Guild Wars 2

eisberg.2379:

Sauzo.6821:

eisberg.2379:

critickitten.1498:

How many sales did Rift, TERA, or even SWTOR have in that same period? Lemme answer that for you: none. They saw no reason to devalue their product when it was still selling just fine at its original market price.

.

6 months after Rift released, they dropped their price for Standard Edition to $4.99 on the Rift Website. SWTOR dropped to $15 ~ 6 Months after release then went free to play less then a year after release. Tera Online dropped its price to $24.99 (half the price) in just after 1 month after release, and went free to play less then a year after release. Plus Rift has been doing sales on Subscriptions very very frequently since shortly after they released, I still get emails from them and I see these sales coming up all the time.

And all 3 of those game pretty well tanked. Not sure about Rift but SWTOR went F2P and so did Tera so if you are comparing this game to those, it is not a good sign for this game….

But as a person that played Tera since beta, that games biggest problem was enchanting(which was RNG based and unforgiving like the MF) and a pretty crappy community with people who thought they were elitists in a game that didn’t even have large scale raid content. So i think those 2 things really drove alot of people away along with bad word of mouth about those 2 things. GW2 has 1 thing on Tera tho, they do got a pretty good community.

It wasn’t me that was comparing them. I was making a statement based on the quote I had in my post. he stated that SWTOR, Rift, and Tera never had any sales in the same time frame since their release, so I guess he was technically right, because a sale is a temporary price drop with SWTOR, Rift, and Tera never did, instead they just dropped their prices in 1-6 months after release that never went back up.

Woops, my bad. Kinda late and these posts are running on :P

cherrie.8907:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This game is doing better then any other MMO i’ve ever played. I can get a group for any dungeon, any path, at any time of day within 5 minutes.

If someone can name one other MMO anywhere that can even do HALF as well as that then I will eat my hat. But I think my hat is safe, even the biggest MMO out there, WoW, has a 20+ minute wait for most people.

The Secret World

Lol it’s made by Failcom…err Funcom. Enough said.

eisberg.2379:

Vayne.8563:

cherrie.8907:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This game is doing better then any other MMO i’ve ever played. I can get a group for any dungeon, any path, at any time of day within 5 minutes.

If someone can name one other MMO anywhere that can even do HALF as well as that then I will eat my hat. But I think my hat is safe, even the biggest MMO out there, WoW, has a 20+ minute wait for most people.

The Secret World

Didn’t they lay off like half their staff and go free to play in almost record time?

They didn’t go Free to play, they went Buy to Play, but I do not know anything about the staff stuff.

Okay, not free to play but they did cut out their monthly fee, and yes, they did lay off a significant amount of staff….and the head of the company resigned, if I’m not mistaken. Not really a successful game, from all indications, though it has a strong fan following.

Vayne.8563:

eisberg.2379:

Vayne.8563:

cherrie.8907:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This game is doing better then any other MMO i’ve ever played. I can get a group for any dungeon, any path, at any time of day within 5 minutes.

If someone can name one other MMO anywhere that can even do HALF as well as that then I will eat my hat. But I think my hat is safe, even the biggest MMO out there, WoW, has a 20+ minute wait for most people.

The Secret World

Didn’t they lay off like half their staff and go free to play in almost record time?

They didn’t go Free to play, they went Buy to Play, but I do not know anything about the staff stuff.

Okay, not free to play but they did cut out their monthly fee, and yes, they did lay off a significant amount of staff….and the head of the company resigned, if I’m not mistaken. Not really a successful game, from all indications, though it has a strong fan following.

The head resigned? lol, they keep losing the head of the company with their MMO releases. If I was promoted to the head in Funcom and a new MMO was about to launch, I would be looking for a new job =D

eisberg.2379:

Vayne.8563:

eisberg.2379:

Vayne.8563:

cherrie.8907:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This game is doing better then any other MMO i’ve ever played. I can get a group for any dungeon, any path, at any time of day within 5 minutes.

If someone can name one other MMO anywhere that can even do HALF as well as that then I will eat my hat. But I think my hat is safe, even the biggest MMO out there, WoW, has a 20+ minute wait for most people.

The Secret World

Didn’t they lay off like half their staff and go free to play in almost record time?

They didn’t go Free to play, they went Buy to Play, but I do not know anything about the staff stuff.

Okay, not free to play but they did cut out their monthly fee, and yes, they did lay off a significant amount of staff….and the head of the company resigned, if I’m not mistaken. Not really a successful game, from all indications, though it has a strong fan following.

The head resigned? lol, they keep losing the head of the company with their MMO releases. If I was promoted to the head in Funcom and a new MMO was about to launch, I would be looking for a new job =D

It really caught people by surprise. No one expected it.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Doom Bringer: DOOOOMMMM!!!! FAIIIILLLL!!!! DOOOM!!!!!

10+ Years pass . . .

Official News Feed: Guild Wars 2 is shutting down.
Doom Bringer: See! I told you! I was right!

Vayne.8563:

eisberg.2379:

Vayne.8563:

cherrie.8907:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This game is doing better then any other MMO i’ve ever played. I can get a group for any dungeon, any path, at any time of day within 5 minutes.

If someone can name one other MMO anywhere that can even do HALF as well as that then I will eat my hat. But I think my hat is safe, even the biggest MMO out there, WoW, has a 20+ minute wait for most people.

