Guild Wars 2

chemiclord.3978:

Well, let’s break it down like this.

Say the 500,000 number is accurate, even as merely an average.

There are 51 worlds… now granted, some worlds are more populated than others, but that will average out to 9,804 players per world at any given time.

From there, we have 28 explorable zones, 6 cities, 17 different WvW groups with 4 maps each, and a sPvP area. Assuming an even distribution among all those areas (which again, despite being a logical fallacy is simply to prove a point), it averages out to roughly 96 players per map.

Now when you consider the reality (where most players gravitate to certain worlds and most hover about in cities), it’s easy to see that even when you have 500,000 concurrent players how some places can look really, really lonely.

There is no 500,000 number. It’s 430,000 PEAK concurrency, which means it’s the highest ever… not the constant. That could have been just after the game came out, for example.

Haha. Definitely not. Three out of four of my friends quit this game, and I asked them to take a look at some of the new content recently. Two of them logged in and played for about 5 minutes, then logged out and said they’d rather play barbie dolls with their kids or get hit by an oncoming train. The other person logged in for about 10 seconds, calmly logged out and uninstalled GW2, then took the disc and threw it out the nearest window into his backyard, to which the dogs happily devoured it and tore it apart.

I’ll tell you my experience. I had to keep switching guilds because I was pretty much the only one that ever logged in anymore. And they were massive guilds too! Each had just over 470 members, and they were thriving a few months ago. I am now in a guild with 100 members, of which 30 are active every few days. I can’t find anyone in PvE (and I play PvE for like 6 hours a day), and I can’t even capture a mini tower in WvW because I’m the only one there. Honestly, even patch days are looking sad on my server. There used to be huge numbers of people that showed up. Now I’m lucky to even get 7 people for Jormag or any other meta boss.

Zeldain.5710:

There is no 500,000 number. It’s 430,000 PEAK concurrency, which means it’s the highest ever… not the constant. That could have been just after the game came out, for example.

I know that the number wasn’t constant. I was saying even IF the number was constant, that really doesn’t translate into swarms of people everywhere as far as the eye can see. There are going to be swaths of territory uninhabited even WITH that high of a number.

Saying “the game isn’t growing” due to that experience may or may not be accurate.

The 450k at any given time was akittens PEAK. Please, stop the speculations.

Is it growing? I dont know. They broke all their promises, and I believe that many players who bought the game are really disappointed from the direction that the game takes.

Its hard to “re-hype” the game again and lure more people to buy it, when they have an access to the information about how the game really is.

Maybe someone is going to buy it out of boredom, or just out of curioisty. Is this growing? I think not. Cosnidering how many people quited already.

Galtrix.7369:

Haha. Definitely not. Three out of four of my friends quit this game, and I asked them to take a look at some of the new content recently. Two of them logged in and played for about 5 minutes, then logged out and said they’d rather play barbie dolls with their kids or get hit by an oncoming train. The other person logged in for about 10 seconds, calmly logged out and uninstalled GW2, then took the disc and threw it out the nearest window into his backyard, to which the dogs happily devoured it and tore it apart.

I’ll tell you my experience. I had to keep switching guilds because I was pretty much the only one that ever logged in anymore. And they were massive guilds too! Each had just over 470 members, and they were thriving a few months ago. I am now in a guild with 100 members, of which 30 are active every few days. I can’t find anyone in PvE (and I play PvE for like 6 hours a day), and I can’t even capture a mini tower in WvW because I’m the only one there. Honestly, even patch days are looking sad on my server. There used to be huge numbers of people that showed up. Now I’m lucky to even get 7 people for Jormag or any other meta boss.

Ladies and gentlemen, the most hyperbolic post in the history of the GW2 forums.

Seems to be more stabilized active player wise, but growing in that new active players are constantly replacing inactive players to some percentage of the overall active population. Currently you just see less overall since most are off doing the new super zerging content. But sure, growing since this is a b2p so sub numbers just don’t count. Just like f2p, marketing loves it because they can boast of accounts created vs. actual active players, thus can spin it as a popular game when it’s really not. I think we will have a better idea of things by the two year mark as with most games, but certainly GW2 isn’t a failure like those that were washed out in their first year. IMO I think it’s doing well overall.

Zeldain.5710:

Vayne.8563:

Actually I know quite a few people who have paid a sub and don’t play a game. In fact, I know people who continue to pay for subs for games they don’t play.

