Guild Wars 2

I’m doing my character, still not level 80, and I find it embarassing that in pve, I don’t see anybody. Each map, there are 3-4 person doing hearts, events, but it’s not enough for me. It’s like a single player with guild chat. I want to play with big groups, jumping from event to event without party, like in the beta. It was so cool, that you looked somewhere, and you saw thousands of players climbing a mountain for a group event, but now, I see only mobs… It’s not good. My suggestion is, you should merge servers in pve. I mean, 4-5 servers in the same area (I mean european or NA) into one server. It won’t effect anything, and you don’t have to implement the guest system. It’s baaad now, please I have been waiting for this game for 5 years (read articles about the game, felt in love), played betas, and now I have 130 hours because there are no players to play with. I won’t tell to my friends that it is a good game, because they should get disappointed. Please, make a change.

Love, David.

To be fair, most people are probably going to be doing the Halloween events until they’re over.

On top of that, you could also be on a smaller, fairly inactive server. Server transfers are still free, so you could always move to a more populated one and see if that changes things – but decide after the Halloween stuff.

I think mergers will come at some point, but it’ll be interesting to see how soon. The media will usually present news of server mergers in a way that suggests a game is dying, and that’s not exactly the type of image ArenaNet wants of their game so soon after launch.

I said the same thing on FB site for our server, everyone lol’d fact is even before the event I gave up leveling my alts because nearly every zone was dead. Villages that get attacked, and taken over, are always taken over, champions spawn and roam with not a soul showing up to take it down. I’ve even noticed that Cursed Shore is dead most of the time.. The game is more busy now during the holiday, but not much more. Longest I’ve spent in overflow was about 2 minutes, and I haven’t been in overflow out side a town in 6-7 weeks.

@ Bonzoso

To true, but at this rate its inevitable. ANet constantly shoots themselves in the foot, the number of players are most definitely dwindling faster than SWTOR even. I really have no idea how they can stop the bleeding, it seems they are trying to make a game no one wants to play.

So was there a point to putting this post in suggestions? It certainly doesn’t look like it since it appears to be another doomsday kittenching post.

My suggestion is to merge servers?

Well the server are at full work/load; i just think most ppl. already have at least 1 character at level cap and they either are having fun with the Halloween event or are simply “alting”.

This happens in every MMO, sadly Anet ddint find any formuala to keep “maps” busy all the time, a reason to go back to like “Lonar Pass” except for the Jumping Puzzles does not exist. So, here my suggestion :

Add some random-task to the Daily Achievement, like on :

-Mondays
complete 5 events for the daily task in Lonar Pass
-Thuesday
complete 5 events for the daily task in Queensdale
-Wednesday
-complete 5 events for the daily task in Mount Maelstrom and
-complete 5 events for the daily task in Orr

Also reduce the amount of kills needed for the daily achiev. from 60 to 30. You could also add a challenge : complete 5 events in under 60min in Tyria;…

Dobi.4168:

My suggestion is to merge servers?

You can´t merge just 2 servers, WvWvW requires are thrid one. And tbh. did you even look at the status when you log in? Every server is at FULL-Load.

Just because people are not in the area you are playing in does not mean the server has a low population.

The problem is many servers are WVW based which makes the pve world seem too empty. Sea of Sorrows used to be full of players in PVE but now we got too many WvW guilds walking in and its basically a solo trip around Tyria. Personally I think its kitten that WvW is 24/7 forcing a major population of the server to only do WvW. WvW should be server specific so the reamaining servers are availible for those who like pve.

But only a set amount of people per server can do WvW at one time, most cities except for LA are sparse at best. So where are the rest of the people? Is a high pop server only 1,500 – 2,000 people? We should find out server capacity, even though this doesn’t change the fact that zones are nearly dead.

Hmm.. merging servers for certain maps certainly sounds like a good idea.

I notice the drop in players as well. The first few weeks the game was live there was people everywhere doing all kinds of events. Now it`s like a wasteland, at least on anvil rock it is. Slowly and steadilly you saw less people and more bots. Only time you see anyone is when they show up to fight the claw of jormag. It`s a shame too. This game had some really good potential and still does.

Like the Underflow suggestion: just merge the pve combat zones. There’s no reason not to merge servers temporarily just in PvE. We can still stay separate for WvW but we will have enough people on a map to take down champions and do all of the content that was designed to require groups.

