Guild Wars 2

I stopped playing ~4 weeks after launch. How is the population now.? . and has the game improved at all or has nothing been fixed/updated?

Game is improving.

Population still falling, will stabilize somewhat below EVE Online’s.

actually GW2 pop has been steadily growing. most servers are full.

Population is more than sufficient to be able to play the game effectively.

Zid.4196:

Game is improving.

Population still falling, will stabilize somewhat below EVE Online’s.

How on earth would you know that?

Orr is “empty” compared to what it use to be. You could say it’s fewer bots, but now I see very little of anyone. Good luck getting your temple karma armors.

Similarly, getting a dungeon team is not as easy as it use to be (unless that dungeon is fractals).

nerva.7940:

actually GW2 pop has been steadily growing. most servers are full.

That’s not population, that’s number of accounts. And of course number of accounts is growing because there’s no reason to cancel an account, even if you stop playing.

Cheers.

I don’t know about the numbers, but through running around the game, there seem to be fewer people playing, and they are not spread evenly. Plenty of near-empty maps, depending when you log on – sometimes there’s too few people around to do the map boss.

The bugs are slowly being fixed, but there have been no improvements that I can see – only existing content crawling into an acceptable condition. I’m looking forward to see what bugs they fix (and introduce) with the Wintersday download.

Population is great. Plenty of packed servers. It’s a mmo so it’s updated all the time. Big patch tomorrow.

juno.1840:

Orr is “empty” compared to what it use to be. You could say it’s fewer bots, but now I see very little of anyone. Good luck getting your temple karma armors.

Similarly, getting a dungeon team is not as easy as it use to be (unless that dungeon is fractals).

I’ve been using gw2lfg.com for dungeons, it works very well, but obviously this should have been implemented in to the game.

Lankybrit.4598:

nerva.7940:

actually GW2 pop has been steadily growing. most servers are full.

That’s not population, that’s number of accounts. And of course number of accounts is growing because there’s no reason to cancel an account, even if you stop playing.

Cheers.

Do we actually know that it is the number of accounts?

With Fractals of The Mist dungeon funneling all the players into a never-ending gear grind for vertical progression, many less people are running dungeons or otherwise exploring areas. Still no group finder tool, so it’s incredibly frustrating to get parties going most of the time. No real point to doing WvW, sPvP only has a small number of organized teams rolling everyone else. Combat system is still braindead shallow with no real reason or integrity to grouping because of the homogenized roles and tendency toward zerg. Loot is still terribly imbalanced and unrewarding in most cases…design is still dependent on the Mystic Toilet, market inflation is almost palpable as a means to drive players to buy gems → gold in the cash shop. Bots are mostly taken care of, but still no reason to go to old areas. Badly designed boss encounters (Claw of Jormag, Zhaitan) that still show off how horrible an idea it was to remove heavy instancing and trinity roles to give players a deeper, more cohesive experience. Plans are in the works to fix WvW and spread out ascended gear to other areas in the game, also to give better, more immersive, and less grindy ways to acquire pre-cursors / legendaries, but i’m not holding my breath. Game feels pretty dead, anti-social, and shallow unless you enjoy grinding for gear for…literally no reason since WvW is just zerg, cant bring pve gear into sPvP, and obviously nothing engaging to do in PvE because of how bad the combat system and group integrity is. Patch drops tomorrow for Wintersday..likely to have some decent class balance changes. At least that might be worth checking out. Otherwise get ready for an inflated holiday market with people blowing money in the cash shop for a chance at skins.

Zones are pretty empty, regardless of what the server population lists says. However, I’m sure the Wintersday event starting tomorrow will begin to (hopefull) enliven some of the zones. Sadly everyone is pretty much just camped in Lion’s Arch treadmilling the Fractals.

Servers show as full so transfers are tough, but actual in gamer population is pretty much dead in most locations I have seen. As to the game getting better or not, it all depends on who you talk to and what it is your looking for from the game.

ref.8196:

juno.1840:

Orr is “empty” compared to what it use to be. You could say it’s fewer bots, but now I see very little of anyone. Good luck getting your temple karma armors.

