Eye of the North technical issues


 * In mission three, on their way to the Hall of Monuments, the one after viewing the cinematic featuring Jora and the Dwarves, the player's computer may randomly crash due to a memory dump error before promptly restarting the computer. This appears to be related to what graphics chip your computer uses, as users of certain Intel graphics chips report this most often. (Sometimes erroneously called the "Boot Camp" bug as the affected graphics chips are common on Intel-based Macintosh computers.)


 * Note: This bug also occurs not only on Macs but on other PCs as well.


 * Sometimes when you're in Kilroy Stonekin's tournament, you will be knocked down, and forced to return to the outpost; disregarding the "stand up" skill.

Integrated Graphics Cards & Crashing


 * Some players using integrated Intel graphics chips, Nvidia integrated graphics cards, and ATI Radeon integrated graphics processors have found that after loading Boreal Station, their client now crashes when under graphical stress. This is due to a driver failure, which requires a full system reboot and causes a message stating that the system has recovered from a serious system error. There is no known fix at the time, but keeping movements and camera rotations to a minimum when one's frame rate is low (during loading, etc.) minimizes the frequency of the error. Unlike the "boot camp" error, crashing can occur at virtually any time.[It should be noted that many Intel-based Macs use Intel graphics chips -- the graphics driver is the likely cause of both of these problems.
 * The following graphics cards experience frequent glitches/crashes during game play

Integrated Intel Media Accelerator 900, 910, 915, 945, 950, 965, Nvidia GeForce 6100, GeForce 6150,GeForce Fx 5200, ATI Radeon 9600 AGP, ATI Radeon 9100 IGP, Nvidia 6200LE PCI-E, ATI x600 PCI-E

Places known to crash with integrated graphics chips
 * Talking to 1st Norn.
 * Beside pool.
 * Outside Hall of Monuments.
 * Beside single NPC in Eye of the North.
 * Outside gate of Gunnar's Hold.
 * Drakkar lake portal.
 * The Great Norn Alemoot quest when talking to Sif Shadowhunter
 * When activating the Northen Proof of Duty in Sepulchre of Dragrimmar the game crashes.

Some Possible Solutions

Some people have reported success using different combinations of the "-dx8" and "-noshaders" command line options and turning on or off various Graphics options like "Best Texture Filtering".

On some computers, the Intel graphics chips problems can be resolved by redownloading and reinstalling the client using the new GW client builds. If it does not work, reinstall Windows, and/or Windows Boot Camp as well as the Mac partition by reintegrating it back into one volume, reformatting and reinstalling the Mac side (you can use the preserve data feature), and then reinstalling Boot Camp and Windows XP.

You can skip certain areas that cause the errors on your video card by passing through those troublesome areas using another computer, preferably using non-Intel graphics chips and then starting from there.

Note: After the update on August 27th, which temporarily locked all GWEN content, some players have reported that their crash errors no longer occur. It is unknown whether the problem was intentionally addressed in the update, as no mention of any crash bugs was made.

Beware
 * The quest Defend North Kryta Province should be complete or abandoned before doing the Eye Of The North quest from Len Caldoron in Lion's Arch. If the quest is active it will be harder to keep Captain Greywind alive against the Titans than the usual monsters.