The Secret World

Didn’t they lay off like half their staff and go free to play in almost record time?

They didn’t go Free to play, they went Buy to Play, but I do not know anything about the staff stuff.

Okay, not free to play but they did cut out their monthly fee, and yes, they did lay off a significant amount of staff….and the head of the company resigned, if I’m not mistaken. Not really a successful game, from all indications, though it has a strong fan following.

It’s not a blockbuster, true, no idea why, advertising must have sucked for it.!
Tbh I wasn’t even aware of that game before someone brought it up on this very forum, in topic about GW2 dungeons, as an example of great dungeon design.
Since GW2 turned into a failure for be around then I went to try TSW out and trully, the dungeons are on top of their game, genre-wise. Skill system is much closer to GW1 than GW2 too, imho. I severly dislike the itemization factor, but you can’t have everything.

Back to topic, I am not playing GW2 anymore so I can’t speak for open world, however I still log in from time to time to look at the bots teleporting between the nodes while ANet announces they got rid of the bot problem and to catch up with the friends that still do play.
My character is in 5 guilds, small to quite big, all groups of friends I played GW1 and other games with. All the guilds were buzzing with activity back in November. Now they are dead; people didn’t leave, they are just never online anymore and the few I see on all moved to other guilds. So from what I can say, a lot of people who used to be very excited about GW2 left. Have more come to take their place? No idea, but the exodus is enormous for me.

critickitten.1498:

I’m saying that the sales figures have nothing to do with concurrency or the number of active players.

snip

I’m saying that the scale of this increase they’re claiming is questionable since the sales figures don’t seem to reflect a high level of growth, and that the player base is most definitely a lot lower now than it was at the start of the game.

You said yourself sales figures don’t have anything to do with concurrency, rightly so.

So why do you use sales figures to infer that the concurrent population increase is questionable? The increase is likely due to players coming back to the game, which looking at the initial sales would be a pretty large pool.

Declining sharply after launch is normal, hitting baseline (core) player population is normal, having that core player base increase slowly over time is excellent. It doesn’t matter what the scale of growth is, to have more players logging in more often is undeniably positive.

This is a buy-to-play game. The game’s initial sales are its primary source of money in the initial months of the game’s release. The Gem Store is its long-term source of revenue, certainly, but the game sales are the big deal in this first several months, and if they were doing as well as they’d hoped, they wouldn’t feel pressured to have sales.

The initial sales are to recoup development costs and with 3 million sales it’s a safe bet that Anet succeeded in this regard. To say that the initial sales is the primary source of their income is probably incorrect.

Under their business model, I’d say that having sales intermittently is planned and we’ll probably see more sales every so often, and the sales would probably be there regardless of the game “selling well” or not. Having more customers enter the game, regardless of boxed sale price, is good for the gem shop which is their primary source of recurring income.

It’s safe to say that your skepticism is misplaced.

Gunnar’s Hold EU

LA : There are no overflows between 2-7 am CET.

Mid Level zones : Dead, as in every game.

Major events : I see people doing Dragon events, Maw and the like even early in the morning.

Dungeons : Almost everyone is using LFG, so it’s only normal to rarely see people talk about it. /map

Colin talks : I’d rather play a full year sub in WoW then believe anything Colin says on any game related topic. I love ANet, but his PR speech is killing me. I guess the game is starting to recover after the fall-winter decline, given that they are going away from “next item tier” patches.

Verdict : GW2 has hit it’s player core and is slowly getting more players, given that inflation has slowed down a bit.

SWTOR : Bioware thought they were Blizzard, but they forgot even Blizzard could make a game like Diablo 3 and pre-pay servers for millions only to have ~100k online. AKA Sales are nothing if you are banking on microtransactions.

achensherd.2735:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I know how to fix this.

Everyone log out of the forums and go play.

There, problem solved, we just increased the server populations.

In all seriousness, I still say it’s likely there are lots of other factors. That there’s no subscription fee means people can come and go if life interrupts (school, family, work) and not have to push time in. There’s also people who just log in to blow through new content as it’s put out because they don’t have time to do it slowly

Some of my guildies actually have very real time constraints on their computers. One for instance plays at an internet cafe in Asia, one’s computer is time-controlled by his/her dad, and one often goes “gtg, mom” before immediately logging off. I myself get on usually around after 9 or 10 PM (PST), and unless I’m running dungeons or Fractals with my guild, or am otherwise occupied by something (like a new event), I get off around 12 AM. What? I can’t stay up the way I used to be able to. =_=

As for getting off the forums to play, one interesting thing I’ve noticed (anecdotal, I know) is that of the people I’ve met and talked to in-game, not that many visit the forums (or know/care about them).

:|

Shrug

This pretty much illustrates enough about the varied types of people playing. They still play, just not as much as some people. I know at least two people who work on odd shifts who wind up playing at times most other people are at school/work/sleeping. I’ve actually had a job where between 2pm and 12pm I wasn’t going to get near the computer if I was working that day. And another job where I was just too plain tired to actually log on if I worked.

Players come in all types of time availability. Just cause you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t playing.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

achensherd.2735:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I know how to fix this.

Everyone log out of the forums and go play.

There, problem solved, we just increased the server populations.

