Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing for few hours today, in three different zones, and it feels like am in a ghost town. You can see a player or two running once in a while, but besides that…there’s nothing.

Main chat is dead, you can hear echos of “LFG (insert dungeon name here)”. Back in September the main chat was alive, there was casual chat, disputes, event notifications, and a great sense of community, but now everything seems so dead. What happened? It’s really depressing to run around alone in a quiet zone. And no, I’m not blaming the Lost Shores and new dungeon, this thing happened before the new content.

So where is everybody? And yes, I’m on high population server.

FotM. Its the only way to get ascended gear at the moment and no one wants to be caught unprepared for the next level of the treadmill to release. We’re trying to gather these items for our mains and alts before they release more pieces of the set.

The other dungeons and zones are, atm, worthless to the treadmill and therefor ignored. They are addressing this issue, though. We should see more progression in those zones as well.

Of course, Arenanet is well aware of this and is spinning it as FotM being wildly successful, since we’re all doing just it and nothing else. :-\

Probably in Fractals or different LA overflows spamming the chat for a group for Fractals. The expected result when you introduce a new dungeon with a chance of dropping an exotic (maybe even precursor) every 15min and nerf or bug all the lvl 80 areas.

It was interesting to log to the server-select screen and see only 4 servers on “full”

One thing I did that helped after the patch was transfer to a higher population server. The server I was on was fine before last weekend, but emptied out afterwards in terms of the open world. Now, just the sheer number of players on the server I’m on outweighs the loss of grinding or disgruntled players. Tbh, the new server feels a lot like the old one did (except in LA of course—there the fragmented community still stands out) and there are enough people to do group events again.

i think that yes, a lot of people are caught on the Fractal treadmill and cant get off.

but many are simply uninstalling/moving on/playing something else/having a break after the big patch last weekend.

i lost my motivation to play for a few days, but i am back making another alt and doing some mostly solo pve.

i have seen a few others along the way, just enough to keep me losing my motivation again.

I think many zones are dead. From my experience, I used to get put into overflows because zones were populated.. now, LA is the only zone I get put into overflows.

FoTM wouldn’t be a problem if it’s only available to lvl 80, at least more people would be available in the world.

If everyone is riding the gear treadmill in the FoTM they should make this gear available in Orr and lvl 80 zones, at least people would have to work their way for it, and not stand in LA whole day long.

Im on my second leveling adventure (the first being my warrior who is now 80) and I have noticed there are even fewer players in the open world than there were when I leveled the first time. When I was working on my warrior i would get help on a few Dynamic Events in zones, now I am lucky if I see one character in a zone. This is a problem that needs to be fixed or the game starts feeling like a less than soloable one person RPG, instead of the MMO it was designed as. I bought the game because I was interested in a community pf people wanting to help eachother and complete things together. All i have found is a barren game that has no interest in players until you can do dungeons at level 80 to farm tokens.

I agree, with lack of active players in all zones the entire concept of “massive multiplayer” just fades, and it turns GW2 in just a multiplayer game.

Well in my case it’s the end of the year and several projects need to get done at work or else (although absent is or else what, but my boss has difficulty effectively motivating people)! So most days I get back home late, with only a hour or so to play and honestly I don’t feel as if I can do anything with only a hours works of play. I can barely do my daily. Of course once the years ends for me and I go on vacation I won’t be back either since I have to visit family and they don’t have internet. So I’m pretty much tied up until next year, with only small increments of time which I don’t see myself spending in GW2 since I don’t feel as if I can achieve something without a larger investment of time than I have at my disposal.

I feel like doing a thread on this.

Yeah I have to wonder if the game is going to keep any new players at this point… it’s not a good thing when you start an mmo and find the starting zone (or at the very least the following zones) almost completely void of any other players. Dynamic events only serve to make the world feel emptier with all the ones that stay forever unfinished due to lack of players.

I’m not playing at all. I gave up after November 15th. I keep checking the forums in the hope that ArenaNet will wakeup and unscrew this last update. Mostly, I’m waiting to see if there are clear, direct answers given in the AMA about where Guild Wars 2 is headed.