Graphics Chips with Problems with GW:EN

 * 3dLabs Wildcat Realizm 500( 256MB) & 800( 640MB) - Massive Geometry errors on various items( armor( e.g. female elite enchanter top), mobs ...) approx.( not certain) since the July,17 update that "fixed" this for some Intel chipsets, game is badly playable due to this but not crashing. Using -dx8 will make it playable, but with considerably worse graphics and other problems such as the lightrays( beacon of droknar) making orientation near them very hard. (Sep,7 2007)
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Acer aspire 5602WLMi
 * Intel Integrated GMA 950/945G, Motherboards and the ordinary white MacBook 2006+
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Toshiba Satellite A100 - So far, it's only crashed in the Domain of Fear, and at any time in GW:EN -Second- Same chipset on a Satellite A105 I cannot run Guild Wars on anything but the lowest graphical settings and even then I still crash
 * Integrated Intel Media Accelerator 9000 Grapics, Dell Inspiron 6000
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, COMPAQ laptop, will freeze at any point in Guild Wars. Have no idea how to fix the problem
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, IBM Lenovo ThinkPad X60s - installed latest driver (7.14.10.1295) along with all previous versions available for Windows Vista from Intel's support page, but problem still persists. Windows Vista gives me the following message: "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered. Display driver igfx stopped responding and has successfully recovered."
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, HP dv2000 series
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Compaq NC4400
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Dell XPS M1210
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Dell Inspiron 640m
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Dell Inspiron E1705
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Dell Latitude D620
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Dell Inspiron 6400
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Dell Inspiron E1505 **Seconded. Problem is anywhere in Guild Wars. I was in Elona the last time of four times it crashed** ***Third-ed***
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, AMILO Pi 1505
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, AMILO Pro V8210 (completely updated XP, Drivers etc, random crashes both in GW:EN and in Elona, both in a town or outpost, or in area's)
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Gateway MX6956 - System crash anywhere in GW:EN, usually at scenes or between areas
 * Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset Family, Acer & HP laptop computers, gateway tablet pc
 * Intel(R) 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family, Dell Dimension DV051 - ****I second this graphics card entry, Spent hour and half on phone with dell to hear i had to purchase a graphics adapter****---Thirded---
 * Intel 82945g Express Chipset Family, Dell Optiplex (I installed older version of the drivers(6.14.10.4299) and issue has gone away, others should test to confirm.)(I have these drivers installed, does not correct the problem)
 * Intel 945 chipset hp media center pc when taking hench from eye to ice video driver causes crash. i found if i only take hero's it does not crash, no explanation i can think of for this.


 * Mobile Intel(R)945GM Express Chipset Family, BenQ S61 - Random system crashes in GWEN. Interim solution: Download and installed latest drivers from Intel (6.14.10.4859). In GW graphics options disable "use best texture filtering."
 * Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family, Alienware Sentia 3450 Mobile - random crashes. Crashed five times during the Norn Tournament.
 * ASUS N6600/TD/128 GeForce 6600 (NVIDIA Drivers) - started crashing during the Norn Tournament and is now crashing regularly outside of the tournament in any map. the colors go prismatic.
 * Nvidia GeForce 6100 Integrated Chipset Family
 * GeForce 6150 Integrated Chipset Family
 * GeForce Fx 5200
 * Nvidia 6200LE PCI-E
 * ATI x600 PCI-E

Many of the Mobile Intel(R) embedded graphics chipsets do support dx9 but not have hardware shaders or hardware T&L. I experimented and found an optimal configuration of using -noshaders without -dx8 on the command line. I have a 915GM/GMS on my Samsung Q1 and can play GW:EN without any crashes on it.

According to this PlayNC support page, Intel Graphics Chips 915 and 945 series are currently supported: http://www.plaync.com/us/support/doc_2664.html?prod=48

Therefore there may be a fix shortly for those who have problems running the game on Intel integrated graphics.

Turning down the graphic option "Shader" to low significantly lowers lag and crashing. NOTE Windows Vista appears to correct any graphical errors it may encounter, allowing you to continue playing past the areas where errors occur. You should note, however, that there is a momentary screen flash while Windows does this, effectively causing problems if you're currently in battle.

*Developer Note: The minimum specification for GW:EN requires a video card with support for pixel shader 1.1. GW:EN uses significantly more DirectX shaders than Nightfall, and graphics cards that do not support shader model 1.1 and above may see graphical corruption or other performance related issues. Graphics cards that do have support for pixel shader 1.1 and meet the other minimum requirements can submit a support ticket to support.guildwars.com.

*Comment to developers: The 3dLabs Realizm Wildcats 500 & 800 are specified as pixel shader 3.0, but they do recently show severe graphics geometry distortion so this is meant as a reminder that something may be wrong in case the ticket does not reach you.