Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,
I love guild wars 2, seriously love it. I am not a hardcore player,but i play a good amount although i havent played in awhile because of work. i am curious about the population and “state” of the game as the title says. i mean how is the game doing: is it “dying out” or lively and an active and populated community. i know this shouldnt matter and it doesnt, im just curious and i dont want to cause fights about this or any flaming. if anyone has numbers like active players and players in servers and stuff like that, ive searched but cannot seem to find anything.
Thanks!

it was lively but Anet seems to take every chance it gets to drive away the fans.

All I can say is this: the forums cry out that the game is “dying,” yet I still see a ton of people everywhere I go. The noobie zones are just as populated as when the game launched, although they no longer have overflows either.

This game is far from dying.

We started with approx 40,000 accounts per server.

Playtime has dropped off for a lot of people, I’m sure.

But I still get overflow on a weekday morning, we have hours-long queues for wvw…

We can lose a lot of players and still have a lot of players.

not to distract from the original topic and question, but anyone know if there r more than 10k people per server?

Population dropped severely after the last event was over, that’s to be expected but I personally am going to take a break (after WvWing incessantly) until they alter how Ascendant gear is obtained.

Esrever.8613:

it was lively but Anet seems to take every chance it gets to drive away the fans.

My guild had 50+ active members and now it has one : me.

JQ used to have queues everyday on primetimes now the top tier server gets none.

JQ gets a ton of refuges claiming they are tired of empty servers.

Starters areas are incredibly empty even on JQ.

That’s what I got it’s not empirical evidence, but it’s enough for me to know that yes Anet did screw things up and game seems to be dying.

Face.7032:

Population dropped severely after the last event was over, that’s to be expected but I personally am going to take a break (after WvWing incessantly) until they alter how Ascendant gear is obtained.

when u say population dropped severely, how do you know?

Getting Lion’s Arch overflow all the time now. Honestly I may dislike the gear treadmill changes, but population seems to have gone up.

But, as Mulch said, “We can lose a lot of players and still have a lot of players.”

atrossity.6437:

All I can say is this: the forums cry out that the game is “dying,” yet I still see a ton of people everywhere I go. The noobie zones are just as populated as when the game launched, although they no longer have overflows either.

This game is far from dying.

Now, I don’t know about all this “game is dying” talk. However, claiming that the noobie zones are just as populated as at launch destroys your credibility. And the 30-70 zones can be even more empty. This could have everything to do with rewards and nothing with server population. However, empty is what these zones have become.

Lande.5782:

Getting Lion’s Arch overflow all the time now. Honestly I may dislike the gear treadmill changes, but population seems to have gone up.

But, as Mulch said, “We can lose a lot of players and still have a lot of players.”

The people that were in Orr are now in Lion’s Arch. This doesn’t mean there is an increase in population.

Fortuna.7259:

Lande.5782:

Getting Lion’s Arch overflow all the time now. Honestly I may dislike the gear treadmill changes, but population seems to have gone up.

But, as Mulch said, “We can lose a lot of players and still have a lot of players.”

The people that were in Orr are now in Lion’s Arch. This doesn’t mean there is an increase in population.

I’ve also noticed a big influx of new botters in LA.

Honestly no one here has hard facts about a player drop-off. I see people in game all the time, some rp in taverns, many are in Divinity’s Reach and LA, I never have an issue with DE (Tarnished Coast server) so to me, its a living, breathing mmo community. I don’t have any hard facts about server pop, I can’t say whether its rising or falling. All I can say is I see people in every kitten zone I play, I do not think people are leaving because of Ascended Gear (that’s the cry of the hate mob). So if you want this data to justify playing this game, you should have all the data you need based on observation. Plenty of players in-game, plenty of interest on external community sites and subreddits. The game is alive, even if many of the people who whine on this forum are not.

Fortuna.7259:

atrossity.6437:

All I can say is this: the forums cry out that the game is “dying,” yet I still see a ton of people everywhere I go. The noobie zones are just as populated as when the game launched, although they no longer have overflows either.

This game is far from dying.

Now, I don’t know about all this “game is dying” talk. However, claiming that the noobie zones are just as populated as at launch destroys your credibility. And the 30-70 zones can be even more empty. This could have everything to do with rewards and nothing with server population. However, empty is what these zones have become.

i really like what u said here. could u eleborate on the “This could have everything to do with rewards and nothing with server population” comment and to clarify u dont think this gw2 is dying?

I did Shatterer at about 7am this morning and there was over 50 people there.
Did Claw of Jormag this afternoon and there was more like 75.
I’m hitting overflow servers all the time, scads of people everywhere.

