Guild Wars 2

When you started playing the game and it had other players everywhere you went sometimes you had to play in the overflow server to about 2 months later being lucky to see even a tumbleweed in 99% of zones you start to wonder how healthy the game really is.

If they made certain skins with components a rare drop from each lower zone the areas would be more populated again.

Nox Aeterna.2965:

The game is not dying , the game is just going to its normal population after release like every MMO that goes out does. Every single one does this and yet people still come to say the game is going to end next month.

Second , this game is about looks , that is what made this game diferent and what made it stand out to the eyes of many who were tired of what pretty much every other offer.

Games are never meant to everyone , they have a target audience. Even MMOs who do try to captivate more kinds of players.

So if you cant stand a basic concept of the game , which is the fact end game grind is for looks , the problem is that this game is really not meant for you , there are plenty of other who already offer what you seek.

People who play PC games as much as some of us do come to learn that Gameplay > Graphics. Games can be as beautiful as ever, but if the gameplay isn’t there it won’t keep a community or its players together.

I’m a new player so I don’t know much about the end game, but so far I am finding this game far more enjoyable than other mmo’s I have played. I’ve played WoW, Perfect World, and a few other MMO’s, but didn’t care for them because they felt too much like a grind. Playing with friends was fun I’ll admit, but I don’t like feeling like I have to devote all my time to a game doing repetitive tasks just to make progress.

So with that said I’d say leveling quickly is actually one of the things I enjoy about this game. It allows me to play the game at a leisurely pace and still make some decent progress when I do play, which I think this is one of the biggest differences between GW2 and most mmo’s; it seems like it was meant for players to play it leisurely. I can agree that it could be implemented better and they shouldn’t make travel cost more, but for the most part I think it’s a good idea.

And honestly, I don’t know how they would make the endgame more enjoyable than it already is anyway. Never got to WoW’s endgame and in this I’m only level 10, so I probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but I have to wonder if its endgame was really more enjoyable than doing PvP or WvW in GW2. Seems like you’ll run out of things to do eventually no matter how the game is set up.

Adding a new tier of stats shows that something must be wrong. I don’t think the game is dying but they must’ve kept far less players than they thought they would.

I guess it comes down to if this update will bring back more players than it loses…

Raksha.8049:

Holding on to this GW1 mentaility will kill this game with todays genre of gamers.

For GW2, I completely disagree.

As the new grindy tier of armor suggests – GW2 is moving into the WoW-clone direction. Other than Rift (which was very cheap to make), no WoW-clone has ever been considered a “success” by the masses. GW2 will be no different if it continues down this path, because no one will clone WoW as well as the original, and people looking for a WoW-like game will just play WoW. Every recent major MMO release has proven that.

The latest patch forces you to grind a dungeon to get the new best gear, yet the in-game LFG tool is subpar even compared to the EQ2 launch LFG tool (Nov 2004). That is why WoW-clones fail – they mimic WoW in a very blatant substandard way and people rightly conclude “this is pretty crap” and move on.

A large chunk of the people who are playing GW2 are doing so specifically because they do NOT want a WoW-clone, so moving in that direction will push many of those away, as well.

SPvP is, basically, Battlegrounds from WoW – only not as good (not nearly as full as features).

WvW, which is something that most WoW-clones have nothing similar to, has seen no improvements for 2 months (unless you consider removing Orbs and improvement). Most matches are over in 2 days, and then it’s 5 days of pointlessness. Euro/NA server divide is bad design in a worldwide 24/7 competition, and there are way too many servers for how many people are interested in WvW.

Arena Net doesn’t seem to be interested in putting out the game they stated they wanted to make in all their statements before release. Perhaps that’s because they found out not as many people would continue playing that kind of game, or perhaps that’s because the game they released really didn’t have all they said it would, or maybe some other reason – I don’t know.

But it seems many people who bought it stopped playing, and Arena Net concluded that it was the lack of gear progression was the main reason, so they have added that. How many people will come back vs how many people who are here BECAUSE there is no gear progression will now leave?

Only time will tell, but it seems that they are trying to draw back people who have moved on by using methods that are only going to anger a large portion of those who didn’t, and that doesn’t seem to make any sense – and in the meantime 2 (or even 3) month old bugs and broken events are still bugged and broken – and not getting fixed.

Initially, GW2 is like a carebear PvE MMO

People who wanted PvP will complain about the lack of substance in PvP or issues with WvW.

But people who likes to explore, jump-puzzles, DEs love the game so much because the next guy who is beside you is definitely a positive sign and less likely to screw your day in PvE.

The more people in the same zone, the better your PvE experience.

Because of levelled zones, people eventually move to higher levelled zones.

Slower PvErs suddenly found themselves alone, abandoned and playing a single player game.
Faster PvErs suddenly found themselves enclosed in some clusterkitten doing the same old event all the time.
Slower PvErs feel the need to power-level. Faster PvErs make alts.
PvErs start to burn out because they diverge from their “original” playstyles.

