Guild Wars 2

I just logged in for the first time in a few months, expecting some fun pvp and silly Heart of the Mists conversation.

What I found was…almost saddening.

There’s barely anyone in Heart of the Mists, nor in the pvp servers.

What has happened to this game? Am I overseeing some kind of area where all players are at the moment?

From the moment I walked through Lions Arch to get to the portal till I got to the Heart of the Mists everything felt so dead..

what sever are you on? Maybe it’s time to switch servers? Underworld is alive and well. Also what hour did you log in at? If you’re logging in at nighttime, yes, it goes dead. Servers are lively at day time mostly.

Spvp is most definitely dead, well because it’s the only form of pvp other than WvW and has 1 mode to play. It got old after a billion matches of the same thing and not being able to enter as a party is very lame to a lot of people, simply the WORD tournament will turn many away, and that’s the only way to go in as a group.

Until they add more modes it will remain a ghost town, not to mention pvp in GW2 is the worst balance I ever seen. It’s like everyone is a vanilla WoW rogue, lawl.

I haven’t logged in at least a month as well, don’t need to check to see because nothing has changed. This was a problem a long time ago.

If you in one of the servers where the “massive guild migration” take place then it’s normal you feel them empty. sPVP became boring and I think the DEVs already heard it alot in this forums.

The game itself is not inclined to grow in population, at the momment. Let’s see if ANet manages to convince the players who are taking a break/stoped to come back with the future “big” updates that are suposed to improve/change/fix the existing content!

The game is far, far from dead. Participation in the sPvP section (which you appear to be referencing primarily), is another story – but apparently there are large updates on the horizon for Feb, and many hope that this will address some of the short-comings.

The rest of the game is absolutely fine and thriving.

this game is not dead.

go on blacktide EU and see what i mean. i see more people running around then in WOW.

Lol kinda funny they say this game is dead.
sometimes there like around 10 people at one event..

If you log in during offpeak hours, yeah its dead on many servers.

However during the day you should be able to find fractals and some WvW action.

The game isn’t dead but spvp is. There will supposedly be a big patch next month focusing on pvp but it seems like most of it will be for WvW.

I gotta say after leveled to 80, done dungeons and WvWvW i dont think im coming back to sPvP until it doesn’t change, the difference between both modes is sooooooo abysmal you can really tell sPvP was designed in a few hours and is the ‘meh we should do this w/e we can just to bring people but dont put too much effort on it’ part of the game

You posted this at 5:30 am on a Sunday morning.

Everyone is sleeping.

Come back in a couple hours. The game is booming.

It’s not dead, it’s just that many people have lost their enthusiasm and gone on “stand by” because of the many issues in sPvP and WvWvW.

Hi – the game is definitely not dead, although at present it is at risk of disappearing up it’s own… er.. fractal

Joking apart, I think the game is fine but there are areas with less activity at the moment. sPvP is one of them although hopefully that will improve with new formats and maps in the forthcoming updates. I’m pretty sure this is on the roadmap for Anet, but we’ll see.

As other posters have said, the time of day makes a big difference. My initial joke refers to the somewhat unusual situation since the November update, where the majority of the end-game population are working on Fractals of the Mists levelling, because at present this is the only place to obtain Ascended items and (a reasonable chance of) exotic item drops.

Anet have commented that in the February and March updates, they will be adding material to encourage players out into the other zones again – so hopefully this will improve too.

I’m out levelling alts on Gunnar’s Hold most of the time and doing WvW – still plenty of people out there in my experience.

Not dead but dying.

There’s noithing to keep players interested or playing long-term as an MMORPG could. So I think the plane they’ve accidentally set for themselves is:

1) Players comb back for the monthly update
2) play for 6 days.
2a) Maybe spend some money in the cash shop
3) Leave until the next patch.

The problem with this strategy is that the monthly update has to be spectacular each time. So far all we’ve seen are holidays which were obviously in the can and completed long ago. What will they do in April? or August?

In short I don’t think they can meet content expectations by making this a once-a-month game.

