Guild Wars 2

Borlis Pass here,

Ive brought in two new players, and have got another 2-3 to return with me.

WvWvW is pretty full lately, and the world seems very strong.

The main reason your seeing a decline is because GW2 launched with a TONNE of servers and has yet to merge any. Most games by now have merged a few servers together. Population has finally started to balance across the servers plus theres guesting so many people may home on one server but play a lot on another.

Last night in BP in the 1-15 area for the norn there was a huge event and at least 30+ players were around at it, fighting away merrily.

So the game is not dead, its just a lot more spread out nowadays because there are afterall 5 major cities (and you dont need to be in one to use the trading hubs/craft), huge areas to explore and tonnes of different content places to visit. Plus, the dungeon areas are often packed.

Then theres also the fact theres multiple instances.

Oh, and as an aside, i HATE the trinity.

Despite the fact i play a healer, always, i still hate it and guild wars was very refreshing. Love guardian.

gek.6041:

For the veteran/experienced players out there, any reason as to why the game feels like its in closed beta (in terms of population)

I believe it’s your server. On my server it’s still very very crowded almost everywhere. I’m on Gandara btw.

The last two months, Ive seen alot more people on far shiverpeaks compared to how it was after some big guild transfered to other servers (some of them moved back now that it goes well for us in wvw again).

Well there are far less servers on the hotjoin in sPvP, there are less queues in WvW and the only place that I ever go to overflow these days is Lion’s Arch, so yes the population seems to be declining (It seemed to increase a bit at Christmas).

But then that is the pattern for most MMORPGs.

due to the lackluster content releases most new content is finished or used up in a matter of days or weeks so most people get what they want out of an update then leave till the next one. I know tons of people half of which are waiting for the WvW update who are just sitting around waiting for updates. So ya when a new update comes you will see tons of people for a short amount of time then it will slowly die again till the next update till a random amount of people return again. It seems to be less each time though because i used to have a ton of friends pop up on my list when events happened now i would be lucky to get 2 to pop up there.

From what I’ve seen, early zones, end zones, dungeons, and LA are healthy across the board.

If you want to do the middle PvE zones, guesting on Tarnished Coast or Piken Square seem to be the best options.

For WvW, it varies server to server…but imo, if you want to actually PLAY WvW, don’t join the top 2 tiers.

I have been away for a week or so myself mostly just burnt out and so i went at Dragonborn and am now working my way through Crysis 3 on supersolder,

but i plan to be back at it again when the update’s hit. for some new and some old content

critickitten.1498:

Is the player base declining? That’s a fairly easy to answer question: yes.

Their sales dropped off tremendously after the first month. They went from selling two million copies in two weeks….to just recently breaking three million back in January. And it’s known that the player base was already in decline as early as November, given the reactions to changes being made at that time and the subsequent damage control rush from the devs following the event.

Now it’s technically not all doom and gloom. According to Colin, their numbers “went up” after the holidays….though to be fair, that could mean anything since he didn’t specify how much that “increase” was. However, if we’re to take the home page’s most recent announcement as evidence of a problem, I’m guessing that their sales are doing badly enough that they’re starting to get really worried.

So, yes, the game’s in decline. I don’t think it’ll be enough of a decline that the game keels over and dies, necessarily, but it’s certainly not on pace to compete with WoW either.

I’d posit that it’s probably reaching saturation; anyone who wants it has it and people who don’t want it wouldn’t buy it without a reason to. Hence “it’s cheaper”.

I also got an email from Blizzard about WoW being 75% off. That’s another game entirely, but it supports the idea that there is a point where more new people simply aren’t going to play your game. Without a subscription coming in, and with rather significant community pressure not to buy Gems, there’s a recipe for real bad potential.

In a game with no subscription people come and go, and then come back again. This might seem unusual to those who played games that had much longer to obtain goals or subscription models.

That being said I came to GW2 from the original Guild Wars as part of an alliance of around 100 people in 4 active guilds. Many of these people built new Computers to handle the game and were dedicated GW players. We are down to 3 that log in now and I have not in about 2 weeks.