I have hope that they’ll point out they made a mistake in the AMA, and talk about how they’re going to fix it (it’s OK to admit you made a mistake, ArenaNet! CCP did!).

Unfortunately, that’s just hope. What I think will actually happen is some kind of spin job on the whole thing.

Time will tell. Hopefully they’ll convince me and a lot of other people to give GW2 a second chance.

same as well waiting for them to do something right about the ascended and reverting back to their initial ideals, pleas remove the Diminishing Returns

GW2 has the depth of a puddle, obviously people aren’t going to stick around.

I wouldnt mind that its empty, I have played WoW in solo-mode you could say, up to almost level cap, but GW2 feels like there is nothing to do. My character wont evolve anymore, no quest I could do will give me gear with better stats, not even with a new look. The only things available are dungeons, better said the few dungeons people actually do, or did before FotM. Thats not what I like about MMORPGs. So GW2 has failed to provide me with fun, instead the recent decissions of ANet push me further away. All my friends have stopped playing this game too, its simply sad.

Getting almost impossible to do ancient creatures on normal maps now, theres just not enough folks around

I’m playing a few hours a week at most right now, not for the same reasons as all the level-capped players upset about the Ascended gear (my highest character is still under 65), but because I’m simply enjoying other single-player games more at the moment. I’ve had fun with this game so far and have barely scratched the surface of its content in my 160 hours of play time, but the game design and lack of sub fees work together to make it so that I never feel compelled to play if I don’t necessarily want to. And lately, I’d just rather be doing or playing something else.

thanksgiving most likely my friend

I remember back in the days of DAoC and WoW thanksgiving weekend things where nuts. We always had a ton of fun. I think GW2 is have thing “now what” senerio going on right now. Hopefully they come out of it.

I was on yesterday night (at peak time) and I was pleasantly surprised at how many other people I saw in Lornar’s pass.

Yep, fractals did it. I can’t get ppl from my guild to do anything else, and even that is fragmented because of the fractal level system. It’s what happens when you abandon your principles and cave in to the gear grind crowd.

This was gonna be THE game for me. Now I’m having serious doubts and thinking it’s time to look elsewhere.

At least on Sorrow’s Furnace I don’t have any problems finding groups or finding people in the same areas I’m in. Found plenty of folks doing events in Frostforge Sound as early as 6am on Saturday. Had two groups for Ascalon Catacombs by 9am and logged off at 10 having not looked at, played or bothered with a fractal dungeon.

Some of the newbie zones might be empty but that’s pretty normal considering most are probably concentrating on their high level characters. I kind of think the OP is just hitting a panic button because the holiday might have people doing other things than playing GW2. /shrug

Apparently on the forums complaining about things.

I’m on a High population server also, and I ask the same. O.o
At least in PVE, Dungeons, it’s like a SinglePlayer Game. It makes everything in PVE Boring, we are at a event, and must skip it because with Bosses or alot of monsters we wont handle it… In Dungeons it’s a nightmare to find a party, I already gave up, not even with guilds, guilds help finding groups but still not suitable ones for what we need.

I wish this game to have sucess but some “major updates” to some systems are needed to people keep exploring and having fun and we don’t see the “empy PVE maps” anymore.

Rakhar.4615:

Apparently on the forums complaining about things.

this made me lol

People are out and about but fotm has effected some areas baddly (orr but people were tired of the bugfest there anyways) but the rest seem fine. Lower than before but thats to be expected since alot of people have finished the levelling process and are lvl 80’s doing fotm. I agree its kinda stupid to scale people up in FOTM but I guess it gives everyone a shot at it.

LFG came to wow next thing you know everyone leveled their toon in a dungeon not caring about the content they missed doing so most sat around stormwind or org while in LFG ques ……. hmmmm seeing I ve seen that same argument here in then forums I would say check the main city hub LA

I’m sitting here LMAO because Myself and 10-20 other people were screaming at the top of our lungs (as best we could) that this was a real problem back 1 months into release. My guardian is lvl 69 now and I just stopped lvling him when MoP came out. These zone with no one in them is just the suck. You have to have dynamic events to lvl at a resonable pace, and you have to have a certain amount of players in an area to trigger a DE.

