Guild Wars 2

To everyone that says the game is dying or failing….

Can you please read those server pops for me in the picture below? K thanks.

Oh and by the way…for the record….that picture wasn’t taken during prime time hours.

When I logged on for the last time (last week), several more servers were set to “Full”. So I do think the population is dwindling. =/

TBH, it’s game drop off. It happens, because you will lose some of the launch population.

At this point, most of SWTOR’s servers were medium AT BEST.

My theory:
60% WVW
20% SPVP
20% PVE
The game is not dead or failing, ppl are just doing the endgame content they enjoy, WVW being one of them.

FarFarAway.6579:

When I logged on for the last time (last week), several more servers were set to “Full”. So I do think the population is dwindling. =/

Panda Land. I know I’m not going back solely because of Pandas.

Come on..

Demons>Dead Death Knights>Dragons>Pandas.. lol wtf?

If you enjoy the game and look forward to playing, what would you care whether or not someone says it’s failing, short of getting an email or notification like, say, the folks who play City of Heroes received letting them know their game is being sun-setted?

If you do not enjoy the game and have decided to leave, are leaving for other reasons (peer pressure to play another game, personal commitments, work obligation, etc), why is it necessary to make a comment that would indicate a game has failed or is failing, whether based on factual information or pure conjecture?

Whats funny is how ppl complain about this game and want things from wow, yet u go on wow forms and ppl over there want things from this game and complain about wow. All i know is i at lest i keep 15 bux in my pocket at the end of my month.

Kingmutez.4931:

Whats funny is how ppl complain about this game and want things from wow, yet u go on wow forms and ppl over there want things from this game and complain about wow. All i know is i at lest i keep 15 bux in my pocket at the end of my month.

The grass is always greener on the other side

notebene.3190:

If you enjoy the game and look forward to playing, what would you care whether or not someone says it’s failing, short of getting an email or notification like, say, the folks who play City of Heroes received letting them know their game is being sun-setted?

If you do not enjoy the game and have decided to leave, are leaving for other reasons (peer pressure to play another game, personal commitments, work obligation, etc), why is it necessary to make a comment that would indicate a game has failed or is failing, whether based on factual information or pure conjecture?

I’m bored. And I bought the game, just like you. That gives me the right to comment whether I’m an active player or not. Remember, no subs?

FarFarAway.6579:

When I logged on for the last time (last week), several more servers were set to “Full”. So I do think the population is dwindling. =/

I logged in last Sunday night. 60% of the Severs are FULL. I logged in this Monday night. 10% of the Severs are FULL. The population is surely dwindling, Very fast.
I just checked Amazon, see the attachment. The game is merely #2 best seller. I mean, 1 months after release and it can not stay as #1? Even MOP is hanging around #7 right now. You know, the game is surly dying.

ShRNA.4376:

The game is merely #2 best seller. I mean, 1 months after release and it can not stay as #1? Even MOP is hanging around #7 right now. You know, the game is surly dying.

You do realize that MoP players simply had to click a button on the Battle.net site to upgrade? The expansion was already patched in. Why on earth would they order it from Amazon?

n-n-n-no I mean MoP2… not MoP

that’s when it’ll really die…
STOP HAVING FUN

I think most of those populations are bots and gold spammers.

I kid, a little bit.

FarFarAway.6579:

ShRNA.4376:

The game is merely #2 best seller. I mean, 1 months after release and it can not stay as #1? Even MOP is hanging around #7 right now. You know, the game is surly dying.

You do realize that MoP players simply had to click a button on the Battle.net site to upgrade? The expansion was already patched in. Why on earth would they order it from Amazon?

You do realize that GW2 players simply had to click a button on the buy.guildwars2.com site to get a key and download the thing? Why on earth would they order it from Amazon?

ShRNA.4376:

FarFarAway.6579:

ShRNA.4376:

The game is merely #2 best seller. I mean, 1 months after release and it can not stay as #1? Even MOP is hanging around #7 right now. You know, the game is surly dying.

You do realize that MoP players simply had to click a button on the Battle.net site to upgrade? The expansion was already patched in. Why on earth would they order it from Amazon?