Changes need to be made and many of us are carefully watching these updates. I know that the forums get a tad hostile to anyone who has things to say that are “bad” without it being notarized and submitted like a criminal trial. I am using Inductive reasoning here that is a loose science. Please know that it is my honest view and not an attempt to mangle this games image. The player base is declining, and I hope it is recovered. I want to see that happen. Just remember not to be hostile towards people in the forums and that will go a long way in you helping preserve this game.

We all want this game to succeed. No one wants any MMO to fail. We get emotional when we get the feeling that the developers don’t care.

Sosyc.3025:

In a game with no subscription people come and go, and then come back again. This might seem unusual to those who played games that had much longer to obtain goals or subscription models.

That being said I came to GW2 from the original Guild Wars as part of an alliance of around 100 people in 4 active guilds. Many of these people built new Computers to handle the game and were dedicated GW players. We are down to 3 that log in now and I have not in about 2 weeks.

Changes need to be made and many of us are carefully watching these updates. I know that the forums get a tad hostile to anyone who has things to say that are “bad” without it being notarized and submitted like a criminal trial. I am using Inductive reasoning here that is a loose science. Please know that it is my honest view and not an attempt to mangle this games image. The player base is declining, and I hope it is recovered. I want to see that happen. Just remember not to be hostile towards people in the forums and that will go a long way in you helping preserve this game.

I had a guild of over 80 at launch that dropped to about 60 after launch. Most of us were Guild Wars 1 players. Most of us are still playing.

The guild is back up to over 70 members, some of whom also played Guild Wars 1. I do think though that generally speaking Guild Wars 1 PvPers are less satisfied overall than Guild Wars 1 PVe’ers (many exceptions, of course).

But since this game is far more mainstream than Guild Wars 1 ever was, I think that the few Guild Wars players that are leaving are more than replaced by people people who didn’t play the first game.

Calae.1738:

We all want this game to succeed. No one wants any MMO to fail. We get emotional when we get the feeling that the developers don’t care.

. . . yeah, I’m not sure if you noticed, but there are people who wish doom upon this game and have ever since 11/15. There are people who seem to come here specifically to go “game is dying . . . what, no I don’t play it anymore”.

There are plenty of people out there who would want a given MMO to fail. I’ve met people who actively wish WoW would get shut down any given day of the week. Or League of Legends, or whatever else you can name. There’s always someone wishing a game will fail.

Sad, but true. This is the internet.

The problem gauging the playerbase in GW2 is simple. In pretty much every other Themepark MMO you have a lot of people at the start and the majority at the end with a desolate middle. This is not the case in GW2 due to downscaling. Any zone is relevant for a level 80 character. This means people will be a lot more spread out instead of in 4-5 areas as it is in other Themepark MMOs.

Furthermore with the game not having a subscription fee, some people feel less inclined to log in to get their monies worth. They still play but might skip an evening here and there.

This just makes it hard to say if the population is going down or not. It feels like the population is down, but without solid numbers to back it up it remains a feeling, which could very well be wrong.

Conner.4702:

The problem gauging the playerbase in GW2 is simple. In pretty much every other Themepark MMO you have a lot of people at the start and the majority at the end with a desolate middle. This is not the case in GW2 due to downscaling. Any zone is relevant for a level 80 character. This means people will be a lot more spread out instead of in 4-5 areas as it is in other Themepark MMOs.

Furthermore with the game not having a subscription fee, some people feel less inclined to log in to get their monies worth. They still play but might skip an evening here and there.

This just makes it hard to say if the population is going down or not. It feels like the population is down, but without solid numbers to back it up it remains a feeling, which could very well be wrong.

Honestly I think it’s the case of what I went through at the end of GW1. “Is there a special event? I might log in, but I don’t have much to do other than fool around aimlessly. Obby armor? Yeah I could but I’d rather put my hand through a woodchipper.”