Fortuna.7259:

Lande.5782:

Getting Lion’s Arch overflow all the time now. Honestly I may dislike the gear treadmill changes, but population seems to have gone up.

But, as Mulch said, “We can lose a lot of players and still have a lot of players.”

The people that were in Orr are now in Lion’s Arch. This doesn’t mean there is an increase in population.

I don’t think that’s a true statement. Orr is still plenty full on my server, just dispersed away from Plinx.

with the new fractal dungeon, people no longer do cursed shore. Anet, please reinstate Plinx frequency.

Sodapop.3715:

Fortuna.7259:

atrossity.6437:

All I can say is this: the forums cry out that the game is “dying,” yet I still see a ton of people everywhere I go. The noobie zones are just as populated as when the game launched, although they no longer have overflows either.

This game is far from dying.

Now, I don’t know about all this “game is dying” talk. However, claiming that the noobie zones are just as populated as at launch destroys your credibility. And the 30-70 zones can be even more empty. This could have everything to do with rewards and nothing with server population. However, empty is what these zones have become.

i really like what u said here. could u eleborate on the “This could have everything to do with rewards and nothing with server population” comment and to clarify u dont think this gw2 is dying?

The game is touted as the “entire game being end-game”. Whenever you travel to a lower level zone or even a lower level portion of the same zone, your level is downscaled to it but you still get experience or drops, scaled up.

Problem is the threshold is only about one zone down for levels before the rewards start to sharply diminish, so at 80 nothing lower than say, 70 is worth doing.

Also travel cost scale up faster than DE rewards. You might get 2 silver per event, but it costs 3 to warp anywhere at 80 as opposed to lower levels where its pretty much neglible.

Combination of the two means that every zone that isn’t Queensdale, level 80 or Lions Arch is deserted, where you’ll be lucky to see one other player doing a DE.

Honestly, I think it has been hard to get a feel for how busy or empty servers are because we had launch (obviously a temporary rush), then a drop-off, then Halloween, then a brief drop-off, then Lost Shores. On the one hand, the events mean that a lot of people have been logged in to try temporary content and places like Lion’s Arch are occasionally very busy; on the other hand, with everyone doing limited time event content other zones, especially the mid-range ones, have sometimes been unusually empty.

I don’t think it’s fair to say a server is dying because no one’s in Timberline Falls during Halloween, for example – because people who are online have incentives to be somewhere else. But who knows? Sometimes I have a couple of days where things seem empty, and then another couple of days where I run into players all over the place even in maps I thought few people visited. I still say events skew the observations either way.

Sodapop.3715:

Fortuna.7259:

atrossity.6437:

All I can say is this: the forums cry out that the game is “dying,” yet I still see a ton of people everywhere I go. The noobie zones are just as populated as when the game launched, although they no longer have overflows either.

This game is far from dying.

Now, I don’t know about all this “game is dying” talk. However, claiming that the noobie zones are just as populated as at launch destroys your credibility. And the 30-70 zones can be even more empty. This could have everything to do with rewards and nothing with server population. However, empty is what these zones have become.

i really like what u said here. could u eleborate on the “This could have everything to do with rewards and nothing with server population” comment and to clarify u dont think this gw2 is dying?

As Servanin pointed out for me, it is less efficient for a level 80 character to be in a level 40 zone, in terms of gold/karma per unit time. One reason is inherent: loot scaling is not balanced. The other is self-reinforcing: despite event scaling (and even because of event scaling), it is more efficient to play in areas with many other people. Naturally, people will reach higher equilibrium in areas perceived as more dramatically more efficient.

About the game “dying”… I honestly have no numbers and too limited a viewpoint to make such an assessment. My personal suspicion is that activity has decreased as was always to be suspected, but this does not translate to the “death” of the game. I suspect there was cough a very steady core group that were happy to continue this game for many years, buy all of the expansions, and pay a reasonable amount for items in the gem store. “Dying” is the assessment made generally made by the people that are NOT of this group, because they inherently have little loyalty to the game themselves and they feel no compulsion to remain. Now this has all been thrown into question. Much of the loyal base is now disloyal, and any revival is composed of naturally fickle customers. So in short, I really can’t draw any conclusion.

Sebyos.4089:

Esrever.8613:

it was lively but Anet seems to take every chance it gets to drive away the fans.

My guild had 50+ active members and now it has one : me.

JQ used to have queues everyday on primetimes now the top tier server gets none.

JQ gets a ton of refuges claiming they are tired of empty servers.

