Guild Wars 2

The game is not dying.

People on the forums just absolutely love to complain and exaggerate. Go to any forum, for any relatively-new game, and you’ll see the same. Forumites do not represent the average player (myself included).

Berelious.3290:

Considering that IGN, Time, and G4 nominated and or voted it Game of the Year, somehow I don’t think the game is dieing. Leveled off, maybe, but far far from dead.

- Such sites will give high scores to any big budget release. It’s another way to market a game.

Game is dying.
You are dying too.
To live is to die.
The game is just dying faster than than a person.

Simple thing like how my server isn’t filled to the brim with player any more is enough to suggest that people are leaving. All servers well full of people when the game was new, now only a few servers have very many people outside of LA.

If anything it’s getting more and more people. Can’t walk 2 feet on my server without running into people. Did Teq last night at 4am and must have had 100+ people. Seems most people just refuse to open their eyes.

LOL this game isn’t dying but it is shedding the emo’s and people afraid to actually work hard at everything. But i have no problem with any community losing its whiner database. Sometimes you just need to shut up and play a lot of guys haven’t learned that lesson yet.

the game is not dying, only people are dying. duh..

Reaver.9256:

If anything it’s getting more and more people. Can’t walk 2 feet on my server without running into people. Did Teq last night at 4am and must have had 100+ people. Seems most people just refuse to open their eyes.

100 people is nothing. Opening week, you can’t even get out of overflow to do shadow behemoth.

It depends on what you consider as “dying.”

1. Population: Based on forum responses, it seems as if population distribution varies immensely for each server. (In my World, there are definitely more people in low-level areas than there were a month ago.) However, regardless of the actual distribution, it seem as if 95% of the characters in low level areas are just a veteran’s third, fourth, or fifth character. There are players who are not playing or purchasing Gems in action against the recent addition of a gear tier. Also, despite being on an American server, I usually find the least activity (outside of dungeons) during times that forum users claim should have the most people online. Therefore, it’s difficult to tell as to whether the population is increasing or decreasing in size; either way, any decrease can be considered as an acceptable loss.

2. Gameplay: There is little incentive to play in lower-level maps, so most players flock around Fractals of the Mists (FotM), a new dungeon that has a small chance of dropping Ascended gear, the newest tier. However, if you disconnect, there’s no way to rejoin the party. Also, Ascended gear is required for higher levels of the dungeon. (Otherwise, other players won’t let you join them.) It may not be statistically likely, but some players reach this point without receiving any Ascended gear, while other players have several, which results in a lot of additional grind.
Also, some professions are broken and/or unbalanced, so players often funnel towards cookie-cutter builds, since they’re the most effective in combat. Warriors, Guardians, Elementalists, and Thieves are far more common than the other professions.

3. Community: In-game, it’s difficult to find people to talk to. If you type into World chat on a populated map, a player will only reply 10-20% of these attempts. If you try to talk to someone “in-person” (i.e. normal chat when next to the players’ character, and they’re not afk), they will only reply 20-33% of the time.
The most a player will generally say is a some variation of “LFG.” There are a few other points to be made about going through dungeons:
1. If you disconnect in Fractals of the Mist, people may or may not harass you.
2. If you bring another player into a group for Fractals and he disconnects, then the other members of the party may or may not harass you as well.
3. If you join a party for a dungeon run and the other players know each other but don’t know you, there’s a decent chance that you’ll be kicked from the dungeon when the boss is nearly dead, so you will not receive the final reward.

The forum community is generally hostile and oftentimes chooses direct personal attacks over discussion/debate. When players are upset, they generally come here to complain. They usually have valid, logical points, but some of them overreact. This angers the other groups within the forum population, so they usually don’t acknowledge their concerns and instead create threads that attack said players. (Sometimes, a forum user starts a thread and creates a valid point, but includes an error in their logic. If another user creates a a post that agrees/acknowledges the OP but corrects the original mistake, all other posters in the threads will engage with a direct argument with the OP over the original mistake.)