People will ebb and flow, especially the ones who have done most of what they wanted to do already. They’ll come back when new content comes out, check it out, then go back to being idle.

There are busy servers. Constantly in overflow on most popular maps on gandara… However there has been a noticeable decline of players in less popular maps.

I think it all relates to the rewards attritubuted to going back to low/mid level zones.

Anet is working on this. In fact a recent interview had them stating that this year will hardly see new zones and additional content, but rather upgrading existing content and adding new features to make all the current open and instanced world as strong as possible.
After that is achieved players will naturally spread out more to go to their favourite regions and maps and style of content. WvWvW, open world, fractals and dungeons ALL need to be balanced in terms of rewards given for each activity.

ALSO, i believe the lack of non combat activities that are out in the open world is a factor to why the game feels less populated than it is.
Theres not alot you cant do from within a LA overflow after all. If there were more stuff you had to go out into the open world to do id take a bet that we would see a influx again.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’d posit that it’s probably reaching saturation; anyone who wants it has it and people who don’t want it wouldn’t buy it without a reason to. Hence “it’s cheaper”.

I also got an email from Blizzard about WoW being 75% off. That’s another game entirely, but it supports the idea that there is a point where more new people simply aren’t going to play your game. Without a subscription coming in, and with rather significant community pressure not to buy Gems, there’s a recipe for real bad potential.

It’s not just saturation, it’s competition. There are just so many games out there now, many of which are free, that are competing for a limited number of gamers and a limited amount of free time.

Notice that WoW’s recent sales (and their special offers intended to bring back older players) mainly got started after their player population turned into a good approximation of an arterial bleed.

With so much competition out there, it’s rare for any game to maintain the same population it started with. Nowadays you have good opening numbers, then you lose nearly 50% of your players in the first month or two, and eventually you level off at a much lower figure than you started with.

GW2 is in a good position for the time being because it doesn’t have a lot of direct competitors that do some of the same things they do. However, we’ll see what happens when TESO comes out. If the game defies my expectations and manages to be really good, then GW2 will see another sharp decline in players, I suspect.

Morpeth.5318:

Proof? Sources? Anything…? My server is as busy as ever.

And Hurricane Sandy didn’t hit my apartment building, so there’s no proof that it ever happened.

….see how ridiculous that logic is? Seriously, just because you aren’t affected by it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Don’t be ignorant. Everyone knows that the player population has dropped off considerably, as it does with every game. There are plenty of servers that have complained of low traffic. Just because your server is fine doesn’t mean there isn’t a decline overall.

You might be able to argue about how much of a decline it is, but I do hope you’re not attempting to imply that there has never been a drop in players.

Recent statistics posted on Anet’s FB have shown that the playerbase and concurrency of players is actually increasing.
Simply, like every other MMO out there early zones are less populated when the majority is lvl 80, and some servers have less population than others.

Meglobob.8620:

The playerbase is NOT declining.

Anet have said the playerbase is growing at a steady pace and this has been the case since launch and I believe them, on the evidence if you go anywhere that is known to attract players there are hordes of them…

The playerbase has massively declined since Lost Shores – stop spreading false hope. Anet are obviously going to say the game is growing, where as to the contrary there is much more clear evidence to support the opposite.

Also, your server is also important in this equation. Some servers are very dead, whilst others are still very much alive. Emhry Bay (ebay) for instance, is struggling for players with many zones just devoid of players, often feels like there are maybe 50 people on the entire server some days.

SneakyErvin.3056:

Maybe you are just in the wrong timezone or something.

If that’s the case, then he’s forever screwed. Off-peak casuals face an uphill battle trying to play a casual-scheduled MMO; I saw this in TOR, where the game was a ghost town outside of peak hours. Unless you really like playing alone, you might as well move along.

I actually keep playing at either low level zones or high level zones because there seems to be few to no players in most zones.

Last information we had from Arenanet was that the amount of players logged on had been increasing for the last two months. That info is only a couple of weeks old.

