Regions, Home Servers, and Guesting

Homitu

From one of the most recent GW2 news posts: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-world-of-choice-the-regions-of-guild-wars-2/

A couple things that were somewhat new news to me:

"At launch, players will be able to transfer between worlds freely. However, once server populations have largely settled and stabilized, world transfers will be restricted to once a week and cost a variable amount of gems based on the population of the world being transferred to."

Apparently the cut off date for free server transfers has yet to be determined.  Instead, it will be determined subjectively when Anet sees fit at some point after the release.  Once home servers are officially locked in, the cost to transfer servers actually varies based on server population.  An interesting concept. 

"In time, we’ll also introduce free “guesting,” which will allow players to visit other worlds as guests as long as they have friends on those worlds. This feature will be free, but guest players will not be able to enter World vs. World, and the Power of the Mists bonuses from their home world will continue to apply to their characters."

It looks like guesting won't be available immediately on launch.  Perhaps they'll implement it when they remove free server transfers, perhaps not.  It was also news to me that guesting will require you have a friend on the server on which you wish to be a guest.  You can't just roam around on another random server whenever you want. 

OldManFunk

They don't need guesting as long as there are free server transfers. By disabling guesting they encourage players to move to the server where their friends are. They'll likely leave free transfers open until they implement guesting. After a couple weeks of shuffling everyone should be settled on a server with their friends and then ANet can lock people down and implement guesting.

Jagarid

In all fairness, the first reference they made to guesting (that I remember) way back during development did include the phrasing indicating you can guest on a server "where you have a friend".   Which seemed to indicate the guesting would require you to have friended someone on that server.    I just think some people thought they were mentioning the whole having a friend thing as it being "great you can play with your friends on other servers" instead of more specifically "you must have a friend on the other server to play there".   I thought, in terms of how they said it, it was pretty clear the intended meaning was always the latter.

GamerUntouch

I think the "friend only" thing is done to prevent people from making servers for certain activities, if people do that, the people who rolled on those servers will be screwed out of WvWvW.

Matheusor1

Originally posted by Homitu

It looks like guesting won't be available immediately on launch.  Perhaps they'll implement it when they remove free server transfers, perhaps not. 

This is me crying my heart out

Andorhal

Love when something I posted two days ago gets more views now

 

Psychow

Originally posted by Andorhal

Love when something I posted two days ago gets more views now

 

 

You should have used a better thread title! "Home Servers" is what won it I think...