You do realize that GW2 players simply had to click a button on the buy.guildwars2.com site to get a key and download the thing? Why on earth would they order it from Amazon?

Yeah, that argument doesn’t work, FarFarAway.

ShRNA.4376:

You do realize that GW2 players simply had to click a button on the buy.guildwars2.com site to get a key and download the thing? Why on earth would they order it from Amazon?

Hey that’s a good point. However, not all new players knew to buy GW2 from Arenanet directly (for instance, I bought mine via box from New Egg for a discount), but ALL Wow players know how to get their Xpacs via Blizzard.

But this conversation has nothing to do with current population, which was the subject of the OP.

ahh southpark and sexual harrasment pandaa
I’m a saaad Pandaaa.

Anyways, i can say as long as anet devs care about bugs and balancing, this game will live sooo long than you have predicted mr panda

FarFarAway.6579:

ShRNA.4376:

You do realize that GW2 players simply had to click a button on the buy.guildwars2.com site to get a key and download the thing? Why on earth would they order it from Amazon?

Hey that’s a good point. However, not all new players knew to buy GW2 from Arenanet directly (for instance, I bought mine via box from New Egg for a discount), but ALL Wow players know how to get their Xpacs via Blizzard.

That’s quite a biased opinion, don’t you think?

After all, there are many people who prefer to buy the box just for novelty, even when they are aware of electronic transanctions.

So no, it doesn’t make any difference. The people buying the box of MoP would be roughly around the same percentage of people buying the GW2 box, within an error margin of course, but relatively close nevertheless.

FarFarAway.6579:

notebene.3190:

If you enjoy the game and look forward to playing, what would you care whether or not someone says it’s failing, short of getting an email or notification like, say, the folks who play City of Heroes received letting them know their game is being sun-setted?

If you do not enjoy the game and have decided to leave, are leaving for other reasons (peer pressure to play another game, personal commitments, work obligation, etc), why is it necessary to make a comment that would indicate a game has failed or is failing, whether based on factual information or pure conjecture?

I’m bored. And I bought the game, just like you. That gives me the right to comment whether I’m an active player or not. Remember, no subs?

I presume your response was with respect to the second question. My question was ‘why’? Are you producing the information with the intention of being a Good Samaritan and helping us make good choices for ourselves?

For that second question, what is the motivation, if not purely one of mischief? I don’t see an answer to that question that is positive, unless the act of doing that makes you feel better about your own choices and decisions. The side effect of that is still negative. Or, the intention is malice from the outset.

I wasn’t questioning the ability of said people to perform the act. I was questioning the motives. ‘Why’ would you do it?

Why does it have to be proven by the players themselves that the game is, or is not, dying?

Those who feel the need to defend the game, will always win. Or feel that they have won. I’ll explain why.

Scenario 1: the game remains to keep a large number of active players, which is exactly their point. Hence the rather silly way of posting screenshots of server populations.
An acive player is doing something he enjoys doing, not sure if the servers are filled with that. Not to mention the lower level zones…
But in the end: if the servers remain full, the game is alive to some extend of course.
not arguing here.

scenario 2: over time, th ammount of active players drops, servers aren’t full anymore, servers get merged, etc.
Did the white knights lose than?
hell no, THEY are the real players, the ones who stuck by the game. They don’t need the Wotards, the MMO hoppers, the complainers, the grinders, the whatever-they’re-nots.

Too much sugar gets me edgy, and seeing players jump up to defend the game at all costs really makes me weary of this gaming community.
it’s nice to see that players appreciate the game, it’s something completely different to see players get aggressive at others for not liking it. Or for saying the game is going downhill…

I’m having fun and I’m liking this game a lot.
But it’s not what I expected it to be. And from a leveling new player to the OP: those numbers don’t mean anything in the leveling zones, they simply don’t…

Too soon to tell, one way or another.
Maybe both sides should relax a bit.

notebene.3190:

I presume your response was with respect to the second question. My question was ‘why’? Are you producing the information with the intention of being a Good Samaritan and helping us make good choices for ourselves?

