Guild Wars 2

So I know there is no way to tell how many players gw2 have per day, but what are your assumptions guys? I am pretty confused because it’s saturday evening in most of countries in europe and lfg looks kinda dead, counting how much groups are there I would say there is ~2k people online. On other hand 100k people checked the thread with legendary weapons being cancelled, I know that some of them don’t play the game atm but I wonder how much? 10k? 50k? more? Or does lfg mean nothing and majority of players don’t use it at all?

100,000 views could have one person doing 99,999 refreshing the page.

penelopehannibal.8947:

100,000 views could have one person doing 99,999 refreshing the page.

I doubt it, I think each of the view is unique per player, no?

CharmedWitchery.1750:

penelopehannibal.8947:

100,000 views could have one person doing 99,999 refreshing the page.

I doubt it, I think each of the view is unique per player, no?

No. Views are the number of times the thread is opened/read (probably with a sort of “cooldown” between views on the same account), not the number of accounts.

Hey mate, most of normal people, in saturdays going outside, so its normal situation for me sincerly talking.

RoseofGilead.8907:

CharmedWitchery.1750:

penelopehannibal.8947:

100,000 views could have one person doing 99,999 refreshing the page.

I doubt it, I think each of the view is unique per player, no?

No. Views are the number of times the thread is opened/read (probably with a sort of “cooldown” between views on the same account), not the number of accounts.

Is there a way to check this info?

Its difficult to tell what the current population is without some sort of information from ANET. Besides that gw2 is still a really popular game. The population is fairly large everywhere I go.

Meta events are always populated with loads of people, wvw continues to have queues, and people are always popping up to res you after you’ve died. Its always sorta felt like this though. But then again I don’t pay much attention to it.

Number of players is only part of the equation as well. A game with only 10, 000 players might have each of those players playing on average of 10 hours a day, when a game with 100,000 players might get an average play time of just two hours a day on average.

I believe Anet sums up Forum loggins plus game loggins for final results.

Maybe arround 24 mil at max and this is being positive, since it has less than gt5 and gt5 might have more than 30 mil players.

Aeolus.3615:

I believe Anet sums up Forum loggins plus game loggins for final results.

That would be a silly way to determine numbers. I should not count as 2 people when I log in the forum and log into the game.

Some people will read the forums to see if the game has changed and they want to return. Some people will never go to the forums but log in every day.

They are seperate and should never be counted together to give final results.

All i have is what i see, i know after being away for 2 years the population is about 1/3rd what it was when i left..

No idea if that’s normal for an mmorpg over 2 years or not, but its a lot less people now.

Anecdotally speaking I never have more then 3 people from my friends list playing anymore. I used to have about 15 or 20 on at a time. Even the guilds I’m in don’t have many people still playing. So seems to me the populations way down.

a lot of old players have quit, but there are also a lot of new players, so a friends list isn’t a good measure

I believe that Anet announced they made over a million sales of HoT and had over 6 Million accounts.

Now, accounts is kinda loaded, because that can mean any account, F2P, Paid, long since stop logging in… anything. So ignoring that.

Lets go those 1 Million HoT Sales.

Since HoT is still recent, lets say, they could hold 10% of the people that bought it.

So I think it’s reasonable to wager that 9 out of 10 people that shelled out money for the expansion moved on to other things by this time, which would explain why everyone’s friend list was empty.

Now, It could be a bit more or a bit less, but, lets go with 10% just to give us something to play with.

That would be roughly 100K Active accounts, across all servers, time zones, EU and NA and all modes of play.

Does that sound reasonable?

cosmicegg.8502:

Anecdotally speaking I never have more then 3 people from my friends list playing anymore. I used to have about 15 or 20 on at a time. Even the guilds I’m in don’t have many people still playing. So seems to me the populations way down.

Interesting, it’s 1am where I am right now, and I have 8 friends online, and 1 who just logged off. If I had posted this 2 minutes ago, the number would be 9.

I say that is pretty good considering.
Oh, and 1 of them just recently game back after like 8 months away.

