Guild Wars 2

Judging by the numbers I am seeing in game and at events I think it is. Obviously two other mmo’s seem to have had an impact on the playerbase , whats everyone else’s thoughts ?

Yeah .. very much the same like every other MMO has died whenever a new MMO was released.

So yes, the numbers have gone down a little bit if i look at the server list, but at the moment Vaabi is still the only server with low population, while some have gone from high to medium.

Since D3 expansion was released recently and now ESO i don’t see that really kitten bad, and we will see what happens when the free month of ESO is gone.

Where are you looking for those numbers?

WvW Tournament is up, so a lot of players are in WvW including the EotM, those players doesn’t not appear in the world map.

Also we know that Living Story is kinda in a “break” so players that really don’t like WvW and is a bit bored, are also taking a break from GW2.

PvP players will probably wait for the April 15th update to check the new reward system.

2 years without any sizable content release will do that to any game.

Belzebu.3912:

Where are you looking for those numbers?

Look at the server list. If you are guesting a lot you notice that quite some server went from “very high” to “high” there recently

Beldin.5498:

So yes, the numbers have gone down a little bit if i look at the server list

Um.. if EVERY server “looks” like it’s gone down, that’s only because of the fact Anet’s increased the capacity of the servers to hold “home” accounts.

Beyond that, the OP is forgetting that some zones simply dont have enough draw to players to get regular traffic there.

SirusDibley.3716:

Judging by the numbers I am seeing in game and at events I think it is. Obviously two other mmo’s seem to have had an impact on the playerbase , whats everyone else’s thoughts ?

No, I am not seeing a decrease – most people are currently in the start of Season Two of the WvW Tournament. Try to queue up for WvW. It has not decreased, no MMO has done that. There is a normal ebb and flow of players from a B2P game.

It would depend on what server you’re on. People have basically abandoned the weaker servers in droves due to free transfers and the WvW tourney.

Im not too sure about ESO. Personally I’m enjoying the game, but I don’t think it compares to GW2. And the metacrit score for it seems to agree with that.

Beldin.5498:

Belzebu.3912:

Where are you looking for those numbers?

Look at the server list. If you are guesting a lot you notice that quite some server went from “very high” to “high” there recently

totally right here.

You might die faster than GW2.
This topic is stupid and must appear from time to time.
You can’t know if the game dies based on the numbers you see on YOUR SERVER.
2 mmos,Wildstar and Eso?
Both subscription based,players will get bored and come back to the non subscription based game,ofc some will not come back but ESO is nothing more than GW2 2.0.Everyone will love the game because is a new thing but like GW2 after a while gets boring….not the new thing anymore (1500 hours + still not boring for me)

In 2 days my cousin will join the game and he will bring another friend in the game,another reason for me to play even more…we lose players…and we get players..the life of an mmo.

No. I regularly meet people in the zones that are supposed dead. You need to remember that there is a ton of stuff to do in game and that people will be spread out doing different activities and not standing around in LA/DR waiting for people to count them for another doom and gloom thread.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Beldin.5498:

So yes, the numbers have gone down a little bit if i look at the server list

Um.. if EVERY server “looks” like it’s gone down, that’s only because of the fact Anet’s increased the capacity of the servers to hold “home” accounts.

Any official source of that ?

What i else also have simply noticed is that the Ori Maps for Frostgorge on most servers now change nearly every night, while they for long time were mostly stable between patches.

Xae Isareth.1364:

It would depend on what server you’re on. People have basically abandoned the weaker servers in droves due to free transfers and the WvW tourney.

Im not too sure about ESO. Personally I’m enjoying the game, but I don’t think it compares to GW2. And the metacrit score for it seems to agree with that.

I agree with the comment about ESO. ESO is a wannabe game. Let’s see what happens at the 3 month mark. People were to max level in ESO in 12 hours, so the game is that small. I got to lvl 20 quite easily and was bored with the game.

The new D3 content, well that is not an MMO so you really can’t equate GW2 with D3.

Beldin.5498:

Belzebu.3912:

Where are you looking for those numbers?