Just because a server is marked FULL, doesn’t mean it is full of players who are still playing. We need to cull the ones who have quit or only play once every few weeks. Or move everyone active to a new server.

My friend and I have noticed this quite a bit as well. No zone has any amount of players anymore. If there servers are full it is only because of the bots.

There are a few problems that are causing this at the moment. Botting, hacking, exploits have caused significant damage to many parts of the game and are one piece of the puzzle. For example, many players have simply left because the problem is so open and not being taken care of and plainly irritating. Also the economy of the game is broken because of said bots, so there is not much reason to harvest, farm, craft anything at all when it is just cheaper and more time effective to buy it.

Another problem I would say is the poorly done random rewards of champions and chests. You do a major time consuming event or jumping puzzle and what do you get for it, most times nothing. The cost of your gear repair may be more then the few blues you get for a reward. This is why many of these things are undone, because they are difficult, sometimes frustrating, or time consuming and not rewarding at all.

So what we are left with, is basically a broken economy, no point to crafting, no rewards for events/jump puzzles. My question would be, why would you level an alt? or go to a low level area? Lets be honest most of the hearts are pointless chores and the personal stories are fairly dumb.

And please do not say everyone is WvW. I play mostly there and 6 out of 7 days of the week, there are like 10 people on.

I hate to say it, but at this point the game is dieing. ANets inaction and lack of communication has caused people to start leaving, we have seen it time and time again with other MMO’s. I wish they would stop ******* with stupid holiday events and get their **** under control first. Who ever is managing this game is driving it into the ground. But that is just my opinion.

agree with that and the reason i don’t make any new characters.

I would really like to know what server’s these people are on that keep complaining about low population. I usually play late in the day and at night when I would expect the server population to be low and never seem to be a shortage of people. Sure, there is not the hoards of people on like before but ever time there is an event or I’m downed, even if the map seemed empty, someone always appears to help.

The Halloween events have defiantly pulled people away from leveling. All event areas including LA are always full and I’m always thrown in OF.

Population dropping faster then SWTOR? LMAO not even close. That population dropped like a stone only a few weeks after launch.

I don’t think the population has dropped as much as people think. It’s just that the population has been spread over the entirety of the map. I can spend time on my high level and see no one, then switch to a low level and see lots of people and vise-versa

Some areas are full like LA others are deserted. It comes and goes. So the dynamic server merging or certain zones ie: underflow server would work very well without creating bad press.

They created a system for an overflow server so it should not be that hard to create an OPTIONAL underflow server join. I for one would click on the join button if I was in a deserted area facing a Champion alone. I actually tried soloing one of the champions a few hours ago… Not a good idea.

Underflow servers for the people of Tyria!!!

It would have been great if you only had 6 servers instead of over 30>_> 3 servers for each region on the world. I can’t understand using such a huge number of servers, this is the first game i seen do that.

Alexander Quess.1932:

I would really like to know what server’s these people are on that keep complaining about low population. I usually play late in the day and at night when I would expect the server population to be low and never seem to be a shortage of people. Sure, there is not the hoards of people on like before but ever time there is an event or I’m downed, even if the map seemed empty, someone always appears to help.

The Halloween events have defiantly pulled people away from leveling. All event areas including LA are always full and I’m always thrown in OF.

Population dropping faster then SWTOR? LMAO not even close. That population dropped like a stone only a few weeks after launch.

I don’t think the population has dropped as much as people think. It’s just that the population has been spread over the entirety of the map. I can spend time on my high level and see no one, then switch to a low level and see lots of people and vise-versa

Halloween event’s have only been going on for a few days, the population issues OP mentioned have been going on for a few weeks now. If it’s not a starter zone or an end zone (60+), it’s pretty much empty.

Halloween might have brought some players back that will stick around after the holiday events (fingers crossed), but I’d guess things will go back to what they were afterwards. Although I think the problem has a little more to do with that there’s not much reason to spend time in those areas more than anything else.

All the high/full servers are lying about their status

i think that Anet has released the game too soon without any proper testing regarding bugs and balance. (long live the money making machine…)

O look yet another MMO with this thread two months into the game.

