Guild Wars 2

My friend wont play because " theres a reason no one plays that game"

If no one plays then why do I see LOTS of people in every map I go to?
This game is full of people and getting fuller with not only the F2P but also more coming back into it with HoT expansion coming out very shortly.

That’s ridiculous, this is one of the most active mmorpgs on the market.

I play. And I heard that this other guy over in eu plays, though I’ve never met him. Everyone else I’ve seen are only fig newtons of my imagination. (And I wish they would get out of my way. They’re get in the picture when I’m doing screenshots). >.>

Before selecting a character look at the dialog for guesting on another server. They are practically all full and very full (or some term like that).

WuGzaGenius.5684:

My friend wont play because " theres a reason no one plays that game"

I knew it! Everyone I see and talk to in the game is really just a bot controlled by anet! I’ve been a fool!

ur friend must be playing WoW then, if hes not then u should tell him how many invisible ppl from china are playing it.

Serophous.9085:

I knew it! Everyone I see and talk to in the game is really just a bot controlled by anet! I’ve been a fool!

Anet learned a thing or two from the Ashley Madison scandal!

WuGzaGenius.5684:

My friend wont play because " theres a reason no one plays that game"

Not sure what information your friend thinks he has, but I find the world map to be full of people at all times, even during the off-hours in the middle of the night. Plenty of people play.

I’m not sure what the scale is and I’m not sure how to find out, but I can tell you there are lots of people playing the game. I have several real life friends who have purchased and played the game with me since launch, and I’ve had more join over time.

I believe that’s actually one of my own personal perks of playing the game. Having people you know in real life play with you makes things that much more awesome!

On a real note though, there are lots of people who play the game. I’ve hardly ever landed in an empty map, except maybe those Tequatil maps people land in when all of the others are full. The player base is also for the most part friendly and willing to answer questions when asked by new people in map chat.

Tell your friend to look at active numbers of people on the Guild Wars 2 reddit. At the same time of day let him compare it to the reddits of every other MMO. Only WoW has more people on reddit than Guild Wars 2 these days.

You guys haven’t given me an answer other than, hurrr durr i see people in my instances.

Anet doesn’t post the numbers, not since shortly after release at least. I would just check trends on various sites like twitch, google trends etc.

“theres a reason no one answers…”

too soon?

WuGzaGenius.5684:

You guys haven’t given me an answer other than, hurrr durr i see people in my instances.

Because there are no official numbers to give.

People are talking about actual experiences of the game. That is as much info as you will be able to get.

There are no number, just join the game and you will see people on each map regardless if it is start region or a higher region. Since there is megaservers we are all ported in to one map and when it is full a new opens, so maps are always having people in it.

How ever i have noticed one thing. There is more activity in EU then in NA both in regions and dungeons. Not sure why this is, first i thought the time zones, but we have active dungeon groups over the whole night in EU. NA seem to not have it much at any point of day compared to EU.

WuGzaGenius.5684:

You guys haven’t given me an answer other than, hurrr durr i see people in my instances.

To be fair, your friend hasn’t given you a reason other than “hurrr durr I’m making up reasons to not play”.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I play. And I heard that this other guy over in eu plays, though I’ve never met him.

That’s me….helloooo!!

I’m generally the kind of guy that get’s turned off by low MMO numbers as well, and I’ve been playing this for the full 3 years.

Frankly I’ve only seen it get more crowded. Plus thanks to “Megaservers” you’ll almost never be on an empty map

We don’t know the number of active players because Anet doesn’t release that info. The end.

If your friend wants to make up reasons to not play, then they’ve made it clear they don’t want to play. He can always try it for free if he gets interested.

Randulf.7614:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I play. And I heard that this other guy over in eu plays, though I’ve never met him.

That’s me….helloooo!!

Hi! How’s the imaginary people population doing over there? Theses swarms of them on this side of the water.

(I hope you’re not another imaginary person talking to me. I hate when that happens)

WuGzaGenius.5684:

You guys haven’t given me an answer other than, hurrr durr i see people in my instances.

Well then, whats this great reason that nobody plays this game?

Not to mention, your friend made a definitive remark in “no one”, and yet people are responding here about how they play. So he’s already wrong.