4. The Economy: GW2 is very realistic in the sense that 95-99% of the players’ wealth in controlled by a select group. They’re power traders who buy up supply and then put in “false” buy orders to create the illusion of low supply and high demand. Currently, power trading is the most effective way of earning gold. The second-most effective would be working a real life job and spending the money on Gems, which can then be converted into Gold. Farming isn’t that effective in comparison.

During November’s event, several players were awarded Precursors, weapons that can be sold for hundreds of Gold. Alternatively, this gold can be converted into the Gem equivalent of hundreds of USD.

5. GW2’s Profit: It’s currently unknown as to how “successful” this game actually is. However, there are certainly many improvements that could be made to the Gem Store, so I consider any justifications revolving around how “they need to make money somehow” pretty void. The types of premium items offered should probably be reconsidered. The addition of a Makeover Kit is a good start, but there’s definitely room for improvement.

~
Overall, I find this game to be fun and enjoyable, which is what your decision to stay ultimately comes down to. Many players start threads along the lines of “OMG I LUV _, _, and _,” but these are generally phrased in a way to ridicule another thread that discusses contrary opinions. Thus, I don’t feel the need to contribute to that type of behaviour; I really enjoy this game. I’m hoping that improvements will be made over time, but this game still has much to offer despite all of the bugs.

People are reacting with “This game is dying!” because many of these concerns I have listed are the direct result of recent “improvements” to the game from the past month, or bugs carried over from the game’s release. Others are just complaining about menial problems for the sake of it.

ALSO NOTE: Some of the players who have quit GW2 over additional grind did so because they already play more grindy MMOs, and enjoyed GW2 because it was different in its approach. It doesn’t have so much to do with the quality of GW2 as a game bur rather how many games they want to juggle at once.

Even though Gw2 is dying to me, it’s really soon to say if it is actually dying overall, I don’t think so.
Now, a game that is DYING for sure would look like this:
http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/new-store-item-hobby-horse/#comment-7956

Just felt like sharing it here, so people get a reality check, have a laugh and spread the scorn turbine deserves for even attempting this lol

I get a laugh every time someone gripes about the game “dying”

There was this thing that happened back in september oh what was it called….

Oh yes, “school”.

Given that the main demographic of this game is probably the 15-25 group, us students (ranging from middle school to college like myself), aren’t around as often to actually play the game.

We’re still here, just too busy to play most days

Well this topic and others like it does go to show how a lot of people feel. but with the lack of endgame content,no large raid pve, bugs they won’t or unable to fix like rife shots being “obstructed” for no reason to melee “miss” on pve objects. The PvP feels unfinished and unpolished. Like Thiefs not coming out of stealth when they attack, chain cc and fighting never ending mesmer illusions while the mesmer hides over and over is never fun, just to name a few. Makes the PvP feel more like a unskilled smash of keys and RNG than a skilled fight. It seems like they add more silly hats in the BlackLion and pumpkin tossing seasonal events then game fixes and content to keep people playing more then 2 days when they log in to see the event. I could go on about the simple things that make good mmos and why this game falls short but it falls on deaf ears. I guess they have more important things to do (Funny hats). Maybe in a year this game will be quality MMO but they have a lot of work to do and it doesnt seem like they care. a Shame

1023 hours in , Legendary crafted, deeply involved in WvW and love dungeoning with guildies.

This game is far from dead, it will only get better.

People just enjoy nitpicking and complaining rather than enjoying their free time actually playing the game, it’s human nature to never be satisfied with anything, even the best MMO out to date.

Example , poster above is delusional if he thinks the combat is a huge mash of keys when all he has been exposed to is combat that includes Tab – 1,2,3 , Tab – 1,2,3. The combat in GW2 requires positioning and timing and using terrain effectively and not having the crutch of a healer keeping you up through your mistakes.

