...making their showcases and video's look as good as possible whether their products are playable like that or not. It's marketting, not programming. It's not as hard to make a 3 minute demo run smoothly on the hardware you own then to make a multi hour MMO run smoothly on 2 million PCs with all different configurations.
I agree with you, there is a lot of flash at E3 and other showcasing shows, but there is a lot of new tech the general public just dont know about, I have been fortunate to have been able to look at some in house R&D stuff that is pretty awesome and ahead of its time, on the same note I have seen games which I have said "I would totally pay to play that in its current form" canned and abandoned in some source control system. Also bear in mind what we are seeing now is tech that is 5 years old for GW2 and maybe a couple of years old already for some of this next gen stuff.
You are absolutely correct about budgets, but that was my point aswell, some decisions are not about lets make the game better, its about lets spend less money, lets have a bigger margin. Also tech departments keep on running throughout the whole project not only to support the production but for continued improvement of said in-house technology ( if you are using your proprietary one ) so part of the investment goes back into further tech for next titles/expansions/products so it's not like we are not gonna see more improvements coming from ANet in the future and more "fluff" its just sad that we can't see it earlier :P
they wanted older rigs to play the game seemlessly, it's why the code supports using the cpu instead of the gpu.
Really tired of microsoft blunders with Direct X is anyone else tired of it? I mean, whatever happened to competition driving the market?
Someone needs to either develope something better and take over the market or sue MS and get the ability for more code to be available and universal for more platforms and for windows games because this is getting out of hand. What's next a system that can't even handle the games coming out but is mandatory because MS decided it was so?
This is a ridiculous uninformed post :P GPU in itself has nothing to do with DirectX, DirectX in its most basic form is just a standard way to talk to hardware drivers the same way as OpenGL, unless you are writting a software renderer ( which no games use or havent been using since the 80's ) all games support the CPU and the GPU.
You may not agree with Microsoft's decision on enforcing Vista and Win7, but it is their proprietary technology, the reason it is so widely used its because it is prefered by game developers, dont want to get into a OpenGL vs DirectX discussion but DirectX does own more market share and developers are free to use OpenGL if they want to, as a matter of fact OpenGL supported tesselation and a lot of the bells and whistles DirectX 11 supports now before DX11 was released and it can run on XP, just some food for thought.
I really do advise you to do some reading so you can actually contribute to the discussion.
Did read and was answering the OP's question nowhere in my response do i ever say that direct X anything supports the CPU i was specifically talking about the code used in the engine of GW2, and YES it is designed to when you lower the settings or can't increase them to use the CPU more heavily then any GPU and when you switch them to higher settings it uses the GPU for rendering more then the CPU. the only one misinformed here is you, because you read things that weren't actually said. As far as my being right, it's right there in their testing of the game, they admitted to it doing that so that people who use older computers can play the game.
Perhaps you should read the entire post and every word instead of putting words that aren't there.
Oh and "it's there intellectual property" does not automagically equal "they are right" nor does it mean "they don't have an illegal monopoly that should be abolished", competition in the market is always 100% better then one company that can do whatever the hell it wants when it wants just because it holds the entire market in a sling.
DX11 isn't just about fancy graphics. More than anything else, it's about using the gfx card inbuilt functions to render some parts of the gfx, which will give a huge performance boost on any machine capable of running DX11. This is apparently something that very few people recognizes. Some of the same gfx renderings can be achieved with DX9, and GW2 will do these renderings, but will not utilize the functions of DX11 for it. This HAS to be fixed in my oppinion.
Most games which utilize DX11 (if not all) are perfectly capable of running the game with DX9 as well. So the people who think it's to lower system reqs are also wrong.
I got a 4.25ghz core i7 with nvidia 570gtx. I doesn't seem to be able to get stable FPS at 60. This would be very easily achievable with DX11 enabled. This is my personal reason to wish for DX11 in this game, rock-steady FPS.
Comments
Well if you're that concerned, send a letter to Anet about the "issue"
CryEngine 2 is an updated version of the CryEngine and yet it came with improvements, so I doubt that is really true. It probably has more to do with the fact that directx 11 doesn't add anything to gaming worth implementing atm. just for the record guild wars 2 uses directx 10 and some people have even found traces of directx11 features in the client from data mining.
A lot of people still run XP (maybe even higher % than vista or 7). Making games run on XP will also run on Vista and 7. If you design a directx 11 only game, it doesn't work on vista and XP. Double the work. simple economics.
Everquest recently upgraded to it's launchpad 3 (from EQ2 and other games) and had an uproar from people running 2000 and ME that couldn't get into the game anymore. Not everyone buys a new computer every other year(or even every decade).
That is BS. Do you have any numbers to support that claim? Steam hardware survey says only ~16% of gamers on Steam use XP. With 72% of the gamer base on Windows 7.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=pc , another more directed comparison shows the last 4 months, win 7 on a steady growth http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/directx/ .
Even if Steam is a adequate judge of OS popularity making a direct X 11 only game locks out 25% of the market. I frequently make comments about WoW's popularity partly being that it'll run on a toaster. Many MMOs have failed because they try to push the hardware limits past their key market.