GW2 made some very bad decisons that have cost them dearly. Sever Xfers would be one of them. Whole guilds have split over the xfers. People who want to xfer to the best ranked servers and people who want to stay on there own sever split guilds then the smaller part quits the game because they are no longer playing with the people they came to play with.

DE’s over Solo quest play. Wow Anet did you ever mess yourselves over on this one.

And lets not forget the Biggest Anet mistake….. HOW terribly slow it is to level by yourself when not in a group. People who don’t have a guild and are new don’t have groups. I did have a guild but I still did not have a group to join because Anet put such huge penalties for down ranking to help a buddy out no one wanted to do it. There are some very very bad problems here and all I have seen is Anet being stubborn and arrogant not fixing these blaring issues.

How about Not being able to group join Spvp and stick with your friends?? How the %^$& was that allowed to happen? I played GW2 to be able to play there vastly better PvP system with my friends just to find out I can’t, unless in a tourney. SHAME ON YOU ANET!!!!!!!

I could see someone coming to game from WOW used to the grind grind it out fast as possible so you dont find yourself behind being in this situation probably why so many complained they were at end content and Anet was amazed that people went thru the content so fast, I on the other hand took my time started slowly looked at all the starter zones and what they had to offer messed here and there was pleasantly happy that i did see people in all the zones I leveled in when i was almost 80 I had almost 80% map completion was looking forward to farming DE in orr but I guess that is over due to the fact most have gotten their exotics and there isnt much else to buy on them for the vertical progression group crowd to bother any more now that people can grind out levels in the new dungeon zones will be more empty who wants to be in a zone alone and you have the chance at mad lootz in there I however was looking forward to exploring the new zone they put in thought i would have fun there while people invested time in the dungeon but its soo bland and void of content looks as tho someone could have cared less making the zone and the dungeon it seemed they were pushing it down my throat to do this month I mean dungeon completion and then fractals on the monthly if the trend for this game is to cater to the dungeon/raid set and hand out left overs to other play styles the game clearly wont be what I thought And my group and I will more then likely head back to WOW cuz if I have to play a game like that might as well play the one I have the most time invested in

Chuo.4238:

I’m not playing at all. I gave up after November 15th. I keep checking the forums in the hope that ArenaNet will wakeup and unscrew this last update. Mostly, I’m waiting to see if there are clear, direct answers given in the AMA about where Guild Wars 2 is headed.

I have hope that they’ll point out they made a mistake in the AMA, and talk about how they’re going to fix it (it’s OK to admit you made a mistake, ArenaNet! CCP did!).

Unfortunately, that’s just hope. What I think will actually happen is some kind of spin job on the whole thing.

Time will tell. Hopefully they’ll convince me and a lot of other people to give GW2 a second chance.

Like I said I would in previous posts I haven’t logged in the LS event. Didn’t do any of them because I was doing refer a buddy of which we recommended not to get the game. It was just neat for her to see what we had all been talking about for the last few months. But she agreed that if we’re not going to be playing no point in her buying the game. It was fun but not enough to switch from WoW.

What AN spins is really irrelevant. They’ve proven that what they say and do are completely different. The effects which were predicted are already occurring and will continue to get worse. Division of the community, people not on the level playing field they were expecting in the game etc. As time goes on more and more players will bleed away. The wayfair players will go to the new MMOs and the rest of us will go back to WoW which does vertical progression correctly. We generally don’t stay in a WoW knockoff (which is what GW2 has become) for long.

What AN would have to do to fix it would be massive. For most who have left it’s in the past. Few of us still read the forums even though we don’t log in. They’d have to go back to what made the game unique in the industry. Making the Ascended items the same item level as Exotics. They’d have to make the gear drops in FotM equilivant to Orr. That is just the fix……………..