I’m confused. Exactly what kind of choice are you trying to make?

notebene.3190:

If you enjoy the game and look forward to playing, what would you care whether or not someone says it’s failing,…..

If more people thought like this the MMO space would a much better one. It always feels like some people think that if a game doesn’t have at least 3 million players it is a failure. Lets be honest: There will never be another WoW for this Genre – The Fantasy RPG scene (Or those that follow old school formula’s) will never peak to the heights again. Neither will WoW itself.

Here is a hint: Depending on the game (mostly Original IP stuff like EQ/GW/WoW) it doesn’t take that much for MMO’s to continue to grow and expand. Most companies that run multiple MMO’s know that (NCSoft/SoE), and continue to sell to their hardcore playerbase. Everquest 1 is visable proof of how long something can live with expanded content selling content to those players that otherwise wouldn’t sell at all today to newer players.

Who cares? Another major game came out that’s a direct competitor. Of course sales/population will decline.

All I know is I feel like I have gotten my $60 worth, and I’m not even starting to get bored or feel like I’ve exhausted the game.

Plus I can stop playing anytime I want and comeback in a couple of weeks or months and not feel like I paid for something I didn’t use.

I thought this had to do with the amount of accounts assigned to that server? They never said this is some sort of online player meter.

Eochaidh.4106:

I thought this had to do with the amount of accounts assigned to that server? They never said this is some sort of online player meter.

You are absolutely right, it has never officially been stated as a means to measure the amount of online players.

Eochaidh.4106:

I thought this had to do with the amount of accounts assigned to that server? They never said this is some sort of online player meter.

If that was true the servers would always be full.

rook.4625:

Eochaidh.4106:

I thought this had to do with the amount of accounts assigned to that server? They never said this is some sort of online player meter.

You are absolutely right, it has never officially been stated as a means to measure the amount of online players.

To add a little to this, if it was simply an online player meter, then you’d see people not being able to log in if they’re on these servers, or if you could log in but not transfer in when it’s full, the servers would just keep getting more and more players at off-peak hours until the server was way over capacity. So yes, there’s a lot more to this than how many concurrent players are online.

Untouch.2541:

Eochaidh.4106:

I thought this had to do with the amount of accounts assigned to that server? They never said this is some sort of online player meter.

If that was true the servers would always be full.

Not necessarily, they frequently change the caps as far as I know. Certain servers are almost always full either way.

Eochaidh.4106:

Untouch.2541:

Eochaidh.4106:

I thought this had to do with the amount of accounts assigned to that server? They never said this is some sort of online player meter.

If that was true the servers would always be full.

Not necessarily, they frequently change the caps as far as I know. Certain servers are almost always full either way.

Not that frequently.

Why are we guessing at this so much?

It’ll take some time, but at one point or another it should become clear if the game is dying, or instead flourishing nice and comfy with a strong active crowd, be it less than on the first weeks of course. But that’s alright.

I don’t see the point in most of this duelling between white knights and doomsayers.

Admitted: i do get edgy from all this sugar that is thrown around on the forums, and I do find many of the defenders of this game overly aggressive towards other opinions.
But this does NOT mean I think the game is dead, dying, or failing.

I can’t tell yet.
What I can tell however, is that these kinds of discussions get on my nerves. But feel free to carry on without me.
By the time anything official and reliable is shown, I’ll catch on again. Don’t worry.

Let’s see if you will be so boastful in 6 months from now. Gw2 shouldn’t even be classified as an mmo. Gw2 is more like a horrible single player console game. It will just take about 6 months for the rest of you to figure it out…

Revenant.2691:

rook.4625:

Eochaidh.4106:

I thought this had to do with the amount of accounts assigned to that server? They never said this is some sort of online player meter.

You are absolutely right, it has never officially been stated as a means to measure the amount of online players.

To add a little to this, if it was simply an online player meter, then you’d see people not being able to log in if they’re on these servers, or if you could log in but not transfer in when it’s full, the servers would just keep getting more and more players at off-peak hours until the server was way over capacity. So yes, there’s a lot more to this than how many concurrent players are online.

You cannot transfer to or create a new toon on a full server. If you already have a toon there and log in, you will be moved to overflow temporarily if there is no room on the server for logged in toons.

