Guild Wars 2

So I decided to run my newly leveled 80 mesmer all the way to Orr in order to open up the waypoints and get an exotic backpiece. This was on the HoD server. Now I had to run him through Sparkfly Fen, Straits of Devastation, Malchor’s Leap and finally the Cursed Shore. I managed to open the waypoints at all the temples but one thing bothered me. Throughout that whole trip I saw only 3 other people. No events were being run, no temples open and every waypoint that could be contested was contested.

Even just a month ago when my last level 80 made the trip the place was at least slightly occupied. Now it seems that the only large groups you find are standing around in LA, in WvW or moving between events in Queensdale and all the lower level areas. Orr is a, pardon the pun, Ghostland!

So question. Is it like this on other servers?

It’s because most people are trying to get all the Living Story content done I think, it’s taken alot of people’s attention because it’s only there for a limited amount of time.

Lethalvriend.1723:

It’s because most people are trying to get all the Living Story content done I think, it’s taken alot of people’s attention because it’s only there for a limited amount of time.

^^this

when doing orr (if i have to) i just guest on a popular server but ive not been there for at least 2months i live in starting area’s doing dailys and the odd dragon event
also with new game releases population will rise and fall as people try out the new shiny Nwno came out recentily

Everyone is playing the new minigames. They only have another 2 days to get the achievements if they want them.

I spent much of last night playing Aspect Arena for example, when normally I’m in the open world.

Of course it’s like this on other servers. Nerfnet wants it this way. There used to be places to farm on that map but those were nerfed to the bottom of the underworld so players simply gave up playing there.

Orr, is a wasteland by design. It’s not the slightest bit fun or rewarding.

For my time spent in game I can park on any number of world bosses, play some WvW (when it’s a good match up) or run CoF for rewards. Why go to Orr?

Like others have said. Though now with the changes planned in the next patch that hits tomorrow IE champions dropping unique skins Orr might get new life since events there can have multiple champions.

Anet created a huge world (too big in my opinion to start with) and then brought in events, fotm, living story etc right from the start to make sure people wouldn’t go to those leveling zones anymore.

It’s a funny thing really if you think about it.

With the nerf to farming, the only thing to really do is either run CoF P1 all day to make cash or log in, do your daily, maybe catch a round of dragons and then log off till the next to rinse and repeat.

Gehenna.3625:

Anet created a huge world (too big in my opinion to start with) and then brought in events, fotm, living story etc right from the start to make sure people wouldn’t go to those leveling zones anymore.

It’s a funny thing really if you think about it.

I’m not sure any game has really found the secret sauce to this. In most MMOs you have a huge world (not as big as this but still big), where you level to max and you raid. Maybe you level an alt, but eventually the largest part of the player base is hovering in the most recent zone, doing the most recent content, having outleveled everything else.

WoW is clearly the most financially successful MMO of all time with the largest player base, and you still here people complaining about dead middle level zones.

I’m from Aurora Glade server and there are plenty of people doing all events also in Orr etc.. It’s normal that if you going to check those maps the first days of a new Living Story, you will find less people/almost none

I moved from my ex server Ring of Fire because even if it said “High” there was no people doing anything.. maybe you just need to move to another server too ^^

There’s so many reasons to keep people interested in this game. If you don’t see anyone, it’s because they’re busy with this game’s rich end-game content.

Exploring Tyria is unpredictable and dangerous. You never know what you might encounter, which makes exploration exciting and slow enough to last for a lot of time. Remember those games where all you do is farm fetch quests, and replaying with an alt is painful? In GW2, playing with an alt is an exciting new experience. And all those enemy patrols, the unexpected encounters, the diversified enemy team formations, etc. There’s a difference between a casual explorer and a skilled explorer: the later kind of players have knowledge and experience about each unique map in Tyria, so you better ask them advice. GW2 is a game that rewards skill and knowledge, after all. And when you get that awesome treasure at the end! Isn’t it an awesome feeling to go through danger to get that rare, shiny sword and equip it? No wonder people don’t play those grindy mmos anymore, you know, those where getting rare equipment is trivial and nothing but salveagable loot. In this game, getting a rare equipment actually incentivates you to equip it and get satisfied by what you just found. No, getting loot is not just about colecting generic materials.

