Guild Wars 2

So after a couple of months i came back to play guild wars 2 again. I realize now that I wasn’t the only one who stopped playing, and this is a problem today.

For me it’s important with populated servers, this allows fast dungeon queues, public group events to actually be done, awesome wars in WvW, chances of finding a fitting guild, getting help and meeting random bypassing people.

Considering the WvW result of 8. Feb where my server is placed in the bottom of the list I assume my server is one of the most deserted. I plan on changing server, though this is expensive I’m only guesting other servers atm.

I would like some information of actual server activity. Today we can see if a server is highly populated and so on, but this is just how many accounts thats registered on that server, not how many active players. Also a merge of couple of the low populated servers could help

I’m really surprised by these deserted servers. I’ve played in Piken Square (EU) since I started and it’s always been a medium populated server (there isn’t low populated servers in EU) and you can always meet other players everywhere I go. Even when I have my bouts of insomnia and decide to play through the night I still see people doing events. Sometimes I will go into an area and there will be some time before I meet another player but it’s very rare not to find at least another player in the map.

Merging Server would be great since there’s a LOT of people have lost interest in the game.

Without subscriptions, how do you choose which players to merge into one server? You may make judgments on the basis of recent player activity, but players may be just taking breaks and planning on coming back, potentially causing overload problems later.

My own server was one of the low servers until soe big PvP guild moved to it, but in PvE I don’t see a lot of other players (I guess the PvP’ers don’t spend much time in PvE). That’s okay with me; if I’m out wandering “the wilderness”, I don’t expect to see a lot of other people. As it is, I think there are far too many NPCs in the world… especially those annoying mobs who spawn out of thin air and attack me, then respawn seconds after I’ve killed them (contrary to the BS ANet tries to feed us about respawn times)…

I find there’s just enough other players to locally help one another in the open world on most events. There aren’t enough, however, to thin the mob population. If ANet’s respawn rate and mob density are based on some presumption of greater player population, then they screwed up because there are way too many mobs and the respawn rate is much too fast.

That’s my only gripe about populations.

Ooshi.8607:

I’m really surprised by these deserted servers. I’ve played in Piken Square (EU) since I started and it’s always been a medium populated server (there isn’t low populated servers in EU) and you can always meet other players everywhere I go. Even when I have my bouts of insomnia and decide to play through the night I still see people doing events. Sometimes I will go into an area and there will be some time before I meet another player but it’s very rare not to find at least another player in the map.

Just a quick bit of info, even if a server says High or Meduim next to it the actual playing population could be Low, the High/Meduim refers to accounts that have made that server their home server.

I think that a simple status of how many players are currently online would be very helpful, the higher populated servers would fill up much faster but the low ones will be empty. Only problem with this is WvW, uneven populated matches are no fun.

on a side note: Dungeon queues would be better if they had a group finder for them (Take a look at Dungeons and Dragons Online. Best grouping system I’ve ever seen).

Bump. I really find this an important matter for the future of the game so I hope that some dev will actually look into it.

The Sever Population is indeed misleading. I have revisited, after being gone for 2 months, every zone to finish up bugged achievements or achievements that were bugged in meta s at the time and are supposedly fixed, and find hardly any players.

There is no one spamming for looking for group or more for dungeons, no one forming for Fracs beyond level 3, no guild recruiting happening, and not even just useless talking in Lion’s Arch for hours. (This does not include overflow in LA 50% of the time).

I been trying to find anyone to do a meta achievement in Blood Tide and its just dead silence.

The gem cost to transfer based on accounts I guess?, is misleading.

Guesting is fine and all but its not really helping.

I really doubt merging would help because since there is no subscription fee, you really arn’t inclined to play or feel that you need to play because you payed for a monthly.

So without that, there is no real reason to have a PvE guild.

I do not like standing around for 5+ hours looking for people or a PvE guild and get no results.

Nor people do not realize, just because Frost and Fire patch is coming, once they storm threw that content, the veteran players will just disappear until the next patch.

Going to give it a few more days before I declare the game in my game review report, pretty much dead to the point that server mergers may happen, though it would not fix it.