Just a lot of delusional people with nothing else better to do than nitpick and complain, GW2 is already a level above the rest of the competition, in a year it will be untouchable.

I have friends who protested GW2 and refused to try it until SWTOR completely tanked and they are confessing to me how much they love GW2 now.

Enjoy the game and forget the glass half empty people you encounter in life, just cause they choose to be miserable in their entertainment choices, doesn’t mean it should affect your enjoyment of the game.

I’ve been following GW2 on xfire (http://beta.xfire.com/games) every day since launch and comparing against WoW/Rift/SWTOR/TSW. (You have to watch xfire over time manually since they only reveal the last 30 days.)

It’s “dying” in parallel with WoW and is almost lock-step with WoW’s up and down ticks, save for GW2 events (big up ticks).

It’s almost always exactly half the number of hours as WoW.

EXCEPT, since the Ascended patch, it has been lower than half of WoW most of the time.

-Rift was flat at about 150 hours until their Storm Legion which bumped it up to about 800 hours.
-SWTOR has been flat at about 3500 hours with an uptick to about 5500 when they went FTP.
-TSW was pretty much DOA at about 350 hours.
-GW2 started at about 180000 hours (above LoL at #1 spot).
-WoW (MoP) started at about 160000 hours (ya, less than GW2 launch, and always less than LoL).
-LoL was about 170000 back when GW2 and MoP released.

Anyhow, watching the numbers is fun for me – so take them as you will. I know people love xfire if it gives readings that fit their world view, and hate/discount it otherwise.

I still love the game even with the crap I post and have logged over 500 hours.

edit: their bbcode/textile is broken.

As soon as my computer is up I can’t wait to get back in. The best game out right now. I always hate the game is dying threads. This game has so much potential; people complain about it being buggy I just don’t see it, it’s a baby compared to the Azerothian mammoth, can you imagine where this game will be in a year? Stay positive this game is not dying.

It’s not dying! It’s ASCENDING! Vertically! Forever onward! … hope you keep up.

PS:
Another game: FULL
Some MMO: TOTALLY FULL
Another one: OMG ITS FULL
That game: EXPLODING WITH PLAYERS FULL
The other MMO: SHE CAN’T HANDLE IT CAP’N, FULL!

See? I can put full next to other games, too. They’re very successful.

I’m on a high world and its like barely hand full of people at the 15-30 zones. Can’t motivate myself anymore to level more characters there.

xiv.7136:

Found this on a website, guess it answers your question

Not to say the game is dying or not but you know the server limits can be manipulated right, the company can fluctuate how many people can make a server full.

Trust you’ll know when a server really is full, day 1 Karka event and the insane lag, pretty sure the server was full.

The game isn’t dying, BUT the FUN in this game at the endgame, YES, that one is dying.
Sadly.

For a game to be dying it has to be alive and successful in the first place.

Overhyped game, commercially failed, most players quit.

The game isn’t dying, it failed.

Namu.5712:

Your turn. 330 am friday night…. game looks pretty populated to me. Thats not even primetime hours lol.

Nice, now pull up that bar and let us see the situation on the other half of the server

Woah, this thread got quite big, anyway i got my answer that i need, and i’ll just follow the path “This game isnt dying” , and as someone else said, “Its improving”, Thanks really much for the help, also quick help guys!

Douzeh.3529:

when i ever hear “The game is dying” my morale for that game sinks like a stone in water

You must be depressed about every game with a forum…. So.. All of them.

Douzeh.3529:

Woah, this thread got quite big, anyway i got my answer that i need, and i’ll just follow the path “This game isnt dying” , and as someone else said, “Its improving”, Thanks really much for the help, also quick help guys!

So, you see people on the forum saying this game is dead.

But you want some sort of false hope to disprove that.

So you want people on the forum to tell you its not dead.

And now you are content.

Smart.

Game isn’t dead yet.

But the lost shores patch was akin to diagnosing it with some terminal disease. Shouldn’t be dead for awhile yet though.

