Dev Tracker: Culling Update & Improvements

Thank you, Grit, for posting that link. It points to a post in which I describe the culling concern in a number of detail and discuss a few of the troubles involved with altering culling. An even more in depth explanation of what culling is can be identified here https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/The-real-dilemma-here-is-invisible-enemies-Give-their-algorithms-time-to-match-servers-effectively/page/4#post356817 (make certain to read each that post plus the subsequent - my description exceeded the post size limit).

As you understand we've been working on this issue for a while yet what I think we haven't ever said before is that our objective is to remove culling completely from WvW. So that you can remove culling thoroughly we are obliged to address three troubles:

1) Bandwidth out of our servers/datacenter (traffic would grow without culling)
two) Bandwidth in to each client (traffic to each client would also boost without culling)

3) Client performance difficulties associated to rendering (potentially) all the players on a map at once. (Note that we base our performance requirements in this case on min-spec buyers. We don't want to cease anybody being able to play the game after all.)

Till all 3 of those difficulties have already been taken care of we cannot turn culling off due to the fact doing so would cause something to break or perform poorly.

Ok, now let's speak about what progress we've made!

Concern #1 was the easiest to deal with for the reason that we can actually just throw income at the circumstance. When we first began down the road toward removing culling from WvW I took a bunch of bandwidth measurements after which went to the executives & stated, basically, "Hey, if we disable culling our network traffic will boost by X%. Are we ok with that?". The answer I got was a clear & unambiguous "yes!" So situation #1 isn't a problem after all.
Concern #2 is a modest tougher. We have to ensure that folks with a min-spec network connection will not be overwhelmed by the facts we send them & we certainly can not just acquire a better connection for all of our players. So we put our heads together & came up with a plan to reduce the bandwidth required for WvW (and Gw2 in general) as much as attainable. Those alterations are in testing now & will be rolled out as soon as we're convinced that they're solid. Let's say we're able to get everything working the way we'd like (& I'm fairly confident that we will) then this will address concern #2.

So that leaves us with issue #3: client efficiency. A number of time ago the WvW team acquired an engine programmer who's focused 100% on this challenge (and he is being assisted by an additional engine programmer who is not officially on the WvW team). They are working on many honestly remarkable optimizations and engine modifications which we hope will allow even min-spec prospects to render all the gw2 gold players on a WvW map. We'll be talking in more detail concerning the distinct alterations they are making when points get just a little more nailed down, but I can say right now that I'm incredibly impressed with the work they've done already.

So that's where we're. Engine programmers are working their magic even now and we're assessing the networking changes that will be needed. I believe that our objective of removing culling from WvW is achievable and I'm looking forward to the day that I can announce to you all that we have pulled it off!