Similarly, getting a dungeon team is not as easy as it use to be (unless that dungeon is fractals).

I’ve been using gw2lfg.com for dungeons, it works very well, but obviously this should have been implemented in to the game.

Lankybrit.4598:

nerva.7940:

actually GW2 pop has been steadily growing. most servers are full.

That’s not population, that’s number of accounts. And of course number of accounts is growing because there’s no reason to cancel an account, even if you stop playing.

Cheers.

Do we actually know that it is the number of accounts?

That dude is wrong. Server status falls and rises through the day.

That question doesn’t make much sense.
OP: Are there more players?
P1: Yes, the population is growing
P2: Actually, the number of accounts is growing (implying it’s not the amount of active players that is growing)
P1: But how do we know that the number of accounts is growing?

Well, didn’t you say that it was going up yourself? He’s going off of what you’ve stated.

Population is very unhealthy for leveling a character.

Zid.4196:

Game is improving.

Population still falling, will stabilize somewhat below EVE Online’s.

Nice troll attempt 0/10

Population is still growing , servers are packed most people are upset they cannot join their servers in NA during prime time due to them being full. Big game patch tomorrow everyone is very excited as usual.

Funny thing is the game starts at level 80. Whoever is expecting the world to be filled with players in leveling zones all the time are kinda delusional ? check previous mmos i wont mention.

juno.1840:

Orr is “empty” compared to what it use to be. You could say it’s fewer bots, but now I see very little of anyone. Good luck getting your temple karma armors.

Similarly, getting a dungeon team is not as easy as it use to be (unless that dungeon is fractals).

To be fair, Orr is a pretty awful place to play in. It’s not even nice to look at. I wish we had more Shiverpeaks zones.

Over all the population seems to be mostly in Lion’s arch. Though I do see people out in the world from time to time.

nerva.7940:

actually GW2 pop has been steadily growing. most servers are full.

No, it hasn’t been growing… all measurable indicators are that player activity has dropped like a rock. And there’s no noticeable influx of new players.

Just because a server says “Full” doesn’t mean that its maps are populated. For one, the cap could be set quite low to begin with; which means people have to go to other servers, which will make them “full” as well (I don’t think ANet uses this tactic, I like to think that they are not that sketchy). A lot of that “full” is in PvP as well. The PvE world itself is pretty empty, even on a full server.

offence.4726:

Zid.4196:

Game is improving.

Population still falling, will stabilize somewhat below EVE Online’s.

Nice troll attempt 0/10

Population is still growing , servers are packed most people are upset they cannot join their servers in NA during prime time due to them being full. Big game patch tomorrow everyone is very excited as usual.

Huh? Not a troll at all…

See, EVE hit 450k subscribers whereas SWTOR, WH, and AoC fell to 100k-200k after initial sales in the 1-2m range. I rate GW2 as good enough game to do better than those three, so it will be keeping at least 200k active players. On the other hand it’s very clear it wont be able to keep 500k, in fact the number of active players is already below 500k most likely despite the most recent influx of new players caused by GW2 getting Time game of the year and Xmas.

What I said is a very safe bet and a commendation.

offence.4726:

Zid.4196:

Game is improving.

Population still falling, will stabilize somewhat below EVE Online’s.

Nice troll attempt 0/10

Population is still growing , servers are packed most people are upset they cannot join their servers in NA during prime time due to them being full. Big game patch tomorrow everyone is very excited as usual.

Funny thing is the game starts at level 80. Whoever is expecting the world to be filled with players in leveling zones all the time are kinda delusional ? check previous mmos i wont mention.

Haha what?
I think most MMOs wish they could have the same pop trends as EVE has. The majority of MMOs experience a decline in players over time, EVE is one of the few (only one I know of myself) whose population has grown steadily over its history. EVE isn’t WoW,, so it won’t have the same base population, but that doesn’t make a comparison to EVE an insult, so I’m not sure how the poster of that intended the comment to be taken.