Zeldain.5710:

Not dead but dying.

There’s noithing to keep players interested or playing long-term as an MMORPG could. So I think the plane they’ve accidentally set for themselves is:

1) Players comb back for the monthly update
2) play for 6 days.
2a) Maybe spend some money in the cash shop
3) Leave until the next patch.

The problem with this strategy is that the monthly update has to be spectacular each time. So far all we’ve seen are holidays which were obviously in the can and completed long ago. What will they do in April? or August?

In short I don’t think they can meet content expectations by making this a once-a-month game.

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

Drapar.1589:

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

For an MMO – GW2 fits the definition of a dying game.

Saw it with Warhammer. Saw it with Age of Conan. Saw it with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The same patterns. And here players don’t even have to pay to play.

The Game is fine. It’s early in the morning and it’s almost everyone’s last day of vacation. People might have things to do.

Zeldain.5710:

Drapar.1589:

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

For an MMO – GW2 fits the definition of a dying game.

Saw it with Warhammer. Saw it with Age of Conan. Saw it with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The same patterns. And here players don’t even have to pay to play.

and that’s a good thing. Personally I see plenty of servers booming. When you can find parties in 10 minutes for a specific type of dungeon, hen you can still find your level of fractal, when there’s still enough people in WvW to make a zerging group, when there’s still enough people in PvP to fill 5 – 10 maps, th game is FAR from dead or dying.

SPvP is kind of a mess right now. From my own experience, it just isn’t worth the time or effort to do.

PvP imbalance is still rather strong at the moment. Still get one to two shot by Thieves and Warriors, and arenas feel dead. I remember for a few hours I ended up in games all by myself. I ran around capping everything and just sitting there doing nothing. Or sometimes you would get a match with one other person. It is quite boring let me tell ya.

And to top it off, the reward is not worth the effort. You are rewarded a random lottery chest. So if I go in there and play my Mesmer, I expect to be able to get tokens or something to get Mesmer gear. No. I get a lottery chest that gives me random gear. Because I totally want heavy armor on my Mesmer. It is frustrating to say the least.

There is just no incentive to play it. And as well the whole not being able to go with your own party kind of ruins it as well. It should be a team thing, not let’s throw you with random people and hope for the best. That doesn’t really scream “structured”.

GW2 wont die, but it dropped a major chunk becouse of lack of content and character/gear progression. Then another big chunk of the casual players still playing when they added fractals.

GW2 will have a playerbase around GW1 size, differance is a mammoth like GW2 requires alot more resources to keep up then GW1

I see lots of sPVP servers up. Just did a few games and it’s really fun. Newbies think warriors and thieves are the OP ones, when all they are good for is noob-killing. It’s the bunker guardians and elementalists that are actually a little on the OP side, but PVP balance wise, GW2 puts all other MMOs to shame.

The PVE side is full of people, even Orr is full these days for some incomprehensible reason. And WvW is kicking as usual.

I’m in LA overflow right now.

This game is doing very well by any indications, and it has sold a ton already.

It’s the other MMOs that are in trouble I think. I hear WoW has lost a lot of subs since MOP already, and SWTOR hasn’t been helped by F2P. Rift, Tera, TSW etc just never really went anywhere.

Zeldain.5710:

Drapar.1589:

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

For an MMO – GW2 fits the definition of a dying game.

Saw it with Warhammer. Saw it with Age of Conan. Saw it with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The same patterns. And here players don’t even have to pay to play.

The difference being those games lost 10x as many players as GW2 in the same period of time. How many servers has GW2 had to merge/shut down? Those other games had already lost up to half their servers this far in.

Just popped back in after a long hiatus and did some dynamic events. I think the lack of similar endgame content of other MMOs is what’s making MMO players in general who are playing 2 or 3 MMOs at the same time … play the other ones as of the moment as they’ve hit 80 on different classes in this game. I’m more of the opposite .. I’m considering coming back to level now. The beauty of the game is that it’s buy to play so excuse me for not wanting to chew through it too fast like other games where endgame is what ppl subscribe for and what they grind and keep on playing for.