With the new patch, GW2 is less likely to be carebear and more hostile for casual games

Initially being killed in WvW and feel that it is because of equipments?
Now because of the patch GW2 attract power creeping into PvE/WvW game, People will scream Cheap because someone else has better equipments, not because of skills or professions.

Dungeons which fosters teamplayer will now also foster competitive teamplayers, some players already had poor experiences in dungeon teams, players are more likely to experience more hostile behaviour in the future from their teammates.
In such competitive environment, people will less likely to invite PuG without high achievement points into their dungeons.

I could care less about gear progression, but the pvp has become a an unskilled spammy zergfest, and I learned my lesson from WOW, im not going to linger around waiting for more empty promises.

I don’t think think the game is dying, and here’s my arguments

first argument – see picture below, i don’t think many mmos have this many servers full at 12 in the morning

second argument – the only reason the game feels like its “dying” is because all the players are spread out throughout the world and, contrary to what this implies, this means there’s less people in each map than there were when everyone was trying to reach the max level as soon as possible

sure there are more level 80s than there are people in any level (for example, there’s more level 80s in the game than there are level 51s or there’s more level 80s than there are level 52s), but the majority of players haven’t reached level 80 yet, there’s still more players who are levels 1-79 than there are level 80s

Because all the GW1 players are killing it.

They cry out against any real character progression at lvl 80 being added despite the biggest complaint about this game being that there isn’t anything worth while to do once you hit the level cap and get %100 map completion.

MMO players need character progression and even though GW2 is supposed to be an MMO (unlike GW1), you run out of ways to progress your character far too quickly.

Raksha.8049:

Nox Aeterna.2965:

Raksha.8049:

Holding on to this GW1 mentaility will kill this game with todays genre of gamers.

Im betting on the opposite.

If this game go out of its way to match what all others offer , it will simple have to compete with them on their kind of player base.

I say their kind , because end game being based on skin or power progression is not something you can match. You either do one or the other.

That means , they need to pick if they want to compete if pretty much every other MMO out there for players , or call a smaller number of players for sure , but players that came since they added a different system and from which many will leave once they change to the same other MMOs offer.

I think you are over estimating the crowd that exsists that wants to see your 10 year old design today.

I don’t have proof, but I would bet that GW2’s population is currently bigger then GW1’s population and GW1’s population would be but a mere shadow of its former self with just enough people still playing to support a very small community.

I didn’t realize that having more choices and level stats for armor made a game terrible.

GW1 game mechanics > GW2.

GW2 physics/graphics > GW1.

LeoXearo.3641:

Because all the GW1 players are killing it.

They cry out against any real character progression at lvl 80 being added despite the biggest complaint about this game being that there isn’t anything worth while to do once you hit the level cap and get %100 map completion.

MMO players need character progression and even though GW2 is supposed to be an MMO (unlike GW1), you run out of ways to progress your character far too quickly.

Yea, and they could have fixed all the MMO kids crying about progression by making the max level 40.

Instead, the give you 40 levels of fun, 40 levels of boring/waiting to get to max level, and then once you are 80 you HAVE to do dungeons to get better skins/gear.

At least in GW1 I could farm ANYWHERE to get gold for my level 20 armor; I wasn’t funneled into playing certain areas for certain gear.

Not to mention the level 20 gear was naked (no stats). You put the prefix/suffix on yourself.

You can say that this game is better than GW1 all you want, but I played GW1 simply because it didn’t have such boring features as other MMOs out there, and now that GW2 is an MMO, they have the right to incorporate boring MMO features.

I, however, have the right to not buy anymore boring MMO expansions to this boring MMO game.

LeoXearo.3641:

Because all the GW1 players are killing it.

They cry out against any real character progression at lvl 80 being added despite the biggest complaint about this game being that there isn’t anything worth while to do once you hit the level cap and get %100 map completion.

There are different type of players with different types of preferences, and they all prioritize those preferences differently. Those who rush to the level cap are but one subset. They do the same thing in every MMO and they make the same complaint in every MMO. In the last game I played, I heard this same refrain from them for eight years.

Eight. Years.

Year after year, their predictions of the game’s demise were wrong. Why do you think that was? Do you think it was because they weren’t the overwhelming majority they thought they were? That perhaps people were playing that game for reasons that differed from their own?

This property, in terms of sheer numbers, is far more successful than that one ever was, so no one is killing this game. It’s simply not wholly catering to one specific set of interests.

As for the “biggest complaint”, this game has warts more glaring than anything concerning “end game”. No doubt most players haven’t even hit 80 yet. The shortcomings of the combat mechanics, however, impact everyone. I’m willing to bet those get many, many more complaints.