And the community is really tight and lively. Inbetween all the guild features, player-generated events, and demanding team-driven content, there’s so much depth and fun for those players. This is not a game about rushing with dps gear and dodging red circles, no. It’s about covering the weaknesses of your allies, giving them space to shine, and analyze the unique strategy behind each encounter.

Another reason that players might not be seen, is because they’re following and customising their personal story. They’re tweaking the personality details of their characters, completing their home instances with stuff, repeating the epic main narrative, and the two-week content patches are keeping them busy. Especially considering how important lore is in this game. Getting ascended gear, getting legendary gear, or filling in extra % map completion gets you to know a lot more about Tyria. GW2 is about the experience, not about mindless material grinding or the like. Remember the entire quest to get the Twilight? I enjoyed the story behind Bolt the best, though.

But those mmo grinders don’t enjoy a game like that. No, they’re leaving GW2, and getting back to those games where you… farm an easy dungeon for weeks, farm epic bosses by auto-attacking them, farm dailies, farm mindless mob waves… You know, those games where you’re in a never-ending race at attempting your luck with RNG boxes. That’s what keeps those games really popular, so people all went back to them. But fortunately for us all, GW2 is not this kind of game.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Theftwind.8976:

So I decided to run my newly leveled 80 mesmer all the way to Orr in order to open up the waypoints and get an exotic backpiece. This was on the HoD server. Now I had to run him through Sparkfly Fen, Straits of Devastation, Malchor’s Leap and finally the Cursed Shore. I managed to open the waypoints at all the temples but one thing bothered me. Throughout that whole trip I saw only 3 other people. No events were being run, no temples open and every waypoint that could be contested was contested.

Even just a month ago when my last level 80 made the trip the place was at least slightly occupied. Now it seems that the only large groups you find are standing around in LA, in WvW or moving between events in Queensdale and all the lower level areas. Orr is a, pardon the pun, Ghostland!

So question. Is it like this on other servers?

In my experience as of yesterday (yak’s bend), the living story areas were occupied enough that at least a couple of times I wakitten by overflow in laberynthine cliffs, I guess people rushing to finish the achievement metas before the new patch hits. Also several ascalon areas I visited seemed to be well populated, mainly with people looking for events for the daily and evon’s achievement (according to map chat, at least). Two of the maguman areas were much less populated, but I found several people at sparkfly fen (enough to spawn champions on the lab defend event), even if the tequatl spawning window wasn’t even close to start. LA was of course full as usual, queensdale had the standard champion zerg going on.

Can’t say about orr since I’ve not been there in several days, but when I go I usually find it much less populated than other areas except for specific areas, like pent-shelter-jofast that while they have less people than before, I usually find enough to spawn at least one champion during their respective events, and so are the temple events then they’re called on chat map.

On CD there are people everywhere, even in Orr (it’s not a lot but still some), hell even the other day the karka queen event got triggered (i was shocked). Me personally, just finished map completion on my ranger a couple weeks ago, and have a level 80 thief (through crafting) so i’m picking up a map here and there. I’m mostly in wvw and farming the world bosses for money and legendary resources.

I would expect to see a rise in players in orr with the new champion drops being added.

Vayne.8563:

Gehenna.3625:

Anet created a huge world (too big in my opinion to start with) and then brought in events, fotm, living story etc right from the start to make sure people wouldn’t go to those leveling zones anymore.

It’s a funny thing really if you think about it.

I’m not sure any game has really found the secret sauce to this. In most MMOs you have a huge world (not as big as this but still big), where you level to max and you raid. Maybe you level an alt, but eventually the largest part of the player base is hovering in the most recent zone, doing the most recent content, having outleveled everything else.

WoW is clearly the most financially successful MMO of all time with the largest player base, and you still here people complaining about dead middle level zones.