I don’t know a single person who is still playing after they dropped the ascended gear patch.

Granted, i was only playing with 15 or so up until then, Im hoping for them to want to come back so I have a reason to log on again. I doubt it though.

It’s a free game. Log in and run around for a while checking? =)

Weird.. I’ve seen people mostly where ever I go.. Even in pretty far off places! I mean it’s not like the release where there were like.. 30 people for one event, but it’s what a MMO would normally have these days.. Random encounters with 2 or 3 people every now and then in some maps. I’ve been able to get help in most areas.

Servers are full due to a large number of inactive accounts.

offence.4726:

Population is still growing , servers are packed most people are upset they cannot join their servers in NA during prime time due to them being full.

Ok you lost me with “…people are upset they cannot join their servers in NA during prime time…”

I’ve never been unable to join my server. Even WvW doesn’t queue anymore even during prime-time.

Of my original group of 25 guild members, only 5 are still playing. They contribute to the server population, but not the active player population. My friends list is a big dead-zone.

Yes players will log on to check-out winter’s day events, but the game is not nearly as busy as it was when it released.

Why not just come back and see for yourself? It’s not like you have to pay to check.

As for population the full high medium and low means nothing. I would like numbers of current logged in players but games just don’t like giving that info out. Since one week if population is down people will rage that the game is dying when it could just be due to any number of reasons.

Even if and when the game starts to die you will still see most servers listed as “high” or “full” so false perception of popularity still exists.

Traygor.6238:

I stopped playing ~4 weeks after launch. How is the population now.? . and has the game improved at all or has nothing been fixed/updated?

Game is getting worse. Some bugs are fixed, and lots of new ones are added. Populaton seems to be decreasing (just a personal feeling – I can be wrong. My guild is emptier after November 15th, tho). In any case, the world is empty since everyone is just doing FotM hoping to get lucky with the terrible rng. Also, it’s kinda the only place where to get any loot, since the stealth nerf to world drop rates. Economy is totally kittened up.
If you bought it as an alternative to the loot grind as wow and clones, you’d better stay away.

My advice is to stay away unless you like doing dungeon grind.If you like that then you will enjoy the fractals.
Yes the pop has had a significant drop and it continues to bleed out badly.

They have stated multiple times that the full servers are account on the server and nothing to do with people online at any given time. Check out CC EVA she is the one who posted that from Anet.

I wouldnt be too surprised if Anet dropped the barrier to entry if the holiday doesnt go well.

Last I checked there are a ton of people all over on my server (one of the full ones.) Orr is full of groups farming Karma and running the dungeon (Straits of devastation does not seem to be very popular though, the other two regions are packed.) Queensdale is extremely actives, especially for the “Shadow Behemoth.” and the Dragons always have a massive army of people taking it down, and lots of people in lions arch.

Don’t ask if its safe to come back, just come back! the game is awesome!

offence.4726:

Zid.4196:

Game is improving.

Population still falling, will stabilize somewhat below EVE Online’s.

Nice troll attempt 0/10

Population is still growing , servers are packed most people are upset they cannot join their servers in NA during prime time due to them being full. Big game patch tomorrow everyone is very excited as usual.

Funny thing is the game starts at level 80. Whoever is expecting the world to be filled with players in leveling zones all the time are kinda delusional ? check previous mmos i wont mention.

“the game starts at level 80”, as you said, nice troll attempt. Not even close.

Actually, the game is amazing until level 80.

Then it’s your usual mmo (which shouldn’t have been).

Just return, the game is awesome. They fixed a lot of annoying stuff since you last played. Man it’s been out for only a few months, the game isn’t going anywhere soon. Come back, it’s free.

Zid.4196:

Game is improving.

Population still falling, will stabilize somewhat below EVE Online’s.

How the kitten do you know this? Are you some kind of MMO psychic?

My server is packed. Can’t do an event anywhere without at least a few other people showing up.

The population is still pretty good; most sit in Lions Arch looking for dungeon groups though, although you’ll still run into a few people out in the world here and there.