I wouldn’t pay attetnion the doom and gloom naysayers. A lot of people didn’t even know Guild Wars until Guild Wars 2 was announced and GW still did fine back then .. this one will too. You realistically cant expect launch numbers as new MMOs will be coming and the MMO market and competition itself is getting more and more fragmented that I doubt any MMO in the future will have success equivalent to WoW or the classics such as Ultima or EQ.

I’m on a hiatus from GW2 and enjoying MoP.

I stopped playing in Dec because:
- introduction of FotM made the world empty, Orr is 95% of time contested, 90% of game is a lobby game in LA, instanced in FotM …. practically like GW1 was, just its gameplay mechanics were ten thousand times deeper
Also the only good drops were coming from FotM, so basically there is no reward from dwelling in the world, especially when down-levelled
- seasonal events made me feel even more like i was playing a slot machine, although with a very sophisticated lighting system, with a cash shop attached to get the change faster
I was expecting real new game content and not cheap real world related lore reusable content, made primarily to catalyse the usage of gems
- lack of constant contact from developers on the community forums, like there was before the game and the forums did launch, and general disregard for the voice of the community (closing/merging threads and more)

So yeah the game is nice, the world is fantastic and the combat feels a little MEH, alike the story, but the management it is so far terrible and this is the real deal breaker for me.
I’ll wait and see what happens, i can, it is B2P after all.

Zeldain.5710:

Drapar.1589:

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

For an MMO – GW2 fits the definition of a dying game.

Saw it with Warhammer. Saw it with Age of Conan. Saw it with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The same patterns. And here players don’t even have to pay to play.

“GW2 fits the definition of a dying game”

With a steady population growth and lots of high population servers with increasing economies on all? Well if that’s your definition of a dying game, what is your definition of a growing one?

Next thing, you’ll tell us that CoD Black Ops 2 was a great innovation for the FPS genre.

ArenaNet should start updating every other week or every week because the game should be more than what people are saying in this Forum

It may not fit the definition of a dying game, but the converse is not true either. Call it a holding pattern on the next patch.

For as many copies as they sold its not doing that well.

SPVP is trash. Cant grp with friends w/o being extorted. If they think that I’m going to pay $15 to do a tourney with the way burst/bunker is in this game they are Hi. Not going to do that when I can play WOW or War and grp with friends all month and get countless matches for the same cost.

WVW culling with thieves is a joke, and if they could have fixed, it would have been fixed.
Cattle hearding in Fractals, eliminating world drops to attenuate the rate at which legendaries are obtained pushing you to the Gem store. Obvious trolls are obvious.
Class balance is a joke and meta is nonexistant.
Bugs beyond belief and class abilities still not fixed. Not even going to get into the fiasco of certain runes.
Tossing out the Manifesto to garner more money. Seems like the Hamster Wheel is alive and doing well which is a sad.

Its an ok game, not great. But so many are this way. There is no perfect game out there, but this one falls way below expectations.

Here is to hoping that Elder Scrolls wont suck or Blizzards next MMO.

The only populated Heart of the Mists is on the Anvil Rock server. You’ll find most of the dedicated NA Teams and sPvP players here .

I love Pvp. I love Spvp. I don’t like capture the point though over and over and over again, it gets boring. We need more modes of PvP. We need Fort Aspenwood.

The game is in trouble and there is no question about that. Ask anyone in the industry.
They shed the vast majority of the players like 65+% of those who started are gone.
PvE outside 7-10pm is dead Do fracs or no loot 4U. Buy Gems Please?
SPVP – life support
WvW – Stale old and only in T1 EB is there ever a Q. No loot 4U. Buy Gems Please?
Feb should see a small update for WvW but personally think it may be too late.