Another possible solution is to temp merge the competeing WvWvW servers

I can go to any map on Yak’s Bend on my level 80 and I see little lowbies running around doing events. Sounds like you are on an unpopular server. Too bad for you. Maybe use the free transfers they provided. Stop trying to fear monger that the game is dying because you can’t find people to play with.

by now even a lot of the exploring types are at 80 and joined the ones that did it old style and powerleveled … Look at the horizon. That dark cloud is the rest of the server.

Since other initial problems are becoming public knowledge the influx of new players is slow and hesitant.

Cappy.2786:

All the high/full servers are lying about their status

No they are not. It is just that all the players are spread out and concentrated in a few popular areas. WvW, PvP, Dungeons and Halloween events.

This means that many of the low level areas are deserted. It is the problem we saw in headstart in reverse. Imagine when the game first started, you went to a level 80 zone as level 2, you would find it deserted, while all the newbie zones were so full you were always being kicked into overflow.

What they need is an underflow server.

I think the population is doing just fine. The population of all the NA servers is either “full” or “high”. The thing is, since the larger part of the people that bought the game are now in the higher level zones, and have stopped exploring and found their “niche” so to speak. What I mean by this is that most people are doing dungeons, WvW, sPvP, or farming PvE (i.e. Cursed Shore).

That having been said, Anet DOES need to implement something to encourage all of us 80’s, and people with map completion, to go back to the lower level zones. Someone above suggested doing this with the dailies, which is a great idea.

1: Your not level 80 – Population is top heavy

2: Many places that give rewards are not lower level content, they are dragons/dungeons.

3: Dungeons are instanced and not open world so the players won’t show.

4: There is no real reason to go back aside from 100% the game

5: Orr is really “farm zone” so 80’s chill there

6: The game was meant to be pick up/put down compared to games like WoW so players are – Doing just that (they get exotic set and quit).

Most important – All post WoW games have a drop off. Get used to it, the genre itself is dying.

some of my in-game friends jumped from Henge of Denravi, and i could not get into their new server (dragonbane?) all weekend. they suggested waiting for the slow times, but never eluded what those were.

I would have to go with Dead’s points. Most people are level 80 by now, farming/questing in the highest level zones, doing the halloween stuff in lion’s arch or its a distinct possibility they are taking a break. guild wars 2 has the ability to stop playing for awhile and come back when there is new content. some of my friends aren’t logging on because of mists of panderia. definitely give it some time, wait for the holiday event to end to assess whether it is worth changing realms. hopefully everything works out.

In the beta, the concentration of people was higher than normal populations because:
1. Fewer servers
2. Testing server load
3. Summer time (school’s out)
4. Many people in lower levels (because we all started at 1)

Now many things would lead to few people being in (especially) the higher level zones.

1. Some people like to level slower or aren’t really concerned with leveling at all
2. Some may be playing pvp, which does not require a level 80 pve character
3. Some may be doing WvW

and so on. This is where people argue to join an active guild that promotes partying up. Or the idea of dailies in certain areas (though it would exclude players who didn’t have those places, and that goes against the idea of GW2 being as nonexclusive as possible). That could be used anyway, if the daily was similar to a zone completion and was available for all zones.

And then there’s the bots. The bots are probably the biggest problem right now. Besides affecting the economy, their presence makes gamers like me avoid whatever place they are at. Nothing breaks the aesthetic appeal of a game then seeing a group of 10 rangers with the same exact face and every one with a juvenile brown bear, and all of them following the same path over and over. Remember, their presence takes up space on your server – which means less people in areas playing with you, and more of them in small areas farming.

6: The game was meant to be pick up/put down compared to games like WoW so players are – Doing just that (they get exotic set and quit).
Most important – All post WoW games have a drop off. Get used to it, the genre itself is dying.

On the contrary, this game was and is meant for the long run. Guildwars was also meant for the long run. In other words, it will be continually added to and improved beyond the basics of expansions and story continuations. The difference between it and other MMOs – you are not required to play it every day in order to feel competitive in the long-term game. You can play for 10 minutes and stop for a while. The addiction of games like WoW is at an end. (For those who like that sort of play, there are plenty of things to keep you busy here, but the difference is.. there is less of an urge to keep going nonstop.)