MMO players need character progression

No, really, they don’t. That is not a universal requirement. I’m an MMO player. I don’t need perpetual character progression. I don’t even want perpetual character progression. I find it to be an enormous drag. I want to complete my character—I enjoy that sense of completion—and move on to other things. An occasional upgrade is fine. A never-ending escalation is not.

My priorities and preferences differ from yours. They are not wrong. They are merely different. This game has been advertised for quite a while as something that would be tailored more in line with the things I and others are interested in, rather than the things you are interested in. It is a different model. There is no one MMO model to which all MMOs, or even MMORPGs, must conform, and there is no such thing as a monolithic, homogenous MMO audience. It simply does not exist, and it never has.

And by the way, having a level 80 and 100% map completion does not mean one has explored the whole of the world.

i think…

Because if you develop a game with a major feature and a defined target and you end up changing the bases on the exact OPPOSITE.

You end up with:

-Your target unhappy
-You lose your major design feature distinguishing your game from the mass
-You have more competitors
-You lose your credibility

The question is easy why should i play this game rather than any other mmorpg without monthly fee from now on?

If i am a new player i have at least 4 reasons to choose something other.
That is why i expect this game to die faster from now on….and i also do not think this patch was made for players demanding gear progression….

Is like making a football team dance because i wanted to see a ballet when i went instead to the stadium so people like that will be for sure a minority.

As well as i think its obvious they difference between players leaving and coming will be at least 10:1 and i think they obviously expect that….

So i m really puzzled on that decision…..only idea i have is they want to lower servers COSTS cutting the playerbase (its obviously a baseless speculation).

Gwaiyn.4395:

I don’t think think the game is dying, and here’s my arguments

first argument – see picture below, i don’t think many mmos have this many servers full at 12 in the morning

About that little picture. Do you know how High is high on servers.
Let`s say High is 100, and your account have 5 slots, total is 20 unique people playing, not 100.

LeoXearo.3641:

Because all the GW1 players are killing it.

They cry out against any real character progression at lvl 80 being added despite the biggest complaint about this game being that there isn’t anything worth while to do once you hit the level cap and get %100 map completion.

MMO players need character progression and even though GW2 is supposed to be an MMO (unlike GW1), you run out of ways to progress your character far too quickly.

ive been fully geared and 100% map completed since month 1 and i have nothing else to do but farm gold…….. and btw i dont think legendarrys are that cool espeically since my favorite profession cant use the ones i want. basically pve in this game has nothing to make a player say im gonna log on and do X today, at least with ascendeds beign added every patch along with new content ill have some real objectives.

Deth.4109:

LeoXearo.3641:

Because all the GW1 players are killing it.

They cry out against any real character progression at lvl 80 being added despite the biggest complaint about this game being that there isn’t anything worth while to do once you hit the level cap and get %100 map completion.

MMO players need character progression and even though GW2 is supposed to be an MMO (unlike GW1), you run out of ways to progress your character far too quickly.

ive been fully geared and 100% map completed since month 1 and i have nothing else to do but farm gold…….. and btw i dont think legendarrys are that cool espeically since my favorite profession cant use the ones i want. basically pve in this game has nothing to make a player say im gonna log on and do X today, at least with ascendeds beign added every patch along with new content ill have some real objectives.

so you will log doing the same things but for a reason

“progression”

Meaning of the word: “we have decided to impose what players have to do because they seems not being able to choose for themselves so they get bored”

Deth.4109:

LeoXearo.3641:

Because all the GW1 players are killing it.

They cry out against any real character progression at lvl 80 being added despite the biggest complaint about this game being that there isn’t anything worth while to do once you hit the level cap and get %100 map completion.

MMO players need character progression and even though GW2 is supposed to be an MMO (unlike GW1), you run out of ways to progress your character far too quickly.

ive been fully geared and 100% map completed since month 1 and i have nothing else to do but farm gold…….. and btw i dont think legendarrys are that cool espeically since my favorite profession cant use the ones i want. basically pve in this game has nothing to make a player say im gonna log on and do X today, at least with ascendeds beign added every patch along with new content ill have some real objectives.

You will have some real objectives? and what are those objectives?

LordByron.8369:

Deth.4109:

LeoXearo.3641:

Because all the GW1 players are killing it.

They cry out against any real character progression at lvl 80 being added despite the biggest complaint about this game being that there isn’t anything worth while to do once you hit the level cap and get %100 map completion.

MMO players need character progression and even though GW2 is supposed to be an MMO (unlike GW1), you run out of ways to progress your character far too quickly.

ive been fully geared and 100% map completed since month 1 and i have nothing else to do but farm gold…….. and btw i dont think legendarrys are that cool espeically since my favorite profession cant use the ones i want. basically pve in this game has nothing to make a player say im gonna log on and do X today, at least with ascendeds beign added every patch along with new content ill have some real objectives.

so you will log doing the same things but for a reason

“progression”

Meaning of the word: “we have decided to impose what players have to do because they seems not being able to choose for themselves so they get bored”

i tried doing dungeons, but they are not rewarding at all, fun is one thing but its another to do something repeatedly for zero worthy rewards. Time put in should yeild=reward, at least with fractals of the mist looking promising im sure ill be rewarded for doing pve content fianlly.