Those people who tout server status as a healthy indicator dont understand that that is the # of accounts to the server and not how many are online and concurrently playing.
Anet has made the same exact mistakes that Bioware did if anyone takes off their fanboi glasses and looks at it. The only thing is this isnt a sub game but it is very easy to see how they are squeezing very hard for people to buy gems to keep things moving. They also didnt have the enormous budget of TOR but they did have the hype. The truth is out there.

The game is dead for at least half a year. There are only 3 people playing and they’re all devs!

…

Right.

In my personal experience, the game is alive and well. My guild is actually growing. The improvements that ArenaNet has planned for the coming months will be vital though.

its alive u talking kitten maybe in your zone its empty

hildegain.2106:

Zeldain.5710:

Drapar.1589:

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

For an MMO – GW2 fits the definition of a dying game.

Saw it with Warhammer. Saw it with Age of Conan. Saw it with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The same patterns. And here players don’t even have to pay to play.

“GW2 fits the definition of a dying game”

With a steady population growth and lots of high population servers with increasing economies on all? Well if that’s your definition of a dying game, what is your definition of a growing one?

Next thing, you’ll tell us that CoD Black Ops 2 was a great innovation for the FPS genre.

What game are you playing cause it aint this one I am afraid. When you shed your mass volume of players ala Tor in 4 months there is no issue? Right.
Server status is just the accounts on that server – does no one read what devs write anymore?
They sold 2Mill copies and need place to put them just in case they log a back in. It in no way shape or form means that the server is current running full online 24/7 with concurrent players.

It’s not dead. Not exactly, anyway. It’s…

(wait for it)

RISEN GW2!

Disclaimer: seems to be alive and well over on Ehmry Bay, anyway.

The game is not dead, but individual servers are dead or dying.

Like Fissure of Woe

… sigh …

Yaki.9563:

Zeldain.5710:

Drapar.1589:

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

For an MMO – GW2 fits the definition of a dying game.

Saw it with Warhammer. Saw it with Age of Conan. Saw it with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The same patterns. And here players don’t even have to pay to play.

The difference being those games lost 10x as many players as GW2 in the same period of time. How many servers has GW2 had to merge/shut down? Those other games had already lost up to half their servers this far in.

I would wager GW2 has lost as many players as TOR in the same period. TOR didn’t merge servers 4 months in it was closer to 7. Plus. that’s a different infrastructure.

hildegain.2106:

Zeldain.5710:

Drapar.1589:

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

For an MMO – GW2 fits the definition of a dying game.

Saw it with Warhammer. Saw it with Age of Conan. Saw it with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The same patterns. And here players don’t even have to pay to play.

“GW2 fits the definition of a dying game”

With a steady population growth and lots of high population servers with increasing economies on all? Well if that’s your definition of a dying game, what is your definition of a growing one?

Next thing, you’ll tell us that CoD Black Ops 2 was a great innovation for the FPS genre.

Population is rapidly decreasing and worse there is no growth path.

Narkosys.5173:

hildegain.2106:

Zeldain.5710:

Drapar.1589:

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

For an MMO – GW2 fits the definition of a dying game.

Saw it with Warhammer. Saw it with Age of Conan. Saw it with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The same patterns. And here players don’t even have to pay to play.

“GW2 fits the definition of a dying game”

With a steady population growth and lots of high population servers with increasing economies on all? Well if that’s your definition of a dying game, what is your definition of a growing one?

Next thing, you’ll tell us that CoD Black Ops 2 was a great innovation for the FPS genre.

What game are you playing cause it aint this one I am afraid. When you shed your mass volume of players ala Tor in 4 months there is no issue? Right.
Server status is just the accounts on that server – does no one read what devs write anymore?
They sold 2Mill copies and need place to put them just in case they log a back in. It in no way shape or form means that the server is current running full online 24/7 with concurrent players.

they sold 2 million copies in the first 2 weeks. The real copies sold number is between 6 and 11 million. I don’t see that massive people shed and I haven’t met a single person that has quit GW2 besides those that come to complain on the forums.

Narkosys.5173:

hildegain.2106:

Zeldain.5710:

Drapar.1589:

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

For an MMO – GW2 fits the definition of a dying game.