I cant speak for every server but on mine I am yet to ever go to Lion’s Arch and not first be in an Overflow server even in the middle of the night in both Australia and America. I havent been in any zones were I’ve gone more than ten minutes without seeing another player somewhere. From my experiance the game population is fine.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The playerbase has massively declined since Lost Shores – stop spreading false hope.

Or you could stop spreading wrong data.
Anet data has shown a major increase in the playerbase and concurrent players.

critickitten.1498:

Is the player base declining? That’s a fairly easy to answer question: yes.

Their sales dropped off tremendously after the first month. They went from selling two million copies in two weeks….to just recently breaking three million back in January. And it’s known that the player base was already in decline as early as November, given the reactions to changes being made at that time and the subsequent damage control rush from the devs following the event.

Now it’s technically not all doom and gloom. According to Colin, their numbers “went up” after the holidays….though to be fair, that could mean anything since he didn’t specify how much that “increase” was. However, if we’re to take the home page’s most recent announcement as evidence of a problem, I’m guessing that their sales are doing badly enough that they’re starting to get really worried.

So, yes, the game’s in decline. I don’t think it’ll be enough of a decline that the game keels over and dies, necessarily, but it’s certainly not on pace to compete with WoW either.

I don’t think this is an issue here.

Rates of sales always decline after launch. The most sales for any game always happen within the first couple months of release. I don’t think there has been a game in history where its rate of sales were higher than at launch.

Take Call of Duty for example. Black Ops to be precise. Best selling game in history. Nowhere after it launched did the sale rate was ever higher than at launch.

Also, game sales happen all the time. TF2 had $1 days back when it was B2P. It certainly wasn’t any indication of “decline”. What would be disconcerting however is if price cuts happen, or if GW2 went F2P like TERA.

Not sure if playerbase is declining, perhaps they are busy IRL. This is a game you can always come back to no matter how long you have been away. Normally I get on everyday, but doing remodeling so been putting off gaming time.

Now, if someone wants to come finish the remodeling, I will HAPPILY go back to gaming!

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The playerbase has massively declined since Lost Shores – stop spreading false hope.

Or you could stop spreading wrong data.
Anet data has shown a major increase in the playerbase and concurrent players.

And you trust anet?

Sinfullysweet.4517:

Not sure if playerbase is declining, perhaps they are busy IRL. This is a game you can always come back to no matter how long you have been away. Normally I get on everyday, but doing remodeling so been putting off gaming time.

Now, if someone wants to come finish the remodeling, I will HAPPILY go back to gaming!

Because this is the only buy to play/free to play game. “perhaps they are busy IRL” has nothing to do with it.

The playerbase is not declining it can only grow, but the active playerbase people that are actually playing is declining at quite a rate.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The playerbase has massively declined since Lost Shores – stop spreading false hope.

Or you could stop spreading wrong data.
Anet data has shown a major increase in the playerbase and concurrent players.

And you trust anet?

I don’t think it’s a matter of trusting Anet. It’s more of a matter of proving your case with statistics. Personal experience doesn’t count by the way as others have stated contradicting experiences.

Its really impossible to provide statistics, and even then ~ they can be faked. Its all personal experience, and I’ve personally seen a dramatic drop in players.

tbh i think alot of this is due to the culling, its doing my head ii cannot see ANY players until 3 seconds after i stand still in an area.... Sometimes i only know they are there due to the spell effects.... You stand on the ledge by the bank in LA for example and u cannot even see whos at the forge.....

Sea of Sorrow still has a fair amount of people, but data or not ever since the Nov patch i’ve also seen a decrease in players.

The last two months i’ve noticed a second one.

Calae.1738:

We all want this game to succeed. No one wants any MMO to fail. We get emotional when we get the feeling that the developers don’t care.

This is truly what most of the negative responses are all about. And, I’ve always found it rather arrogant to infer a developer the caliber of Arenanet doesn’t know what is needed or how to implement. They will fix what they believe needs fixing and implement what they planned when it is ready.

