Guild Wars 2

So recently I started playing again, and I don’t really see a lot of players, I’m only level 50 and I find it annoying to have to do an event alone :/ especially if you can’t really do it alone. What is Guildwars’ playerbase at the moment? and is it at all increasing? I personally know of a lot of people who just got bored and left. :/ Just scared the game kinda dies out…

Go to LA, everyone is there cause the only effective way to do anything at the moment is to run FotM.

There are about 60,000 threads with people feeling your pain. A lot of people have left, and those that remain are in instances.

There’s no motivation to do PvE for anyone who has already done it, especially areas that aren’t max level.

I see, I’m just scared the game dies out. Hope Arena Net can do something or know of something to do

In my opionion the game will not die out but lose a lot of players cause they are pissed with the change in Arena Net’s philosophy or because they change wasn’t enough for them.

Yeah, this is a pretty bad time to start up again. The population’s in flux, lots of people leaving or playing less. Not a lot of newbies joining. You can also thank Anet for channelling everyone into LA for the FoTM grind.

I consider myself to be a casual player and I have a full set of exotics.

There is no horizontal or vertical progression left in the game for me to do at the moment. While I would be interested in chasing after a Legendary or Ascended I will not do dungeons which prohibits me from obtaining either at the moment.

Until they add some sort of progression to the game that doesn’t require dungeon play, many players like myself will just sit on the sidelines tapping their feet impatiently waiting.

Yea this was a fear that I was having ever since launch. Due to the split of the community for FoTM however there are many of the steadfast GW1 that didn’t like the change and left.

Why not check out Operation: Union over at players helping players?
It’s a massive thread full of many players from a lot of different servers. Those there are more than willing to help you!

There are a lot there that are lvl80 or near it. But more than willing to assist you in the low areas, we’re just folks that look for some good company.

I’ve run AC story/explore over a few hundred times, do I get bored?
NO!
Just because it’s worth it seeing someone complete their first dungeon for the first time.

I’ve been running the dungeon since 27 till 80 so I still need to explore the world.

Looking for some good people Union is the place.

Funnily enough, the places that I visit always seem alive. If you’re on the map, see an event and can’t do it alone, yell on the map chat. Leveling 2 chars at the moment and this is what people do. Every single zone as far as I’ve seen has between 10 and 30 players at all times.

Mirta.5029:

Funnily enough, the places that I visit always seem alive. If you’re on the map, see an event and can’t do it alone, yell on the map chat. Leveling 2 chars at the moment and this is what people do. Every single zone as far as I’ve seen has between 10 and 30 players at all times.

This is very true- atm I’m lvling my alt and all that is needed is just to ask in map chat, link a waypoint and people will come.
Last night my husband and I wanted to do an event but we needed more people, we asked and since the nearest waypoint was contested we set about opening it up with the 5 others that came to our call, then we did the event.

Later one of those players asked for help with a champ and we rushed over to help- so it goes. Help with a Skill point, vista, champ, event- just ask

I have the same experience at Mirta actually. It’s kind of funny really. I’ll be going around an area and see a few people running around most times. But when I run into an event everyone comes out of the wood work. It’s like a group of ants finding candy.

Map chat has a good number of people talking and asking about what events are up.

I was playing in the Iron Marches and the Blazeridge Steppes zones and saw a lot of people running around, not just at events. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone in these higher level zones (never been there before) since people kept saying they’re dead.

My guess is it’s your server. Mine’s definitely not dead.

Blaqdot.5279:

I see, I’m just scared the game dies out. Hope Arena Net can do something or know of something to do

I am too man. It’s ridiculous the glaring problems that haven’t been fixed. All we can do tho is hope for the best when the next patch arrives which i believe is Dec 14th.

Ya it is dieing mostly because Anet doesn’t do what it says, still havent finished the game while continually working on new content they might as well spit in our faces. Plus fail to communicate effectively allowing people to believe they don’t really care. While engaging in manipulating the market place, making it more difficult on casual players. Fundementally and systematically making the game more difficult by adding DR and other game ruining systems.

To me it looks like their trying to kill the game.

I don’t think the game will die out just cause people like myself stopped playing. I don’t have the metrics to see how many people are still playing, for example everybody who logged in no later than 1 week ago and were online for at least an hour. However you want to measure it.