Saw it with Warhammer. Saw it with Age of Conan. Saw it with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The same patterns. And here players don’t even have to pay to play.

“GW2 fits the definition of a dying game”

With a steady population growth and lots of high population servers with increasing economies on all? Well if that’s your definition of a dying game, what is your definition of a growing one?

Next thing, you’ll tell us that CoD Black Ops 2 was a great innovation for the FPS genre.

What game are you playing cause it aint this one I am afraid. When you shed your mass volume of players ala Tor in 4 months there is no issue? Right.
Server status is just the accounts on that server – does no one read what devs write anymore?
They sold 2Mill copies and need place to put them just in case they log a back in. It in no way shape or form means that the server is current running full online 24/7 with concurrent players.

Nope, it’s the amount of players currently logged in. The guy who said that was not a dev but a cc (community coordinator) and wrote it in a misleading way. Servers fluctuate on a daily basis because people log on and off and not because new accounts are created and deleted every 12 hours.

Part of what’s got a disparity between servers is, IMO, folks trying to consolidate onto some of the bigger ones. Tarnished Coast gets a lot of transfers in and is busy in lots of places.

10 am PST Shatterer on Sanctum of Rall

http://i.imgur.com/3yVk6.jpg

Looks plenty lively to me.

Narkosys.5173:

hildegain.2106:

Zeldain.5710:

Drapar.1589:

you know what a dead game is right?

or a dying game.

look at Battllefield 3 / Diablo 3.

For an MMO – GW2 fits the definition of a dying game.

Saw it with Warhammer. Saw it with Age of Conan. Saw it with Star Wars: The Old Republic. The same patterns. And here players don’t even have to pay to play.

“GW2 fits the definition of a dying game”

With a steady population growth and lots of high population servers with increasing economies on all? Well if that’s your definition of a dying game, what is your definition of a growing one?

Next thing, you’ll tell us that CoD Black Ops 2 was a great innovation for the FPS genre.

What game are you playing cause it aint this one I am afraid. When you shed your mass volume of players ala Tor in 4 months there is no issue? Right.
Server status is just the accounts on that server – does no one read what devs write anymore?
They sold 2Mill copies and need place to put them just in case they log a back in. It in no way shape or form means that the server is current running full online 24/7 with concurrent players.

So your argument falls down to “It’s dying because I said so” sorry kid but that’s not a good argument and without evidence to support your claim, you’re just sitting and yelling about nothing.

The decline of ToR subscriptions was well-documented by EA even due to protests against EA and Bioware, comparing Guild Wars 2 that has maybe 100 people on the forums complaining that the game isn’t for them is somewhat laughable.

During even the lower population hours (2am) I’m still able to do dungeons, fractals, sPvP, WvW and group events with not many problems.

If you really think the game is dead, then why are you still here? Why don’t you move on?

As with those other games that fell quite a bit (but aren’t even dead themselves, yes ToR is STILL alive) they put on MASSIVE sales and incentives for people to play. So far Guild Wars 2 seems to be in cruise control and I only see the server list and general population increasing.

Please, don’t make a fool of yourself, it must be fun to troll about a game you dislike but you need to know when to say goodbye and play something you DO enjoy.

Karizee.8076:

10 am PST Shatterer on Sanctum of Rall

http://i.imgur.com/3yVk6.jpg

Looks plenty lively to me.

I know the argument already! “You could have taken that image months ago!” and other whiny child nonsense.

Zeldain.5710:

Population is rapidly decreasing and worse there is no growth path.

I see no evidence of this, so I don’t think I’ll take your word for it.

Drapar.1589:

this game is not dead.

go on blacktide EU and see what i mean. i see more people running around then in WOW.

Lol kinda funny they say this game is dead.
sometimes there like around 10 people at one event..

10 a measly 10, you make it sound like a lot, try getting 25-30 for some of the DE’s in Orr.

10 it’s generally unusual to get more than 5 in an area.