I’m on Isle of Janthir. W3 queues aren’t to bad and, unless it’s a weekday morning, I never solo an event and my latest toon is 22.

Is the playerbase declining? that’s easy… no it is growing… in fact as of 3 weeks ago it had been growing every week for the last 6 weeks. You can check the dev tracker and a recent MMORPG.com article for the references.

I guess i’ll never understand the obsession with some people to convince others a game is dying just cause.

I would like to share a quote by Colin Johanson:

“COLIN: We’ll stop to sleep when the game is the best possible game we think it can be. We’ve seen the population of the game steadily rising lately and we’re not going to sit on our butts and congratulate one another, we’re going to try and build on that momentum and make the game even better. There is so much coffee in Seattle no one can sleep anyway.”

I think that is the only official word we have received regarding the player-base isn’t it? If you take another player’s word before you take his word, you’re crazy. Sure he’s gotten a bit excited about some stuff in the past, but as of right now that is the word from ANet.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The playerbase has massively declined since Lost Shores – stop spreading false hope.

Or you could stop spreading wrong data.
Anet data has shown a major increase in the playerbase and concurrent players.

And you trust anet?

I’m sorry, what should we trust with this data? Your eyes don’t cut it.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7133/Februarys-Flame-and-Frost-Update-Detailed.html

Also, to whoever said they’ve seen a drop in sales lately so it is probably shrinking… come on. Do you expect them to sell a million copies every month? It is not about the amount of copies they’ve sold, it is about the amount of player retention they have maintained. Use your head.

I was on Northern Shiverpeaks in beta and launch and two months ago switched to Tarnished Coast when I was shopping for a better guild. I found one (Wolf Demon Tribe) which has been around since 2005 in GW1 with same members for the most part. Fractals are very active as are every dungeon. I see people spamming for AC all day long in LA and in front of the dungeon. CM is active as well as every other one except for perhaps HoTW. No idea why.

Events in Orr are cleared regularly though not as often as on NS. The Grenth temple isn’t cleared very often though I’m on late at night most times.
The biggest draw seems to be that TC is a Role Player’s paradise. Pure RP guilds and people RPing everywhere. Also a lot of WvWvW goes on here. I’m glad I made the choice to transfer before it cost gems.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Conner.4702:

The problem gauging the playerbase in GW2 is simple. In pretty much every other Themepark MMO you have a lot of people at the start and the majority at the end with a desolate middle. This is not the case in GW2 due to downscaling. Any zone is relevant for a level 80 character. This means people will be a lot more spread out instead of in 4-5 areas as it is in other Themepark MMOs.

Furthermore with the game not having a subscription fee, some people feel less inclined to log in to get their monies worth. They still play but might skip an evening here and there.

This just makes it hard to say if the population is going down or not. It feels like the population is down, but without solid numbers to back it up it remains a feeling, which could very well be wrong.

Honestly I think it’s the case of what I went through at the end of GW1. “Is there a special event? I might log in, but I don’t have much to do other than fool around aimlessly. Obby armor? Yeah I could but I’d rather put my hand through a woodchipper.”

People will ebb and flow, especially the ones who have done most of what they wanted to do already. They’ll come back when new content comes out, check it out, then go back to being idle.

this is how most MMO’s work even one’s with subs really.

did this plenty when i played EQ and I know people to do it with wow

Yes, and all the reports are based on sales. Since this game isn’t based on subs, therefore – there isn’t any way to tell how many people are actually actively playing and ones that are idle.

However, I bet if a survey was done ~ It’s pretty obvious there is way more idle players than active ones.

All mmos lose the locusts after early launch, then the people that didn’t read what the game was leave, and now the people playing are the actual gw2 players. Same in any mmo. A slow growth is great.

emikochan.8504:

All mmos lose the locusts after early launch, then the people that didn’t read what the game was leave, and now the people playing are the actual gw2 players. Same in any mmo. A slow growth is great.

