Guild Wars 2

While it was recently disclosed that apparently GW2 has sold 3 million copies world wide it certainly doesn’t feel like that in game. I don’t think ArenaNet will ever give active player numbers so it’s left to speculate.

So it got me to wondering how many active players are there really? For example I no longer play but I obviously bought the game and enjoy interacting with those on the forums… but the game simply isn’t for me.

It seems many folks are in this camp but there are many that aren’t as well.

So if you’re reading this… are you just a poster or a player?

I play the game at least 4 hours a day.

The next patch will make or break for me. There is just sooo many things broken and wrong with the game right now, I find myself logging in and then logging out minutes later. Everyone says that Tarnished Coast is a super populated servers and one of the most busy but I don’t see that at all. It’s no more busy than my last server which was essentially dead. That should tell you something. The people who say “Oh thats because everyone is either in fractals/dungeons or WvW” well, I doubt that’s true because when I go into WvW there’s about 4 people there at any given time and I rarely see anyone in any zone or looking for dungeon groups. I doubt the entire population on a server is in fractals and dungeons 24/7.

Active players, less than WoW I’d like to say, even if I prefer GW2.

How do I know? A few days ago I checked both WoW and GW2 pages on Facebook…

Last publication by World of Warcraft was 2 hours ago when I went there ; just over 8000 likes.
In that time, GW2 poorly manages to get 200-500 likes. When I came from WoW page, they were adding pictures to the fanart album posted over 1 month ago!! ; only 6000 likes.

So, several possibilities:
- Active players on WoW have 50 times more Facebook accounts than active players on GW2.
- GW2 posts crap so nobody likes it.
- GW2 is so awesome that players are stuck in the game and never go on facebook.
- GW2 has definitly less active players.

Player. 3-4 hours a day.
Pretty much do the daily, do the fotm daily, do AC and CoF daily runs, kill some noobs in WvWvW, exit. Nothing really entertaining at all.

Player for the moment. Just too many hiccups have really tarnished the rep and made the game a lot less enjoyable. That’s putting it very nicely. My current community corner is what keeps me from just raging and demanding a full refund.

Guesting issue has really made me into a disgusting unhappy troll.

I’m a player and honestly enjoying the game.

I’ve also noticed a big upswing in activity on my server (Desolation) recently. All the PVE areas, at least the ones I’ve been to, seem to be busy.

To answere your question: Player.

Comments: Two rl people I know who play(ed) the game. First likes it, played gw1, got me into it and is perfectly happy playing it one maybe two hours per week never reaching what ever end game is. The other no longer plays having returned to wow. He has tried a bunch of mmo’s conan ect and said that of them all gw2 was actually good and fun. However he prefered wow and having all reps to max was heavily invested into it. So I wonder how many players are happy with their one hour per week? That one would never read or touch the forums with a ten foot pole btw.

I’m pretty new to GW2 (almost 2 months) but I’m loving it and seems busy and full on Tarnished Coast at various hours of day and night.

I prefer playing to posting though I try and browse these forums once in a while.

I avoid facebook.

I imagine there may be more players than the forums suggest but nowhere near 3 million players. I imagine some left after release, as is usual in all games but hopefully they’ll keep coming back to experience the improvements & changes as this game grows.

I think the negative tends to be more vocal than the positive so it’s easy to get a slightly skewed view of the game. IMO, personal experience through own game-play is best.

I’m mostly a poster these days.

I log into GW2 maybe once or twice a week, play for about an hour at most and log off. Just tired of a bunch of things that I won’t go into, as I don’t want to derail the thread. The game is just no longer fun for me anymore.

But I have this lingering hope that things will change, so I hang around the forums still to congregate with others and give opinions here and there. Always been a forum person though and usually end up spending more time on the forum than in game anywhere.

I post because I play and am passionate about the game. I play on average 6 hours a day. I know right offhand at least 40 other people that play as much as me and post regularly on the forums too.

Alf.9137:

I’m pretty new to GW2 (almost 2 months) but I’m loving it and seems busy and full on Tarnished Coast at various hours of day and night.