Look at the server list. If you are guesting a lot you notice that quite some server went from “very high” to “high” there recently

Good part of this is also because the WvW Tournament.
Some servers gt free transfers, HoD for example was a “very high” server and after getting tons of new players is still “very high”, other servers that used to be “very high” got down to “high” because people left to another server.

Dusty Moon.4382:

I agree with the comment about ESO. ESO is a wannabe game. Let’s see what happens at the 3 month mark. People were to max level in ESO in 12 hours, so the game is that small. I got to lvl 20 quite easily and was bored with the game.

You could get to max level in Factions in 3-4 hours, and complete the entire storyline in 10 or less, depending on how you played. Just because it’s small doesn’t necessarily make it ‘bad.’ I played Factions for hundreds of hours and never found myself bored and by many peoples’ standards it was a ‘small’ game.

WoW started to die 10 years ago too.

Most people sadly want EVERY mmo to be like wow as far as expansions and content. i play ESO and love it. im lvl 30 now due to re rolling been playing since the 5 day access and honestly its not that bad of a game. Now back on topic, GW2 did have a small drop in players but tarnished coast starter zones still hit overflow quite often.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Xae Isareth.1364:

It would depend on what server you’re on. People have basically abandoned the weaker servers in droves due to free transfers and the WvW tourney.

Im not too sure about ESO. Personally I’m enjoying the game, but I don’t think it compares to GW2. And the metacrit score for it seems to agree with that.

I agree with the comment about ESO. ESO is a wannabe game. Let’s see what happens at the 3 month mark. People were to max level in ESO in 12 hours, so the game is that small. I got to lvl 20 quite easily and was bored with the game.

The new D3 content, well that is not an MMO so you really can’t equate GW2 with D3.

New MMOs aren’t the problem, the problem is when someone wants to come back to GW2 they see there is no xpac, not even an announcement almost 2 years in…that’s a bad sign. And when the only content getting released is temporary/cash shop/grind related they don’t have much reason to come back even if they are dissatisfied with WoD/ESO.

It feels like ncsoft has but this game on the backburner/maintenance mode ever since wildstar was announced. And yes they do play a major role in what goes into GW2 ($$$).

If Anet did have an xpac in the works now would be the best time to reveal/announce it (ESO is out / WoD on the horizon). But instead were are getting a QoL patch.

nGumball.1283:

WoW started to die 10 years ago too.

3.5 years ago is more accurate. Maybe you’re referring to the first time you heard someone ask if WoW was dying, but in reality it had explosive player expansion pretty much steadily until late 2010 when Cata beta drama and the wind down of ICC jump started it’s inevitable decline. Up to ICC the general consensus was that WoW was continually improving, and from Cata launch on the general consensus seemed to be that WoW was headed in a very bad direction. Even if the numbers were different, the change in community morale in that period felt like a death knell.

What server are you on?

ANET’s living story updates that required zergs to complete caused players to transfer off the bottom 80% of servers into a few mega servers.

WvW leagues reward coverage: you have more players, you win. Players who cared about winning went to a few top servers.

A few weeks ago, anet offered free transfers to the bottom half of servers. A lot of players too this opportunity to get off their sinking ship and transfer to the best server that was free to transfer to.

Tl;DR. Anet updates have been killing most servers, causing big servers to eat the small ones.

Asgaeroth.6427:

nGumball.1283:

WoW started to die 10 years ago too.

3.5 years ago is more accurate. Maybe you’re referring to the first time you heard someone ask if WoW was dying, but in reality it had explosive player expansion pretty much steadily until late 2010 when Cata beta drama and the wind down of ICC jump started it’s inevitable decline.

It was a sarcastic comment directed towards ‘’this game is dying’’ threads. Whenever someone isn’t statisfied with a game, they start posting ‘’omg this is dying’’ and WoW got its first dozen of those few months after release.

I think, enjoying a game or just switching to something else, is far better than wasting time, creating threads like the following.

I haven’t played in months, just logged in to talk to some guildies again. From what I heard, the new update sounds promising enough to make me log on more often again. The beauty of this game is that I can pick it up whenever I want.