Unless we aren’t actually real and just a figment of your imagination…

Bring him to TEQ at reset sometime. Then look at all the LFG Taxi’s there are and change map instances. Then tell me there are no players playing gw2. Unless this guy is correct

Serophous.9085:

WuGzaGenius.5684:

My friend wont play because " theres a reason no one plays that game"

I knew it! Everyone I see and talk to in the game is really just a bot controlled by anet! I’ve been a fool!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Randulf.7614:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I play. And I heard that this other guy over in eu plays, though I’ve never met him.

That’s me….helloooo!!

Hi! How’s the imaginary people population doing over there? Theses swarms of them on this side of the water.

(I hope you’re not another imaginary person talking to me. I hate when that happens)

They did an amazing job of killing Dwayna. It’s like having 100 henchies follow me into battle! I have to summon new ones when I zone and start a new boss though. Poor design imo.

If that’s your friend’s reasoning, I don’t want him playing the game

WuGzaGenius.5684:

You guys haven’t given me an answer other than, hurrr durr i see people in my instances.

I don’t think your friend likes you. If he did, he’d try the game for free.

Menadena.7482:

Before selecting a character look at the dialog for guesting on another server. They are practically all full and very full (or some term like that).

That is actually an incorrect thing to do because that status only counts WvW participation.

All we know for sure is that a great number of people signed up when HoT was announced and when it went f2p. We know this because they said they had a huge influx and that support were running behind on tickets because of it.
That means 2 huge influxes this year alone.

Retention wise? Impossible to say, although logically if the entire influx had vanished, there is every reason in this day and age we would have heard more about that or seen evident signs.

The zones are populated. Bosses old and new are packed (Ive never seen so many at Dwayna as I have recently), starter zones are bustling. That is all the evidence we can give since no statistical info is forthcoming.

Randulf.7614:

All we know for sure is that a great number of people signed up when HoT was announced and when it went f2p. We know this because they said they had a huge influx and that support were running behind on tickets because of it.
That means 2 huge influxes this year alone.

Retention wise? Impossible to say, although logically if the entire influx had vanished, there is every reason in this day and age we would have heard more about that or seen evident signs.

The zones are populated. Bosses old and new are packed (Ive never seen so many at Dwayna as I have recently), starter zones are bustling. That is all the evidence we can give since no statistical info is forthcoming.

I’d rather see actual numbers than to take Anet’s word, because we all know how little their word actually means.

At least 3,500,000 copies were sold within the first year ( https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-the-first-year/ )

but past that and a few other infographics, they haven’t released any numbers.

McViolin.8547:

Randulf.7614:

All we know for sure is that a great number of people signed up when HoT was announced and when it went f2p. We know this because they said they had a huge influx and that support were running behind on tickets because of it.
That means 2 huge influxes this year alone.

Retention wise? Impossible to say, although logically if the entire influx had vanished, there is every reason in this day and age we would have heard more about that or seen evident signs.

The zones are populated. Bosses old and new are packed (Ive never seen so many at Dwayna as I have recently), starter zones are bustling. That is all the evidence we can give since no statistical info is forthcoming.

I’d rather see actual numbers than to take Anet’s word, because we all know how little their word actually means.

And where would these ‘actual numbers’ come from, other than their word? /smh

The whole point is there hasn’t been any word from ArenaNet.

No one knows the exact number of active players except for ANet. From personal experience the game is far from dead. World bosses maps fill up quickly, Silverwastes is active even during weekdays, tons of players afking in LA and racial cities, and with the game free to play the starter zones are active as well.

While I’m sure the player population has dropped significantly over the past two years, it’s not so low that the world feels empty. Your friend should give the game a try before judging it…it’s not like there’s anything to lose…

I know the OP wants to get an idea of how many people are actively playing, but the numbers aren’t publicly available. In lieu of hard numbers, here is an article from massively rating MMORPG health on publicly available metrics:

http://massivelyop.com/2015/06/11/perfect-ten-the-top-10-healthiest-live-mmos/

As of the last time I think ANet published relevant figures for determining this (which was on the game’s first anniversary, two years ago), they were claiming to have peaked at 460,000 players (actually logged in and playing at a given moment, that is).

