We had a death in the family last week. And so it is in the middle of a global pandemic I found myself on the road. Ordinarily I would be excited for a road trip, but not now, and not like this.
NOTE: If you don’t have two-factor authentication enabled, set it up now. 2FA saves your account from being hijacked, which is particularly important if you’re traveling and using random hotel and public WiFi.
For this trip I spent the $25 to get a month of in-car wifi. The signal strength and throughput varies from mile to mile, but it would be enough for me to finish an easy set of dailies.
The big barrier to playing GW2 in the car was trying to play it in tablet mode. I brought my Microsoft Surface, which has a snap-on keyboard and wireless mouse, but I couldn’t juggle them on my lap while riding in the car.
I have friends who claim to be able to play without any problems on a touchscreen, but I couldn’t figure it out. Every time I tried to move, all I could manage to do was swing the camera around wildly until it eventually got stuck pointing up at my charr’s chin from below.
NOTE: Update your game before you leave home. Waiting for an update to download over bad WiFi is a huge bummer.
The biggest problem with trying to play GW2 on the road is the ping times and connection strength. Hotel and public WiFi connections are reliably terrible, which means a lot of lag and loading delays with your game.
Avoid anything which requires precision timing. This isn’t the time to join a raid or do the Halloween Clock Tower jumping puzzle. I was once able to do a full set of guild missions with my guildmates while sitting in an airport lounge waiting for a connecting flight, but I avoided doing any of the tricky bits.