The only thing stopping me from playing more often is the lack of challenging content. The reason I played so much WoW and GW1 was because they both had a lot of challenging content. In GW1 I had a lot of fun leveling each class, getting elite skills and armors, vanquishing and doing HM missions. There is nothing even remotly close in GW2. Only things which kept me coming back for more, atleast for awhile, were : SaB, FotM, The Sunless Raids and Liandris. Two of them are not available at the moment and I’ve bored myself to death on the other two. I’m currently looking forward to Dark Souls 2 on PC. I still log on to GW2 from time to time, it’s still a great and fun casual game. But I usually play games for the content and the challenge, I need to get both of them elsewhere.

Again, the new update is looking fairly promising. I’ll definitely check it out. Bit of a shame that I had to buy 3 versions of some cultural armors before they decided to release this QoL update though.

Beldin.5498:

Look at the server list. If you are guesting a lot you notice that quite some server went from “very high” to “high” there recently

Rather if what you’re seeing is that previously bronze servers fell in numbers, what happened was a massive migration to silver.Because migration is spread across a few servers, instead of being concentrated into one, it’s quite possible that none of the servers that got an influx of people went to full, but that those where people ran away from went down to medium, though I don’t think that the server list reflects reality really well. For example Underworld simply died. It’s very much a medium server that we’re desperately trying to revive, but it’s still listed as very high, even though we lost all of our major guilds in the last mass running.

Besides the stupid migration out of bronze servers due to WvW, the game at the moment is on a slower patch. What I mean by that is that the current living story has ended and that we’re waiting for the April 15th update. Afterwards there’s going to be another slow patch before Living Story season 2. So expect to see a lot of people (especially with megaservers) on April 15th and a few weeks after it, because people will be rushing to do all the content to unlock all the traits. Later expect another drop out until we get new content. In my opinion the fluctuation is normal. Look at the drop out that World of Warcraft used to have between expansions (by now it’s actually seriously dying, but before people used to just fluctuate), we’re seeing the exact same thing, except on smaller intervals (GW2 content comes in smaller chunks, but more often, meaning that when living story was up I would see the game alive for about 4 days, slowed down for the next 10), which I like, because we never seen this game as dead for 6, 8 months while the new expansion would be in production.

TLDR, it’s a combination of a break in between living story seasons and server migration. Nothing to worry about.

They’ll be back. ESO isn’t that good and once they realize that they’ll be back.

Beldin.5498:

Belzebu.3912:

Where are you looking for those numbers?

Look at the server list. If you are guesting a lot you notice that quite some server went from “very high” to “high” there recently

It was confirmed servereal times that the population is counted by registered accounts, not active ones, meaning the change is probably caused by Anet tweaking the server-system, prepearing for the mega-one.

nGumball.1283:

Beldin.5498:

Belzebu.3912:

Where are you looking for those numbers?

Look at the server list. If you are guesting a lot you notice that quite some server went from “very high” to “high” there recently

It was confirmed servereal times that the population is counted by registered accounts, not active ones, meaning the change is probably caused by Anet tweaking the server-system, prepearing for the mega-one.

They also have a 50% off sale of the game and they always tweak the servers for this type of thing.

On Friday April 4th at around WvWvW reset time Arena net increased the cap on all servers. This caused server status to show High instead of Very High and Very High instead of Full.

This is most likely due to Arena net expecting an influx of new players due to 50% off sale, and an influx of existing players due to feature patch.

A lot more new players have appeared in the game than you might think.
If anything, I would say the population has gone up from my feelings. I’ve seen a queue on EBG on my server(SFR) at around 6 AM(GMT time)….. Even with our server being #1 in wvw, that was unusual and literally quite insane.

You are all forgetting one thing, just because a server says “HIGH population” does not mean its Active players, it is just the number of accounts made on that server.

the real question you should be asking ANET is, how many ACTIVE players are in the game.

GW2 boasts about millions of players, well i don’t see millions of anything but empty space

RenaissancE.3501:

You are all forgetting one thing, just because a server says “HIGH population” does not mean its Active players, it is just the number of accounts made on that server.

the real question you should be asking ANET is, how many ACTIVE players are in the game.