But yeh I do wonder why Anet felt they wanted to create a big persistent world and then chase everybody into instances. They might as well have skipped the troubles of the persistent world and instance everything. Seems that between FotM and WvW there’s not much else the game is about right now. You don’t need a big persistent world for that.

So I don’t think the game will die but it probably will be a small game just like all the other MMOs that made exactly the same mistake: Start with a lot of noise and big talk and then not fulfill the promises. Kinda like politics I guess

Volomon.9147:

Ya it is dieing mostly because Anet doesn’t do what it says, still havent finished the game while continually working on new content they might as well spit in our faces. Plus fail to communicate effectively allowing people to believe they don’t really care. While engaging in manipulating the market place, making it more difficult on casual players. Fundementally and systematically making the game more difficult by adding DR and other game ruining systems.

To me it looks like their trying to kill the game.

1. The game is far from dying. Almost all servers are either full or high population.
2. What did they say that they haven’t done?
3. “still haven’t finished the game while continually working on new content they might as well spit in our faces” while the game has bugs here and there, like all games, it seems pretty finished. Since when extra content is getting spat in the face? “If you buy a bread loaf you get a bread loaf free” “I don’t need the extra bread loaf, that is equal to punching me, I’m really insulted sir!”
4. “While engaging in manipulating the market place, making it more difficult on casual players” I have not seen any market manipulation from Anet’s side. Except for ecto drops. Ecto should drop more often. Tier 6 mats drop nearly all the time in high level zones though, so I would not say that drop rate right now is bad.
5. “making the game more difficult by adding DR and other game ruining systems” so your way of playing the game is sitting there and grinding the same mob in the same area day after day? Do more than one activity and you will not even notice DR.

Mirta.5029:

1. The game is far from dying. Almost all servers are either full or high population

This depends on the server limits. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Nowadays high/full is like yesterday’s low.

Vakirauta.6397:

Mirta.5029:

1. The game is far from dying. Almost all servers are either full or high population

This depends on the server limits. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Nowadays high/full is like yesterday’s low.

Somehow I’m still able to catch people in every zone that I go to. Lion’s Arch is always on overflow of course, but I’ve hit the notifications that WvW is full too and also have seen plenty of people leveling from scratch again. When I joined my server at the start of the game the population was medium and it doesn’t look like it has fallen in those 3 months at all.

Mirta.5029:

Somehow I’m still able to catch people in every zone that I go to. Lion’s Arch is always on overflow of course, but I’ve hit the notifications that WvW is full too and also have seen plenty of people leveling from scratch again. When I joined my server at the start of the game the population was medium and it doesn’t look like it has fallen in those 3 months at all.

And please do tell me why you think LA and WvW has more players than in other zones. Though I’d also like an answer to why other zones are left out empty. Thank you

Vakirauta.6397:

Mirta.5029:

Somehow I’m still able to catch people in every zone that I go to. Lion’s Arch is always on overflow of course, but I’ve hit the notifications that WvW is full too and also have seen plenty of people leveling from scratch again. When I joined my server at the start of the game the population was medium and it doesn’t look like it has fallen in those 3 months at all.

And please do tell me why you think LA and WvW has more players than in other zones. Though I’d also like an answer to why other zones are left out empty. Thank you

Because most of us reached level 80, explored the full map and decided instead of investing time grinding the zones with our level 80s to do something fun and run dungeons, do fractals, play in WvW and PvP. And like I said, I’m yet to see a SINGLE empty zone. I thought that the norn town was empty. Then I’ve seen how many people are waiting and playing the barrel scoring game. I’ve entered seemingly low population areas, only to hear about an event, rush there and find 30 more people. The fact that you don’t see them on a map that’s 2 times bigger than a WoW map does not mean that they’re not there. Try yelling about an event on a map chat.

Mirta.5029:

Since when extra content is getting spat in the face? “If you buy a bread loaf you get a bread loaf free” “I don’t need the extra bread loaf, that is equal to punching me, I’m really insulted sir!”