In all seriousness, I still say it’s likely there are lots of other factors. That there’s no subscription fee means people can come and go if life interrupts (school, family, work) and not have to push time in. There’s also people who just log in to blow through new content as it’s put out because they don’t have time to do it slowly

Some of my guildies actually have very real time constraints on their computers. One for instance plays at an internet cafe in Asia, one’s computer is time-controlled by his/her dad, and one often goes “gtg, mom” before immediately logging off. I myself get on usually around after 9 or 10 PM (PST), and unless I’m running dungeons or Fractals with my guild, or am otherwise occupied by something (like a new event), I get off around 12 AM. What? I can’t stay up the way I used to be able to. =_=

As for getting off the forums to play, one interesting thing I’ve noticed (anecdotal, I know) is that of the people I’ve met and talked to in-game, not that many visit the forums (or know/care about them).

:|

Shrug

This pretty much illustrates enough about the varied types of people playing. They still play, just not as much as some people. I know at least two people who work on odd shifts who wind up playing at times most other people are at school/work/sleeping. I’ve actually had a job where between 2pm and 12pm I wasn’t going to get near the computer if I was working that day. And another job where I was just too plain tired to actually log on if I worked.

Players come in all types of time availability. Just cause you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t playing.

Yup

I work 4 day weeks, that are upwards of 13-16 hours per day, I don’t play on those days. That leaves 3 days, but I go to school on one of those days from 9am to 9pm, and I do not play on that day either typically. the other 2 days are spent between school work, spending time with my wife and son, doing what is needed around or for my home, and playing PC games.

What server are you on OP? LA is ALWAYS filled with people on SoR. Even out in the wilderness I run into 3-4 people at a time(in really remote spots).

eisberg.2379:

Yup

I work 4 day weeks, that are upwards of 13-16 hours per day, I don’t play on those days. That leaves 3 days, but I go to school on one of those days from 9am to 9pm, and I do not play on that day either typically. the other 2 days are spent between school work, spending time with my wife and son, doing what is needed around or for my home, and playing PC games.

I very appreciate it that you spend time there, just going to say that

Myself? I fall into the “I’ll play for intense bursts of time lasting either days or weeks then back away to play something different” category of people.

It’s declined by 1. I’ve gotten so fed up with the way precursors are acquired in the game that I’ve decided to play when the scavenger hunt thing is implemented or something. -_- As it is now, I’m not even given enough time to “enjoy” precursors as a weapon seeing as it mostly ends up as the last thing people get.

I can’t remember the last time I logged in without being shuffled off to an overflow server. Doesn’t matter what time of day or night, this game is busting at the seams!

Karizee.8076:

I can’t remember the last time I logged in without being shuffled off to an overflow server. Doesn’t matter what time of day or night, this game is busting at the seams!

Yeah, my game time is on Monday and Tuesday, usually during the non prime time hours, sometimes an hour or so during the primetime. But yeah, even during the non prime time I see people all the time in the leveling zones.

I got to say though, playing during the non prime time is actually really interesting, Dynamic events actually have a chance to fail, and seeing what comes afterwards has been a lot of fun. When the game first released I was able to play more during the prime time, so all events were always being complete with a success. Now I am going through those same zones again, and seeing stuff that is different because things actually have a chance to fail. Have been a lot of fun. But I still see plenty of people around that I am hardly ever by my self in an event, just there are times there are just not enough people for an event to succeed.

What is being seen is lack of satisfaction from every corner of the map (pve) If you go to cursed shore, any dragon events, queensdale, Wayfarer foothills, or even Brisban Wildlands(or w/e the centuar region is) it is full with people. Any other place just isn’t rewarding enough or lacks the fun events people are looking for. Things like this are being worked on from what I’m told.

20 areas so far, not a single soul seen

People qqing about sales…

They had a Sale during Christmas, I checked Google and noticed GW2 was the only company in the world who had sales during this holiday period.

They had a Sale for New years, also checked Google, no one in the world had sales on new years or any “after Christmas sales”.

They had sales this month, I checked Google again, no one in the United States had any refund money this year, so terrible time to have a sale, also there were no refunds this year, anywhere.

So what we can assume from this is Guild Wars 2 and Arenanet are failing because clearly these are not times to have sales. As I’ve checked thoroughly with Google and seen no evidence of any other companies taking advantage of these holiday times to give sales to loyal or prospective customers.

So in anticipation of everyone in forums (since everyone is forums is clearly the only ones who play the game) leaving, I’ve driven as fast as I could to my local gamestop store (where there are no SALES at the moment) and bought all of their Guild Wars 2 cards so that I can play by myself when everyone is gone. I may be the sole survivor of Guild Wars 2, much like will smith in “I am Legend” I will endure on the zombie Apocalypse and support the world all by myself.

/sarcasm

The game has enough bugs and problems to worry about, they don’t need people predicting the end of the game at month 7. If the game developer says player activity is slowly increasing, then most likely they are telling the truth. Simply stating the numbers can cause people to panic for no reason. It’s obvious to most that games have a flow, ups and downs, and after initial release. So stating numbers tells nothing. Do you see regular updates in WoW when a new MMO comes out stating “We lost 3 million people, 1 million came back”? No. That’s just an example. But seriously, if you want to talk about decrease/increase you need to realize some obvious things:

Holidays
School
Work
Season
Peak Times
Servers
Locations Played from
Players playing other MMO’s on the side -Beta testers included for new MMO’s
Console gamers trying the new games that just released, breaking from GW2

And yes.

“Some” people leaving.
“Some” people returning.