I prefer playing to posting though I try and browse these forums once in a while.

I avoid facebook.

I imagine there may be more players than the forums suggest but nowhere near 3 million players. I imagine some left after release, as is usual in all games but hopefully they’ll keep coming back to experience the improvements & changes as this game grows.

I think the negative tends to be more vocal than the positive so it’s easy to get a slightly skewed view of the game. IMO, personal experience through own game-play is best.

You, dear player, are a wise person indeed…..

Player here. Currently eating lunch right now and watching Portlandia. Will login soon after… I usually post when I’m bored at work.

“GW2 has sold 3 million copies world wide”

(how I see it)

yes they sold roughly that many copies.. BUT how many accounts where bought for gold selling and botting…and how many of those have been BANNED and then rebought and then rebanned again my guess is alot…

And also how many people bought more than one copy of the game I know a few

so in all there are not 3 million players playing..

“GW2 has sold 3 million copies world wide”… <—- marketing trying to sell more games with fancy wording…. would have been better just to say… BLANK amount of active players playing…but thats how i see it and just my personal opinion

I see lots of people in game and in different zones (Seafarers Rest), since the end of wintersday event, I have given GW2 a rest, mainly to avoid burnout.

So at the moment I am a poster, rather than a player but when the next event happens I will be playing 2-8 hours a day until my next rest…the beauty of no subscription.

I think GW2 continues to be very popular but because its such a big game everyone has stuff in the game that they dislike, annoys them. The longer you play, the more the good stuff gets taken for granted and the bad really starts to get at you…

I definately love/hate GW2!

New player here, and more or a reader then a poster on forums…

As posted above, its always the negative players that seem to be more vocal on forums then people who are happy, think about it, how many times has someone said how great life is for them compared to how many times someone has complained about the weather /traffic/wife/husband / insert current issue here.

Genuinely enjoying the game, and so far got nothing but good to say about the community (Desolation FTW) , as all have been friendly and helpful when either me or someone else has asked something in /map, hell I even had an engi light the way with his flamethrower for nearly an hr while I epic failed the JP in LA (the one where the lights go out and you jump on the dark)

Player, 2-3hrs a day.
I think Facebook is the devil.
My guild has 200-250 people logging in daily (you can see on the guild transaction tab)

I think you may be used to the old school type MMOs which have quest hubs with players gathered around those hubs. Due to the dynamic nature of GW2 it works much differently.

I can be standing in an area and it looks deserted, like this:

http://i.imgur.com/Kvyub.jpg

Ten minutes later an event spawns and all kitten breaks loose:

http://i.imgur.com/fm9ZE.jpg

After the event everyone dissapates to whatever they were doing before the event and it looks just as deserted as it did before the event.

Go to any of the large meta events with the big chests. You will see tons of people.

ANet counts logins to see how many active players there are.
So according to them I’m an active player.

I login, play with my armor’s dyes, stand around reading chat, then alt-tab to firefox and log out 2 hours later.

I may login every day but most of the time I just have the program running while I do the dishes or clean the toilet (more fun than gw2… just kidding, just kidding :P)

I still actively play. I’m waiting to see how this game grows like most everybody else, but I like it enough to stay. I was a Guild Wars 1 veteran so there’s also that attachment to the world for me as well, though it’s minor compared to the actual reasons I continue playing (which can be summed up as it’s just plain fun!).

I’m currently a poster, hoping one day I will be tempted to log in and actually play again.

seems the AA here, but player, active, sometimes i have the feel not to play and read/post forums.
i’m also gw2 fan on facebook, but i never click i like, because facebook bores me to death.
i hate wow

If my sig wasn’t obvious enough

I mained sin in GW for years and before that I never really was into GW all that much. I actively GvG with a war and prot monk but never pve’d. I was under the impression thief would be the same style and I was totally wrong, basically ruined the game for me on top of ANet doing a crazy 180 and betraying any and all GW vets in my eyes.

I actually didn’t buy D3 for the same reason. Mained sin in D2 for years and they just remove a class so suddenly? Why do devs do this!? Seriously? There are a plethora of reasons I don’t play GW2 anymore but this would be #1. I just don’t enjoy any profession.