Namu.5712:

Your turn. 330 am friday night…. game looks pretty populated to me. Thats not even primetime hours lol.

And there’s absolutely no way those servers were “full” at that time, either – if full means number of players logged in.

My server is listed there, and I was online, and at that time there were no WvW queues, no Lion’s Arch overflow, and pretty much no way to get a fractal group of a specific level (due to no way to change overflows).

I also went to Metrica (working on world completion) around that time, and it was desolate.

I’m not saying there was no one on, but the number of people logged on at that time last night was very, very tiny – for a “full” server.

If there were that many people on – I am curious where they were?

Remember Bioware?
They lowered their requirements for server population, meaning servers showed “High” with lower people online than before, meaning overall the servers seemed more alive from judging the small little word beside it indicating its number of inhabitants.
I don’t say they do this, but trusting it blindly is just stupid. There is literally no reason to show anyone how dead a server is.
By the way, to the people who say low level zones are active, when i leveled my warrior to 80 just weeks ago on a Medium server, 95% of the events were dead and i stumbled across a non-bot player only every 1 hour or so.

Truth be told ppl do not like doing the same thing over and over it seems so why would they rerun an even they have done already but that how most mmorpgs are so there is a very bad disconnect of what the gaming community wants vs what they do. Look at it this way events are ran by ppl who want to do the events but if they just run the event once we must think other ppl will do the same so in the end of things if you did not get on-board the first few times there no hope for you to get that event done because of the gamers unwillingness to grind.

Any way the game not dieing there just a big pop. of gamers who only jump on games due to hype and hype alone and for games like mmorpgs that type of player dose not stay long.

Over all i must say the gaming community is become very not loyal to games one small thing and they think the game is dieing or they WANT the game to die. So by coming to forms and saying this and that about games dieing is there own will put on what going on. You can look at these ppl post here and see how they feel about the game and how there view are very much one way and one way only.

Gw2 is a sinking ship.

Guild Wars 2 was a groundbreaking and revolutionary MMORPG, but now its falling to new opponents: the vast array of connection issues, the anciant karka chest, gems, and the anciant karka chest. My computer fell victum to some arcane issue 5 hours ago (theres even a post on the connection issues thing area of the forum where a person posted a impressive list of things he did that didn’t work). RIP Gw2.

Well, not just of this thread but of other facts also, i couldn’t say that GW2 is a sinking ship, “RIP GW2” or something like that,
I would more say the game is improving ,heres some facts about that
-The game is quite new, especially to be a MMORPG
-The game recently released a new zone, so people got more to do
-The game recently released new dungeons, people got more to do there also
-The game has no monthly fee, so people are not “losing money” on not playing it, as games with a monthly fee has often cards, when u inserted one of those people actually play the time as long as they can , because otherwise they would “lose money” on not playing it.

As i said, the game is just improving for me and i guess for many, many others also. And i belive that this game is everything BUT going down.

Esrever.8613:

Reaver.9256:

If anything it’s getting more and more people. Can’t walk 2 feet on my server without running into people. Did Teq last night at 4am and must have had 100+ people. Seems most people just refuse to open their eyes.

100 people is nothing. Opening week, you can’t even get out of overflow to do shadow behemoth.

facepalms

On opening week, every single player was in the same zone. Now the population has spread out more. Doesnt mean the game is dying, just means that there are no longer 1000 people stuffed in the same square meter.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Esrever.8613:

Reaver.9256:

If anything it’s getting more and more people. Can’t walk 2 feet on my server without running into people. Did Teq last night at 4am and must have had 100+ people. Seems most people just refuse to open their eyes.

100 people is nothing. Opening week, you can’t even get out of overflow to do shadow behemoth.

facepalms

On opening week, every single player was in the same zone. Now the population has spread out more. Doesnt mean the game is dying, just means that there are no longer 1000 people stuffed in the same square meter.

it went from stuffy to barren though (all zones) except 1 or 2 areas per zone. there really should be a happy medium