(I’m from east coast NA, which is needed to know)
Guild 1 (WvW)- 21/117 online, most of them were up until 4am last night for reset night. Half of this guild is also from OCE/SEA area. There was about 78 online for reset yesterday.
Guild 2 (PvE map guild) – 111/469, most of these guys are from NA
Guild 3 (PvE mega events) – 74/356, OCE guild. The event time this guild does stuff is usually around 4-6am my time,which is in about 3-5 hours. So it’s still early for a lot of them to be online.

All in all, looking at the numbers, seems GW2 is doing just fine. You really can never compare what your guild looks like or your friends list.

Make your own LFG and see how fast it fills. LFG often looks dead because groups fill very VERY quickly.

I seldom have to wait more than a minute or two for LFG.

Dante.1508:

All i have is what i see, i know after being away for 2 years the population is about 1/3rd what it was when i left..

No idea if that’s normal for an mmorpg over 2 years or not, but its a lot less people now.

You have NO evidence for this at all, and I really wish you’d stop saying this. There are probably as many people now, if not more, but they’re more scattered. People who are raiding you’ll never see….because you don’t raid. More people are in dungeons and fractals now than before. You won’t see them unless you do them.

You dont’ use lfg to get into busy maps in the new zones, and there are a lot of people there.

My guild has more activity now than it did both two years ago and 1 year ago.

Why make up numbers if you don’t have them?

I don’t think a friends list is an accurate measure of GW2 activity, unless you added all of those friends in the last 6 months. Like any activity, old people leave, new people join, others are sporadic depending on what is going on with their lives. This is why guilds like TTS purge themselves every month, so they can get rid of dead wood. I don’t think measuring the success of GW2 based on a guild that is 2 years old would be helpful

CharmedWitchery.1750:

Or does lfg mean nothing and majority of players don’t use it at all?

Basically. In general, the majority in MMOs tend to play solo. Also, unlike other MMOs, GW2 doesn’t revolve around dungeons/fractals/raids and there are alternatives for the skins, so there’s going to be naturally less people looking for groups. Additionally, those in active guilds likely won’t be using LFG.

For some random stats, ~17k people have posted on these (en) forums this year. In the past, they’ve said that less than 10% use the forums, so you can assume a bare minimum of ~200k players. GW2’s reddit has ~1k active people during the day, which is a little more than BDO and 3x less than WoW, which has a population of ~5 million. Based on the quarterly sales, HoT sold around 250k copies. Based on a report by SuperData Research several months ago, they estimated GW2’s monthly active population at 3.1 million.

Dante.1508:

All i have is what i see, i know after being away for 2 years the population is about 1/3rd what it was when i left..

Dante, m8. Your unrelenting negativity is in danger of defining you and it might even consume you. Some days I login and you are the latest poster on 7 or 8 of the top threads, all talking the game down, often using an unreasonable or inaccurate reason. If the game really is that unenjoyable for you then you need to look at making some changes to your gaming habits imo.

What definitely does not help is just quoting numbers that you would like to be true but, actually, are completely invented. We have no way to know the game population, or the changes thereof. For me the population feels pretty good but it’s only a feeling.

I’ve been a big critic of HoT, in particular of the difficulty level and the solo-unfriendliness. The last patch improved things but I’m still not really enjoying those maps and events. However, what is definitely noticeable is that after that patch there are a lot more happy players around. The game is not perfect but I do think it in a pretty good place right now.

Aeolus.3615:

I believe Anet sums up Forum loggins plus game loggins for final results.

Maybe arround 24 mil at max and this is being positive, since it has less than gt5 and gt5 might have more than 30 mil players.

What do you mean by 24 mil at max? Active players?

STIHL.2489:

I believe that Anet announced they made over a million sales of HoT and had over 6 Million accounts.

Now, accounts is kinda loaded, because that can mean any account, F2P, Paid, long since stop logging in… anything. So ignoring that.

Lets go those 1 Million HoT Sales.

Since HoT is still recent, lets say, they could hold 10% of the people that bought it.

So I think it’s reasonable to wager that 9 out of 10 people that shelled out money for the expansion moved on to other things by this time, which would explain why everyone’s friend list was empty.

Now, It could be a bit more or a bit less, but, lets go with 10% just to give us something to play with.

That would be roughly 100K Active accounts, across all servers, time zones, EU and NA and all modes of play.