It’s not like it was launch week, but still reasonable and they have been working on quite a few changes. I just hope they learned from this whole fatm fiasco and don’t try to add more gear grind…

Fractals levels: good idea, could have been implemented better to not fracture the community so much (maybe have a daily to help people in the lower levels or something?)
Infusing: could have just made it so that there is a useable item that adds an Agony resist line to the original gear tiers.

The new dungeon is fun for a while, but as with anything running the same thing over and over again can get boring pretty quick, but the random series of levels helps with this a bit (although I don’t like all the loading screens in between lol; even if they only take like 3-4 seconds to load).

If you like exploring and just immersing yourself in a game world; then by all means come back, I’m sure you’ll have fun (make sure to find some people to play with though if like to group, and if you are more of a solo player, but want to work through the dungeons and group content then try using gw2lfg.com).

They have fixed a lot of the open world bugs that prevented players from completing stuff (there are still a few out there, although very rare now) and fixed many other things as well.

There have been lots of fixes and I would say that, apart from the addition of vertical progression, the game is improving.

Population is a tricky question. I’d suggest you go out into the open world on your server and see for yourself. I had to do a server transfer after the last patch to a higher pop server. New server is better and adequate for general play in the open world.

Population? Dying. Not steadily, but warp speed.

People are leaving in hordes due to some “Ascended gear thing”. Quite frankly I could care less about the gear/grind issue but me and all my friends stopped playing because of the boredom. No end game, no Open World PvP. No fun. Don’t even bother coming back. I don’t mean that as an insult, but I’m just stating the truth. Theres nothing to do, and the stuff there is – has no point.

nerva.7940:

actually GW2 pop has been steadily growing. most servers are full.

You can’t be serious.

No, just no.

Yes the majority of the servers are full yet quite a few of them are empty outside of LA.

I still cannot understand why people who say they are finished with this game are still active on this forum. Is that to warn people off from playing a bad game? If so, as you can see, there is about the same amount of people who say it is a good one, so clearly it’s just a matter of personal preference, and anyhow, you will never know if you won’t check for yourself. In light of this, I really don’t know what you’re doing here, but raging and/or trolling.
And I know that everyone’s just answering the question, but as you can see, you just have to check yourself (and it doesn’t cost you indeed, so I don’t see why ask in the first place).

ref.8196:

juno.1840:

Orr is “empty” compared to what it use to be. You could say it’s fewer bots, but now I see very little of anyone. Good luck getting your temple karma armors.

Similarly, getting a dungeon team is not as easy as it use to be (unless that dungeon is fractals).

I’ve been using gw2lfg.com for dungeons, it works very well, but obviously this should have been implemented in to the game.

Lankybrit.4598:

nerva.7940:

actually GW2 pop has been steadily growing. most servers are full.

That’s not population, that’s number of accounts. And of course number of accounts is growing because there’s no reason to cancel an account, even if you stop playing.

Cheers.

Do we actually know that it is the number of accounts?

Not according to CC Eva…

“… when you see a server FULL means that it is full from people actually playing there at the moment, independently of where did they create their accounts. For example, if a player creates an account in Vizunah Square and then moves to Baruch Bay, then all the characters of this player will go to Baruch Bay and he will be counted among the total amount of players of Baruch.”

Millions and gazzillions of players everywhere. I have yet to wait for people to join me on a quest.

Every event I do everywhere other people show up. Only a couple of times have I had to do an event solo.

population is slowly falling, the rest of the population is in LA LFG for Fotm since they became dungeon focused, most of the time the people who post here are on servers that are either having people play alts so they have lots of people in the beginning zones, or people who are doing WvW. Pleanty of people are never in the Orr zones in many places accept to farm ore and omnoms then leave, the rest are in LA. So you probably will have some serious trouble finding people to free temples or to run any of the other dungeons.

That’s the hard truth.

The other part of the hard truth is that showing a server as full without knowing the numbers or knowing how many of those people are bots farming continuusly because let’s face it they don’t have an AFK thing going really doesn’t tell you about the health of the overall server pops until you login and try to do any of the things they have in the game that’s suddenly become old content in two months time.