TheWarKeeper.5374:

Deth.4109:

LeoXearo.3641:

Because all the GW1 players are killing it.

They cry out against any real character progression at lvl 80 being added despite the biggest complaint about this game being that there isn’t anything worth while to do once you hit the level cap and get %100 map completion.

MMO players need character progression and even though GW2 is supposed to be an MMO (unlike GW1), you run out of ways to progress your character far too quickly.

ive been fully geared and 100% map completed since month 1 and i have nothing else to do but farm gold…….. and btw i dont think legendarrys are that cool espeically since my favorite profession cant use the ones i want. basically pve in this game has nothing to make a player say im gonna log on and do X today, at least with ascendeds beign added every patch along with new content ill have some real objectives.

You will have some real objectives? and what are those objectives?

doing fractals at higher dificulty, grabbing some new ascended peices Weps/armors/infusions as well as partcipating in new events that they add with content patches.
thats a hell of alot more entertaining than, “okay gotta go farm orr for gold” or “okay time to kill 50 people in wvw only to get like 5 badges of honor”

I won’t judge whether the game will die or not.
But I’ll share how some mmo dies in history.

They key point in order not to let the game die is “never to let players feel satisfied” .
There must always be something to look forward to after they are satisfied with one thing. The constant anticipation feeling. The progression of a goal after another.
—————————
Example :
Player X has played for 1 month. During this 1 month, he played for 4 hours per day. He finally reach his goal of acquiring full set of CoF armor and 100% map completion. He is satisfied.

On that day onwards, he started only to play the game 2 hours per day. The time he spent is just to experience each dungeon once. He has no reason to repeat the dungeons since he acquired his favourite look.

After he experienced all the dungeon, the only purpose he has now, is just to wait for monthly events like Halloween, Lost Shore and Christmas. He did not go online for the rest of the days. Out of 30 days, he was only online for 3 to 7 days. Most of the days, he either explore the forum or do something else.
—————————
The current state of the game before the 16th November update is just like the scenario above. This is the main cause for low concurrency of players online per day after a couple of months. Low concurrency also has a negative influence to active players. Active players can be easily affected by a dead map and start losing motivation themselves.

This was how guild wars 1 was like. Yes, guild wars 1 was successful but it can never be suited for guild wars 2 structure. Why? High maintenance is one. The game mechanic is another. The dynamic events which is most fun if there are high concurrency of players online per day. Most content in gw2 is suited best if there’s high concurrency of players.

High population in a server will just be a number if the concurrency of players per day is low. It’s because the whole batch of players who already feel “satisfied” no longer have a reason to log into the game daily. They only came online once a month, tasted the content, and began back their inactive phrase until the next festival.

This is why the element of progression must be strong in any mmo to avoid low concurrency of players online per day.

My class (engineer) waited 2 months. We reported a kittenload of bug fixes. Are stats won’t work. And what do we get in the bug fixes? Not a single fix. Just descriptions and underwater skills.
I’m very, very dissapointed in Arenanet. You’ll see my dervish in GW1 back online very soon..

Naoko.7096:

This is why the element of progression must be strong in any mmo to avoid low concurrency of players online per day.

Totally agreed.

More content: more events, more places to explore, harder dungeons, more costumes etc. or more statistics.

But this is a never-ending cycle of creating content vs consuming content . Some players are already used to AAA titles every 6 months, so they need the “dopamine” every 2~3months. Rushing a game is pretty much the staple for hardcore gamers, who ignored most of the nitty-gritty content and goes for the plateau/ending/credits.

But I thought GW2 is for low-commitment players? If there’s not enough concurrency the servers will merge?

On my 2 accounts together I have about 500hrs played, only 2 lvl80’s (Mesmer and Necro) and yet I haven’t done any dungeon at all, maybe 25% world completion and not one single crafting profession at 400.

All I’m doing is WvW whenever I have time to play. So the day I get bored of WvW I have plenty of other stuff to do. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, this is the best mmo I have ever played.

I’d like to ask people to do TL;DR, because I (and perhaps a lot more) didn’t read the long walls of text that surely contain good arguments.

I’d also like to add that GW1’s system was quite different than 2’s.
What I’m talking about is the instancing of most of the (if not all) places in the game.
After that, you had vanquishing, hard mode dungeons, elite missions, titles that gave you nifty bonuses in the corresponding areas, and titles maxing as a whole.Dailies much more engaging…

Game was far from dying. But now when the core players are really pissed off, it might start.

HERO.2057

It took them 5 years to develop GW2, that is a very long time for a game that is empty.

Not sure where you got this information from. Did you make it up?