Don’t ask me why.

I’m sorry, but the percentage of people who are PAYING monthly for a game and NOT playing it is minute, at best. And if you DO believe what you’re saying, then surely you have to agree that box sales in no way reflects active players…

Don’t move the goalposts – there’s nothing wrong with asking ArenaNet to define “active” players just as Blizzard has done.

Then, and only then, could we get a bead on the original topic of “is this game growing” because anecdotal evidence we have shows the opposite.

By the way, this isn’t directed at “you” specifically but rather the collective “you” including ArenaNet

We don’t know that. Again a lot of people subscribe to games long term..because it’s cheaper, and they think they’ll be playing a long time and stop. Not most, but not necessarily few either.

Take WoW’s idea of who plays. Now they can’t players in China as subscribers, even though none of those players actually subscribe.

They count people who bought a year’s subscription to WoW to get D3 for free (because then the year’s sub only cost them like 30 bucks). Are you saying 5 guys bought that? A million? No one really knows.

It was a good enough offer where I even considered it…and I’d almost never have played WoW…certainly not for a year. But every single person who bought into that deal…the annual pass deal, is considered a WoW subscriber. We don’t know how many people bought the annual pass, but I guarantee you not all of them play WoW still, or even really played it at all.

Thirty bucks for a year’s subscription plus the price of a game you were going to buy anyway? How many people would YOU say that is?

Then you got games like Rift. When it launched, Rift was like magic. I really enjoyed it. It rapidly went down hill. I enjoyed it enough to buy a long term subscription. Why? Because it was cheaper per month. I only paid $120 for 12 months, so ten bucks a month instead of $15. I was the only guy who did it.

At that time, a ton of people who loved the game at launch were walking away. The forums were, at least annecdotally full of us. Everyone I started playing the game with left.

Rift kept getting more new people because they kept having free weekends and selling the game for 5 bucks and stuff like that. Good promotion and good uptake, because the starting zones were great.

But Rift probably never had a million people at one time. They were just good at rotating players.

Guild Wars 2 is good at that too. A lot of the original players have left. Some have come back, but no one can say the percentage. That said, if 75% of everyone who played the game left, and then more people come and like it…the newer people are actually less likely to leave. Why?

Because they’re starting a game that is as it is. They don’t feel they were promised a game with no ascended gear, because that’s already in the game. They don’t feel the living story is kitten, because if they bought then game when it started it was already here. It’s not a change for them. So if they like it, they have more of it.

I think the people who originally bought this game looking for a specific experience, one like Guild Wars 1 were disappointed. This is particularly true of the competitive PvEer’s and the PvPers. But then there were a whole lot of people who played Guild Wars 1 non-competitively in PvE and never touched PvP. They just played (like me).

And I’m not so sure most of us are disenfranchised. As an annecdote there are 120 people in my guild and almost half of them have played Guild Wars 1 and probably a third of them consider themselves Guild Wars 1 fans.

But we don’t really know enough about any company to talk about goalposts. Because every company, including Blizzard, tries to make themselves look better. I’m convinced that was the purpose of things like the annual pass in the first place. They get both D3 sales and a chance to artificially raise the subscription rate of WoW for a year. I’d be stunned of at least a million people didn’t take Blizzard up on that, who had no real intention of playing WoW longer than just checking it out briefly.

Erasculio.2914:

Vayne.8563:

Actually I know quite a few people who have paid a sub and don’t play a game. In fact, I know people who continue to pay for subs for games they don’t play.

Vayne, you are not too complex to understand. The reason why so many, including myself, don’t care your comments seriously isn’t because, as you claim, others see you as someone who thinks ArenaNet can do no mistake. No, it’s something subtler than that.

I went to Guild Wars 2 looking for a fun game. Others came here looking for a way to “work” in order to show off in front of fellow players. Others wanted a place where to socialize with other people, some wanted a place where they could be the annoyance that gank fellow players from the shadows without the chance for a fair fight, and so on.

All those groups are different, but there is one even more different than all of those: the players who came to Guild Wars 2 looking for a life. Those who embrace escapism to an infinite degree.

You talk a lot about your life. We know you are 51 years old, retired despite being relativelly young, and that you spend your days taking care of someone who’s crippled (in some meaning of that work), probably your wife or your yourself. You mentioned in that /age topic that you spend more than 12 hours per day playing this game.