But a fast decline of players isn’t ~ The game already had lost a ton of players with the Lost Shores mess, and now the next patch it set to cause another round of players quitting.

It looks like now with Guesting active there’s no real incentive to play on any server but the most active one(s) like Tarnished Coast. Since people want to be where people are the problem will continue to exacerbate itself as there’s no sense of connection to a server outside of WvW and in that also lies the problem of population slide.

Where before the feature was active I thought Guesting was a great idea but now I am left to wonder if it was better as just an idea.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

emikochan.8504:

All mmos lose the locusts after early launch, then the people that didn’t read what the game was leave, and now the people playing are the actual gw2 players. Same in any mmo. A slow growth is great.

But a fast decline of players isn’t ~ The game already had lost a ton of players with the Lost Shores mess, and now the next patch it set to cause another round of players quitting.

I beg to differ about “fast decline”. Plus, the next patch isn’t going to make people quit; it’s not the same nature as Lost Shores.

Lost Shores involved the introduction of an additional gear tier and an extremely glitchy one-time event that caused endless frustration.

For this patch, , at the most there’s only going to be mass migrations between guilds. No one is actually gated; everyone can get the content they want immediately if they choose to which is unlike the case in Lost Shores. If people quit at all, it’d be minimal compared to Lost Shores.

Kitsunami.6241:

Borlis Pass here,

Ive brought in two new players, and have got another 2-3 to return with me.

WvWvW is pretty full lately, and the world seems very strong.

The main reason your seeing a decline is because GW2 launched with a TONNE of servers and has yet to merge any. Most games by now have merged a few servers together. Population has finally started to balance across the servers plus theres guesting so many people may home on one server but play a lot on another.

Last night in BP in the 1-15 area for the norn there was a huge event and at least 30+ players were around at it, fighting away merrily.

So the game is not dead, its just a lot more spread out nowadays because there are afterall 5 major cities (and you dont need to be in one to use the trading hubs/craft), huge areas to explore and tonnes of different content places to visit. Plus, the dungeon areas are often packed.

Then theres also the fact theres multiple instances.

Oh, and as an aside, i HATE the trinity.

Despite the fact i play a healer, always, i still hate it and guild wars was very refreshing. Love guardian.

Same here! I brought four of my friends to the game! And I agree, Borlis Pass is a busy server People everywhere especially in LA.

-Cowrex of Borlis Pass

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

emikochan.8504:

All mmos lose the locusts after early launch, then the people that didn’t read what the game was leave, and now the people playing are the actual gw2 players. Same in any mmo. A slow growth is great.

But a fast decline of players isn’t ~ The game already had lost a ton of players with the Lost Shores mess, and now the next patch it set to cause another round of players quitting.

I know i’m going to regret this… but why in the world would the upcoming patch cause people to quit? I’ve heard only wonderful things about it. I didn’t know there was any controversial content in it…

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I know i’m going to regret this… but why in the world would the upcoming patch cause people to quit? I’ve heard only wonderful things about it. I didn’t know there was any controversial content in it…

Look at the topic about Guild Missions and how are they gated

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-guild-missions-opinions-concerns/first

I’ve only noticed an increase in players since Wintersday. I’m always sent to an overflow at first when I go to LA, that didn’t used to happen expect during Mad King’s. Also, I’ve noticed more people in the open world. To say the playerbase is declining is all about what server you’re on, and what time you play.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Its really impossible to provide statistics, and even then ~ they can be faked. Its all personal experience, and I’ve personally seen a dramatic drop in players.

Mhm. And my personal experience says differently. For months, HoD seemed to be declining. However, since Christmas or so, there’s always an overflow in LA (for months there was not); initial zones are always jammed, Orr events get done more often, there are even more people than before in the podunk zones like Iron Marches.

It’s impossible to say based on personal experience that personal experience has any validity.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

emikochan.8504:

All mmos lose the locusts after early launch, then the people that didn’t read what the game was leave, and now the people playing are the actual gw2 players. Same in any mmo. A slow growth is great.