The game is far from empty.

Why some people think that GW 2 is Dying?

I bought this game 3 days ago, I really tried to get into it, but after playing the Secret World, this game just feels so lame and boring, the first thing that shocked me was how rubbish and ancient the graphics looked, even in full maxed out settings, but that aside the worst thing is the dull repetitive game play, and totally uninteresting storyline.

Sorry to say this but this game isn’t anything special. In fact it’s a wonder people are still playing it.

Some people always think any game they play is dying. I bet they have people who play single player games and are like….man this game is dead.

because some people can’t read the server screen:

Why is GW2 dying?

Once they’ve driven their long-time followers away (their current cmpaign) to keep the grinders playing, revenue will drop. Then the grinders leave for the next triple-A MMO, probably Elderscrolls Online. Left with no loyal playerbase and ever dwindling revenues, new development will cease, staff will be layed off, the game will die.

NCsoft will finance one last attempt to re-kindle interest with an expansion, raising the level cap. Since GW2 will have a reputation as “dead end” by then, this will fail to attact enough customers to recoup development costs.

A few years later, the servers will be shut down.

xtorma.1283:

Some people always think any game they play is dying. I bet they have people who play single player games and are like….man this game is dead.

some poeple deny a game is dying simply because once it died they won t be there to hear “told ya”.

Most players like us instead saw many games die for reason far less worse than this…..

In my whole experience in fact this is the worst turns in a game i ever saw….

This coming from a player not understanding the overall complaints about things like mass effect 3 that seemed futile to me.

Or the game could keep on growing, like it is now.

People can and should take a break for a while if they don’t feel like playing. This is not a big deal, they will come back to GW2 after playing the other MMOs out there, just like everyone else does.

I guess vocal minority crying can be very loud, but the truth is more people are playing now than before.

GW2 is the only MMO in years where this has been the case.

I agree that the leveling should have been slowed down somewhat. I think crafting shouldn’t help you level. Harvesting nodes to get exp isn’t bad, but it should be reduced. More add more dynamic events into zones and reduce their exp somewhat. For people who are level 80 have dynamic events that spawn when a certain amount of lvl 80 players enter a zone to give them more of a reason for being there…I’m talking about the lvl 1-50 zones. make them out of the way of the lower levels and have them have a rare chance at a unique weapon or armor skin and maybe rare chances at things like karma jugs or a zone specific mini pet.

Hardcore players will only reach endgame fast and then abandon the game if there’s nothing substantial to keep them playing. Being hardcore is not about racing through content, it’s about sinking your teeth into everything the game has to offer on a meta level, analysing, studying, understanding and research and applying that practically to a competitive environment. Hardcore players are players who love a game for being a game, not just an experience.

If there’s nothing to poke or prod at, take apart, break, exploit or discuss as a community, then there’s nothing to hold interest for longer than it takes to reach lv 80. For example, I consider myself a hardcore gamer, but I’m easily entertained. I can be satisfied just making gold in a game like this by playing market and hunting for rares to turn into ectoplasms, but I sure won’t care about things like skins and fluff until I’ve actually done all the meaningful content and have nothing else to really aim for. I will seek out nice skins for roleplaying purposes, but I can’t get excited for a legendary just because it has more particles than an exotic.

The fact is, gaming takes time. Many casual players complain about not having enough time to work for their goals, and yet they praise the GW2 design principle of ‘grind for aesthetics, not stats.’ When you think about it, if you’re grinding for aesthetics, you aren’t really being rewarded with something very substantial at all, but moreso a vanity item. Where’s the sense of achievement in that? I would much rather put my time and effort into a fancy hat that’s going to let me hit for 200 more damage per swing than a fancy hat that doesn’t do anything for me.

I think GW2 is on the right track for balancing hardcore content with casual, but it needs more things to collect, trade and market. The economy is a bit linear right now…there aren’t enough misc items that hold value and crafting is a bit barebones. Even casual players can appreciate the simple fun that comes from gathering items in order to craft things that they can give to their friends or sell for profit.

To be fair, GW2 was supposed to be ‘that MMO for people who don’t play MMO’s.’. I never thought I would enjoy GW2, so the fact that I did enjoy it was kind of a miracle. I came in expecting the game to be fully catered to casuals, and found a surprising amount of depth by modern mmo standards…at least at first glance.

Now I’m at endgame, I’m realising it’s not quite as deep or rewarding as I initially thought, but it still has some very interesting and well-implimented ideas, and I think it deserves praise for that.

Now if only the developers would actually communicate with the playerbase and explain their decisions more in-depth, that would help things greatly. It’s like they’re afraid that the casuals will be upset or intimidated if they try to talk about their game design and balance in any depth beyond vague outlines.

xiv.7136:

Or the game could keep on growing, like it is now.

People can and should take a break for a while if they don’t feel like playing. This is not a big deal, they will come back to GW2 after playing the other MMOs out there, just like everyone else does.