A better analogy is that you purchased a particular artisanal style of bread, the baker leads you to believe that this new style of bread is going to be a regular item in his shop. After a little while, the baker not only discontinues that style of bread, opting for a more bland mass produced unhealthy style of bread, but he takes the loaf of bread that you’ve already purchased and replaces it with his new mass produced crap and tells you that that’s the way it has always been.

4. “While engaging in manipulating the market place, making it more difficult on casual players” I have not seen any market manipulation from Anet’s side. Except for ecto drops. Ecto should drop more often. Tier 6 mats drop nearly all the time in high level zones though, so I would not say that drop rate right now is bad.

Anet has not only held a recent precursor lottery to vastly increase supply of precursors, but they have also added huge sinks for T6 mats, which have helped drive the prices up exponentially. Also by increasing gold rewards in comparison to loot rewards, and by placing incentives in the game that drive players away from farming mats. This all had an enormous effect on the in game market. I had thought that they had an economist working on their staff, how could they drastically change so many incentives like this?

Everyone is concentrated in one point, because ANet seems to have the foresight capabilities of a stone, and instead preparing new content that would affect the entire world, they made an update that put it all in one spot, then told us that “we’ll see it coming in the future in other places”, instead of holding onto it and releasing it all once it’s ready for the entire world.

Then players get a feeling of ‘urgency’ as some players that stand or even enjoy the grind repeat something again and again, getting ahead of them in their gear progress.
People who would rather explore and play all over the world have to choose between sticking to one spot and get the shinnies, or do what they like to do, but get Junk. Literally.

And then, once they add better, more fun and/or easier ways to add the stuff, those who spent countless hours repeating things will complain that now things are easier than when they did it.

So what I do is wait. As I did with many things in GW1, and as I should have done with many others.

I won’t be among those who ground and then realized they wasted their time. I will be among those who get to do things they way things should have been from the start but wouldn’t.

And what if they don’t change things?
Well, then I’ll just wait some more. Unshakable, Defiant, Determined.

In the recent interview GW2 was surpassing all expectations. My server(stormbluff) is packed every second of the day. The sky really isn’t falling…….

Even though I started playing at the 3 day head start I’m currently only level 17 and 23…

Got to 23 took a two month break and then came back with this new level 17 one. Probably once I reach 80 I will quite forever. Cos I don’t feel like dungeons at all. I hate dungeons. I want PVP, good balanced PVP which it’s currently not.

As I keep saying, it’s following the history of WAR strike for strike. It’s morbidly fascinating how closely the two are tied. WAR had a power plateau, then it didn’t. WAR had good PvP ideals, then it didn’t. WAR had lots of players in its public missions, then it didn’t. Everything that counts for WAR is counting for GW2.

And WAR is now pretty much dead. I’m not holding out much hope for GW2, to be honest. If they’d designed this game well, they would have put great reasons to keep a player in a zone, in each zone. Even GW1 did this. But I think a lot of the people who worked on GW1 aren’t those working on GW2. At least not the important ones.

AuldWolf.7598:

As I keep saying, it’s following the history of WAR strike for strike. It’s morbidly fascinating how closely the two are tied. WAR had a power plateau, then it didn’t. WAR had good PvP ideals, then it didn’t. WAR had lots of players in its public missions, then it didn’t. Everything that counts for WAR is counting for GW2.

And WAR is now pretty much dead. I’m not holding out much hope for GW2, to be honest. If they’d designed this game well, they would have put great reasons to keep a player in a zone, in each zone. Even GW1 did this. But I think a lot of the people who worked on GW1 aren’t those working on GW2. At least not the important ones.

WAR died because it was a bad game. I don’t know anyone that played that filth for over a month. It was released with half the content that was promised and what was released was buggy and untested. Vertical progression had nothing to do with that fail mmos death.

Reaver.9256:

In the recent interview GW2 was surpassing all expectations. My server(stormbluff) is packed every second of the day. The sky really isn’t falling…….

Good for you…you’re on a full server. Many of us are not, and it breaks the game.

Vakirauta.6397:

Mirta.5029:

1. The game is far from dying. Almost all servers are either full or high population

This depends on the server limits. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Nowadays high/full is like yesterday’s low.