But a fast decline of players isn’t ~ The game already had lost a ton of players with the Lost Shores mess, and now the next patch it set to cause another round of players quitting.

I see you don’t like the upcoming guild missions. Got any evidence (other than conjecture) that you are not alone?

critickitten.1498:

Is the player base declining? That’s a fairly easy to answer question: yes.

Their sales dropped off tremendously after the first month. They went from selling two million copies in two weeks….to just recently breaking three million back in January. And it’s known that the player base was already in decline as early as November, given the reactions to changes being made at that time and the subsequent damage control rush from the devs following the event.

Now it’s technically not all doom and gloom. According to Colin, their numbers “went up” after the holidays….though to be fair, that could mean anything since he didn’t specify how much that “increase” was. However, if we’re to take the home page’s most recent announcement as evidence of a problem, I’m guessing that their sales are doing badly enough that they’re starting to get really worried.

So, yes, the game’s in decline. I don’t think it’ll be enough of a decline that the game keels over and dies, necessarily, but it’s certainly not on pace to compete with WoW either.

Please!
Do you even know what you are talking about. Have you ever heard about a best selling MMO that does not have a decline in sales after the first month. That is simply how things work.
Now, the important thing is: does the sales get stable again. Most MMO’s slowly dies like all the WOW-clones have done. So far this game, whether you like or not, does not seem to follow this trend. So far everything indicates its a succes. There will always be tons of forum haters – on this forum like on every other MMO forum about other MMOs. And there will always be people leaving the game – shot term or for ever. That in it self does not indicate anything.

And I don’t think it makes much sense to compare sales with a 9 year old MMO. Nobody knows what the world looks like in 2 years from now. GW2 could be dead, or it could be the only one still alive.

And this:
“However, if we’re to take the home page’s most recent announcement as evidence of a problem, I’m guessing that their sales are doing badly enough that they’re starting to get really worried.”
…just makes me laugh. You really want this game to fail so bad, dont you. You must really be invested. There are so many other things to do in life, you know.

By the way, im no big GW2 fan – because im no MMO fan – but on my server theres plenty of people to play with.

Everyone is farming away in dungeons or just doing their dailies and logging off, because Anet made those few things the only things worth while anymore.

The game I would say as it currently is, is designed on purpose to be repetitive and eventually stale, with very restrictive builds for most classes it would be amazing if people didn’t get bored actually. As of right now my engineer is the only class that’s keeping me playing so far because of the flamethrower, but after that gets boring I doubt i’ll be playing anymore than 30 minutes a day.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Meglobob.8620:

The playerbase is NOT declining.

Anet have said the playerbase is growing at a steady pace and this has been the case since launch and I believe them, on the evidence if you go anywhere that is known to attract players there are hordes of them…

The playerbase has massively declined since Lost Shores – stop spreading false hope. Anet are obviously going to say the game is growing, where as to the contrary there is much more clear evidence to support the opposite.

Also, your server is also important in this equation. Some servers are very dead, whilst others are still very much alive. Emhry Bay (ebay) for instance, is struggling for players with many zones just devoid of players, often feels like there are maybe 50 people on the entire server some days.

I’ve seen an increase in players since Lost Shores. Not just a little one either. Now it could be that more people are coming to my server, but there’s definitely more people around.

These posts are always annoying. The playerbase is increasing. Look at the facts, websites that track hours played, sales of GW2 etc.

There are more players in the open world since launch.

Heijincks.9267:

I don’t think it’s a matter of trusting Anet. It’s more of a matter of proving your case with statistics. Personal experience doesn’t count by the way as others have stated contradicting experiences.

There are no metrics backing up Anets claim, either. They say there are, there may very well be, but they’re certainly not making them public.

Anyway, increased hours played over the past two months isn’t especially noteworthy; by December, hours played as tracked by Xfire had dropped something like 90% from the release. I know fanboys curse Xfire, but its proven reliable across multiple MMOs I’ve played.