Guild Wars 2

I am an inactive player that is hoping to come back to GW2, if it’s worth it, of course. I was wondering how the population is now? I’ve logged in on my thief in Cursed Shores, and it seems to be deserted? Perhaps there’s a new location to grind for money? Is the game worth coming back to? I saw the Halloween advertisement, and I was excited because of last year’s event with the jumping puzzle.

The game isn’t… dead…right? It’s still highly populated and perhaps even more players have joined to make the community grow? It’s been a long time, so I don’t really know what server I’m in, lol. I will have to find out.

Depends on what server you are. If I go to frostgorge or orr on my main server, there is no one there. I could run around for hours and find no people. On busy servers like EU desolation there are plenty of people to do events with.

Some servers nearly died out, some got new guilds and people transferring there from those dying servers. But in general, there are less people playing the game now. Like aspirine said, deso is pretty active, so check it out.

According to the most recent message from Devs numbers have been steadily growing for months.

Very likely still not back to launch numbers but it’s easy to see that the population has been growing.

People are transfering from low populated servers to the active ones, so some servers die out while the active ones grow, which I see as a good thing. There are servers with a good reputation and people want to go there, if not for the WvW aspect you can guest anyways.

The Tier 1 WvW servers are most likely the ones with high population, so for EU it would be Piken Square, Seafarers rest and Vizunah Square if you’re french.

The most populated servers on NA are Tarnished Coast, Blackgate, Jadequarry and Sanctum of Rall. I’m on Jade Quarry and it’s very populated here.

Guild wars 2 has the most stable pop i have ever seen in a MMO since WoW(every MMO is pretty much dead within months after wow, but it has been a year and gw2 is doing well and Anet says pop is rising not the other way around)

But there are servers that have a low pop and ones that are more than healthy, but yes Gw2 is worth coming back to, content every 2 weeks and the game is not dying.

The game isn’t growing, the game isn’t dying. There was a drop in population after launch and it has stabilized. I don’t believe PR speak about their population. I have played on low population servers in which I could find no one around. I played on high population servers that had plenty of people around.

But I will tell you one thing, the experience is way better on high population servers. Way better. So if you can, try to guest on one and see how you like it compared to your server.

If you have to level a new toon it’s pretty dead after level 20ish, but if you have an 80 and you want to hang out in LA there’s ton of others who will be there with you.

overall population has grown but activity fluctuates(currently in a dip) and is spread out throughout more activities than before.

server-specific populations are mostly driven by WvW performance(and vice-versa) since all the PvE elements can be done on any server thanks to guesting.

I recommend that if you’re on a dead server right now, guest to the rest until you find one you like. Then and only then spend the money.

The reason I urge you to do this is that some servers are high population, but the quality of said population is not “ideal.”

What I mean is that if it were me, I would rather be on a less populated (not empty) server where most are friendly and helpful than on a higher population server with idiots and trolls that make up the bulk of the population.

I just left my home server, which I started on day 1 because the population has become one of trolls and guests from other servers. The native population seems to have degraded into trash talking kiddies, and I didn’t like it… So, I moved. The server I am on now seems to actually DO the content, and finish it, and actually has a lot of fun doing it, so please, make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into before you transfer.

Some servers are half dead but some are good,I play on Piken Square and i remember when i joined it it was “med” population but server rapidly growing.Right now Piken Square is on “high” population,WvW and arena PVP is vary active here,leveling zones are more or less deserted but farming maps such as frostgorge are vary active,as much that sometimes thakes them 2 sec to kill champ

It varies, but in general the population is quite healthy.

However GW2 hasn’t really had an MMO come and challenge it yet, which most other MMOs couldn’t claim.

It will be another 6 months before TESO and Wildstar really put GW2’s longevity to the test.

TESO will have WvW that is 100 times larger than that of GW2 and Wildstar seems to be adopting much of GW2’s combat design choices.

So I imagine both will be taking a significant bite out of GW2’s population.

I think GTA5 took a few people, and the upcoming Pokemon game will take away players, as well.
More on topic, you’re more likely to find people if you stick to a tier 1 server, or possibly tier 2 if you’re on at the right time.

Dee Jay.2460:

It varies, but in general the population is quite healthy.

However GW2 hasn’t really had an MMO come and challenge it yet, which most other MMOs couldn’t claim.

It will be another 6 months before TESO and Wildstar really put GW2’s longevity to the test.

TESO will have WvW that is 100 times larger than that of GW2 and Wildstar seems to be adopting much of GW2’s combat design choices.

So I imagine both will be taking a significant bite out of GW2’s population.

Now if only they didnt have subscriptions and if only wildstar didnt look so godkitten awful.

Just think how awesome it’s be if we didn’t have servers and have a district system instead. The zones would always be full and no need to worry about server mergers, times of day and being able to join your friends no matter where in the world they are…

Server mergers are inevitable at some point along the way, especially with world events like Teq driving players towards the higher population ones.

Hard to judge populations especially when you have no reference, but I can say that I’ve been playing since early release and compared to now I honestly see no difference in population. It seems as populated now as it was then.

I’m confident I’d notice if it was becoming a ghost town, so the fact I’ve seen no difference at the very least means it is probably stable. I’d be lying if I said for a fact it was growing, because how the heck would I know that.

Talking about personal experience (Yak’s Bend server, about 8:30 to 12:30 EST), the population seems healthy enough. LA is always full (even if I log in at 7 am like I’ve done a couple of times this week). Starter areas seem populated enough that I always see people running around and calling up events (at least up to level 25 areas). Queensdale is a special case for starter areas, though, because of the champion train, there are usually LOTS of people there calling up events and stuff, but unless you ask they’ll just name the event and won’t say where, expecting people to already know. Mid level areas are much more empty (much more so than near release), but I still see someone running around every now and then, and usually 2 or 3 other people show up on events. The exception is when a big boss event is happening in the area.

The big events (dragons and other bosses) are VERY active, to the point that this last couple of weeks I’ve been sent to overflow twice. Tequatl is an exception as he was exceptionally buffed on previous patch and is now a very hard encounter, most people doing it are doing it in overflows organized by big guilds (but the upside is that joining one is VERY easy and they only ask you to represent for the tequatl fights).

Dungeons seem to be being done a lot, at least according to the LFG tool. It looks empty sometimes, but if you keep it open for a little while usually groups appear and are filled so fast that sometimes you don’t even have time to read the group description before it fills up.

Overall I’d say that population (again, on Yak’s Bend) has been mostly stable, or at least it’s the impression I get. Lots of areas seem much more empty than they were around release, but others seem to have lots more people.

Dee Jay.2460:

It varies, but in general the population is quite healthy.

However GW2 hasn’t really had an MMO come and challenge it yet, which most other MMOs couldn’t claim.

It will be another 6 months before TESO and Wildstar really put GW2’s longevity to the test.

TESO will have WvW that is 100 times larger than that of GW2 and Wildstar seems to be adopting much of GW2’s combat design choices.

So I imagine both will be taking a significant bite out of GW2’s population.

I honestly don’t see Wild Star succeeding with P2P, just looks like the same old thing and does not have an already installed franchise fanbase like FF14, Warcraft and TESO had/has.

TESO………eh, haven’t been keeping up with it so can’t comment on that.

Still wish we had “underflow” servers for “dead zones”.