In other words, Guild Wars 2 is your life. You or the person you are stuck with cannot run through a grass plain like the one in Queensdale. You cannot do something productive with your (real) life. GW2 is pretty much everything you have.

That’s why it’s hard to take your opinion seriously. All the “I know a lot of people who like this”, “I have talked with a lot of editors who agree with me”, “everyone in my guild loves that aspect of the game” comments are empty – they are just baseless comments lacking any evidence, from someone who plays this game because he has no other option, not because he simply wants to.

This post shows how little you actually understand me, even though you think you do. No one is going to understand me from a few sentences on a forum.

I have a life. I play this because my wife (who I care for) plays this too. See, spending time with your wife is part of having a life, whether you’re retired or not. But we also do other things. I read…I still write, I have friends (both real life and online). You really don’t have a clue.

I play this game to have fun, this isn’t a life for me. In fact, this game has specifically failed to be the kind of escapism I crave…because it’s not immersive, something I’ve commented about in multiple threads.

But I don’t care if you misunderstand me. I don’t even care if you ignore or don’t take seriously what I have to say.

Because there are enough people that do take me seriously and those people are the people I’m talking to. People who want to judge me one way or another…they’re perfectly welcome to do so.

Doesn’t change reality one single jot.

Sylv.5324:

Danikat.8537:

It seems to me Anet is in a lose/lose situation here.

If they don’t say anything it’s because the game is failing and they don’t want us to know.

If they do say something, even providing numbers, then it’s obvious they’ve wrangled it to look good to cover the fact that the game is failing.

[…]

What would convince people that the game isn’t failing?

Nothing. These folks are obsessed with GW2 failing because it didn’t meet their personal expectations. People have been using the exact same lines, argument, contradictory statements, accusations, and such since before launch.

Others then get all panicked and demand hard numbers. I suggest switching to busy servers for the latter ones, and stop angsting about whether the game will die. It won’t for a long time (GW1 is still going). It won’t tomorrow, it won’t next month, and it won’t a year from now.

Again, people are straying off what this topic was originally intended. No one here is saying gw2 is failing, we are merely collecting opinions on what people feel about the issue.

On a side note, if anet was totally transparent about their numbers, people wouldn’t have any doubts about it. But obviously, we can see a lot of flaws and reason on why they particularly chose to present any figures that way.

For example, instead of showing max players ever on in the INITIAL 9 months, they could have gave us an average player online per month as a bar graph. Obviously, that would show an increasing or decreasing trend which Anet does not want us to see. Regardless, all i’m asking for in this thread is do you feel a difference in people comparing now and a month or two back.

Yep no one is obsessed with GW2 failing here its you people that are obsessed with people posting negative post always wanting the game to fail….

The game population is growing, regardless of anything else, or where the population stood before it started to grow. This is currently a given.

When it starts to fall again they will introduce a new system, or new reward structure to entice players back, or increase sales/player retention. If the current system works and brings in players/retains players, nothing substantial will change.

Just pay attention to the releases. When you start seeing a bunch of new ideas and systems being implemented you haven’t heard about months in advance, it means they are trying to entice players.

It ain’t rocket science.

Is the game growing?

(Shakes magic 8-ball)

Answer hazy, try again later.

CobaltSixty.1542:

Galtrix.7369:

Haha. Definitely not. Three out of four of my friends quit this game, and I asked them to take a look at some of the new content recently. Two of them logged in and played for about 5 minutes, then logged out and said they’d rather play barbie dolls with their kids or get hit by an oncoming train. The other person logged in for about 10 seconds, calmly logged out and uninstalled GW2, then took the disc and threw it out the nearest window into his backyard, to which the dogs happily devoured it and tore it apart.

I’ll tell you my experience. I had to keep switching guilds because I was pretty much the only one that ever logged in anymore. And they were massive guilds too! Each had just over 470 members, and they were thriving a few months ago. I am now in a guild with 100 members, of which 30 are active every few days. I can’t find anyone in PvE (and I play PvE for like 6 hours a day), and I can’t even capture a mini tower in WvW because I’m the only one there. Honestly, even patch days are looking sad on my server. There used to be huge numbers of people that showed up. Now I’m lucky to even get 7 people for Jormag or any other meta boss.

Ladies and gentlemen, the most hyperbolic post in the history of the GW2 forums.