I play GW2 an average of 3-4 hours a day.

Very much enjoying the game.

I’m only on the forums while at work (or to check on market crashes).

Well, lets put it this way: 3.000.000/49 (amount of servers. 24 NA servers, 27 european) is about 61.000 players per server. Thats a small town! So, these 61.000 players might only go online for about 1-2 hours a day, some 3-4hours, and some 5hours +. and some might not even log in at all cos they are to bussy/dont want to play gw2 that day. So overall I’d say you wouldnt see more then 5.000 players on that server online (maybe more during prime time) of which most are probably spread out all over the world of tyria. Which in total has 26 regions. 5.000/26 = 160~ of which id asume a fair share is not in there but in WvWvW or doing dungeons.
Then we have the problem that the render distance for friendly players is incredibly low, you have to run into them before you even see them. And overflow servers that split the population of a server even more.
Having everything taken into consideration the averages arent even reliable cos they are based on a guess and server population might be different (with some servers being more popular then others) so yeah, this could explain why everything feels dead.

I’m taking a break I’ll probably be back at the end of January/beginning of Feb.

I was playing 2-4 hours a day.

Zeldain.5710:

While it was recently disclosed that apparently GW2 has sold 3 million copies world wide it certainly doesn’t feel like that in game. I don’t think ArenaNet will ever give active player numbers so it’s left to speculate.

So it got me to wondering how many active players are there really? For example I no longer play but I obviously bought the game and enjoy interacting with those on the forums… but the game simply isn’t for me.

It seems many folks are in this camp but there are many that aren’t as well.

So if you’re reading this… are you just a poster or a player?

Since you no longer play, any and all your posts can be safely ignored. Gotcha.

killcannon.2576:

Since you no longer play, any and all your posts can be safely ignored. Gotcha.

I think players who post but don’t play bring a very unique — and important — perspective to discussion about the game… After all, we spent money on the game but dislike it enough to essentially flush that money down the toilet. ArenaNet no doubt has a keen interest in finding out why.

I was running about 2 hours a day, with longer stretches on weekends to average about 4. But now that the inflation on all the high-end stuff has put even bleh pre-cursors up to 90 gold (for The Energizer, to make a disco ball, really?), I’m having trouble staying motivated to put in that much time. The amount of time to get things I’d like in the game, and the fact that I have to grind the whole time to do it has taken a lot of fun out of the game.

I had been leveling alts, but now that the power traders have started to force up the prices on low level gear as well, you not only make less per hour, but have to spend more to get low level gear.

Might as well change the name to U.S. Economy 2.

Zeldain.5710:

killcannon.2576:

Since you no longer play, any and all your posts can be safely ignored. Gotcha.

I think players who post but don’t play bring a very unique — and important — perspective to discussion about the game… After all, we spent money on the game but dislike it enough to essentially flush that money down the toilet. ArenaNet no doubt has a keen interest in finding out why.

You do bring a unique perspective. It’s like posting on a board about flying, but you don’t fly. It’s like critiquing swimmers, but you don’t swim. It’s like being a food critic, but you don’t eat. Your perspective is at best a distraction, at worst a detriment to the community. If you are not part of the community, then……and be assured this fact will be pointed out when you feel the need to post on anything that may affect the community.

Meglobob.8620:

So at the moment I am a poster, rather than a player but when the next event happens I will be playing 2-8 hours a day until my next rest…the beauty of no subscription.

That brings up an interesting point. Has ArenaNet simply done exactly what they intended? Built a world that you can easily step in and out of? Come back only for a splash of new content that interests you?

Personally, I want a world and character I can feel attached to and invest in. I don’t view MMORPGs as a simple video game but more as a hobby… something I put myself into over time in a dedicated way.

Guild Wars 2 does not foster that mindset at all, and I think for the detriment of the genre.

killcannon.2576:

You do bring a unique perspective. It’s like posting on a board about flying, but you don’t fly. It’s like critiquing swimmers, but you don’t swim. It’s like being a food critic, but you don’t eat. Your perspective is at best a distraction, at worst a detriment to the community. If you are not part of the community, then……and be assured this fact will be pointed out when you feel the need to post on anything that may affect the community.