Yep, that doesn’t mean however that the problem doesn’t exist here as well. This is not a comparison between games, but a discussion about what happens in this game, unless you want to make it into a GW2 vs WoW thing.

What I do feel is that Anet have gone out of their way to make a huge world that in my view is too big, already making sure it will spread people out more and then make new content, fleeting or not, that makes sure people even revisit it less.

I remember that Anet was saying they didn’t want to go the same way as they did with GW1 with bringing out new continents because it spread people out too much.

So to remedy that they made a world that is actually bigger than the original Tyria, party because by making a persistent world, effectively decentralising the world. And because they decided on 80 levels, which is way too much for this game, they also made it so people don’t spend much time in each zone to begin with. Then everybody’s just running around doing their hearts etc and it really makes it a persistent world made for solo play. DE’s that I’ve run into the last week or so while leveling were often myself alone or maybe 3-4 people total on occasion.

I am convinced if the game had only 50 levels and fewer areas so people spend a bit more time per zone on average, it would’ve been much better.

I just wonder why they made such a huge world that people spend so little in because all the new stuff is elsewhere.

Sure we didn’t get new continents (although I still believe cantha might yet come one day), but we did get new locations, spreading people out more. I just think it was a mistake to begin with so many levels and areas.

It spreads people out too much and makes leveling boring since it’s the same stuff in each area…just some areas are grassy, snowy etc but the exact same activities.

DiogoSilva.7089:

There’s so many reasons to keep people interested in this game. If you don’t see anyone, it’s because they’re busy with this game’s rich end-game content.

Exploring Tyria is unpredictable and dangerous. You never know what you might encounter, which makes exploration exciting and slow enough to last for a lot of time. Remember those games where all you do is farm fetch quests, and replaying with an alt is painful? In GW2, playing with an alt is an exciting new experience. And all those enemy patrols, the unexpected encounters, the diversified enemy team formations, etc. There’s a difference between a casual explorer and a skilled explorer: the later kind of players have knowledge and experience about unique each map in Tyria is, so you better ask them advice. GW2 is a game that rewards skill and knowledge, after all. And when you get that awesome treasure at the end! Isn’t it an awesome feeling to go through danger to get that rare, shiny sword and equip it? No wonder people don’t play those grindy mmos anymore, you know, those where getting rare equipment is trivial and nothing but salveagable loot. In this game, getting a rare equipment actually incentivates you to equip it and get satisfied by what you just found. No, getting loot is not just about colecting generic materials.

And the community is really tight and lively. Inbetween all the guild features, player-generated events, and demanding team-driven content, there’s so much depth and fun for those players. This is not a game about rushing with dps gear and dodging red circles, no. It’s about covering the weaknesses of your allies, giving them space to shine, and analyze the unique strategy behind each encounter.

Another reason that players might not be seen, is because they’re following and customising their personal story. They’re tweaking the personality details of their characters, completing their home instances with stuff, repeating the epic main narrative, and the two-week content patches are keeping them busy. Especially considering how important lore is in this game. Getting ascended gear, getting legendary gear, or filling in extra % map completion gets you to know a lot more about Tyria. GW2 is about the experience, not about mindless material grinding or the like. Remember the entire quest to get the Twilight? I enjoyed the story behind Bolt the best, though.

But those mmo grinders don’t enjoy a game like that. No, they’re leaving GW2, and getting back to those games where you… farm an easy dungeon for weeks, farm epic bosses by auto-attacking them, farm dailies, farm mindless mob waves… You know, those games where you’re in a never-ending race at attempting your luck with RNG boxes. That’s what keeps those games really popular, so people all went back to them. But fortunately for us all, GW2 is not this kind of game.

Hahahah XD

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Gehenna.3625:

Anet created a huge world (too big in my opinion to start with) and then brought in events, fotm, living story etc right from the start to make sure people wouldn’t go to those leveling zones anymore.

It’s a funny thing really if you think about it.