Does that sound reasonable?

That sounds pretty reasonable, do you remember where they posted the info about 1 mil HoT sales?

Healix.5819:

CharmedWitchery.1750:

Or does lfg mean nothing and majority of players don’t use it at all?

Basically. In general, the majority in MMOs tend to play solo.

And look how much benefits and attention guilds get. It’s ridiculous from a monetary perspective even Idk why companies repeatedly do it.

Ellieanna.5027:

cosmicegg.8502:

Anecdotally speaking I never have more then 3 people from my friends list playing anymore. I used to have about 15 or 20 on at a time. Even the guilds I’m in don’t have many people still playing. So seems to me the populations way down.

Interesting, it’s 1am where I am right now, and I have 8 friends online, and 1 who just logged off. If I had posted this 2 minutes ago, the number would be 9.

I say that is pretty good considering.
Oh, and 1 of them just recently game back after like 8 months away.

(I’m from east coast NA, which is needed to know)
Guild 1 (WvW)- 21/117 online, most of them were up until 4am last night for reset night. Half of this guild is also from OCE/SEA area. There was about 78 online for reset yesterday.
Guild 2 (PvE map guild) – 111/469, most of these guys are from NA
Guild 3 (PvE mega events) – 74/356, OCE guild. The event time this guild does stuff is usually around 4-6am my time,which is in about 3-5 hours. So it’s still early for a lot of them to be online.

All in all, looking at the numbers, seems GW2 is doing just fine. You really can never compare what your guild looks like or your friends list.

Well I am in the only active guild left in russian community and here online caps ~130 max of 300+ players in the guild. That’s only at guild events like guild missions or something like that. Most of the time in the morning it’s 30, afternoon ~50-60, evening ~80. But gl regularly kicks those who didn’t play for a while so I guess those 170 out of 300 are people who at least log in every couple of days, but not play for long.

Healix.5819:

CharmedWitchery.1750:

Or does lfg mean nothing and majority of players don’t use it at all?

Basically. In general, the majority in MMOs tend to play solo. Also, unlike other MMOs, GW2 doesn’t revolve around dungeons/fractals/raids and there are alternatives for the skins, so there’s going to be naturally less people looking for groups. Additionally, those in active guilds likely won’t be using LFG.

For some random stats, ~17k people have posted on these (en) forums this year. In the past, they’ve said that less than 10% use the forums, so you can assume a bare minimum of ~200k players. GW2’s reddit has ~1k active people during the day, which is a little more than BDO and 3x less than WoW, which has a population of ~5 million. Based on the quarterly sales, HoT sold around 250k copies. Based on a report by SuperData Research several months ago, they estimated GW2’s monthly active population at 3.1 million.

Where did you know about ~17k people? And the guy above said anet sold 1 mil of hot copies, so who to believe?

Just from my own experience I always see a lot of people around.

Ellieanna.5027:

Aeolus.3615:

I believe Anet sums up Forum loggins plus game loggins for final results.

That would be a silly way to determine numbers. I should not count as 2 people when I log in the forum and log into the game.

Some people will read the forums to see if the game has changed and they want to return. Some people will never go to the forums but log in every day.

They are seperate and should never be counted together to give final results.

I love when people tell i worth 2 or more people

Vayne.8563:

Dante.1508:

All i have is what i see, i know after being away for 2 years the population is about 1/3rd what it was when i left..

No idea if that’s normal for an mmorpg over 2 years or not, but its a lot less people now.

You have NO evidence for this at all, and I really wish you’d stop saying this. There are probably as many people now, if not more, but they’re more scattered. People who are raiding you’ll never see….because you don’t raid. More people are in dungeons and fractals now than before. You won’t see them unless you do them.

My guild has more activity now than it did both two years ago and 1 year ago.

And you have no evidence to say they are wrong either, numbers are clearly down on certain things, the clear WvW server merge shows this, the fact they had to merge servers to keep numbers up says a lot, the PvE side of the game maybe doing better than other places, who knows, the only true fact is, that unless ANET themselves come on here and say numbers are up or numbers are down, then its only speculation, as like you stated, people in instances will not be seen in the open world,

You keep saying your guild is more active now than 2 years ago, good for you, you must have 1 of the only super active guilds in the game, as guilds that i know with 400+ members are struggling to get more than 25-30ppl online at a time, and some of them haven’t had members on for months, you need to realise that your experience is not the same as someone elses, but you fail to get that point, if people don’t agree or see things how you do, they must be wrong.