Starters areas are incredibly empty even on JQ.

That’s what I got it’s not empirical evidence, but it’s enough for me to know that yes Anet did screw things up and game seems to be dying.

That’s like me!

My guild had 40 active members, but now then I became the only one (so I closed it down).

I think one of the main reasons of empty maps is easy leveling, I mean that you can level up to level 40 without even entering level 40s maps and by the time you are 60 you also haven’t gone to almost all 60s and 50s maps, that’s why orr for example has alot of players because its highest map in the game (in terms of lvl) and everyone end up there , and starter areas are full of people, so when you go to a new map just for map completion you barely see anyone there, and when you see someone they aren’t “training” but they are all also discovering the map, maybe Anet should do something to make players go to their current level maps and do something there.

I’m the last person left playing in my 23 person guild.

Everyone I knew in game have all stopped playing. That’s about 25 people. I am tired of logging in to find no one, so I have slowly stopped playing myself.

I loved Fractals though. Granted I only got to level 2 but it was pretty fun.

Too bad there is new gear to farm and the people i played with who were interested in that aspect of gameplay are all playing MoP now.

Oh well. I will just keep an eye on things and hope they change so people may come back some day . This game had a lot of promise.

i dont think this game ever had the potential to be extremely populated in the first place tbh. the casual gameplay that it started with wasn’t for everyone, (obviously, seeing as how there were five thousand threads here about people thinking there wasn’t enough to do at endgame). Had things stayed the way they were with the horizontal progression, I think the playerbase was already on its way to being small to average in size.
now theyve added the vertical progression to try and draw in/draw back that raiding/grinding crowd that was originally unhappy, promptly pissing off the other half of their playerbase that liked it the way it was and making them quit. so it doesn’t have much of a chance now of being super extremely populated, but then it never really did.
in no way saying that the game is dying or anything like that though, because its not, and wont. ive seen much crappier games make way worst mistakes and survive just fine through the years.

I feel like there is only 3 zones in the game with any people in it, this makes the game feel extremely empty and also very boring. It was so much more fun at launch where you can just find people on the map that you can just ally with.

Sodapop.3715:

Face.7032:

Population dropped severely after the last event was over, that’s to be expected but I personally am going to take a break (after WvWing incessantly) until they alter how Ascendant gear is obtained.

when u say population dropped severely, how do you know?

http://beta.xfire.com/games/gw2

Lande.5782:

Getting Lion’s Arch overflow all the time now. Honestly I may dislike the gear treadmill changes, but population seems to have gone up.

But, as Mulch said, “We can lose a lot of players and still have a lot of players.”

That’s bound to happen when you move the “end game” from Orr to LA.

Its natural for long term games to lose population like this. I bet if you went and look at WoW’s xfire profile it would have a similar drop since the last expansion came out.

If you take a look at NCsoft’s stock over the last year, things are not looking super happy fantastic however. I expect a lot of pressure is going to be put on the Anet devs to produce profits as quickly as possible to stop their 4th quarter from being a total disaster.

I am in the underworld server which appears to be having population issues. It seems wherever I am map chat is usually dead or quiet (apart from LA) Big events are really impossible to do as there are just not enough people even on the map to come and help.

For the past 3 weeks or so I have gone repeatedly to do the Lyssa Temple quest. Not once in 3 weeks have I seen it done, or seen the temple uncontested.
This really went crazy yesturday when we had a large group of us, enough random players to do the mission. Except at the bit where you defend the NPCs fixing the cannon, level 82 Veteran Abominations were spawning faster than the rate we were killing them. It was absolutely ridiculous. We all called on map chat for more people and more people turned up to help but literally eveyrtime we killed one, 2 more would appear. We stuck at it for about half an hour before everyone got fed up and left.
This is beyond ridiculous to be honest.

It seems unfair that because we have a low population (something that we have no direct control over) is affecting gameplay like this. The game seems pretty keen on scaling and being dynamic. Could you not make huge events scale to the number of people on the map so we still have a chance?

Also the generally low population and Underworlds status in WvW has caused my guild to question moving to another server. I do not want to do this for several reasons. One, we are not a huge guild so we all feel we have contributed to influence points and our upgrades will be lost on another server. Two, Empty servers are not fun, and I know its in your interests not to have them either. Three, I like the name.

It’s not your server, i’m in the full server and every zone is mostly dead, it’s rare to see anyone talk anything in map chat or do events.
It is the fault in games design by not make old zones more interesting for high lvl people, and the recent patch which made game into a LA spamfest over one dungeon.