Exactly. No way 2/3 of the server are “high”. ROFLMAO

Let’s alter the data to make it look like our game is thriving in general when in fact only about 1/3 of the servers are and probably another 1/3 are game-breaking desolate.

I don’t think GW2 is dying, I think the fractals and poor open-world rewards are encouraging people to focus on dungeons. The drop rate bug is part of that problem, once it gets fixed more people will be in PvE.

I see a ton of threads about this, and the answer is always the same. ASK IN MAP CHAT. There’s only a few times when asking in map chat hasn’t gotten a response, and only when I kind of expected that (middle of the workday US, for example). GW2 doesn’t have a way to see players near you unless they’re in sight, so a lot of people are missing other players. It’s pretty funny to see someone complain on map chat about how the zone is empty, and 10 people respond with “Here, but busy. Do you want something?” Or I’ll make a random remark and start a conversation if I’m feeling lonely.

Server does make a difference. – if your server is way down the population list than that makes a difference. My server (Henge of Denravi) definitely isn’t full and we always get creamed in WvW, but there’s almost always someone around in PvE. Henge is about the middle I think.

Oh, and I second Operation Union. It’s a fun group of people, and I represent whenever I’m soloing just for the guild chat. They don’t mind multi-guilding, I represent my other guild when doing other stuff. They do dungeon runs pretty frequently too, for both NA and EU.

I doubt the game will just completely die but there are some issues facing it.. Difficulty of events at lower levels less people playing on entry now. There is the gold issues some say they find it harder to make cash .. I seen a few posts from GW1 players like myself that do not like the way the game is set up. I like the game but find a few things a challenge being I am pretty much a solo player. And I know there are guilds ect ect but at times I am anti social :P

Then there is the fact that its the holidays less people around or busy in real life to play. Basically there is a ton of reasons of people not playing. I think GW2 needs to make a few changes to make it a a fun long term project..

Blaqdot.5279:

I see, I’m just scared the game dies out. Hope Arena Net can do something or know of something to do

TLDR at the bottom

The thing is it’s not even about the game being “bad” it’s about the game not doing anything to keep you playing. I had an amazing time going from 1 to 80, in fact i never had such a great experience leveling in mmos. and then what?

i’m not talking about a gear treadmill/stats grind but almost everything at 80 is a massive grind. Legendaries? I don’t think i even need to say anything, pvp rank? it take hundreds if not thousands of hours to max out, ascendant gear? i can’t tell since i stoped playing 1-1.5 months ago but i was told it take an insane ammount of that new instance run. Even getting gold is a huge grind and take forever.

I don’t know about other people, but in games i like to set myself a goal, when the goal is unreachable (legendaries, maxed out pvp rank, etc) i just stop playing and move on to another one.

There are a lot of legendaries in the game and arenanet can add even more, why not make legendaries easier to get so getting SEVERAL legendaries is the big deal,(note here that legendaries should still be hard to get but not THIS hard, specially when classes use different weapons in different situation) why not make pvp rank faster and add more rank/skin in expansion so maxed out people have things to do

Leveling alts? for what? hitting that same brickwall at 80?

TLDR: everything at 80 is a massive grind so people quit the game when they hit that brickwall, There’s nothing to look foward to unless you give up your life and play 24/7 if you want anything in a reasonable ammount of time. Even then, Farming the same pvp maps, farming the same events, running around for orichalcum ore can’t really keep you entertained long

jmhart.2036:

Vakirauta.6397:

Mirta.5029:

1. The game is far from dying. Almost all servers are either full or high population

This depends on the server limits. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Nowadays high/full is like yesterday’s low.

Exactly. No way 2/3 of the server are “high”. ROFLMAO

Let’s alter the data to make it look like our game is thriving in general when in fact only about 1/3 of the servers are and probably another 1/3 are game-breaking desolate.

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/6915/99384436.png
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/9392/52397020.png

1. They’re not allowed to alter such information, because they’re being checked by more than one company. If they altered their own information there would already be a case about it.
2. If they would lower the population cap wouldn’t that mean that they would need to open more servers?
3. Like you can see I’m currently in high population server. Guess what? I’m seeing 10 to 30 people a ZONE. Where are you exactly that it’s that empty?

