To everyone that says GW2 is dying or failing
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It amuses me at the people saying that the servers being Full on Saturday and on Monday them not being AS Full is a sign of the game dying.
I love to be the one to point out that, on Saturday, a lot more people are able to stay up later and play later as there’s no school / work on Sunday. Mondays, people aren’t able to stay up so late because they have school / work on Tuesday.
And I’ll add in the fact, … in primetime (depending on what timezone you’re in), people could already be asleep by the time you log on. For example, Pacific Time Zone is three hours behind East Coast.
Someone at 6 p.m. in Washington logs on, and it’s 9 p.m. for someone in NY. Of course, that person in NY is going to be going to sleep fairly soon or already asleep, so they can wake up early to start their new day.
That is not a sign of the game dying. That is a sign of life.
The culture has changed in the way MMORPGs are played since WoW showed up on the scene. People play more now, rush for endgame faster and generally try to finish all the content as fast as possible. The WoW release wasn’t like that at all.
When WoW came out people played a lot. A few people rushed to 60 but I was in the top 5% (first 60s) on my server and I took almost a month. Playing a lot when WoW came out is NOT the same a what people do now. Now people often take time off work for MMO releases and spend a CRAZY amount of time playing these games. When WoW was released I played 8+ hours a day and that was insane. Compared to today’s hardcore that is peanuts. 12-16 hour gaming days are the norm for the hardcore.
Not only do people play more but they also rush for endgame and try to bypass content to get there as fast as possible. How many people were escorting Dolyaks for exp? Dozens per zone per server. How many people grinded mobs to level as fast as possible when WoW was released? (yes pure grinding was faster than questing believe it or not) Hardly any at all. Even when the first 60 appeared (and told everyone grinding was faster) people STILL didn’t go to grinding for levels. These days it would have been a full on switch from questing to grinding and people being called noobs for doing quests.
These days people spend 16 hour days gobbling up content and finding the fastest way to finish everything possible. The drop-off in players is un-avoidable as it is simply impossible to create enough content to keep those players happy.
What I think people miss about GW2 (and is causing the sky-is-falling posts) is that people can comeback or play casually after the initial crazy push and also that overflow mechanics make the need for new servers much smaller than with a traditional MMO.
WoW only needed as many servers as it had from 6pm to 12am EST. There was a 6 hour window when stuff was jam packed (and lag was terrible) and 18 hours of moderate to low populations.
GW2 with it’s overflow mechanics can handle the crazy primetime while not leaving servers deserted the rest of the time. This is what confuses people. Servers are not added because they are not needed for performance. Modern MMO releases have HUGE declines in playtime after release because people stop being on MMO vacation and have to go back to work/school.
Arenanet have done a great job to jam pack servers to the gills so that modern player tendancies will not impact the population in a negative fashion so you can get groups and play PvP/PvE easily even after the initial rush of players dies down. The lack of monthly fee means that there should be a steady flow of people coming back while other people go play something else.
TLDR: overflow is the reason more servers haven’t been added.
Karandara, Necromancer, Fort Aspenwood
Most of my friends including myself are getting refunds. They rushed the game and now they are set back MONTHS because of bugs that should have been fixed in betta / stress test. I don’t want to wait 2-3 months until my classes are balanced.
I have done beta for a few mmo’s. The amount of issues that made it through to launch is ridiculous.
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