Whether this means that a “full” server means alloted slots full or too many toons logged in, I cannot say. I do know that different areas fill up at different rates – I can log into Celadon Forest with no problems, move to Lion’s Arch and get put into overflow, move to Queenswhatever and be back on the main server. I don’t look at the server list to see if my server is “full” because I don’t care one way or the other.

No one plays the game 24/7 for months at a time. I’ve never been in an area where I didn’t see a single person also moving through the area within a reasonable stretch of time. Prime time I usually see many people in the area and there is a good number of people cooperating during DEs. During off peak hours I’ve cleared DEs alone or with 1-2 others.

People tend to see what they expect to see, whether or not it matches up with reality. If you believe the game is dying, you look around once and see no one in the immediate area and conclude the game is empty. If you do not believe the game is dying, you see someone in the distance and conclude things are fine.

To be able to say something with certainty, you need to have information that the players do not have. How many accounts per server, when those accounts were last logged in, the average # of hours played per account, how many accounts are online per server per time of day, etc.

You do not have this information. You cannot find this information anywhere. If you work for Arenanet you may or may not have access to this information. If you have access to this information you most likely do not have permission to release this information to the public. If you have the authority to give permission to release this information to the public you almost certainly do not want to do so.

Therefore, as a player you will never know for certain how many people are playing this game over what period of time. All speculation about it is purely speculation and based on inaccurate or incomplete information.

For me, the only thing that matters is, “am I enjoying playing the game?” My wife plays it too, and we both have fun whether we play together or separate. So I have no problems with the game or how it’s run. YMMV.

I just hate running into so many deserted events, in the mid-level areas. Soloing them is even less fun than just avoiding them.

I’m sure it looks fine at peak times, but at 3pm… not so much. When pops are honestly high, it can seem almost like there are no off-peak times.

@tolunart
You are moved to overflow if the map is full, not the server.

The game is played across many different time zones, so prime time for you may be 3 am for someone else. Regardless, no one is going to put in 12 hr days on the game indefinitely, it is intended that people will take breaks and come back to the game as they want to, and the content of the game is focused on this more casual attitude rather than “you must be here every Tuesday night for the raid” kind of play.

Build toons that can be self-sufficient with defensive abilities/buffs as well as offensive and you don’t need huge crowds playing the game to hide in.

This makes no sense, obviously if the game is not dying or failing as you claim and server populations were based on current players then servers would all be filling up and new servers would have been made.

Since the game is not dying then there must be a constant influx of new players which would warrant the creation of new servers to handle this increase of player base, correct?

So if server populations are remaining relatively the same and no new servers are being created this must mean the population is not growing.

WoW continued to grow and create new servers for many years, GW2’s population has remained static since week 2, what does that say about the state of the game?

This isn’t SWTOR, Guild Wars 2 will never fail and it’s too late to say it will, it already won.

tolunart, I don’t know why you decided to go on such a lengthy rant about my post, which merely addressed the information on the server screen and didn’t even touch on the majority of issues you seem to attribute to it. To be honest, I find the majority of these topics a pointless waste of time that immature sub-humans use to feed off of one anothers’ anger to fuel their own “righteous indignation” high.

Do I think the game is dying? No. Do I think the game is experiencing troubles currently that could have an effect on long-term players numbers? Yes, most definitely. If you don’t feel that way, awesome. If you do feel that way, come up with ideas instead of just prowling the forums looking for someone to jump on. People talk about a “white knights vs. haters” debate, which is moronic. What I’m seeing is a small minority of people having discussions about how to possibly make the game better while the majority of people try to hijack these discussions to reinforce their own egos. “White knights” and “haters” are equally as useless and just clog the forums with meaningless pap.

I’m glad you and your wife are enjoying the game, and I hope you both continue to do so. In the meantime, please stop talking until you have something more constructive to add than the same “uh-huh! nuh-uh!” back-and-forth.

we’re also down to just one medium pop server =)

Nodrog.7458:

This makes no sense, obviously if the game is not dying or failing as you claim and server populations were based on current players then servers would all be filling up and new servers would have been made.