There is a lack of common sense in most posts, people with any sense of business know that sales are a common thing, even in brand new companies. Petco opened near me, grand opening sale, as did a furniture store. Again, just an example.

Anyway…

If you find yourself on an empty server, we have guesting. If you enjoy the server you guest on why not join a guild and stay? If you REALLY like it you can get a transfer, and a good guild or friends could contribute to your costs.

If you don’t want to stay, or just want to hop around, find guilds on different servers. Ask them if they have a guest rank, a rank for just people guesting. Once you leave they remove you for space for others to guest and be part of a guild.

Just some ideas. My Apocalypse survival list is included below.

Mackdose.6504:

-snip-

Okay, since there is clearly a great number of people posting in this thread who don’t understand the terms we’re working with, a quick recap.

Total sales != number of active players != number of concurrent players.

Total sales refer to the total sales of the game (which, to date, is over 3 million copies). “Active players” refers to the number of people still playing, which is somewhere between 0 and 3 million. “Concurrent players” refers to the maximum number of players online at the same time.

Got it? Good.

No one, least of all me, said that their concurrency figures are directly related to their sales figures. This is just you not reading my post properly. What I said was that the sales figures are down, which in turn means that the overall growth of the player base might not be as significant as the devs want us to believe.

You state that it doesn’t matter how much growth there is, but no, it absolutely does matter, because if the growth is relatively small, then it’s nigh meaningless. In which case, you’re relying primarily on player retention for your continued sustenance rather than true growth.

Initial sales are always the primary source of income for every game in the initial months of a game’s release. Don’t forget that the developers are not only recouping development costs for creating the game, but also maintenance and distribution costs over the early months as well. Yes, it’s likely they made their money back, no one’s questioning that.

But micro-transactions are the long-term monetary model, not the short-term model. Once you’ve saturated the market with sales of the game and can no longer rely on that source of income (and ANet’s getting to that point now), it’s the micro-transactions that keep you going.

I’m not sure you even understand where my skepticism is coming from, so it’s hard for you to adequately judge how misplaced it is.

My point is that everyone posting in here with bold confidence is doing so without any figures in front of them, only the word of a developer that the game’s overall population has increased. Well, that’s nice, but that’s not numbers, that’s a very easily manipulated PR statement.

The actual numbers don’t paint nearly as rosy of a picture: visible decreases in sales and a downtrend on Xfire and other related sites. Then there’s the more anecdotal stuff: individual accounts of the player count, continued silence about the game’s concurrency and active player counts (when previously they were all too willing to brag about them), etc. It all doesn’t add up very positively. No, the game’s not dying, it may even be growing as they claim, but it’s likely not as large of a growth as they’re trying to imply.

Now you can certainly argue the validity of those statistics and you’re welcome to it, but it’s outright false to claim that the “nay-sayers” in this thread have less facts than you. In fact, they have more backing up their arguments than you do. You’re running on the word of a single dev and nothing else. And the continued silence of the developers in discussions like this should have you at least a bit concerned, because it’d be all too easy for them to hand over statistics that prove the game is doing great….but only if those statistics exist. Usually the reason for a company hiding statistics is because they paint an unfavorable light, one that works against the choice narrative of the time.

Case in point: ANet was bragging about 2 million sold copies of the game after only two weeks of the game’s release. Then they went dead silent on the figure for the longest time, causing people to question how much it was actually growing. People argued and debated and fought over it until finally in Jan, we found out that they were now up to 3 million….meaning that it took them four months to gain the same number of players as they gained in the opening two weeks of the game’s release….not nearly the beautiful picture of growth that they had been implying all this time.

I don’t deny that they may be telling the truth and the game is growing. I believe it. I simply question how significant the growth actually is. And if you were learning from their past statements, then you would be, too.

eisberg.2379:

-snip-

Yes, and that’s sort of my point.

If they’re having to resort to sales this early, and are being outsold by all three of the formerly named games at their current stages of development (all three had better sales per week on average than GW2 does right now), then the odds are good that they’re not doing very well.

maddoctor.2738:

TERA had a sale 20 days after release (May 19th), had another one on May 26th, both at half price and another one in September (at a price of 9.99$!) only 4 months after release.

Erm, the end of April to the beginning of September is most certainly not a four month period.

critickitten.1498:

eisberg.2379:

-snip-

Yes, and that’s sort of my point.

If they’re having to resort to sales this early, and are being outsold by all three of the formerly named games at their current stages of development (all three had better sales per week on average than GW2 does right now), then the odds are good that they’re not doing very well.

maddoctor.2738:

TERA had a sale 20 days after release (May 19th), had another one on May 26th, both at half price and another one in September (at a price of 9.99$!) only 4 months after release.

Erm, the end of April to the beginning of September is most certainly not a four month period.

That’s funny because I just looked up how Wow did in the 1st 7 years and it looks like gw2 still sold more than wow did in the same time frame: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/11/seven_years_of_world_of_warcra.php

Gw2 – ~6 months to 3 million (accounts)
Wow – ~8 months to 2 million (subs)

Sure it was a different time, but common, lets not be so pessimistic. Since when did 3 million become a bad number!?

critickitten.1498:

eisberg.2379:

-snip-

Yes, and that’s sort of my point.