I agree, but what you said was just pulling numbers out of a hat really. GW2 production started around 5 years ago, they wouldnt have picked up DX11 back then anyway because at the time it just wouldnt be feasible at all, the fact that they support DX10 shows a willingless to support newer hardware, Vista+, a game starting pre-production today I think would be aiming for DX11, with the current trend the XP, Vista crowd is gonna be pretty small its not gonna be worth the investment, when the game hits gold.
This is not to say they couldnt have invested in DX11 for GW2, but its a business decision as you say, its nothing to do with taking advantage of the hardware or limitations whatever.
I said maybe, I knew I was guessing and didn't claim otherwise. Direct X 10 and 11 require a hardware ingredient as well as the software. I'm also not convinced Steam's customer base accurately portrays MMO users, especially the quiet casual majority that don't post on forums.
I have no numbers for this and this is just my opinion but I would wager that most MMO gamers have Steam installed, not only that but it depends on your definition of MMO gamer, are those people that played WoW? People that played pre-WoW and have been played MMOs for many years? Anyone that has played an MMO? If its the latter then I would put my wage down that more people than not, have and use steam on a regular basis. There 4.5 million logged in Steam users at the moment.
Then you have to think on the business side, the gamers market is much larger than the MMO gamers market, and ANet would be aiming to sell to every gamer not to a niche market. At the moment this is seamless really besides design decisions, MMOs are pretty mainstream lots of people know about them, so I dont see why we need to make the distinction anymore. Market wise Blizzard has proven that you can sell to your old school MMO niche crowd and to people that have never been exposed to MMOs before and even people that havent been exposed to much gaming at all.
My definition of MMO gamer is probably the same as Anets. Anyone that has, does, or may someday ever consider playing an MMO. There are FPS players that wouldn't even think of ever playing an MMO, and MMO players that have never played anything else (maybe angry birds). Developers wanting the biggest market program to the least common denominator, ie windows XP/Dx 9. Doing Dx10 or 11 versions and features require more development so cost analyses are done.
As for Steam, I do my best to keep that spyware off my computer. As to the reliability of it's survey, it says 19% of windows computers have IE installed. Considering how complicated it is to remove IE, I find that hard to believe. The survey is probably also opt-in skewing results to people that allow it.
DX11 should happen, and DX11 almost certainly will happen between now and the first expansion. The performance benefits on new integrated graphics are worth it alone.
Sure but until you can show me something that is more than your opinion or a more accurate survey, that is just it your opinion. Regarding the numbers and how accurate Steam is.
Also unless you have been to a ANet marketing meeting, "is probably the same as ANet" is as valid as me saying "my opinion is the probably the same as ANet". We have no idea what their internal targets, target markets and new market research really looks like, we can make an educated guess that they will target current MMO gamers and that as a business they want to sell as many copies as possible even to the guy that plays only angry birds.
There is a whole set of circunstances that makes DX9 the desirable API for ANet, 5 year old project, there is still 16% of the market on XP, but this is not as black and white as you make it seem, high end features also sell games, and it could have been possibly that it was more profitable to drop DX9 and just support DX10 and DX11 ( Vista and up ) and still make more money, obviously people that know more about market research than I do have made the maths and figured what was the best choice considering ALL of the circunstances ( see also the fact that they started development 5 years ago when DX11 wasnt even released ).
Also bear in mind that "supporting DX11" is not in itself any sort of improvement besides a few runtime performance improvements, its unlikely it would even be noticeable to a player that already has high end hardware, you have to be invested in implementing high end features aswell to actually make a difference so that comes into the equation aswell.
because it is a lot of work to learn new stuff in programming,imagine if they had to implement ,64 bit,dx11,remote differential compression ,donnybrooks,tessalation etc etc etc.that would be far too much work for the meeger gain game company make.nah lets try to dazzle player with 2003 technology instead!
they wanted older rigs to play the game seemlessly, it's why the code supports using the cpu instead of the gpu.
Really tired of microsoft blunders with Direct X is anyone else tired of it? I mean, whatever happened to competition driving the market?
Someone needs to either develope something better and take over the market or sue MS and get the ability for more code to be available and universal for more platforms and for windows games because this is getting out of hand. What's next a system that can't even handle the games coming out but is mandatory because MS decided it was so?
This is a ridiculous uninformed post :P GPU in itself has nothing to do with DirectX, DirectX in its most basic form is just a standard way to talk to hardware drivers the same way as OpenGL, unless you are writting a software renderer ( which no games use or havent been using since the 80's ) all games support the CPU and the GPU.
You may not agree with Microsoft's decision on enforcing Vista and Win7, but it is their proprietary technology, the reason it is so widely used its because it is prefered by game developers, dont want to get into a OpenGL vs DirectX discussion but DirectX does own more market share and developers are free to use OpenGL if they want to, as a matter of fact OpenGL supported tesselation and a lot of the bells and whistles DirectX 11 supports now before DX11 was released and it can run on XP, just some food for thought.
I really do advise you to do some reading so you can actually contribute to the discussion.