That may stop the bleeding if the game hasn’t become too much of a empty ghost town to make it feel less like an MMO. To bring people back they’d have to come up with some way of getting the attention of people who’ve left the game behind. The problem with that is most of the people are happily seated in their other games (just finished leveling out my hunter now working on gearing) and also figure out a way to say the new advertisements to the people that don’t believe a word they say. So they’d need a huge ad campaign which would cost a ton of money.

Probably it’d have to be an expansion that sets everyone back to an even playing field gear wise. If you come back to the game your prior exotics are the top gear again and for logging in you get a legendary precursor for coming back to the game. NEVER GONNA HAPPEN. So RIP but like movie about a sinking ship some people enjoy watching.

deborah.2068:

LFG came to wow next thing you know everyone leveled their toon in a dungeon not caring about the content they missed doing so most sat around stormwind or org while in LFG ques ……. hmmmm seeing I ve seen that same argument here in then forums I would say check the main city hub LA

Same thing here with Lion’s Arch. I logged in at 7 AM, and LA was filled with LFG FoTM spam, while other zones were dead.

I’ve seen plenty of new players and old alike roaming around. if you’re just frequenting the same old zones you’re not gonna see many people. Also, jsut because chat is quiet doesn’t mean no one is there. There’s more organized guilds lately and usually the chat is going on within the guild. If you want some interaction be the one to step out and talk in map chat, you’d be surprised with the responses you get. Sometimes it just takes someone to stop QQing and step up and talk. I’ve gotten at least 7 new recruits to my guild this past week and they know of many more coming to the game, so it’s not dead. Take into consideration the holidays and people’s schedules always getting busier as the year wraps up. Its the same way in about any game. Once the next holiday rolls around there will be an activity explosion again. If you’re that hard up for some company, join a more active guild. Plenty of us out there.

Crystal desert altaholic here…most of the starting zones are bustling actually and I’ve seen an increase in cities and 1-25 sections imo. Also more map chat. I attribute this to some people starting off the sale/ trial weekend and some people saying screw the treadmill I’ll level my alt and see where this goes.

Either way ‘dead’ is a strong word…if it’s true for your server I feel bad for you, but of course in every game the ‘mid’ level zones are always less populated.

Side note most of you guys that use this word ‘dead’ to describe things tend to use it too quickly. A guy asked if anyone wanted to do CM in queensdale no one responds for about…30 seconds and he’s like ‘man its dead here isn’t it’. Meanwhile there’s about 40 people running about the map give or take.

Just sayin’

Fractals is fun to run over and over because its new and designed better than the other dungeons. It can also be very rewarding. Unless you plan on WvW-ing, the new gear tier isn’t required to run it, or be efficient at anything else in the game. But the shinies are there for those who want it.

One short-term solution to ameliorate the affects of the gear grind is to consider a server transfer to a higher pop server. By virtue of sheer numbers you tend to find more people leveling an alt or just out exploring in the open world. This isn’t a long-term solution as more and more will realize you have to either hop on the treadmill or get left behind. And, the altoholics will suffer most (I have 11 characters) as this is the mother of all grinds. There really isn’t a practical way to do this grind on more than one character.

Everyone is on Lions Arch Overflow

OP, if the people won’t come to where you are, why don’t you try going to where they are? I see lots of people doing FOTM and dungeons at the moment, join them. You might also be on a server that attracted a majority of WvWvW players, some servers are like that. Check if your server is, and then transfer to one of the servers that has a higher PvE percentage (lower WvWvW performance is a metric I might suggest). Remember that people are free to do what they choose in GW2, if they aren’t doing what you are, it is their choice.

GW2 is over. The first 2 weeks after launch was it really. The game is WvW, SPvP, and FotM now. There’s no reason to do anything else.

I’m waiting for the afternoon football games… Watched the early games. Will watch the night game. I’d rather watch a game for fun, than play a game that requires me to “work” to stay competitive.

Today, I spent some time in WvW. Started on the Tarnished Coast Borderland, moved to the Fort Aspenwood borderland (wow you guys were out in force), then was in EB with a couple of guildies. Then after I went running, I created a new thief and played that for about 30 minutes in the Silvari starter area. Saw people in all the areas I went.