If they’re having to resort to sales this early, and are being outsold by all three of the formerly named games at their current stages of development (all three had better sales per week on average than GW2 does right now), then the odds are good that they’re not doing very well.

maddoctor.2738:

TERA had a sale 20 days after release (May 19th), had another one on May 26th, both at half price and another one in September (at a price of 9.99$!) only 4 months after release.

Erm, the end of April to the beginning of September is most certainly not a four month period.

Using the word resort denotes you have some sort of insider info on how the company is doing. Care to show proof other than a outside program/blog post?

Like in WoW, avoid any servers that have low, medium, high population at ALL TIMES.

On a Full server, play during peak times because if you play early in the mornings it is as good as dead as < Full server. Also, don’t expect to see lots of players in the leveling areas unless you are playing a new MMO on release.

WoW apparently has ~9.6 million subscribers but it honestly feels a lot less, more like 1/5 of that number…

Back on topic, apply the same advice for GW2 to maximize your chances of playing with others!

Jade Quarry server is ALWAYS poppin off.

Try guesting here. it’s pretty awesome.

Arisal.9740:

That’s funny because I just looked up how Wow did in the 1st 7 years and it looks like gw2 still sold more than wow did in the same time frame: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/11/seven_years_of_world_of_warcra.php

Gw2 – ~6 months to 3 million (accounts)
Wow – ~8 months to 2 million (subs)

Sure it was a different time, but common, lets not be so pessimistic. Since when did 3 million become a bad number!?

3 million isn’t a bad number. It’s just not as meaningful to sell 3 million in 2013 as it would have been back in 2004.

Sort of like how all these new movies have vastly outsold classic movies from the 90s and 80s, but that’s not really as meaningful in an age where a movie ticket costs 10 times as much as it used to.

The markets then and now are completely different beasts.

Oh, and secondary note: WoW continued to sell at an exponential rate for its first two years. GW2 has slowed to a near halt after six months. WoW’s newest expansion outsold GW2 in the same span of time and it was widely considered a failure. So I do hope you’re not about to claim that GW2 is going to be the next WoW when it isn’t even able to output nearly the same sales figures as a 10-year-old game.

Geotherma.2395:

Using the word resort denotes you have some sort of insider info on how the company is doing. Care to show proof other than a outside program/blog post?

Someone hasn’t been reading this thread.

Go do that, then I’ll consider answering your question.

critickitten.1498:

Arisal.9740:

That’s funny because I just looked up how Wow did in the 1st 7 years and it looks like gw2 still sold more than wow did in the same time frame: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/11/seven_years_of_world_of_warcra.php

Gw2 – ~6 months to 3 million (accounts)
Wow – ~8 months to 2 million (subs)

Sure it was a different time, but common, lets not be so pessimistic. Since when did 3 million become a bad number!?

3 million isn’t a bad number. It’s just not as meaningful to sell 3 million in 2013 as it would have been back in 2004.

Sort of like how all these new movies have vastly outsold classic movies from the 90s and 80s, but that’s not really as meaningful in an age where a movie ticket costs 10 times as much as it used to.

The markets then and now are completely different beasts.

Geotherma.2395:

Using the word resort denotes you have some sort of insider info on how the company is doing. Care to show proof other than a outside program/blog post?

Someone hasn’t been reading this thread.

Go do that, then I’ll consider answering your question.

I did, I ignore xfire and other pages that are not 100% accurate. I’d trust a dev over a website and over a player who doesn’t like a game. Saying that because they are having a sale they are doing bad makes no sense, as my previous post mentioned.

Geotherma.2395:

I did, I ignore xfire and other pages that are not 100% accurate. I’d trust a dev over a website and over a player who doesn’t like a game. Saying that because they are having a sale they are doing bad makes no sense, as my previous post mentioned.

Now I know you haven’t read the thread.

As I said, go do that now. You shouldn’t jump into a conversation you’re not a part of if you’re not willing to go back and read everything that was said in that conversation.

-“Companies only start to hide things when they’re not doing as well as they want it to appear.”-

“The game has enough bugs and problems to worry about, they don’t need people predicting the end of the game at month 7. If the game developer says player activity is slowly increasing, then most likely they are telling the truth. Simply stating the numbers can cause people to panic for no reason. It’s obvious to most that games have a flow, ups and downs, and after initial release. So stating numbers tells nothing. Do you see regular updates in WoW when a new MMO comes out stating “We lost 3 million people, 1 million came back”? No. That’s just an example. But seriously, if you want to talk about decrease/increase you need to realize some obvious things:
Holidays
School
Work
Season
Peak Times
Servers
Locations Played from
Players playing other MMO’s on the side -Beta testers included for new MMO’s
Console gamers trying the new games that just released, breaking from GW2”
^ Was my point.

diabluz.2860:

Raine.1394:

The server you play on determines your open world PvE experience to a large degree. I’m on Tarnished Coast and every zone is populated from starter areas to Cursed Shore farming areas. Try guesting on TC and check it out.

Guesting is not the ultimate solution as ideally it should be around, well, guesting, playing with friends and the like. Right now, it’s a solution to the dead server problem. It’s natural for the population to peak and decline somewhat in a new MMO. However, their introduction of vertical progression in the 11/15 patch emptied the open world on my original server. It was like in one day there was no one around anymore outside LA. I did two server transfers before landing on TC which I am very happy with.