High end features sell games like Crysis which is all about being pretty. Vanguard and AoC both tried being pretty as a selling point and both had so many issues just playing well that people left in droves. GW2 is much smoother and better programmed. Maybe they could of made pretty work but I play MMOs for the story and the community, not cause the leaves move independantly from the trees. I still return to EQ twice a year with it's 10 year old graphics. Using your software to sell hardware upgrades you better get a kickback from the hardware manufacturers (like MS not releasing Dx10 or 11 on XP). Dx11 features will probably be rolled out over the coming years but I am glad they chose to focus on making the game launch as smooth as possible for as many people as possible.
Sure but there is nothing saying that they need to choose between animated leaves and good story line that is again your assumption that ANet one of the best software houses in the world that can hire pretty much the best programmers, artists, designers in the world, cannot take advantage of better hardware to add immersion on top of the great story and gameplay they already have to enrich the experience.
I dunno if you follow E3, GDC, etc.. but at E3 all of the tech demos we have seen, from Square Enix new engine, to Ubisoft Watch Dogs, all of this stuff announced for the next generation of consoles, was all running in their booths on current gen PCs, the experience just simply could be much better, the expertise is there, the tech is there, maybe just not the business incentive to spent more money when you are gonna sell the same and can get away with providing less. The "they didnt spend time on this, cause they made X better" is a fallacy, specially for a world class game studio. Its all about conscious decisions conditioned by budget, direction, market, it will never be because they cannot achieve it ( Within the realms of possibility ofc, but even then most big studios have pretty big R&D departments which come up with pretty amazing stuff way ahead of its time plus the hundreds of other research papers that come out each year from various sources ).
Budgets and release dates aren't arbitrary numbers made up out of thin air. A lot of calculation goes into how much can be spent and for how long. Eventually, features, graphics, and other systems have to be triaged and cut or delayed to release a game and start recouping some of the vast costs of development. In MMOs programmers are the highest paid employees and their time is the most heavily budgetted. A quest designer can't add graphics systems, neither can an artist. Sure they could hire (or try) more programmers but accountants frown upon that. You can't spend more than your projected sales and increasing the target market increases sales with less cost than adding fluff.
E3 is all about flash...making their showcases and video's look as good as possible whether their products are playable like that or not. It's marketting, not programming. It's not as hard to make a 3 minute demo run smoothly on the hardware you own then to make a multi hour MMO run smoothly on 2 million PCs with all different configurations.
I agree with you, there is a lot of flash at E3 and other showcasing shows, but there is a lot of new tech the general public just dont know about, I have been fortunate to have been able to look at some in house R&D stuff that is pretty awesome and ahead of its time, on the same note I have seen games which I have said "I would totally pay to play that in its current form" canned and abandoned in some source control system. Also bear in mind what we are seeing now is tech that is 5 years old for GW2 and maybe a couple of years old already for some of this next gen stuff.
You are absolutely correct about budgets, but that was my point aswell, some decisions are not about lets make the game better, its about lets spend less money, lets have a bigger margin. Also tech departments keep on running throughout the whole project not only to support the production but for continued improvement of said in-house technology ( if you are using your proprietary one ) so part of the investment goes back into further tech for next titles/expansions/products so it's not like we are not gonna see more improvements coming from ANet in the future and more "fluff" its just sad that we can't see it earlier :P
Did read and was answering the OP's question nowhere in my response do i ever say that direct X anything supports the CPU i was specifically talking about the code used in the engine of GW2, and YES it is designed to when you lower the settings or can't increase them to use the CPU more heavily then any GPU and when you switch them to higher settings it uses the GPU for rendering more then the CPU. the only one misinformed here is you, because you read things that weren't actually said. As far as my being right, it's right there in their testing of the game, they admitted to it doing that so that people who use older computers can play the game.
Perhaps you should read the entire post and every word instead of putting words that aren't there.
Oh and "it's there intellectual property" does not automagically equal "they are right" nor does it mean "they don't have an illegal monopoly that should be abolished", competition in the market is always 100% better then one company that can do whatever the hell it wants when it wants just because it holds the entire market in a sling.
A last reason why we are not leaving DX9 just dawned on me:
XBox 360 supports only DX9.
Many games today are developed for the XBox and then ported to the PC afterwards.
This may be a more weighty reason than WinXP still running on 45-50% of the PCs, and combined these two reasons are quite heavy.
DX11 isn't just about fancy graphics. More than anything else, it's about using the gfx card inbuilt functions to render some parts of the gfx, which will give a huge performance boost on any machine capable of running DX11. This is apparently something that very few people recognizes. Some of the same gfx renderings can be achieved with DX9, and GW2 will do these renderings, but will not utilize the functions of DX11 for it. This HAS to be fixed in my oppinion.
Most games which utilize DX11 (if not all) are perfectly capable of running the game with DX9 as well. So the people who think it's to lower system reqs are also wrong.
I got a 4.25ghz core i7 with nvidia 570gtx. I doesn't seem to be able to get stable FPS at 60. This would be very easily achievable with DX11 enabled. This is my personal reason to wish for DX11 in this game, rock-steady FPS.