The population “description” they have said isn’t based on the number of people on a time SOLELY. It also has to be based on how many people who have ever been on that server might pop back online for a special event so it doesn’t break.

Full means “we aren’t letting more people switch to this server at the moment”. It doesn’t mean “this server is full of players spread out amongst the world, who would be happy to be your friend!”.

They’ve said they can change these limits as they see fit, so other companies can’t tell them they are lying when Anet hasn’t said “Full means full of people online right now”.

The fact that you’re taking it upon yourself to convince us all we’re not feeling like the pve maps are dead tells us that you’re not an objective opinion. If you wanted to have your say, you could have said your peace and let others say theirs.

Fara venator.3908:

i’m not talking about a gear treadmill/stats grind but almost everything at 80 is a massive grind. Legendaries? I don’t think i even need to say anything, pvp rank? it take hundreds if not thousands of hours to max out, ascendant gear? i can’t tell since i stoped playing 1-1.5 months ago but i was told it take an insane ammount of that new instance run. Even getting gold is a huge grind and take forever.

Excuse my naivety, but “farming PvP maps”?? The concept of “farming” PvP is somewhat alien to me. If you are not participating in PvP simply because you like the PvP… then why the hell are you there?

And to be fair, if Legendaries were made to be easier to aquire, then they need a name change (and then they would need to have a replacement to fill the spot of long term goal). There are already plenty of people with Legendaries already. There would be nothing “Legendary” about them if they were easily attainable.

As for other cool weapon skins that require a bit of an effort? There are plenty of those, some easily crafted, and some that can rival Ledgendary components.

Should their be more skins, and more titles? Yes. But that doesn’t mean that Legendaries should be reduced to something everyone can get. As for titles, yeah, they need a whole lot more.

There’s nothing to look foward to unless you give up your life and play 24/7 if you want anything in a reasonable ammount of time

Bollocks! Even though many people eagerly await more skins, there are plenty available with varying amounts of commitment required. If you don’t want to shoot for the stars, then aim your sights lower.

Surbrus.6942:

Fara venator.3908:

i’m not talking about a gear treadmill/stats grind but almost everything at 80 is a massive grind. Legendaries? I don’t think i even need to say anything, pvp rank? it take hundreds if not thousands of hours to max out, ascendant gear? i can’t tell since i stoped playing 1-1.5 months ago but i was told it take an insane ammount of that new instance run. Even getting gold is a huge grind and take forever.

Excuse my naivety, but “farming PvP maps”?? The concept of “farming” PvP is somewhat alien to me

This was a strange response. What you quoted wasn’t said by anyone.

Just type: need help on map chat with this and that and then copy paste nearest waypoint. I always come if I can to help others. Am sure there’s other people like me on the servers, at least I hope am not alone

Catcrafter.3917:

Just type: need help on map chat with this and that and then copy paste nearest waypoint. I always come if I can to help others. Am sure there’s other people like me on the servers, at least I hope am not alone

There are lots of people who do this. In some zones I haven’t gotten responses (depends on time of day usually), but even in the middle of the day usually someone responds, or if I’m online and someone needs help I respond.

Clark Skinner.4902:

This was a strange response. What you quoted wasn’t said by anyone.

I didn’t quote the guy’s entire post because that would have been messy, and a more streamlined post looks much better. Instead I broke it up and used a bit of paraphrasing, a very common thing to do.

Your post is the only strange one here.

Gilosean.3805:

Catcrafter.3917:

Just type: need help on map chat with this and that and then copy paste nearest waypoint. I always come if I can to help others. Am sure there’s other people like me on the servers, at least I hope am not alone

There are lots of people who do this. In some zones I haven’t gotten responses (depends on time of day usually), but even in the middle of the day usually someone responds, or if I’m online and someone needs help I respond.

When I was young (about lv15 :p) i was walking in woods and collecting berries when this giant-champoin-spider-ugly-thing murdered me for no real reason. So i respawned and came back seeking revenge, he one shot me… I came back 2 more times and he wiped the floor with me. So.. I get frustrated and plead for help on map chat for players to help me get my revenge! Like 10 people showed up and we kastrated the bastrd. Since then I always help other players :p

Try a new server. Try a new one each week until you find either a good server or a good guild.