This is not true. The time when this game lost the most players is the month or two following release. People that came to GW2 expecting a WoW competitor started realizing this game was not a gear treadmill and didn’t have raiding so they started leaving in droves. We are now left with the small percentage of the mmo community that doesn’t need raiding or a gear treadmill in their MMO’s.

This game will never compete with the BIG MMO’s out there that have raids and gear treadmills. Are there enough gamers in the MMO community that don’t mind the absence of raids, the gear treadmill and the trinity? I don’t know as only ArenaNet knows how many people they need to be playing this game and spending money in the gem shop to make it a profitable success.

If this game ever wants to achieve massive major success they would have to institute a gear treadmill, raiding and the trinity system. This game is a niche MMO as it stands.

If you read my post carefully I never said anything about a decline in the player base. How would I know? I only spoke of an emptying of the open world, and that was actually due to funneling players into one dungeon to grind for the gear with the better stats.

And, there is nothing big-league about vertical progression (your gear grind treadmill). The major MMO’s have it and it is increasing viewed as a negative element in game design. It’s only purpose is to give players an illusion of progress. Let me illustrate. Before the new tier of gear everyone is at power level X. When they get off the treadmill they are now all at power level Y. Meanwhile the environment has also assumed power Y. There has been no relative change in power level among players or between players and the environment. No one has actually gone anywhere. That’s why it’s called a treadmill. You get on and off at the same place. Thoughtful gamers have begun asking for more than illusion from their gameplay and the time they invest in a game. And, no, a game doesn’t have to be a WoW-clone in any respect to be successful. They just need a design philosophy and vision full of ideas whose time has come. GW2 has distinctively improved on WoW in a number of ways, primarily in a design that allows players to successfully play with other players. VP is a step backwards in my opinion.

GW2 got over-hyped, ratings don’t count, they are just an opinion of the early levels. But GW2 sold sooo much copies, but after 2months after release, a huge percentage of people got 80. But there’s nothing to do after level 80. So everyone stopped playing. Until this day, you can see messages on the forums of people that get bored, leaving the game. And it’s dropping everyday. only a small percentage kept playing. Only on big updates you’ll see alot of people. Because people are still following the game, hoping the gameplay will get better for them.

Geotherma.2395:

-snip-

Er, but your “point” is wrong. WoW rather regularly reports its player count, as do many other subscription games. Even some F2P games do it. That’s how we constantly know how many people are playing games like WoW, they outright tell people how many subscribers they have. That’s how most companies work, usually because they have investors to answer to.

There’s at least one site online that gets its data for active player counts from said companies and/or press reports: http://mmodata.blogspot.com/

So the data is obviously out there, at least for most companies.

Worth noting that ANet was reporting some of these figures back when the figures made it sound like the game was doing great. But then they fell silent after the initial two weeks. Now we’re hearing nothing about concurrent or active players. It was only just recently that we even got raw sales figures, and they showed a significant drop in sales since the first two weeks. It’s clear that people just aren’t buying the game that much any more. So either the recent uptick in players is people coming back, or it’s purely due to sales (which would mean that it’s a much smaller increase than they’re implying). I don’t deny that it’s possible the game is growing, I only question how much that growth really is.

It’s not coincidence when a company goes from bragging about its sales to total silence. It’s not exactly conspiratorial to suggest that perhaps the reason they’re no longer bragging about their numbers is because there’s no longer anything there to brag about.

And, as I’ve stated multiple times, I’d be fine with being proven wrong. I’ve directly said that if the devs came in here and posted the data to prove that the game’s growth is significantly high, I’d withdraw my point. But the devs have remained quiet, and have continued to do so, despite this topic being brought up many, many times since the game’s release.

You choose to ignore that fact. But it has not escaped my own observation, and I am convinced that the reason is because they don’t want us knowing that the game isn’t growing as fast as they want it to seem.

critickitten.1498:

How many sales did … Rift have in that same period? Lemme answer that for you: none. They saw no reason to devalue their product when it was still selling just fine at its original market price.

Bad info there. Rift had multiple sales in its first six months. I bought the game for half price in the first third of May, a little more than two months after launch. A month after that it was on sale for less. I remember thinking I should have waited.

They also had two-week free trials in that same period. TW announced in August 2011, a little over five months into the game, that “1 million had played the game.” Since “played the game” could mean “played the game as part of a free trial,” 1,000,000 boxes sold in that time frame is questionable.

IndigoSundown.5419:

-snip-

Appreciated, but someone else has already pointed this error out for me.

Seems like their doing “ok”. /shrug I just play the game, plenty of people here.

http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/155585.pdf?attachmentId=155585
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/186137/Strong_Guild_Wars_2_sales_help_NCsoft_to_record_quarter.php#.USv1XKWcH8k
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/02/05/ncsoft-earnings-report-shows-healthy-growth/

Medazolam.3058:

Also for those who haven’t played in two months and still are posting here, log in, check it out.

If they had made any appealing changes to the game since I stopped playing, I just might do that.

More calendar gating just doesn’t cut it.

Arisal.9740:

Since when did 3 million become a bad number!?

If I’m not mistaken, SWTOR sold 3 million in the first six months (with about 2M at release), before going F2P by the end of its first year.

The biggest problem is not lack of players.. but lack of information on events. There is high traffic in the noob areas so event are often enjoyed by both high and low levels, but higher level areas are much thinner and what is worse is you tend not to know about events until you are on top of it. I think the map needs to show any active or startable events in a radius that is %50 of the map.