You wish I was exaggerating, because then you wouldn’t have to admit that your precious GW2 is dying and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

More like you’re desperately clinging to whatever you can to convince yourself its dying, in the misplaced hope Arena.net will come back to you crawling on their knees saying, “You win… here’s your GW1 clone with updated graphics. Please, love us again!”

Yes – No Change, from my experience. Map populations are about the same or slightly busier on Tarnished Coast, but any experiences there should be viewed in the context that TC is one of the busiest and most populated servers there is.

The fact that people can even have an argument about whether or not the game is growing or failing is an indication that it’s the most successful MMORPG since World of Warcraft and EVE Online.

After all, they’re the only two MMORPGs of the past decade that we know had periods of sustained growth post-launch. Everything else plummeted to such an extent that there is no debate whatsoever.

chemiclord.3978:

More like you’re desperately clinging to whatever you can to convince yourself its dying, in the misplaced hope Arena.net will come back to you crawling on their knees saying, “You win… here’s your GW1 clone with updated graphics. Please, love us again!”

I don’t want this game to be like GW1. I realize that this is a separate game. I also realize this is an mmorpg, and as such, feel obligated to suggest certain things to make the game better. However, since Anet has let down the majority of Thr gw2 population multiple times, the majority of the game has either left or is on the verge of leaving. I’m not trying to convince you or convince myself that this game is dying, because I’ve experienced some of its decay first hand.

Galtrix.7369:

I don’t want this game to be like GW1. I realize that this is a separate game. I also realize this is an mmorpg, and as such, feel obligated to suggest certain things to make the game better. However, since Anet has let down the majority of Thr gw2 population multiple times, the majority of the game has either left or is on the verge of leaving. I’m not trying to convince you or convince myself that this game is dying, because I’ve experienced some of its decay first hand.

And I’ve seen zones and worlds packed with people, guilds flourishing and adding people daily. Which one of us is right? Well, we both are, I suppose. Which one is more reflective of the overall experience? Who knows? But one thing I have learned is that you rarely can trust official forums to accurately reflect that overall sentiment.

Galtrix.7369:

However, since Anet has let down the majority of Thr gw2 population multiple times, the majority of the game has either left or is on the verge of leaving. I’m not trying to convince you or convince myself that this game is dying, because I’ve experienced some of its decay first hand.

No, it hasn’t, and it’s not. You’re just on a low-pop server.

Galtrix.7369:

CobaltSixty.1542:

Galtrix.7369:

Haha. Definitely not. Three out of four of my friends quit this game, and I asked them to take a look at some of the new content recently. Two of them logged in and played for about 5 minutes, then logged out and said they’d rather play barbie dolls with their kids or get hit by an oncoming train. The other person logged in for about 10 seconds, calmly logged out and uninstalled GW2, then took the disc and threw it out the nearest window into his backyard, to which the dogs happily devoured it and tore it apart.

I’ll tell you my experience. I had to keep switching guilds because I was pretty much the only one that ever logged in anymore. And they were massive guilds too! Each had just over 470 members, and they were thriving a few months ago. I am now in a guild with 100 members, of which 30 are active every few days. I can’t find anyone in PvE (and I play PvE for like 6 hours a day), and I can’t even capture a mini tower in WvW because I’m the only one there. Honestly, even patch days are looking sad on my server. There used to be huge numbers of people that showed up. Now I’m lucky to even get 7 people for Jormag or any other meta boss.

Ladies and gentlemen, the most hyperbolic post in the history of the GW2 forums.

You wish I was exaggerating, because then you wouldn’t have to admit that your precious GW2 is dying and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Do you know what we call a baseless claim with no evidence to back it up? It’s called fiction.

There’s no evidence the game is dying. And by none, I mean zero. Zilch. Nada.

You can say anything you want and so can I.

Evidence, however, doesn’t support you.

Raine.1394:

One thing I’ve noticed is a growing, open trash-talking of Anet in map chat. It’s significant in that I’ve played other MMO’s for years and have not witnessed the level of ill will towards a developer that I have here, in-game. And, I’m on one of the more mature, even-handed servers. This can’t bode well for the game long-term in terms of people actively playing the game.

Hmm… guilty of this …tho it’s usually just in a sarcastic manner. No one likes really long drawn out drama in their map chat, it’s always best to keep it to smart allecky one-liners that don’t invite long debates. (unless you really ARE a troll and the only reason you’re on that map is to start toruble). ….Most of us though have things to get done. The sooner I can get those things done, the sooner I can log out and eat something so I don’t get stomach pains and headaches.

xephire.8324:

Companies never post their game failing.They are trying desperately to get new players now through their PR bs……Which indicates why the player base are declining.