Last night I was questing in Sparkfly Fen and there was a champ shark, champ jungle troll, and champ risen spider all at once but no one responded in map chat when i told them. This was however after Act III started so people were in LA farming the Mad King. It’ll normalize when the event is over.

same here i went on avil and after i left the strating zone,hardly seen players and was hard to get the stuff down with out the hated word"grinding"

Winchestur.6513:

Last night I was questing in Sparkfly Fen and there was a champ shark, champ jungle troll, and champ risen spider all at once but no one responded in map chat when i told them. This was however after Act III started so people were in LA farming the Mad King. It’ll normalize when the event is over.

Good to see at least someone understands that a lot of people are going to be busy with the Halloween events.

Clark Skinner.4902:

Just because a server is marked FULL, doesn’t mean it is full of players who are still playing. We need to cull the ones who have quit or only play once every few weeks. Or move everyone active to a new server.

Just a note on this . Those servers are marked full by online/offline, not number of accounts who call it their home. Otherwise there would have been no way for me to get on Stormbluff Isle when I started a couple weeks ago, much less help my friend get on there a few days later.

Population drop in general is probably a thing, but it’s not nearly as bad as people think. Out of the 2 million purchases the first week or whatever I would think maybe, at worst, fifteen thousand of them have no plans to play anymore. That’s less than a single percent of the number of sales . Free server transfers have made a lot of the lower-pop servers even more barren. As they are still around, I would suggest making use of them to get into a High or Full pop server (note on Full: you may have to keep refreshing the display before the Full server you want is lowered to High, but it -will- happen). ANET’s mistake was not so much a mistake as a safety net, and it’s working. Now that the net has caught all the stragglers on the low servers Free Transfers opened up so you can fight your way into the throngs of people. Plus, you know. Halloween and WvWvW have concentrated almost the entirety of every server’s population to Lion’s Arch/the surrounding zones.

Did anyone coming from WoW notice that before Mists arrived, there were doomsday posts on their forums about the game dying? Yeah. They even had a slightly higher percentage of the population quit playing by the time they’d reported the official numbers than my rather pessimistic estimate about GW2. What makes it seem like they didn’t lose players? Population consolidation. They went through their too-many-servers phase already and had to do their share of server/battlegroup mergers to keep things reasonable for the players (and even still some servers are just as dead/lopsided as the lowest population server here). If anything is dying, it’s mass interest in the genre from people as a whole, sort of like what Dead said. Guild Wars is taking it a different direction than the established money-making precedent however, and I see no reason to believe it will die any time soon (and seriously, Star Wars sank like a rock. Almost 2/3 of their servers were deader than dead by two months in. Guild Wars is doing fabulously so far (Deader is a word as established by Planescape: Torment)).

Archmortal.1027:

Clark Skinner.4902:

Just because a server is marked FULL, doesn’t mean it is full of players who are still playing. We need to cull the ones who have quit or only play once every few weeks. Or move everyone active to a new server.

Just a note on this . Those servers are marked full by online/offline, not number of accounts who call it their home. Otherwise there would have been no way for me to get on Stormbluff Isle when I started a couple weeks ago, much less help my friend get on there a few days later.

Basing this on fact or a guess? Maybe people transfered off stormbluff while you transferred on.

Clark Skinner.4902:

Archmortal.1027:

Clark Skinner.4902:

Just because a server is marked FULL, doesn’t mean it is full of players who are still playing. We need to cull the ones who have quit or only play once every few weeks. Or move everyone active to a new server.

Just a note on this . Those servers are marked full by online/offline, not number of accounts who call it their home. Otherwise there would have been no way for me to get on Stormbluff Isle when I started a couple weeks ago, much less help my friend get on there a few days later.

Basing this on fact or a guess? Maybe people transfered off stormbluff while you transferred on.

Observation. I’m rather unwilling to believe that people transfer off one of the most populated WvW servers every 5 minutes.

-edit- To elaborate, I also don’t believe the status changes from Full to High based on a single transfer/logout. It’s far more likely for a number of people to be logging out about the same time than a number of them to be transferring at the same time.

I don’t believe the population is falling, not on my server that is (Yaks Bend), I always see people wherever I go. I would think that more and more people are becoming more widespread across the map, or jumping over to a lower level area to help a new friend level or something like that. It’s a pretty big map for ~1500-2000 people in a full server.

It won’t mean dying, if Anet merges the zones. It would be great. Please, answer Arenanet!

Reason not many players you see around PvE or in Tyria, is because of events such as the current holoween festivities.

And aside from pve itself, many players are active within the PvP aspect of this game, more so than PvE, for example World vs. World is filled with active players. sPvP is bustling with players everywhere.