Another thing to is.. there is no rush. We arn’t paying any monthly fees so I don’t feel bad getting done later what I could get done now.

Geotherma.2395:

Seems like their doing “ok”. /shrug I just play the game, plenty of people here.

http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/155585.pdf?attachmentId=155585
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/186137/Strong_Guild_Wars_2_sales_help_NCsoft_to_record_quarter.php#.USv1XKWcH8k
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/02/05/ncsoft-earnings-report-shows-healthy-growth/

Psst. If you’d taken my advice and gone reading back through the thread, you might have noticed this snippet:

Okay, since there is clearly a great number of people posting in this thread who don’t understand the terms we’re working with, a quick recap.

Total sales != number of active players != number of concurrent players.

Total sales refer to the total sales of the game (which, to date, is over 3 million copies). “Active players” refers to the number of people still playing, which is somewhere between 0 and 3 million. “Concurrent players” refers to the maximum number of players online at the same time.

All three of those links refer to sales, which in no way gives any indication of how many players the game still has.

See? It’s important to read a thread before replying, so that you don’t end up saying something that has already been covered.

I can park a character in a corner and AFK level (really) – so why is there this misguided belief that you will NOT see a glut/concentration of players in certain areas of the game where the content is relevant to high/max level?

That said on many servers there is plenty of action outside that concentration, probably easy to miss when alt tabbing out to the forums.

I can only guess how much content I’ve missed, how many cut scenes I didn’t watch, just so I could jump on here and cry about how broken the game is…

critickitten.1498:

Geotherma.2395:

Seems like their doing “ok”. /shrug I just play the game, plenty of people here.

http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/155585.pdf?attachmentId=155585
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/186137/Strong_Guild_Wars_2_sales_help_NCsoft_to_record_quarter.php#.USv1XKWcH8k
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/02/05/ncsoft-earnings-report-shows-healthy-growth/

Psst. If you’d taken my advice and gone reading back through the thread, you might have noticed this snippet:

Okay, since there is clearly a great number of people posting in this thread who don’t understand the terms we’re working with, a quick recap.

Total sales != number of active players != number of concurrent players.

Total sales refer to the total sales of the game (which, to date, is over 3 million copies). “Active players” refers to the number of people still playing, which is somewhere between 0 and 3 million. “Concurrent players” refers to the maximum number of players online at the same time.

All three of those links refer to sales, which in no way gives any indication of how many players the game still has.

See? It’s important to read a thread before replying, so that you don’t end up saying something that has already been covered.

Ah yes, my skill in reading through qq has declined a bit over the years. But the models that are followed for active players are usually Subscription games, where you can more accurately calculate how many players are “continuing on”. Whereas people in Guild Wars 2 know that they don’t have to log in, so its very difficult to compare this game to a free to play or a sub game by any standard. But after the 3000 “game is dying/dead” threads, it gets hard to take any of them seriously or draw any sort of intelligent information from. An expansion is upcoming, and I assume that this will bring more players back. Soon you can send gem items to people as well, which will also help their profits and increase the fun of the game. They will be focusing on global holidays which I’m sure the global player base will enjoy. From experience with past MMO’s and noticing the trend in players to call apocalypses far too early, I simply dislike most of the posts solely because they offer no optimistic points. This isn’t generalized, but as a whole it is very hard to find people who can constructively comment on the game from both sides. They are also releasing more rewards for our favorite areas, this should help as well. They are learning as they go, and its a good sign for things to come.

Geotherma.2395:

Ah yes, my skill in reading has declined a bit over the years.

Fixed that for ya. You’re welcome.

But the models that are followed for active players are usually Subscription games, where you can more accurately calculate how many players are “continuing on”. Whereas people in Guild Wars 2 know that they don’t have to log in, so its very difficult to compare this game to a free to play or a sub game by any standard.

It’s really not, though. Check how many players logged in over the last month, everyone else is clearly not active. Even if you argue that “maybe they took a holiday”, fair enough, but that still doesn’t mean they’re actively playing the game as of this instant.

It’s like measuring subscriptions on a monthly basis (which most companies do), and in fact ANet likely already does this to some degree internally. So all they have to do now is publish that data.

But after the 3000 “game is dying/dead” threads, it gets hard to take any of them seriously or draw any sort of intelligent information from. An expansion is upcoming, and I assume that this will bring more players back.

Whatever happened to “I don’t trust information from anyone except a developer”? Not one developer has stated that an expansion is upcoming in the near future. The only source of that rumor is an outside source. It may well be true, mind, but if you’re going to trust that rumor then it makes you entirely hypocritical on your earlier point of view.

Soon you can send gem items to people as well, which will also help their profits and increase the fun of the game. They will be focusing on global holidays which I’m sure the global player base will enjoy.

Which are both nice things. But neither of those things provides genuine retention to the point of consistency. If you’re only logging in for the holiday events, you’re not a consistently online player.

From experience with past MMO’s and noticing the trend in players to call apocalypses far too early, I simply dislike most of the posts solely because they offer no optimistic points. This isn’t generalized, but as a whole it is very hard to find people who can constructively comment on the game from both sides. They are also releasing more rewards for our favorite areas, this should help as well. They are learning as they go, and its a good sign for things to come.

And this is why reading helps. Because I’ve never said that the game is dying.