You wouldn’t do very well in business if you ignored the customers unhappy y with your product or service. They are as big or bigger key to future success as “happy” customers.

And that’s exactly my point – we ARE a part of the community. We just don’t play the game.

I play a couple hours at a time a 3-5 days a week

Both.

My server’s a bit dead, I have no problem finding groups but I miss the crowds of people in zones. There are plenty of servers that are still bustling but my friends are here, and 3 million sold or not I still have people to play with.

Player and still loving it. Currently working on having a geared-up 80 of each class whilst playing the TP to stack cash for a legendary. Still plenty to keep me occupied despite the bugs etc.

10+ hours a day. Farm ori/mithril across 4 of my 6 characters, Daily achievement, AC occasionally, and Since I’m Tarnished coast, I spend my time RP or leveling alts.

Zeldain.5710:

killcannon.2576:

You do bring a unique perspective. It’s like posting on a board about flying, but you don’t fly. It’s like critiquing swimmers, but you don’t swim. It’s like being a food critic, but you don’t eat. Your perspective is at best a distraction, at worst a detriment to the community. If you are not part of the community, then……and be assured this fact will be pointed out when you feel the need to post on anything that may affect the community.

You wouldn’t do very well in business if you ignored the customers unhappy y with your product or service. They are as big or bigger key to future success as “happy” customers.

And that’s exactly my point – we ARE a part of the community. We just don’t play the game.

You are not part of the community if you don’t play. Does buying two copies make you twice as much a part of the community? Should Anet listen to gold sellers? By your logic, they are part of the community. Should they listen to bots? By your logic, they are part of the community. Just because you buy something doesn’t make you a part of the community. Being a part of the community (playing) makes you a part of the community. People buy games in large part because of word of mouth, from others who liked the game. I can’t imagine someone buying a game because someone told them it sucked.

I play and post.

I probably average 15 hours a week playing. That’s a steady decrease from 25 a week. I’m probably going to pick up a copy of Secret World next week. For me how the next GW2 patch unfolds and/or how much I like tSW will determine whether or not I keep playing.

At first I came to the forums to get help with my engineer. Then I found out that it wasn’t me that sucked it was the profession. So then I lingered around in the many hilarious engineer subforum threads (predict the next nerf, famous engineer quotes, etc.). Then I started trying to post informative stuff in the general threads – which quickly got ignored. People don’t seem to like actual information. Then I started getting into the actual discussions a bit. Now my sarcastic sense of humor is getting me in trouble with the moderators. I need to post more smily faces I guess.

Now I’m getting less and less interested in playing every day and spending more time on the forums. Most of the time I’m not complaining. But I do that sometimes too. I’d prefer it if there were more useful conversations and less flaming but I get the general sense that the imbalanced state of the PvE game is fueling those fires.

Poster, I’ve played the game for like 20minutes in the past month. Also if this helps any, when I was online in LA I only seen about 5-10 people in the area where TP/bank/Forge is, and it was later in the day on a weekend.

Keiran.1896:

Active players, less than WoW I’d like to say, even if I prefer GW2.

How do I know? A few days ago I checked both WoW and GW2 pages on Facebook…

Last publication by World of Warcraft was 2 hours ago when I went there ; just over 8000 likes.
In that time, GW2 poorly manages to get 200-500 likes. When I came from WoW page, they were adding pictures to the fanart album posted over 1 month ago!! ; only 6000 likes.

So, several possibilities:
- Active players on WoW have 50 times more Facebook accounts than active players on GW2.
- GW2 posts crap so nobody likes it.
- GW2 is so awesome that players are stuck in the game and never go on facebook.
- GW2 has definitly less active players.

well WoW has 16 million people that pay the subscription, Guild Wars 2 has 3 million sold copies. Of course it would be more populated lol. though something IS up with WoW population, because now almost all zones are cross 8-10 servers to make them more full.