I’m not sure any game has really found the secret sauce to this. In most MMOs you have a huge world (not as big as this but still big), where you level to max and you raid. Maybe you level an alt, but eventually the largest part of the player base is hovering in the most recent zone, doing the most recent content, having outleveled everything else.

WoW is clearly the most financially successful MMO of all time with the largest player base, and you still here people complaining about dead middle level zones.

Yep, that doesn’t mean however that the problem doesn’t exist here as well. This is not a comparison between games, but a discussion about what happens in this game, unless you want to make it into a GW2 vs WoW thing.

What I do feel is that Anet have gone out of their way to make a huge world that in my view is too big, already making sure it will spread people out more and then make new content, fleeting or not, that makes sure people even revisit it less.

I remember that Anet was saying they didn’t want to go the same way as they did with GW1 with bringing out new continents because it spread people out too much.

So to remedy that they made a world that is actually bigger than the original Tyria, party because by making a persistent world, effectively decentralising the world. And because they decided on 80 levels, which is way too much for this game, they also made it so people don’t spend much time in each zone to begin with. Then everybody’s just running around doing their hearts etc and it really makes it a persistent world made for solo play. DE’s that I’ve run into the last week or so while leveling were often myself alone or maybe 3-4 people total on occasion.

I am convinced if the game had only 50 levels and fewer areas so people spend a bit more time per zone on average, it would’ve been much better.

I just wonder why they made such a huge world that people spend so little in because all the new stuff is elsewhere.

Sure we didn’t get new continents (although I still believe cantha might yet come one day), but we did get new locations, spreading people out more. I just think it was a mistake to begin with so many levels and areas.

It spreads people out too much and makes leveling boring since it’s the same stuff in each area…just some areas are grassy, snowy etc but the exact same activities.

A smaller world isn’t necessarily a better world. What you end up with in this situation is traffic control. That’s what dailies and the living story do. They get people together at different places at different times. People can still find guilds and go explore together…my guild does that. But random people just population a zone. Maybe at prime time. What about all the people who play off hours. That was never going to happen.

Enter traffic control. Guild Wars 2 funnels people in the places where people are…and for a lot of people that works. It works for me, since I’m often online in my prime time when most Americans are asleep.

Rift had a smaller world, and everyone still basically ended up in the end zones. That would have happened here too.

I think humans like to gather at spots and they make those spots if the game doesn’t provide them.

I think the human that likes to be on their own all the time is the exception.

Get a bunch of people together and they’ll find a place to gather. It’s true in every game.

DiogoSilva.7089:

There’s so many reasons to keep people interested in this game. If you don’t see anyone, it’s because they’re busy with this game’s rich end-game content.

Exploring Tyria is unpredictable and dangerous. You never know what you might encounter, which makes exploration exciting and slow enough to last for a lot of time. Remember those games where all you do is farm fetch quests, and replaying with an alt is painful? In GW2, playing with an alt is an exciting new experience. And all those enemy patrols, the unexpected encounters, the diversified enemy team formations, etc. There’s a difference between a casual explorer and a skilled explorer: the later kind of players have knowledge and experience about each unique map in Tyria, so you better ask them advice. GW2 is a game that rewards skill and knowledge, after all. And when you get that awesome treasure at the end! Isn’t it an awesome feeling to go through danger to get that rare, shiny sword and equip it? No wonder people don’t play those grindy mmos anymore, you know, those where getting rare equipment is trivial and nothing but salveagable loot. In this game, getting a rare equipment actually incentivates you to equip it and get satisfied by what you just found. No, getting loot is not just about colecting generic materials.

And the community is really tight and lively. Inbetween all the guild features, player-generated events, and demanding team-driven content, there’s so much depth and fun for those players. This is not a game about rushing with dps gear and dodging red circles, no. It’s about covering the weaknesses of your allies, giving them space to shine, and analyze the unique strategy behind each encounter.