It’s just a matter of looking at the most mainstream places and there you will find your main active places.

Dobi.4168

It won’t mean dying, if Anet merges the zones. It would be great. Please, answer Arenanet!

Well it’s not dying as it is, really. Merging the low-pop zones between several low-pop servers would be a good idea, but I don’t see a reason to apply it across the board. On Stormbluff Isles I consistently see plenty of people (pre-Halloween) going about their business in Queensdale and the other starting areas. I even see up to 8 people participating in a single escort event at times.

Some people stay in WvW/sPvP/Dungeons/Orr whenever they’re on and some people are making alts. It’s all about what’s hip and happening at the moment, like YumCHA said, and as soon as Act 2 of the Halloween event started I instantly noticed many fewer players in the starting areas farming Candy Corn/doors in favor of the areas with the pages for the second Mad Memories book, and now that most people have that they’re all isolated in Lion’s Arch for the dungeon.

I would like to suggest on merging servers, or adding more exciting and captivating contents on the less active areas.

I have to wonder if some of these folks ever played other MMOS? The population on my server is very high, others said the game needed to be polished more ROFL….This is the most polished game Ive ever played this early on, WOW maybe was more polished, but I didn’t play that, seriously the game is great, Im having a blast.

Maybe there are a couple low pop servers….but mine is great, server merging is not a good idea, it will only hurt the game as it will be made to look like the game isn’t doing good.

Truthfully I wasn’t a huge fan of GW1, but I love what Im seeing in GW2.

If you want the game to be a major success represent it, spread the word, talk about it on all these MMO sites, all folks need to do is make some posts and say GW2 is a blast, and folks will come, only reason I decided to give it a try was reading a lot of good reviews, a month after launch I had NO Intention of playing.

Glad I am now tho.

I have to wonder if some of these folks ever played other MMOS? The population on my server is very high, others said the game needed to be polished more ROFL….This is the most polished game Ive ever played this early on, WOW maybe was more polished, but I didn’t play that, seriously the game is great, Im having a blast.

Maybe there are a couple low pop servers….but mine is great, server merging is not a good idea, it will only hurt the game as it will be made to look like the game isn’t doing good.

Truthfully I wasn’t a huge fan of GW1, but I love what Im seeing in GW2.

If you want the game to be a major success represent it, spread the word, talk about it on all these MMO sites, all folks need to do is make some posts and say GW2 is a blast, and folks will come, only reason I decided to give it a try was reading a lot of good reviews, a month after launch I had NO Intention of playing.

Glad I am now tho.

The only reason there seem to be less people now then in the beta is due to the fact that the player level ranger is much more spread out, so there aren’t just massive zergs of people in every area (excluding the high level zones such as cursed shore and straights of devastation, main due to people farming karma). There are still about the same amount of players active, your just not seeing them because their spread out throughout the world (which is quite large if you haven’t noticed…)

I feel the same OP. Only log in to level my alt when I know my friends are online, else the PVE side of things feels deserted. Even in Orr, it’s only somewhat busy at peak time. Mostly, champions roaming around as you said, with noone to team up with. Truth is, the PVE side of the game is a bit of a let down, yes you can farm, if you care about gold or a legendary, if you don’t, exploring is the only thing to do – though frankly, hardly any fun when you’re alone in the zone, not counting an occasional little army of bots here and there, plus, I’d rather not complete the whole map on one character, as that leaves nothing new for an alt. And makes subsequent leveling process a bit dull.

Looking forward to the first proper content patch and hoping some fresh, new ideas will be implemented to counter the many little issues. It’s such a great framework, so much possibilities.

Dead.7385:

1: Your not level 80 – Population is top heavy

2: Many places that give rewards are not lower level content, they are dragons/dungeons.

3: Dungeons are instanced and not open world so the players won’t show.

4: There is no real reason to go back aside from 100% the game

5: Orr is really “farm zone” so 80’s chill there

6: The game was meant to be pick up/put down compared to games like WoW so players are – Doing just that (they get exotic set and quit).

Most important – All post WoW games have a drop off. Get used to it, the genre itself is dying.

This is probably the most accurate explanation to be had. I agree to all, but 5, and only because Orr has really died off lately. Most people I see are in LA, or standing in front of what ever dungeon doing “LFG” spam.