As to the OP – active player here, play at least 6 hours a day. Out of my close circle of friends – my boyfriend plays about as much as I do, his mother and my friend are both casual players logging in every 2 days or so.

killcannon.2576:

You are not part of the community if you don’t play. Does buying two copies make you twice as much a part of the community? Should Anet listen to gold sellers? By your logic, they are part of the community. Should they listen to bots? By your logic, they are part of the community. Just because you buy something doesn’t make you a part of the community. Being a part of the community (playing) makes you a part of the community. People buy games in large part because of word of mouth, from others who liked the game. I can’t imagine someone buying a game because someone told them it sucked.

Sorry, you don’t have to be a player to be part of the community. I paid my money, here I am.

But listening to the people who thought it sucked and making it better to maybe sell 2 copies for every one quitter sounds like a plan I’d take if I was a developer.

Poster. Still waiting on culling to get fixed. Plus my favorite classes are gimped (mechanic wise) in WvW as I dislike the big 3 so hopefully they balance better (fix the bugs/mechanics) in the future.

I recently quit, my primary issue as to why is the shallow combat and the favouring of ranged combat, and the worst part of it is the devs know what’s wrong and yet they do nothing. I’ll log in only to do the daily and that’s it, collect those jugs of karma just in case they ever fix this game.

I play. After a couple of hours of the RNG beating me on the forehead with the “NO LOOT FOR YOU” stick I post.

I play. Then I see the same bots in the same place doing the same thing I reported 29 days ago, and I post.

I play. Then after a couple of hours soloing events for little gain in mid level zones that seem abandoned, I post.

I would like to play without a plethora of unresolved annoying issues building up to vent point and posting.

shrug.

Player and vary happy, that said my guild of about 50+ Im the only one that post on the forums

NetherDiver.6079:

Both.

My server’s a bit dead, I have no problem finding groups but I miss the crowds of people in zones. There are plenty of servers that are still bustling but my friends are here, and 3 million sold or not I still have people to play with.

you do know not haveing crowds of people in all zone’s in a larg open world
MMO isnt that uncommon I mean hell WOW full server’s there PLENTY of empty space

Player and poster. I post when I am eating dinner or when not able to set aside enough time to truly enjoy the game. I have no problem with the game save a few bugs that I am confident will be fixed with them concentrating on core content over new content. I usually play about 6 hours a day on average; give or take depending on work hours. I feel that if it ever came to me not playing the game anymore I would leave my opinion at the door on my way out as I have done with many other games. However, as this is a game I plan on spending much time with I will continue to support it with both opinion and cash.

I am a player first and only lurk the forums to get a feel for updates or other happenings. MMO forums are a vile place where the vocal majority engages in bashing the game of the day. My experience in GW2 is a really fun few hours a week doing WWW with a large local guild interspersed with casually brining alts to 80 and sPvP. GW2 has problems but I actually enjoy the setting and gameplay.

Player since head start. Playing as much as I can each day, 8h+ like most people I know.

Not a Facebook user.

And yes, WoW probably has more facebook users and it probably still has 6mill+ subs, it has been up in 10mill subs. That doesnt mean GW2 has failed, it just means WoW is still the king of mainstream boredom.

WoW = Pop
GW2 = Heavy Metal

Zeldain.5710:

For example I no longer play but I obviously bought the game and enjoy interacting with those on the forums… but the game simply isn’t for me.

It seems many folks are in this camp but there are many that aren’t as well.

So if you’re reading this… are you just a poster or a player?

Player. I would like to say for those still playing, that once you are done with the game a short while after (handful of days) you would go pursue other things, then act only as a poster here. There are plenty of players carrying the “we need this” posts, that the current playing base can let the dev team know how things are going and what is needed, without ex’s piling on.

By staying it’s going to be too much negative, it doesn’t really enhance the game for those still playing. There is a time to hang it up and just move on. We’ve all been there with one game or another, show class, see yourself out. You owe it to yourself to pursue more meaningful activities.

SneakyErvin.3056:

Player since head start. Playing as much as I can each day, 8h+ like most people I know.

I hope you are well and independently wealthy. I on the other hand know not one person who plays anywhere near close to 8 hours a day. Just balancing it out.