The core of any MMO is the players. When people ask if this game is still being played a lot, that’s actually a good question. If an MMO doesn’t have very many players at all then it turns into a single player game. And since any MMO worth anything is meant to be played with others, it’s gonna lose around 70% of what makes the game fun.
Absolutely.. the players are the core.. and many potential new or returning players look to the forums to gain insight when considering whether or not to spend some of their coin on it.
But when you, I or the OP make threads that asks for opinion on such things as “Is it dieing or not?” or " is an expansion feasible for GW2 and its F2P business model" without any facts other than “my server was quiet at 2am , it must be struggling” doesn’t really do much for the game as a whole.. and if players like the OP really enjoy and care about the game being successful, then such threads will likely hurt it as much as aid it… because that’s what guess work does.
However I will add one small opinion… GW2 to me has many issues for sure, show me an MMO that doesn’t… but I, in no way feel its anywhere close to being a Single Player game because of player population, although many players enjoy that even within an MMO, especially one like GW2 that has attempted to breakdown some of the traditional MMO concepts.
What I see GW2 having problems with is content replay value, something every MMO has to deal with. ANET try to keep the game fresh with small added value content patches, which works for and against the game.. it gets players interest, it draws payers in/back… but it also hives players into areas.. e.g Southsun is always on Overflow so its a sign players kinda like it… but it also means they are not getting around the other maps quite so much and they feel empty.. when the event is over so the population shifts again, some leave till the next thing and others spread out within the game to do whatever they want.
One thing I will say ANET so far have kept their end of the bargain in delivering additional content, features, patches etc ever month.. yes and issues have often dogged their work.. but many other MMO’s I have played fail miserably and often use that “we will deliver stuff to you regularly” as nothing more than a smokescreen for fire fighting issues (SWTOR is a big example of that).
Another thing that needs to be considered is that the game will always fall back in player numbers at some point after launch…. its normalisation of the game – every MMO goes through that phase and will then see peaks and troughs as players grow bored, come back to try new things, expansions tempt them and new players, bugs and issues turn them away…. not to mention things like global economics, trends, new titles being launched etc etc… its a jungle out there, doesn’t mean the game is dieing or expanding… not just yet anyway I hope