Opinion from the perspective of an active guild guildmember:

Honestly to me population is completely moot. I belong to a guild that has constant activity. There is always someone on, everyone is friendly – they run story mode dungeons for people who need it, even if they have it done, they help with storyline quests, if someone needs help with an achievement or any kind of event, they group with you and help you finish it.

For those off-hours (for the nightowls/earlybirds), using gw2lfg.com has made it pretty much impossible NOT to be able to find a group for anything. Plus I’ve had good luck in /map when I ask if anyone is willing to help me with something. I always get at least one person that is like “yea sure why not”.

I’ve honestly not noticed a thing population-wise and I think it’s 100% because I found a good guild to join. It’s a wonderful thing when you don’t need to worry about being able to find a group to do something.

I do feel sorry for those that honestly are unable to get groups to get things done. I could see the frustration there. Maybe this should prompt people to seek out strong guilds more.

@ Draknar.5748

Not the perfect website I have to say, I can see where its easy to find people to self join for dungeons and fractals, horrible way to find people for specific meta events.

Since you’ve been away, you no doubt missed the server shuffling that went on just before paid transfers were finally introduced.

If you’re only interested WvW, then you’re out of luck, you’d need to pay to transfer to a more active WvW server. If you’re only interested in PvE, luckily there’s now guesting, so you can guest on an active PvE server.

Dear ANet team! Please less server to play. There are too much servers that players can play on and that means no one plays on the same server, so less ppl to make, find, join to party or make one. This way Guild Wars 2 is unplayable and can’t enjoy the game.

There’s a post by developers on this forum somewhere about this. The server populations shifted around a lot right as they were going to make transfers cost gems, and they bumped up the server pop caps across the board a significant amount with the patch so that people could move where they wanted to settle for good before they had to pay to change. So some servers became a lot less populated, especially if they weren’t making progress in WvW. The game hasn’t decreased in population or activity, though apparently there are more and more people buying and getting into the game now than there was before so it’s steadily rising and some of these servers will probably rise in population a long with that.

Anyone noticed that nothing, absolutely NOTHING changed since last patch that was supposed to bring high level characters in low level zones for events and such? Human 1-15 zone is the ONLY zone in the whole game that you’ll see many people around (not even 1/3 of what it was the first week of game’s launch but still acceptable amount)… Is this it? Like was this their effort? Or did i missed something and its coming in the next patch? Like who exactly is gonna spend 2+ silver to travel to an X zone to do events that reward you under 2s, TWO SILVER!!!!!!!!! Their whole reward system must be scrapped and completely reworked from the ground up if they’re expecting lev80’s to populate low level zones and its not with laughable updates we got they’ll achieve that.

Yawn this horse again?

Not really, zones on my server, and server’s i’ve guested on are more active then they have been in a VERY long time.

Yeah, as it is now, there is absolutely no incentive for me to bring my two level 80s to any zone that doesn’t have a dungeon or isn’t Orr. Sure, I checked out Diessa for the live story or whatever it’s called, but left after about five minutes of fixing refugee posts.

Why do players insist on having every aspect of the game to be profitable for them?
Most DE’s outside of Cursed shore are for karma and exp only.

If you want to make some gold, there are other ways to do it, and if you insist on DE’s – do Penitent / Shelter / Plinx.
You got 3 servers to farm from right now, you should be able to do this on a nonstop loop.

Shadowlancer.7102:

There is no one spamming for looking for group or more for dungeons, no one forming for Fracs beyond level 3, no guild recruiting happening, and not even just useless talking in Lion’s Arch for hours. (This does not include overflow in LA 50% of the time).

This has to be server specific. On my server, there is nothing but chatter in LA for dungeon groups, there is /map requests for the dungeons on those maps, there is guild recruiting like crazy, to the point it’s annoying. There is fractal advertising, I’ve seen for 30+ fractals, there are questions being asked and answered. Some light general chit chat.

Thankfully, the only thing missing is the banal, nonsense, political, religious “I’m smarter than you” type chat. Other games have it and that just ruins being in any city, you have to turn off the chat channels.

All in all, CD is pretty healthy, active and groups, guilds, fractals are going non-stop.

Firegoth.6427:

Why do players insist on having every aspect of the game to be profitable for them?
Most DE’s outside of Cursed shore are for karma and exp only.