The problem with a “Server Full” rubric is that they can arbitrarily increase or decrease the cap without telling us players, to give us an illusion of server popularity/capacity. Unfortunately, only anet has the actual numbers and I don’t think they’ll release it to the public.

I love seeing the people who complain that this game is dying.

And then finding out their regular forum posters scanning every thread on the website.

Lolz.

Wizardauz.3761:

I love seeing the people who complain that this game is dying.

And then finding out their regular forum posters scanning every thread on the website.

Lolz.

Right on , right on. Even more sad that people who say “they don’t care or they quit the game still post on these forums” saying the game is slowly dying". The forum voice of the community is truly a minority thank god.

lothefallen.7081:

<snip>Combat system is still braindead shallow with no real reason or integrity to grouping because of the homogenized roles and tendency toward zerg… <snip> …Badly designed boss encounters (Claw of Jormag, Zhaitan) that still show off how horrible an idea it was to remove heavy instancing and trinity roles to give players a deeper, more cohesive experience. <snip>

I’m curious about your comments about combat mechanics. One of ArenaNet’s biggest selling points for GW2 as a “next generation” MMO was that its combat removed the holy trinity. It seemed the idea behind it was that groups of players would actively form their own strategies for approaching encounters. You appear to argue the idea has failed. How are groups tending to behave in your opinion? Maybe this idea just needs more time? Or maybe it was just “seemed like a good idea at the time” sort of thing?

lothefallen.7081:

Combat system is still braindead shallow with no real reason or integrity to grouping because of the homogenized roles and tendency toward zerg.

Badly designed boss encounters (Claw of Jormag, Zhaitan) that still show off how horrible an idea it was to remove heavy instancing and trinity roles to give players a deeper, more cohesive experience.

I wouldn’t say it’s brain dead shallow, some of the skills are a little… unimaginative, but there are a ton of group dynamics; maybe not in open world zergs, but in smaller groups there are plenty.

Heavy instancing and the trinity just ruin open world games. Trinity mechanics are what are brain dead shallow. Sure the way combat works in Gw2 isn’t the best and still has things to work out, but it’s better than any trinity dependent game I have ever played.

Claw of Jormag and Zhaitan could definitely use an update to be a little more interesting, especially since the Claw event is just spam attacks -> feared out of place -> run back and spam attacks again, but there have been numerous threads about players wanting a more involving event. They are supposed to have a cinematic feel to them, which is fine, but I would definitely say they need to feel a bit more involving. It’s not that they are badly designed per se, just that they are not very involving; they don’t really give the player a sense of actually actively doing very much.

They are hopefully working on better event scaling too, because they really need to snipe some of these more popular events that get zerged and start using sub events to draw groups of players away and split up the zergs a bit in order to succeed.

Gw2 is definitely a good game overall… though I hope that development will keep it that way and not drive it off a cliff.

@OP I can’t directly answer your question without facts but I can give you my opinion based on my personal experience. I was away from GW2 for 2 months due to work requirements and upon my return I noticed a large drop in population in the open world. Some of that decrease in active players would be expected I think but I find it disconcerting in a young game. My guild for example currently has 170 mbrs with only about 15-30 active players mostly grinding gear in dungeons. I have had to complete many events solo and had to avoid the harder ones because there is few ppl on that map to join in. I find the mid level maps the least populated and of crse Orr is very empty now. Many on my friends list have disappeared, some back to GW1 due to there disappointment in GW2 ( that’s there personal choice). So in my opinion and from my in game observations I definitively think the gaming population of current active players has dropped drastically. I sure hope ANET finds away to correct this bleeding of players because I for one only play GW2 to have fun with others in this wonderful world of Tyria they have created. Not to play it solo.

Probably both parties are correct, the population is growing and declining depend on what activity you are doing.

If OP prefer to grind instances, he would find the population booming in LA.
If OP prefer to do any other activities, he’ll probably find the population declining.