Orr’s not very soloable content, and though I’m on a higher pop server I’m seeing the same problems. I decided to level an alt until the devs do something to fix this last patch and/or make older content viable for the players who just want new shinies.

And moving to another server for the WvW is shortsighted at best.
You´ll just end up in the queue, or rather you would last time I checked on the PvP fora.

I don’t know why the hell people are complaining about zones being empty, i’ve played tons of other MMO’s and their lower level zones were empty as well (including you-know-what) and it seemed no one ever cared. But dear god, a patch that shows up that people overreact over and now apparently it’s broken the game and everything is going to hell.

As for my server, there are definitely people playing in zones. Just the other day i ran with a huge zerg of people in Kessex doing hearts and events. Orr in itself just isn’t very solo-able at all, plus the fact that they nerfed Orr makes it even worse.

Zelkovan.2630:

I don’t know why the hell people are complaining about zones being empty, i’ve played tons of other MMO’s and their lower level zones were empty as well (including you-know-what) and it seemed no one ever cared. But dear god, a patch that shows up that people overreact over and now apparently it’s broken the game and everything is going to hell.

As for my server, there are definitely people playing in zones. Just the other day i ran with a huge zerg of people in Kessex doing hearts and events. Orr in itself just isn’t very solo-able at all, plus the fact that they nerfed Orr makes it even worse.

It’s not good here and it’s not good in other MMOs either. You know why people didn’t seem to care, because the ones that did care left. That’s what will happen here as well if nothing is done.

They should just do away with servers for PvE content and have everyone in overflow servers. Servers are only necessary for WvW.

Make 10 (or whatever is needed) overflow servers for PvE and allow players to que up to whichever one they want. This way there would always be at least one full server for every zone. If players want to be in an empty zone then give them that choice.

They can keep people from exploiting nodes / etc like they did in the new Lost Shores zone.

This seems like an obvious solution that they should have thought of long before launch. Empty zones are the bane of all server based mmo’s. GW2 has the tech already to fix that industry wide problem, why did they drop the ball so badly?

Grim West.3194:

They should just do away with servers for PvE content and have everyone in overflow servers. Servers are only necessary for WvW.

Make 10 (or whatever is needed) overflow servers for PvE and allow players to que up to whichever one they want. This way there would always be at least one full server for every zone. If players want to be in an empty zone then give them that choice.

They can keep people from exploiting nodes / etc like they did in the new Lost Shores zone.

This seems like an obvious solution that they should have thought of long before launch. Empty zones are the bane of all server based mmo’s. GW2 has the tech already to fix that industry problem, why did they drop the ball so badly?

It would be a start, but wouldn’t totally solve the problem, problems are FoTM and that there really isn’t any reasons for people to hang out in older zones once they have completed it.

Valtameri.2075:

Grim West.3194:

They should just do away with servers for PvE content and have everyone in overflow servers. Servers are only necessary for WvW.

Make 10 (or whatever is needed) overflow servers for PvE and allow players to que up to whichever one they want. This way there would always be at least one full server for every zone. If players want to be in an empty zone then give them that choice.

They can keep people from exploiting nodes / etc like they did in the new Lost Shores zone.

This seems like an obvious solution that they should have thought of long before launch. Empty zones are the bane of all server based mmo’s. GW2 has the tech already to fix that industry problem, why did they drop the ball so badly?

It would be a start, but wouldn’t totally solve the problem, problems are FoTM and that there really isn’t any reasons for people to hang out in older zones once they have completed it.

Yeah, that’s true for lvl 80’s. But for players leveling up for the first time, or alts, the lack of players in low level zones is a huge issue. And also a total waste of the dev time spent creating content for those zones.

Giving lvl 80’s a reason to play in lower level zones is a tougher fix. They have addressed that somewhat with gear drops but it isn’t enough. One issue is that harvesting mats in lower levels zones is pointless unless you are willing to give up valuable bag space to cart around all the different tools. Nobody wants to do that.

Putting high level mobs in low level zones would help some but not much. Champs and other high level mobs rarely drop anything of use in any zone (another problem with GW2 that needs fixing).

But first things first. Give up separate servers for PvE and put everyone in overflow servers with the option to join whichever overflow the player wants. This would also solve the guest issue which is STILL not in the game.

Man they are really dropping the ball :/ What made it all unique seems to be caving in on itself…. in pretty much every way.

everyone just stands in LA now running FOTM over and over and never leaving
Same thing happened to World of Stormwindcraft

Zelkovan.2630:

I don’t know why the hell people are complaining about zones being empty, i’ve played tons of other MMO’s and their lower level zones were empty as well (including you-know-what) and it seemed no one ever cared. But dear god, a patch that shows up that people overreact over and now apparently it’s broken the game and everything is going to hell.