As I said, this is all speculation based on inaccurate or incomplete info. Because there are no sub fees, a player can create an account and leave it dormant for months. Counting that account as part of the server population would only keep new players from joining the server, causing a gradual decline and people wondering why their “full” server seems empty.

So, one of two things probably happens:

1: The server cap is raised periodically, possibly based on the average active population. If the cap is 10,000 accounts and an average of 7,000 accounts are active each day, the cap is raised to 13,000 to compensate for the inactive accounts.

2: Inactive accounts are purged from the server pop listing after a specific period of time. If a full server of 10,000 accounts has 3,000 accounts that have not logged in for a week, they are left on the server but are not counted, reducing the population to 7,000 and allowing 3,000 new accounts to join the server.

I don’t have access to Arenanet’s internal records, so like everything else this is just speculation.

Geemo.6018:

Let’s see if you will be so boastful in 6 months from now. Gw2 shouldn’t even be classified as an mmo. Gw2 is more like a horrible single player console game. It will just take about 6 months for the rest of you to figure it out…

lol, nice troll bud. GW2 is gonna get huge. just wait till the first xpac/content patch. theyre just working out the kinks now. it’s way bigger than any other MMO was on relase

Revenant.2691:

tolunart, I don’t know why you decided to go on such a lengthy rant about my post, which merely addressed the information on the server screen and didn’t even touch on the majority of issues you seem to attribute to it. To be honest, I find the majority of these topics a pointless waste of time that immature sub-humans use to feed off of one anothers’ anger to fuel their own “righteous indignation” high.

I apologize for not making an entirely new post when I started writing stream of consciousness about my thoughts on the subject. The first two paragraphs were in answer to your post, the rest of it was not directed towards you or about you.

I’m glad you and your wife are enjoying the game, and I hope you both continue to do so. In the meantime, please stop talking until you have something more constructive to add than the same “uh-huh! nuh-uh!” back-and-forth.

Feel free to edit any of my posts and remove material you do not want. If you do not have the authority to do so, you also do not have the authority to tell me when to post or what to say.

I am merely expressing my views on the situation. I do not have any significant attachment to this game or any other, and have no desire to “pounce” on anyone or feel the need to win any arguments. If I write something it’s because I believe that what I have to say may be of some use. I will continue to do so with or without your permission.

Geemo.6018:

Let’s see if you will be so boastful in 6 months from now. Gw2 shouldn’t even be classified as an mmo. Gw2 is more like a horrible single player console game. It will just take about 6 months for the rest of you to figure it out…

First it was 2 weeks.
Then it was a month.
Then it was until MoP came out
Next benchmark is 6 months I see, awful large jump though.

i think gw2 will be huge in 6 months…should be about the time of the new expansion.

Untouch.2541:

Geemo.6018:

Let’s see if you will be so boastful in 6 months from now. Gw2 shouldn’t even be classified as an mmo. Gw2 is more like a horrible single player console game. It will just take about 6 months for the rest of you to figure it out…

First it was 2 weeks.
Then it was a month.
Then it was until MoP came out
Next benchmark is 6 months I see, awful large jump though.

Isn’t the next one “When the new Rift expansion comes out…”

Oh, I forgot, Rift is already dead. That’s why they’re selling huge numbers of preorders of Storm Legion, because no one plays the game any more.

I think Storm Legion comes out past 6 months from now, maybe that;ll be the next one.

Storm Legion is about six weeks from release.

Those servers say full when they aren’t even full….The server says full when its 3-6 a.m. in the states….They do it so u can’t roll a toon on it…

It’s no where near dying. people are very silly sometimes. Every night im on heaps of people are always around doing things togeather , helping eachother out. this is the best mmo i have ever played. I’m not a guildwars 1 fanboy as I never played it, but safe to say im now a guild wars 2 fan boi game is just stunning! If you have a high end computer running everything on /high/ultra you will be so amazed of it’s beauty.
If you dont have a high end computer, I suggest getting one to fully exp the game.

OP- “Hey look, GW2’s methods of telling how much population is on a server is flawed and doesn’t work- hooray for GW2!”

Glorious composition, comrade.