Another reason that players might not be seen, is because they’re following and customising their personal story. They’re tweaking the personality details of their characters, completing their home instances with stuff, repeating the epic main narrative, and the two-week content patches are keeping them busy. Especially considering how important lore is in this game. Getting ascended gear, getting legendary gear, or filling in extra % map completion gets you to know a lot more about Tyria. GW2 is about the experience, not about mindless material grinding or the like. Remember the entire quest to get the Twilight? I enjoyed the story behind Bolt the best, though.

But those mmo grinders don’t enjoy a game like that. No, they’re leaving GW2, and getting back to those games where you… farm an easy dungeon for weeks, farm epic bosses by auto-attacking them, farm dailies, farm mindless mob waves… You know, those games where you’re in a never-ending race at attempting your luck with RNG boxes. That’s what keeps those games really popular, so people all went back to them. But fortunately for us all, GW2 is not this kind of game.

You are completely right! For the first month the game is exactly like this. Unfortunately, after that, you realize that the game world is rather stale and boring. You hit a point where there is literally no way to improve your character, so you level another one until you hit the same point.

DiogoSilva.7089:

There’s so many reasons to keep people interested in this game. If you don’t see anyone, it’s because they’re busy with this game’s rich end-game content.

Exploring Tyria is unpredictable and dangerous. You never know what you might encounter, which makes exploration exciting and slow enough to last for a lot of time. Remember those games where all you do is farm fetch quests, and replaying with an alt is painful? In GW2, playing with an alt is an exciting new experience. And all those enemy patrols, the unexpected encounters, the diversified enemy team formations, etc. There’s a difference between a casual explorer and a skilled explorer: the later kind of players have knowledge and experience about each unique map in Tyria, so you better ask them advice. GW2 is a game that rewards skill and knowledge, after all. And when you get that awesome treasure at the end! Isn’t it an awesome feeling to go through danger to get that rare, shiny sword and equip it? No wonder people don’t play those grindy mmos anymore, you know, those where getting rare equipment is trivial and nothing but salveagable loot. In this game, getting a rare equipment actually incentivates you to equip it and get satisfied by what you just found. No, getting loot is not just about colecting generic materials.

And the community is really tight and lively. Inbetween all the guild features, player-generated events, and demanding team-driven content, there’s so much depth and fun for those players. This is not a game about rushing with dps gear and dodging red circles, no. It’s about covering the weaknesses of your allies, giving them space to shine, and analyze the unique strategy behind each encounter.

Another reason that players might not be seen, is because they’re following and customising their personal story. They’re tweaking the personality details of their characters, completing their home instances with stuff, repeating the epic main narrative, and the two-week content patches are keeping them busy. Especially considering how important lore is in this game. Getting ascended gear, getting legendary gear, or filling in extra % map completion gets you to know a lot more about Tyria. GW2 is about the experience, not about mindless material grinding or the like. Remember the entire quest to get the Twilight? I enjoyed the story behind Bolt the best, though.

But those mmo grinders don’t enjoy a game like that. No, they’re leaving GW2, and getting back to those games where you… farm an easy dungeon for weeks, farm epic bosses by auto-attacking them, farm dailies, farm mindless mob waves… You know, those games where you’re in a never-ending race at attempting your luck with RNG boxes. That’s what keeps those games really popular, so people all went back to them. But fortunately for us all, GW2 is not this kind of game.

Brilliant. Accurate. Insightful. Informative. Sad.

5 stars, sir. /salute

Living story content, and orr is still just terrible designed. I hope they look at changing orr in the coming months.

iCryptik.1496:

Living story content, and orr is still just terrible designed. I hope they look at changing orr in the coming months.

Well no they are very well designed you just do not like that there is a limitation on how long you can wait to do things such as a living story. As for orr i images you just over played it the very idea why there is living story. Most players seem to be like this they are “fearful” of missing something but when something stay there too long it becomes boring or simply not played.

Any way players are there they just happen not to be right by you this is a BIG game the maps are big and you can do a lot to level up make gold etc.. I could go out side at night and say “where did all the light go” and be on the same logic level as going out into the world of gw2 and not seeing any one at a given time and at a given places.