CharmedWitchery.1750:

Where did you know about ~17k people? And the guy above said anet sold 1 mil of hot copies, so who to believe?

I cache the english forums, which allows me to pull information such as there being ~178k users that have once posted here.

I don’t think ArenaNet ever revealed HoT’s sales numbers. They certainly would have however if it was something special, like over a million. The HoT figures were estimated based on the profits earned during the last quarter. Keep in mind that these numbers don’t include the last few months, though sales tend to drop after a month anyways. The profits were around 15 million USD after subtracting the average profits from the prior months in order to get an idea of what HoT generated. The problem is, you have to guess what HoT was being sold at, which was $50 by ArenaNet but official 3rd parties pay reduced prices. At say $30 each, that would have only been 500k. ArenaNet did however reveal that when HoT launched, there were 7 million registered accounts and prior to the free accounts, the figure was at 5 million copies sold. Only a fraction of that is of course active, say 25%, which is almost 2 million, or if you’d like to go by the percentage of active forum users, 10%, 700k, but keep in mind that cuts out free accounts.

CharmedWitchery.1750:

So I know there is no way to tell how many players gw2 have per day, but what are your assumptions guys? I am pretty confused because it’s saturday evening in most of countries in europe and lfg looks kinda dead, counting how much groups are there I would say there is ~2k people online. On other hand 100k people checked the thread with legendary weapons being cancelled, I know that some of them don’t play the game atm but I wonder how much? 10k? 50k? more? Or does lfg mean nothing and majority of players don’t use it at all?

because LFG is so diversified now, people can more easily find others to do the content they want, which means… it’s more likely than before that LFGs don’t stay up as long.

To use a common text book example, you can’t measure how many people use a hospital by counting how many beds are currently occupied — the vast majority of patients are in & out quickly; those in beds are the minority of those with long-term care needs.

Obviously, post-patch, if the LFG goes up & down, it will be related to how many people playing online. But it’s not the only factor.

tl;dr LFG, forum posts aren’t (by themselves) a good proxy to measure “peak concurrency” or “active accounts” (the first being how many are online at the same time; the second is how many have played in the last month for more than an hour)

Ok I Did It.2854:

Vayne.8563:

Dante.1508:

All i have is what i see, i know after being away for 2 years the population is about 1/3rd what it was when i left..

No idea if that’s normal for an mmorpg over 2 years or not, but its a lot less people now.

You have NO evidence for this at all, and I really wish you’d stop saying this. There are probably as many people now, if not more, but they’re more scattered. People who are raiding you’ll never see….because you don’t raid. More people are in dungeons and fractals now than before. You won’t see them unless you do them.

My guild has more activity now than it did both two years ago and 1 year ago.

And you have no evidence to say they are wrong either, numbers are clearly down on certain things, the clear WvW server merge shows this, the fact they had to merge servers to keep numbers up says a lot, the PvE side of the game maybe doing better than other places, who knows, the only true fact is, that unless ANET themselves come on here and say numbers are up or numbers are down, then its only speculation, as like you stated, people in instances will not be seen in the open world,

You keep saying your guild is more active now than 2 years ago, good for you, you must have 1 of the only super active guilds in the game, as guilds that i know with 400+ members are struggling to get more than 25-30ppl online at a time, and some of them haven’t had members on for months, you need to realise that your experience is not the same as someone elses, but you fail to get that point, if people don’t agree or see things how you do, they must be wrong.

I don’t NEED evidence that they’re wrong, because I’m not quoting a number. There’s a huge difference between pulling a number out of thin air and quoting it and some one saying there’s no evidence for it, and stating in a post myself that this is the number.

He can say I believe the population is going down. The third of the population is complete fiction however. It’s not even plausible fiction.

For one thing, we’ve following profits from month to month year to year, and they haven’t gone down nearly that much. If it was a third of the players, I’d expect a much bigger drop in profits.