In fact I’ve outright said that I don’t even doubt the claim that the game’s population has increased, in accordance with Colin’s assertions. However, I also said that I don’t for one second believe that the data is statistically significant. I think it’s much lower than we’re being led to believe, given sales data to date, and I think there’s a reason they’re not providing it for public viewing: because it would indicate that the game isn’t doing as well as they’re trying to make it sound.

If you’re arguing that you don’t like when people claim the game is dying, then I feel it necessary to point out that you’re clearly arguing with someone else, not me.

http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2013/02/25/exclusive-guild-wars-2-interview-with-colin-johanson/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=t.co

Not sure if anyone reads twitter anymore so here’s some info on upcoming things. Aside from your sly indirect,direct comments I can see some of your points. However, this game is still developing and I doubt they want to release numbers as they do not correctly identify how well a game is doing at all times. Just as much as the financial status of the company does not. For the sake of turning the thread into a giant bickering session I’m just going to say that they are making money off Guild Wars 2, possibly more than any game from NCsoft. To continue this trend they will surely do whatever it takes to keep people playing/buying the game. Also, I wasn’t stating that you said the game is dying, the other threads that push this sentiment were only exacerbated by yours is what I was getting at. The thread has gone on a downward spiral from the start. But perhaps its my fault for even reading a thread that stated the exact opposite of what a dev just said weeks ago. But you and me, we can still be friends. I’m going to send you cookies from gem store as soon as they are available, and we can take pics of us in the maybe or maybe not upcoming expansion so people don’t think everyone in game wants to kill or harass each other.

The game seems to be dying, I fear for ghost towns

Flamenco.3894:

The game seems to be dying, I fear for ghost towns

If the game dies and all its players die in game, Orr will be entirely full of zombies. If I’m the last one left it will be like heaven for me ^^ Imagine all the giant moldy bags…

Flamenco.3894:

The game seems to be dying, I fear for ghost towns

Do you not like guesting or something?

CoRtex.2157:

GW2 got over-hyped, ratings don’t count, they are just an opinion of the early levels. But GW2 sold sooo much copies, but after 2months after release, a huge percentage of people got 80. But there’s nothing to do after level 80. So everyone stopped playing. Until this day, you can see messages on the forums of people that get bored, leaving the game. And it’s dropping everyday. only a small percentage kept playing. Only on big updates you’ll see alot of people. Because people are still following the game, hoping the gameplay will get better for them.

Everyone stopped playing? lol

I play my level 80s, plural, all the time, and I still find stuff to do. And all the people in my guild, over 70 of us (most of whom were here in beta) are still playing. I guess when you say everyone stopped, you mean a percentage of people.

This is true. A percentage of people stopped playing. Those are the people who should be playing games like WoW. People who need to be led around by the nose, now grind this specific instance till you get this specific gear, till you beat this specific boss so you can move onto the next instance. I’ve played games like that. Do you know what I do at max level. I leave them. Because they suck.

Guild Wars 2 lets me play a game I want to play, not be locked up at 80 in a couple of dungeons and a raid I have no interest in banging my head against. Or end game PvP.

Some people just haven’t figured out yet that there’s another type of gamer out there. Less competitive, but not necessarily more casual. People who play games like Dragon Age and Skyrim (both are immensely popular). These are, wait for it, RPGs.

I’d much rather play a game with “nothing to do” like Guild Wars 2 at level 80, than play WoW at max level and bang my head against the same raid for week after week, hoping to get the one piece of gear I need to move onto the next ridiculous waste of time. That’s what a treadmill is.

I go anywhere I want, and do anything I want, in any zone I want…and I have fun doing it. People who need to be led around by the nose are indeed leaving this game. And most of those same people are quite happy to think that everything thinks like them. But there’s a large playerbase out there that makes their own fun. They don’t want to be led around. They want to make their own fun in a virtual playground.

I do the ocassional Fractal, but I’m not at level 10 yet. I’ve done a bit of WvW, a bit of SPvP, but mostly you’ll find me in a dungeon with friends or more often, the open world, where I happily play this game.

Because some of us are looking for a different game than the rest of you. And we’re the people who are largely satisfied. Not that the game doesn’t have flaws, of course it does. It just has less flaws for my type of gameplay than any other MMO.

The design of Guild Wars 2 makes it seem like there’s far fewer players than there really are. In a game like WOW, end game is standing in whatever the capital city of choice is these days and waiting for LFD/LFR/BG to pop up and complain how all the other classes are overpowered. In GW2 there is no reason to stay in the cities rather than go do stuff out in the world. You also have WvW and SPvP taking players out of the world.

“The game’s population is seriously declining”
“Nuh uh, it’s not I have 5 level 80s and I play them”

Somewhere between those 2 quotes lies the real truth.

In between “it’s dead Jim” and “0MG this is best evar!!” is “doing just fine thanks”. I think I can handle that.

MrDmajor.7084:

“The game’s population is seriously declining”
“Nuh uh, it’s not I have 5 level 80s and I play them”

Somewhere between those 2 quotes lies the real truth.

Well, no, that’s lazy thinking that the truth has to be somewhere in the middle. It could be seriously declining, and someone could have 5 level 80s and play them. Both can indeed be true

I still think the population readings would be a waveform more than a downwards line. People come and go as they have time – that’s the benefit of it not requiring them to pay and feel obligated to log in to get their money’s worth.

Of course, it makes it incredibly hard to track via accounts existing since they might not all be active at the same time.