Publicly held companies are required to let stockholders know if a product is failing. I suspect your tinfoil hat may be a little too tight.

Galtrix.7369:

CobaltSixty.1542:

Galtrix.7369:

Haha. Definitely not. Three out of four of my friends quit this game, and I asked them to take a look at some of the new content recently. Two of them logged in and played for about 5 minutes, then logged out and said they’d rather play barbie dolls with their kids or get hit by an oncoming train. The other person logged in for about 10 seconds, calmly logged out and uninstalled GW2, then took the disc and threw it out the nearest window into his backyard, to which the dogs happily devoured it and tore it apart.

I’ll tell you my experience. I had to keep switching guilds because I was pretty much the only one that ever logged in anymore. And they were massive guilds too! Each had just over 470 members, and they were thriving a few months ago. I am now in a guild with 100 members, of which 30 are active every few days. I can’t find anyone in PvE (and I play PvE for like 6 hours a day), and I can’t even capture a mini tower in WvW because I’m the only one there. Honestly, even patch days are looking sad on my server. There used to be huge numbers of people that showed up. Now I’m lucky to even get 7 people for Jormag or any other meta boss.

Ladies and gentlemen, the most hyperbolic post in the history of the GW2 forums.

You wish I was exaggerating, because then you wouldn’t have to admit that your precious GW2 is dying and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Source?

My experience is the complete opposite of your experience.

Vayne.8563:

Do you know what we call a baseless claim with no evidence to back it up? It’s called fiction.

There’s no evidence the game is dying. And by none, I mean zero. Zilch. Nada.

You can say anything you want and so can I.

Evidence, however, doesn’t support you.

Neither does you.
You keep telling us that you see plenty of people every time of the day, you got 120 active members in your guild ecc.
But you are on Tarnished Coast, the most populated server where people goes to guest.

I’m from Gunnar’s Hold, EU server with (last time i checked) high population, and i can tell you that from my point of view, the game is losing lots of players on daily basis.

Who’s right? Who’s wrong?

Valanga.5942:

Vayne.8563:

Do you know what we call a baseless claim with no evidence to back it up? It’s called fiction.

There’s no evidence the game is dying. And by none, I mean zero. Zilch. Nada.

You can say anything you want and so can I.

Evidence, however, doesn’t support you.

Neither does you.
You keep telling us that you see plenty of people every time of the day, you got 120 active members in your guild ecc.
But you are on Tarnished Coast, the most populated server where people goes to guest.

I’m from Gunnar’s Hold, EU server with (last time i checked) high population, and i can tell you that from my point of view, the game is losing lots of players on daily basis.

Who’s right? Who’s wrong?

The difference is I’m saying no one knows and someone else is saying it’s shrinking. Who’s right? Me. Because I’m saying no one knows.

Now if the person arguing with me would say they didn’t know,. they’d be right too, but they’re not. They’re saying its shrinking, for which there’s no evidence.

The only thing we know is that Anet has stated publicly that the population is growing, in the summertime when it shrinks in most MMOs (and they also said it shrunk in Guild Wars 1 during the summers), but here they see continual growth. That’s what Anet has said.

I say we don’t know. Would you really care to argue that point?

Galtrix.7369:

Haha. Definitely not. Three out of four of my friends quit this game, and I asked them to take a look at some of the new content recently. Two of them logged in and played for about 5 minutes, then logged out and said they’d rather play barbie dolls with their kids or get hit by an oncoming train. The other person logged in for about 10 seconds, calmly logged out and uninstalled GW2, then took the disc and threw it out the nearest window into his backyard, to which the dogs happily devoured it and tore it apart.

I’ll tell you my experience. I had to keep switching guilds because I was pretty much the only one that ever logged in anymore. And they were massive guilds too! Each had just over 470 members, and they were thriving a few months ago. I am now in a guild with 100 members, of which 30 are active every few days. I can’t find anyone in PvE (and I play PvE for like 6 hours a day), and I can’t even capture a mini tower in WvW because I’m the only one there. Honestly, even patch days are looking sad on my server. There used to be huge numbers of people that showed up. Now I’m lucky to even get 7 people for Jormag or any other meta boss.

Your friends seem really reasonable people one would love to hang out with.

P.s. what’s a mini tower?