I guess vocal minority crying can be very loud, but the truth is more people are playing now than before.

GW2 is the only MMO in years where this has been the case.

the vocal minority is a lie and we both know that…. a 10.000 posts long thread of mostly complains is something you don t see by a vocal minority on ANY forum…

Also post proofs the game is growing (they lowered server cap to display high population with less players)…..

I just see so many players asking for refunds or just quitting….

Well enough for today people can read…..no need to explain what s obvious.

Lifelike.5862:

To be fair, GW2 was supposed to be ‘that MMO for people who don’t play MMO’s.’. I never thought I would enjoy GW2, so the fact that I did enjoy it was kind of a miracle. I came in expecting the game to be fully catered to casuals, and found a surprising amount of depth by modern mmo standards…at least at first glance.

Now I’m at endgame, I’m realising it’s not quite as deep or rewarding as I initially thought, but it still has some very interesting and well-implimented ideas, and I think it deserves praise for that.

Now if only the developers would actually communicate with the playerbase and explain their decisions more in-depth, that would help things greatly. It’s like they’re afraid that the casuals will be upset or intimidated if they try to talk about their game design and balance in any depth beyond vague outlines.

This has been my experience as well…except i really didnt like the game at first, the lack of depth in the skills etc really put me of the game…but then i left behind all pretense of staying with GW2 and having any loyalty with the game, and just started enjoying it for what it is, a simple no frills bit of fun with some shiny graphics…im having a lot more fun after coming to that realisation to be honest.

I would advise other to just “let it go” and dont expect much, just play it for fun while it lasts, go back to other games for “real” MMO action and enjoy GW2 for casual fun times…you’ll enjoy it a lot more.

LordByron.8369:

xtorma.1283:

Some people always think any game they play is dying. I bet they have people who play single player games and are like….man this game is dead.

some poeple deny a game is dying simply because once it died they won t be there to hear “told ya”.

Most players like us instead saw many games die for reason far less worse than this…..

In my whole experience in fact this is the worst turns in a game i ever saw….

This coming from a player not understanding the overall complaints about things like mass effect 3 that seemed futile to me.

that mass effect three thing was hilarious. I did so enjoy the multi-player though.

Raging Bull.5048:

1) People “think” GW2 is dying because it is.

2) Well said and very true. The sad fact is you’ll get infracted for that post of yours. But we all know the truth, even with posts being deleted and people being banned from the forums.

Define “dying”. People have been proselytizing on forums about “dying” MMOs since WoW launched, and with maybe 1-2 exceptions out of 100 games they’re all still very much alive. It’s become de rigeur to proclaim a game is teetering on the brink of instant death the very second it fails to implement a favored feature, or a server is closed, or a friend leaves the game. I’d like to say it’s because people actually have the impression that the game is sinking, but I think the far more likely reason is that regular forum attendees contain an unusually large sub-demographic of hyperbolic children.

The game, of course, doesn’t have anywhere near the population it had at launch, but that was to be expected. It’s been the case for every single MMO to launch over the last 8 years. It’s even the case for WoW, now…WoW has a surge for expansions, and then a rapid bleed-off. Everyone assumes it is because the games are crap, and the form their assumption takes is based on their particular confirmation bias. Are you a hardcore progression hound? You will proclaim the game is for “kiddies” and lacks an “end game” where you can grind your head against stats for 17 hours a day. Are you a hardcore hatin’ casual who views stats as the devil’s playground? You will proclaim the game is a ghastly WoW clone, and is shuddering in the depths because no one wants to play anything similar to a breakaway, genre-defining hit.

In reality, games struggle to hold on to large player bases because the genre has stagnated, and it is overly populated with FTP games with low to no barrier to entry. Exhausted the content? Why stick around? There’s a dozen other games with fresh content waiting to be tried. This isn’t 2004 and the competition isn’t several aging MMOs with archaic, punitive mechanics. This is 2012, and even the niches have niches. Games are going to drop 50-70% of their players inside of 3 months. It’s inevitable.

What would be nice is if the players would wake up and smell that the MMO world has changed, and stop screeching “fanboy!” and “hater” at one another on the forums, and issuing jeremiads about power creep and end game and easy mode and just accept the fact that the more games crowd into this space, the harder it’s going to become for them to hold onto a large base. Maybe then they’ll stop acting like a bunch of chicken littles every time something they don’t like happens.

Probably not, though. Edited by moderator: post edited as it was breaking the Code of Conduct for disrespectful language

Dismissing player’s concerns and comments over and over again because they ‘just don’t get it yet’ is a very good way to make people leave angry.

I laugh so hard whenever people talk about a new game dying, 3 months after launch. Especially one with a loyal fanbase like this one has. GW was played for years for the fun of it, not because we’d get some endgame gear. Sure, FOW and Tombs had chests and monster drops that were nice, but we went there to beat wholesale kitten and /flex, not to attain another badge. So the fact that you do get loot in GW2 is a bonus imo. Too many people are so focused on “no end game” that they miss what there actually is to do.