If you want to make some gold, there are other ways to do it, and if you insist on DE’s – do Penitent / Shelter / Plinx.
You got 3 servers to farm from right now, you should be able to do this on a nonstop loop.

Personally, its not about making gold (even tho if long event chains were rewarding for 15s+ i’d be perfectly fine with it and do them often enough), its more about how the world feels when you’re in it and that could be for many reasons (mine is mapping for example). This is an MMO not Skyrim where you’re alone vs Ai but it sadly feels like it. This kind of emptyness is only present in bad mmo’s (which this is obviously not the case i hope) or very old mmo’s that 7 people still play… At first when game launched i used to 100% every zone i set my foot in, now, i haven’t 100% a zone in over three months because soloing everything and most importantly not seeing anything happening is boring to the point of not wanting to play the game at all.

You must be playing a different game from me, because I see people in the world all the time. I’m on Tarnished Coast and no matter when I play (and I play at all hours), I always find people.

I’ll often start group events in zones that look empty, and try to solo them. Before they’re done, there’s usually a small group that forms even without it being annouced in map chat. If I say something in map chat, most of the time, people show up.

But it’s a relatively big world for a new MMO, and when you take away PvPers, WvWers, dungeon running and fractals, of course there aren’t going to be zergs in most zones….and most zergs don’t need them.

You shouldn’t either.

Yeah, which server are you on? I can’t go to a zone without running into a fair number of other people. All of the starter zones on my server are very highly populated. Even “unpopular” zones like Lornar’s Pass or Fields of Ruin have pretty constant interaction with other players and semi-active map chat.

tarnished coast is a US server, could it be the higher natural volume there is compensating and people actually ARE experiencing lower volumes just on EU servers?

Syeria.4812:

Yeah, which server are you on? I can’t go to a zone without running into a fair number of other people. All of the starter zones on my server are very highly populated. Even “unpopular” zones like Lornar’s Pass or Fields of Ruin have pretty constant interaction with other players and semi-active map chat.

I’m from JQ which is one of the if not the most populated server.

Well, guesting should solve most of your problems anyway, Nuka. Just find a busier server and guest to it, since some of us have people on their server.

The game needs to add more fun to bring new players in, such as customizable player and guild halls. This alone would add tons of new items to play for, and make gold for. The first wave of players i think had alot of fun exploring and leveling to 80, and getting the 80’s gear. But after that there is only one item to play for (make gold for) which is the legendary. But many players do not enjoy the steps involved in getting the legendary. So less players making alts for the zones, and less new players due to the current player reviews.

Shanna.4762:

The game hasn’t decreased in population or activity, though apparently there are more and more people buying and getting into the game now than there was before so it’s steadily rising and some of these servers will probably rise in population a long with that.

Bold claim.

Can you provide proof though?

As I’m seeing quite the opposite in game.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Syeria.4812:

Yeah, which server are you on? I can’t go to a zone without running into a fair number of other people. All of the starter zones on my server are very highly populated. Even “unpopular” zones like Lornar’s Pass or Fields of Ruin have pretty constant interaction with other players and semi-active map chat.

I’m from JQ which is one of the if not the most populated server.

JQ if I’m not mistaken is mainly a pvp oriented server?
Come to Gandara, I gauranee you that no matter where you go, you’ll find people at every corner of the game during peak hours.

Firegoth.6427:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Syeria.4812:

Yeah, which server are you on? I can’t go to a zone without running into a fair number of other people. All of the starter zones on my server are very highly populated. Even “unpopular” zones like Lornar’s Pass or Fields of Ruin have pretty constant interaction with other players and semi-active map chat.

I’m from JQ which is one of the if not the most populated server.

JQ if I’m not mistaken is mainly a pvp oriented server?
Come to Gandara, I gauranee you that no matter where you go, you’ll find people at every corner of the game during peak hours.

I’m on Sanctum of Rall which is a Tier 1 server and the zones are busy as all kitten.

Maybe I should pay a visit to JQ and take some snapshots

I was just reading in another thread that the new guild challenges, one of the things a guild can earn is reduced WP cost. Awesome!

But I go to different zones, low, medium, not high so much, just too frustrating and I see players everywhere.