They might have been able to claim about 250,000 active players at that time by a fair definition (which, IMHO, is essentially mean concurrency), and probably something like a million active players by the sort of inflated definition a marketer might use — but note that both of these numbers are essentially guesses based on the two-year old published statistic I just quoted.

Source

Why this even matter to you? I think the only people who should and do care for the actual number of players are Anet, because this is their business. Are there many people on world bosses? Yes. Are there enough people to do any dungeon,fractals,SW run etc etc at any given time? Yes. Are there many people doing WvW and sPvP? Yes. Are there enough people running events and doing hearts around the world? Yes.
The game is packed with people everywhere you go, and the numbers will only grow when the expansion hits.
Also I don’t suppose you participated in the last event? If you did, you would’ve gotten the answer to your question right there, OP.

This game is one of the best MMOs i have ever played…. i even think this is better than wow. This is coming from a wow player of 8 years….. The only thing is i will prob play wow legion when the patch is released because im a oceanic player and 220 ping is just too restricting in pvp and on wow on there oceanic servers i get 30 ping. Other than the lag this is my fav MMO atm.

Game is very active. There hasn’t been any official numbers released for 2 years but regardless the game continues to grow.

WuGzaGenius.5684:

You guys haven’t given me an answer other than, hurrr durr i see people in my instances.

Would you prefer “Hurr durr, I don’t see people in my instances?”

How about this then:

There are enough people to justify sinking money into an expansion. Given the cost involved, I doubt there would have been a paid expansion if the company wasn’t expecting to remake its money and then some.

Obviously WOW is still the market leader by a gigantic margin, and there is frankly and honestly no way this lower-budget game is going to so much as make a dent.

However, as proven by the mass loss of subs from WOW, a lot of people are tired of the dumbed down casual grind fest that is WOW today. The fact that GW2 is even more dumbed down and casual doesn’t mean the high pop servers aren’t busy. And even though there vastly more people in WOW, you won’t see them because they are busy camping their garrison or farming dailies.

WuGzaGenius.5684:

You guys haven’t given me an answer other than, hurrr durr i see people in my instances.

There is no other way to answer your friend’s assertion — your friend has no data; the people posting on the forums have either proxy data (reddit posts, e.g.) or anecdotal (how many I see in my instances).

Your friend has no data to back up their statement, at least not that you’ve presented to us.

That’s ludicrous, i’m playing on one of the least populated servers (isle of janthir) and the place is ridden with people.

The day they hand out free transfer for everyone it’s gonna be chaotic.

mtpelion.4562:

WuGzaGenius.5684:

You guys haven’t given me an answer other than, hurrr durr i see people in my instances.

To be fair, your friend hasn’t given you a reason other than “hurrr durr I’m making up reasons to not play”.

He doesn’t wanna play a game where he hasn’t seen a lot of people playing it, so he doesn’t wanna invest time into a game where it could potentially be bad.

I know I read some where that GW2 makes around $4 per person playing the game per month when they take income divide it by the number of players playing the game that month. Using the numbers from the last quarterly report, that would be about 1.5 Million players playing this game per month. We know in the last quarter they had the income of 422,222 players paying $15 a month for a subscription based MMO. We know not every player buys stuff, and we know that people who spend more than $20 a month are a small minority, so having a total of 1.5 million people per month playing the game is very much a reasonable estimate.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

At least 3,500,000 copies were sold within the first year ( https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-the-first-year/ )

but past that and a few other infographics, they haven’t released any numbers.

Just a few months ago they stated they sold well over 5 million
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLslqhBn3PU

WuGzaGenius.5684:

He doesn’t wanna play a game where he hasn’t seen a lot of people playing it, so he doesn’t wanna invest time into a game where it could potentially be bad.

Two problems here:

1) If he hasn’t played it, he has no idea if people play it or not. If you tell him people are playing it, that should be his best evidence, as you’re actually a player. Is your word not good enough for him?

2) All games can potentially be bad, even highly-rated games. Not every game will be everyone’s cup of tea. By this notion, he should never play any games ever. Obviously you like it, if you’re trying to get him to play, so again..is your word not good enough for him?

You cant really force someone to play a game because you like it. I have a few friends I want to play gw2 with but they tried the game and it wasn’t to their liking. “theres a reason no one plays that game” out of curiosity what is this ‘reason’ cause in my 3 years of playing gw2 right now is more alive than ever.