Actually now that prime time is in full swing, it’s obvious the game is growing. Everything is zerged and there’s overflow/queues.

Not only have there not been server merges, but server capacity has actually been increased since launch

ArenaNet is not only not firing, they are still hiring even more staff. And the only thing they’re hiring them for is GW2.

This game is already huge, and is on the way up.

I think it’s mostly transfers however there is a large chunk of us who pretty much aren’t going to waste our time with the loot issues we’ve been having until they fix it we won’t be seen. Many people you’ll see here on the forums and a large number you won’t see who are reading daily, are just not logging into the game until these problems are fixed. No reward for time spent will kill a game faster then anything.

Solid Gold.9310:

Drapar.1589:

this game is not dead.

go on blacktide EU and see what i mean. i see more people running around then in WOW.

Lol kinda funny they say this game is dead.
sometimes there like around 10 people at one event..

10 a measly 10, you make it sound like a lot, try getting 25-30 for some of the DE’s in Orr.

10 it’s generally unusual to get more than 5 in an area.

10 people at an event in a large zone, that means that there would likely be a few hundred people in the zone doing things.

Go to WoW where you could run through an entire zone and find NOBODY because most people are spending their subscription time raiding. Really, don’t try to look stupid.

So lets see. The professional complainers think the game is dead. The entertained are convinced the game lives.
The complainants have numbers to back them, the entertained have numbers to back them….
What to think … what to think…….
Lets see, we also have the content locusts complaining of no endgame, we have the casuals stating that there is more to do it’s not about the endgame.
I see some posts stating in one sentence about no balance with professions yet in same paragraph also make the mistake of saying their all like a particular one….
Hmmmmmm…… so much convincing propaganda from both sides..
What to do ……
I know !
I will log on and play the game for myself! If I likes (which I do btw) I will stay!

Mirta.5029:

they sold 2 million copies in the first 2 weeks. The real copies sold number is between 6 and 11 million. I don’t see that massive people shed and I haven’t met a single person that has quit GW2 besides those that come to complain on the forums.

This is outright false.

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/37350/guild-wars-2/

Even if we assume that every single one of the 2 million copies sold in the first two weeks is a digital copy and thus not counted among the above figures (which we know isn’t true), that still only totals to under 4 million copies sold.

And given that many of the copies in that 2 million overlap with the retail sales in the link above, it would be far more accurate to predict a conservative 3 million or so copies sold. Nowhere NEAR 6 to 11 million copies of GW2 have left the shelves.

There is the fact that this is still a recession, and that overall game sales have dropped. Guild Wars 2 is one of the few that has been doing consistently well right now.

I get my kicks for pvp in WvW, as it is much more fun and varied. I find the instanced pvp bland and uninteresting, other than to screw around on occasion. I just don’t like the maps or the game mode. In fact, I enjoyed the holiday pvp events more so than the actual ones we always have.

Also, I’ve been getting more and more WvW queues lately, not the opposite. Just because people find one aspect of the game uninteresting, doesn’t mean the game as a whole is dying. It is booming in other areas. The population is also more spread out doing different things compared to release time. Although, a lot of my guild hardly plays anymore, so I wouldn’t say everything is hunky dory, but there are also a lot of new people still coming into the game. I think the majority of people that didn’t like the game are already gone, and I don’t feel like it’s bleeding out in game either. It actually feels like it’s slowly increasing again due to holiday sales/activity.

Mirta.5029:

They sold 2Mill copies and need place to put them just in case they log a back in. It in no way shape or form means that the server is current running full online 24/7 with concurrent players.

they sold 2 million copies in the first 2 weeks. The real copies sold number is between 6 and 11 million. I don’t see that massive people shed and I haven’t met a single person that has quit GW2 besides those that come to complain on the forums.[/quote]

I haven’t laughed so hard.

They sold 2 million the told us about. Maybe another 500 000 since then. And the actually amount of people playing is but a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that.

GW2 has peaked. It’s now a struggle to retain and push them into the cash shop. Growth is over.