At 80, you can literally do everything this game offers. Go explore, do some fun DEs in Metrica or Caledon, level crafting for access to armor skins, get 100% exploration, do your personal story, conquer WvW, conquer PvP, get a few exotic sets, work on your monthly achievement, try another profession, farm ore/wood for gold…there’s so much to do that is fun that I’m jealous I’m not at 80 yet. You’re too worried about the “what’s in it for me?” to see the “man, this is fun” aspect of the game. Join a guild, make some friends, try dungeon team builds, and stop whining already.

The game’s not dying. The game has its flaws, as every new MMO does. And despite our groaning about a potential gear grind (there’s something for you to look forward to), we’ll have 2 Events and a major content update within 3 months of launch. Pretty good imo.

Well, it’s not dying, and it’s not going to die. It’s certainly hemorrhaging players, though. Which is to be expected when you start with so many initial sales. I don’t think it’s growing from that initial number like they had hoped, though.

All MMOs go through this phase of everyone trying out the game, then a mass of players realizing it wasn’t what they wanted, or realizing that if they have reached a point where they are grinding for better gear, they’ll just return to WoW, since it’s the same exact thing except they’re not starting from scratch there.

While I don’t think GW2 will die, I do think its population will level out at a level much lower than what ANet had anticipated. I chalk up much of this to some very poor decision decisions, not only from the Ascendant update, but from the initial launch. Many aspects of the game that were supposed to work simply didn’t. Examples?

Dynamic Events being very important, world-changing events that made you feel connected with the world? Definitely did not work. They happen far too often, and even if they didn’t, their subject matter is rarely important, and their effects can’t rarely be seen on a large scale, other than a couple vanishing models and NPCs moving from one area to another.

Focusing on content rather than gear. I needn’t specify much here. Even at release, grinding was still very much a reality. The game felt very MMO-like in that regard. It was certainly no GW1. With exotics being locked to dungeon runs, with those runs being so unprofitable and loot in general being so pathetic (and still is, even post-patch), this created an atmosphere of futility that still exists. The game is consequently also not very alt-friendly, especially since leveling can take such a very long amount of time if you aren’t crafting or going to WvW. The game feels like it knows it has no content to offer, and is simply trying to chain you down to keep you from realizing it. The Ascendant patch is just a few more chains for locust players, to try to stem the bleeding.

The build and skill system with the Tera-esque (but worse) combat was meant to create a system in which all builds were potentially viable, offering nearly infinite diversity. Very contrary to this, GW2 now has one of the worst build systems of any MMO, offering very limited skill choices (as many either do not work or are simply inferior to others) and a dull and straight-forward traiting system. Much of this stems from the developers playing it too safe in regards to balancing, and trying to avoid a situation where players could create systems they did not anticipate. Unfortunately this did just that, resulting in a system in which players can’t work around bad skills by using their creativity to utilize several different kinds of skills together, in unusual ways. This makes the meta very stagnant, combat very dull after hours of using the same kind of moves, and creates tension between build choices when components to these pre-planned ANet brand builds simply aren’t up to par.

But you get the idea. GW2 is only dying in the sense that it’s not going to be the WoW killer we wanted, which is 100% the fault of the developers. It will continue to make them money, but the population will eventually lower to a point they aren’t happy with. I think the kind of game they made is also bad for long term branding of the game world and franchise, as they are operating a business model off players who don’t care about the mechanics, only the addictive MMO progression elements. I doubt there will be a Guild Wars 3, but GW2 will survive for quite a long time, even if it eventually has to go true F2P a few years from now.

xiv.7136:

because some people can’t read the server screen:

That screen doesn’t show the player concurrency.
High population doesn’t mean high player concurrency.

It just shows how many accounts are made on that server.
It means the accounts were made, but players are offline.

With the lack of progression element, players tend to go online only if there’s a big festival event like halloween, lost shore or christmas.

xiv.7136:

because some people can’t read the server screen:

BioWare decreased the max limit to make unpopulated server seem full and therefore imply that the game is being played.

Even though those servers are full and high, whenever I log into Guild Wars I see empty zones everywhere, with 1-2 people dong alts.

People say that everyone is in Orr, but wen I go to Cursed Shore, I only see 2 or 3 whole teams farming Plinx (or whatever it’s called).

Then people say that everone is in WvW. I log in and have to run around for 20 minutes before I find the zerg (if there’s any), and the starting base is almost always empty.

So then I wonder what a Low popularty server might be like.

Shooopa.5632:

When you started playing the game and it had other players everywhere you went sometimes you had to play in the overflow server to about 2 months later being lucky to see even a tumbleweed in 99% of zones you start to wonder how healthy the game really is.