DiogoSilva.7089:

There’s so many reasons to keep people interested in this game. If you don’t see anyone, it’s because they’re busy with this game’s rich end-game content.

Exploring Tyria is unpredictable and dangerous. You never know what you might encounter, which makes exploration exciting and slow enough to last for a lot of time. Remember those games where all you do is farm fetch quests, and replaying with an alt is painful? In GW2, playing with an alt is an exciting new experience. And all those enemy patrols, the unexpected encounters, the diversified enemy team formations, etc. There’s a difference between a casual explorer and a skilled explorer: the later kind of players have knowledge and experience about each unique map in Tyria, so you better ask them advice. GW2 is a game that rewards skill and knowledge, after all. And when you get that awesome treasure at the end! Isn’t it an awesome feeling to go through danger to get that rare, shiny sword and equip it? No wonder people don’t play those grindy mmos anymore, you know, those where getting rare equipment is trivial and nothing but salveagable loot. In this game, getting a rare equipment actually incentivates you to equip it and get satisfied by what you just found. No, getting loot is not just about colecting generic materials.

And the community is really tight and lively. Inbetween all the guild features, player-generated events, and demanding team-driven content, there’s so much depth and fun for those players. This is not a game about rushing with dps gear and dodging red circles, no. It’s about covering the weaknesses of your allies, giving them space to shine, and analyze the unique strategy behind each encounter.

Another reason that players might not be seen, is because they’re following and customising their personal story. They’re tweaking the personality details of their characters, completing their home instances with stuff, repeating the epic main narrative, and the two-week content patches are keeping them busy. Especially considering how important lore is in this game. Getting ascended gear, getting legendary gear, or filling in extra % map completion gets you to know a lot more about Tyria. GW2 is about the experience, not about mindless material grinding or the like. Remember the entire quest to get the Twilight? I enjoyed the story behind Bolt the best, though.

But those mmo grinders don’t enjoy a game like that. No, they’re leaving GW2, and getting back to those games where you… farm an easy dungeon for weeks, farm epic bosses by auto-attacking them, farm dailies, farm mindless mob waves… You know, those games where you’re in a never-ending race at attempting your luck with RNG boxes. That’s what keeps those games really popular, so people all went back to them. But fortunately for us all, GW2 is not this kind of game.

lol

Vayne.8563:

A smaller world isn’t necessarily a better world. What you end up with in this situation is traffic control. That’s what dailies and the living story do. They get people together at different places at different times. People can still find guilds and go explore together…my guild does that. But random people just population a zone. Maybe at prime time. What about all the people who play off hours. That was never going to happen.

I don’t want to talk in general. That smaller isn’t necessarily better means nothing.

GW2 has loads of leveling zones with people stretched out among them. Compressing that a bit more is better for that especially because GW2 is well suited for that. Why do I say that? Because of the way the game levels you down to the content you are doing.

Also it’s just a dumb idea to spend a lot of time on something people just rush through and forget about. That’s just wasting resources. Of course once people are leveled to 80 there are some hubs where people get together. It would’ve been better they spent more resources on stuff to do at max level than creating zone after zone of similar activities for a leveling process that just takes too long.

If the reality is that while leveling you run into a handful of people only, then that means you have too many leveling zones. It really comes down to the fact that they went overboard with the amount of levels and making xp gain low enough that you need to either repeat things or go to zones of other races to stay on level….that makes their replay value less of those areas as well.

If the had stuck to 50 levels a few less areas and more xp gain per zone, I think this game would’ve leveled a lot smoother and would bore people a lot less. A lot better situation in my view and better for the long term as you have more zones to open for different purposes without having to add more areas outside the existing map.

So nothing is better per definition but I do think I have a few reasons here to think that smaller (and fewer levels) would’ve been better for this game.

Quality > quantity.

Tyria is a huge world, but that’s not exactly a good thing the moment you realize all maps play the same, and there’s little to do but mindless and repetitive fetch quests for 80 levels. More so when after all the grind, you realize that whatever remains revolves around RNG, dps-zerging and material farming.