As for my server, there are definitely people playing in zones. Just the other day i ran with a huge zerg of people in Kessex doing hearts and events. Orr in itself just isn’t very solo-able at all, plus the fact that they nerfed Orr makes it even worse.

Probably because population is central to GW2’s experience, while in other MMOs questing is a solo activity where you don’t want to see other people.

Reminds me of one month into Rift, after everybody has stopped doing rifts and the world is overrun by them with nobody to do them with. Luckily they eventually fixed that. Its a similar situation to here, where they built it for the first month and not a day longer.

That being said, I do see a lot more people in the open world than I did last week. 80% of GW2LFG is still Fractals, but people are also getting sick of it.

Time of day/week may also have something to do it. I’m an Australian player on Tarnished Coast (US server), and it’s not unusual for my weekday nights to be very quiet. (I’m still getting my characters through the starter zones.) I know there are other people in the map, because I will see them from time to time, and occasionally there’s a conversation going on in map chat, but I can do a few Hearts and not see another soul, because I’m playing at a time when most US players are asleep.

On the weekends it’s a completely different story. I’m now on at times when US players are normally on, and the maps are PACKED with people. As a result, I usually leave tough Group Events or jumping puzzles for the weekend so I can have some help.

Well the issue that I think ANET really failed on is waypoints. There are just too many and being able to just hop anywhere and appear really kills the feeling of the world being populated.

WoW had the same issues when they added flying mounts and dungeon finder, etc.

You need travel points and areas where people ‘wait’ to travel to other places. It really creates a sense that that world is populated. Yep people will hate that they would need to travel but it’s already been pretty much shown that when WoW did these things, the world died. They nix’d that for MoP for the continent and so you had to travel by mount or foot throughout the continent.

atrossity.6437:

All I can say is this: the forums cry out that the game is “dying,” yet I still see a ton of people everywhere I go. The noobie zones are just as populated as when the game launched, although they no longer have overflows either.

This game is far from dying.

I started yesterday and I’m having a VERY hard time finding people to help out with world events in the noob areas. So I tried to do the WvWvW thing, I found almost 10 people there.

Almost.

I can imagine myself at Cursed shore and my guild mate post in guild chat “Shatterer is up”. By the time I walk/fight/swim my way there event ended. Nice way to populate the world. No thanks!

It seems to be almost entirely server-specific. I’m on Gandara and there are plenty of people around – i’m an altoholic and Wayfarer foothills is one of my fave places to haunt. Lots of players there, but of course, nowhere near as many as at launch. But that is to be expected. Gandara is EU btw so it might be radically different on US servers.

For the smelly green thing that live in the cage – Please show me proof that a lot of people stop playing the game.

I logged onto my realm today (Devona’s Rest) near that waves dungeon (way the heck out there where claw usually lands) and saw within a 40 yard radius at least 15 people playing in the open world.

That’s more than was there a week ago.

There are more people on in my guild than there were a week ago.

I presume people are coming back from thanksgiving.

Kiviar.7063:

Its natural for long term games to lose population like this. I bet if you went and look at WoW’s xfire profile it would have a similar drop since the last expansion came out.

If you take a look at NCsoft’s stock over the last year, things are not looking super happy fantastic however. I expect a lot of pressure is going to be put on the Anet devs to produce profits as quickly as possible to stop their 4th quarter from being a total disaster.

Gnerally speaking when a gaming publisher wants a quick profit it means only bad things for whatever games they have a hand in. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that was the entire motivation behind the latest changes as well.

IonicBlaze.7948:

Sodapop.3715:

Face.7032:

Population dropped severely after the last event was over, that’s to be expected but I personally am going to take a break (after WvWing incessantly) until they alter how Ascendant gear is obtained.

when u say population dropped severely, how do you know?

http://beta.xfire.com/games/gw2

Wow so based on that data Gw2 got about 6m players now?

I mean what that show us is Gw2 has 4k players player 17k hours per day. we dont know how many players Gw2 has but we know how many players WoW has

according to that: http://beta.xfire.com/games/wow
WoW has 6k players playing 29k hours.

That makes Gw2 having 60% less then WoW, WoW has 10m players so gw2 must have 6 million players… amazing! wonder why they never announced reaching the 6m mark.

/sarcasm

Can we please stop with the meaningless xfire data ?