Or how healthy your server is. On mine during the normal busy hours there are plenty of people running about, even in the remote corners of low traffic maps I bump into the odd person.

MMO gamers have been doing this whole self-fulfilling prophecy thing for a few years now. I find it really quite wretched actually, a really sad state of the genre when people who are drawn to it like moths to a flame proceed to try to wreck their own game with pronouncements of doom, seemingly wishing to goodness that it does indeed come to pass. How weird is that?

GW2 is a B2P game…that makes a world of difference to you doom sayers pronouncements, which normally might apply to a sub model but clearly to anyone with two brain cells to rub together, do not apply here. Think about it.

This game isn’t dying, it just lost a ton of players like all other mmo’s 3 weeks after launch. But anyone who thinks there isn’t a huge drop off of people logging and leaving the game is just delusional. Lots of servers are barren, and please don’t say because they are in wvw or stuff like that because they aren’t. People’s friend list of 30+ people having 1-5 people who even still log on is proof of that.

Problem is they just keep disappointing people and lying flat out. Fan boys here would rip on ToR for this so it is funny how they are silent now.

But in the end there has yet to be an mmo since WoW where subs actually would go up and up instead of down fast then maybe raise a little. I wish I knew the reason why this happens now. I know I have tried all the new mmo’s since WoW and lost interest after a month and it isn’t because I wanted to, just lost interest and I know it has a lot to do with WoW and how much I loved and missed Vanilla/BC WoW and even parts of Wrath.

Anyways let those who love the game keep believing there is nothing wrong with the game and the population is just growing in the herds.

If it isn’t dying, it soon will be.

You simply cannot lie to/betray your core player base and expect to get away with it. SW: Galaxies is a perfect example of that.

Just give me a dungeon finder and Im going to be massively more enchanted with this game than I am now… Still after release I can’t get into a dungeon group because I am actually out in the world exploring and nobody is advertising runs or responding to my requests to start a group… Very annoying and frustrating. I would really like to see how the non trinity which I am not fond of works in a dungeon setting. I fear it won’t be as organized as I like it…

Naoko.7096:

They key point in order not to let the game die is “never to let players feel satisfied” .
There must always be something to look forward to after they are satisfied with one thing. The constant anticipation feeling. The progression of a goal after another.
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Example :
Player X has played for 1 month. During this 1 month, he played for 4 hours per day. He finally reach his goal of acquiring full set of CoF armor and 100% map completion. He is satisfied.

On that day onwards, he started only to play the game 2 hours per day. The time he spent is just to experience each dungeon once. He has no reason to repeat the dungeons since he acquired his favourite look.

After he experienced all the dungeon, the only purpose he has now, is just to wait for monthly events like Halloween, Lost Shore and Christmas. He did not go online for the rest of the days. Out of 30 days, he was only online for 3 to 7 days. Most of the days, he either explore the forum or do something else.
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The current state of the game before the 16th November update is just like the scenario above.

Again, this is describing one particular type of player. Again, this particular type of player is not all players. This particular type of player is not even the majority of players. A player who has played for only one month and has achieved all of that is a linear gamer that has ignored a tremendous swath of content. Such a player is not representative of a norm, has never been representative of a norm, never will be representative of a norm, and in 2012 their behavior pattern should be common knowledge.

I have put in hundreds and hundreds of hours into this game. I play five characters, not one, five classes, not one, and I’ve had plans to add a 6th to the roster. Only just this week has one of them actually reached 80 (others are at 74, 48, 20 and 18). I’ve obtained only 53% map completion. I’ve barely touched the Orr zones, and have maybe half the jumping puzzles done. My highest craft skill is 325. I’ve done all of 2 dungeons in story mode, and one in explorable mode. There are zones I haven’t even entered yet. I’ve done WvW once and intend to do more.

If a person is already bored with this game, it is due to their style of play. It is not the fault of the game itself.

This game doesn’t even fully cater to my own preferences (I have zero interest in sPvP, for example), and yet I still have much to do. Given how much I play, how do you reconcile that with your “theory”?

I do not want perpetual character progression. I want to get to a point with a character where I can call it done (at least for a very long while) and then do other things. Such as, for example, starting on another character that has a radically different play style.

People are drawn to games for a wide variety of reasons, and they stay around for a wide variety of reasons. But, in my experience, the strongest, most common anchor isn’t progression it’s community. An MMO is not just a game, it’s a social construct. People can and do make an MMO their virtual third place.

This is what accounts for an antiquated game like Ultima Online trucking along year after year after year. This is what accounts for the anomalous activity arc of EVE. It’s no doubt what maintains WoW. Social investment. Not game investment.

Talking about an MMO only in game terms is like talking about health only in terms of what you eat.

If this game is suffering at all, or not meeting (lofty) expectations set out for it by executives, “lack of end game” is very low on the list of reasons, if it’s even a reason at all.