GW2 boasts about millions of players, well i don’t see millions of anything but empty space

No MMO expect WoW and Eve have a growing player-base. On the other hand, GW2 has one of the biggest populations in the western MMO market. For a game, highly considered casual, it is a miracle how populated the servers are and how WvW queues can take up to 3 hours, almost 2 years after release.

Anet added alot of things to the game since release, something that alot of people totally ignore since they are focused on new zones, classes and such, however, they may have learned by this point that LS alone doesn’t make the player-base happy even if the concept is unique.

A better LS2 with additional feature patches (it was confirmed taht features patches will keep coming) and an expansion announcement in the coming months will blow up the game’s popularity again.

While many people on this forum fancy to bash on the game and it is understandable since that’s why we a have an official forum, GW2 is considered to be the leading MMO in the western market atm, wether becaue it is a quality title or other games are simply bad and both points are accurate. At the end of the day, Anet has an amazing chance now to reveal what they promised, the projects half of their 350-man team have been working on behind the scenes.

GW2 may as well enter a golden age and instead of empty complaints and drama threads, people may want to focus on feedback. The MMO industry has alot of surpriseshowever, aside from Everquest, there is nothing that can threaten the massivness of GW2 by this point and it will still remain the most, commercially sucessful game since WoW, until Everquest changes that or some other games in the future.

What does anything you just said have to do with the difference of ACTIVE players and NON-active players? Server populations are based on how many accounts are registered to that server, so please tell me how your huge paragraph had anything to do with what we are talking about.

Every time there’s a new “big” game release, this topic comes up.

MMOs in general tend to wax and wane with the phases of the moon, so yes, the game is losing some people, but it is also gaining some people at the same time.

Just because you log in and there’s nobody there right now doesn’t mean your server/homeworld is dead. It means that there’s nobody there at that moment. If it is consistently “dead” at the times you play, consider moving to a server that has more people online during the times you want to play. I know a lot of folks who are NA but their homeworld is on an EU server because of this. Not everyone has a 9-5 job and can play during “normal” peak hours.

As for total game population, who cares? It’s up this week, down the next. What truly matter is whether or not you’re having fun.

They actually had to raise server caps this week due to the sale. I’m seeing more players than ever

RenaissancE.3501:

What does anything you just said have to do with the difference of ACTIVE players and NON-active players? Server populations are based on how many accounts are registered to that server, so please tell me how your huge paragraph had anything to do with what we are talking about.

We are discussing the situation of a game, chill instead of being ignorant, I am just trying to explain my point of view, being disrespectful doesn’t really help.

Considering we can’t actually see the full player population, there isn’t really any good way to determine this.

NA cannot see EU.
EU cannot see NA.
Beyond that, they are now launching in China and we won’t be able to see any of them either. although it “should” mean a significant upswing in players.

Judging by just the people you run into isn’t accurate. Judging it by the number of accounts on the servers doesn’t work either. As someone else pointed out a ‘Full’ server could drop to ‘High’ simply because Anet opted to up the cap for total allowed accounts on that server. The only people that know actual metrics (and can definitely answer) are the people that matter – Anet. They aren’t going to tell you anything specific though. The best we’ve gotten from them is that things are progressing as expected, when it comes to population flux.

Everything beyond that on our part is pure arbitrary speculation without any truly concrete statistical evidence.

The game started to die the moment it went live, just like a real living organism. Trying to gauge the actual lifecycle from within, though, is pointless. None of the games that came out are an actual threat to its continuation though, no.

nGumball.1283:

No MMO expect WoW and Eve have a growing player-base. On the other hand, GW2 has one of the biggest populations in the western MMO market. For a game, highly considered casual, it is a miracle how populated the servers are and how WvW queues can take up to 3 hours, almost 2 years after release.

I don’t see it as a miracle since most of the MMO players these days are casuals and WoW also is in the end an ultra casual game in the eyes of all the “real” players from other MMOs.

And i never understood the reason why so many games cater for maybe those 5% of hardcore players that only they get all the shinies while the rest of the playerbase just could sadly see what they never will have.

That i should be able to get the best gear here on different ways, and not only through stupid raiding was THE main reason i started with GW2.