GW2 population after HoT

GW2 population after HoT

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

According to article below GW2 had an active ‘monthly’ user base of 1.5 million ‘before’ free to play and that it has doubled to 3.1 million after the expansion.
Relevant quotes: “Guild Wars 2 has proven pretty resilient historically, with about 1.5 million monthly actives”
“Since it switched to free-to-play in late August, Guild Wars 2’s monthly active user base has doubled to 3.1 million”
Source: http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/
I am not really surprised by 3.1 million number after the expansion, but am a little bit surprised by the 1.5 million active monthly users before free to play.

PS: Post originally from reddit.

Some must fight so that all may be free.

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Posted by: Rayden.3695

Rayden.3695

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

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Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419

IndigoSundown.5419

Well, they didn’t get the original price right (They said $40, it was $60). They also think the Premier League has playoffs. Hopefully, they were a bit more accurate with the rest of it. I’m not that surprised by the numbers, tbh.

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

I think you’d have to give some leeway to the numbers, since Anet hasn’t announced numbers. Anyway it certainly doesn’t look like the doom and gloom some forum goers are trying to push.

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

Also I think mega server is still bugged, Anet really should fix mega server and increase player cap for HoT maps.

Some must fight so that all may be free.

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

Well I don’t think this include Chinese version, again I’m not sure. But Chinese version HoT only launched a few days ago.

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Posted by: Labjax.2465

Labjax.2465

Very skeptical of the numbers and it probably includes every region, including China.

I’m not sure how they measure numbers without subscription. If they are going by monthly login, that could be counting a ton of players who log in as little as once a month, which lowers the pool of active players significantly. As in, if you log in all the time, you may only see a fraction of the monthly pool.

It’s also possible that if they are lumping regions together, one region could only house a small percentage of the total active players compared to another. And then factoring in time of day too, your pool can get even smaller.

I don’t think anyone would be surprised if Anet is doing well monetarily and even less surprised at Anet heads talking positively about the game (what else are they gonna say “we think we’re on the way down”? lol). How the alleged numbers impact day to day play for any given individual is another matter.

That said, it sounds like Esports are only becoming a higher priority for them over time, so if you play for content other than Esports in GW2, except to feel like the red-headed stepchild for the foreseeable future. Sounds like they are seeing dollar signs and picking up momentum in their rush for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

It’s unlikely that GW2 is doomed in any way. It’s just going to change a lot and shed/gain players until it hits the spot they’re looking for. No one can stop the Esports train. Chug chug chug.

Or words to that effect.

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

Very skeptical of the numbers and it probably includes every region, including China.

I’m not sure how they measure numbers without subscription. If they are going by monthly login, that could be counting a ton of players who log in as little as once a month, which lowers the pool of active players significantly. As in, if you log in all the time, you may only see a fraction of the monthly pool.

It’s also possible that if they are lumping regions together, one region could only house a small percentage of the total active players compared to another. And then factoring in time of day too, your pool can get even smaller.

I don’t think anyone would be surprised if Anet is doing well monetarily and even less surprised at Anet heads talking positively about the game (what else are they gonna say “we think we’re on the way down”? lol). How the alleged numbers impact day to day play for any given individual is another matter.

That said, it sounds like Esports are only becoming a higher priority for them over time, so if you play for content other than Esports in GW2, except to feel like the red-headed stepchild for the foreseeable future. Sounds like they are seeing dollar signs and picking up momentum in their rush for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

It’s unlikely that GW2 is doomed in any way. It’s just going to change a lot and shed/gain players until it hits the spot they’re looking for. No one can stop the Esports train. Chug chug chug.

Well they said it’s Active users, but I’m not sure what qualify as an active user. Actually I think Esports could go somewhere, we had almost 10k people watching on twitch during ESL, it could be possible for GW2 to achieve Esport. If Anet give us SOLO QUE and proper ban system for AFK PLAYERS. Seriously Anet if you want GW2 to achieve Esport why these two features not in game yet get on it Anet.

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Posted by: FogLeg.9354

FogLeg.9354

Active users have always been number of accounts logged in at least once during a month.

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Posted by: ShelBlackblood.7826

ShelBlackblood.7826

snip
“Since it switched to free-to-play in late August, Guild Wars 2’s monthly active user base has doubled to 3.1 million”
Source: http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/
I am not really surprised by 3.1 million number “after” the expansion, but am a little bit surprised by the 1.5 million active monthly users before free to play.

So… what does this have to do with HoT? They wrote “since it switched to free-to-play” not “since the expansion launched”. The increase in active players was caused by the F2P switch, not the Xpac. It would be more interesting to know how many “formerly” active players (from the 1.5 million) are still monthly users.

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

snip
“Since it switched to free-to-play in late August, Guild Wars 2’s monthly active user base has doubled to 3.1 million”
Source: http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/
I am not really surprised by 3.1 million number “after” the expansion, but am a little bit surprised by the 1.5 million active monthly users before free to play.

So… what does this have to do with HoT? They wrote “since it switched to free-to-play” not “since the expansion launched”. The increase in active players was caused by the F2P switch, not the Xpac. It would be more interesting to know how many “formerly” active players (from the 1.5 million) are still monthly users.

It was mentioned that the population increased to 3.1 million After expansion, ehat it means is that player base been increasing after f2p and spiked up player base after HoT and has doubled the player base.

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Posted by: HtFde.3856

HtFde.3856

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

Also I think mega server is still bugged, Anet really should fix mega server and increase player cap for HoT maps.

Ack- NO!!!!

They should decrease it! Because the way it is it doesn’t put enough people on the maps. The maps seem to be capable of holding far more players than are needed. This leads to people taxiing and thus vaccuming players from maps.

You can only cure this by two different mechanisms:

(a) Decrease max players per map (so taxis cannot suck in too many)
(b) Increase the threshold for megaserver so that it puts more people into a map before starting a new one

If you do these things you should see fewer but better populated maps.

PMI – Dzagonur Rallybot :)

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Posted by: mcwurth.2081

mcwurth.2081

and how many of these accounts are alt accounts of existing players?

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Posted by: ShelBlackblood.7826

ShelBlackblood.7826

snip
“Since it switched to free-to-play in late August, Guild Wars 2’s monthly active user base has doubled to 3.1 million”
Source: http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/
I am not really surprised by 3.1 million number “after” the expansion, but am a little bit surprised by the 1.5 million active monthly users before free to play.

So… what does this have to do with HoT? They wrote “since it switched to free-to-play” not “since the expansion launched”. The increase in active players was caused by the F2P switch, not the Xpac. It would be more interesting to know how many “formerly” active players (from the 1.5 million) are still monthly users.

It was mentioned that the population increased to 3.1 million After expansion, ehat it means is that player base been increasing after f2p and spiked up player base after HoT and has doubled the player base.

“Warman says Guild Wars 2 has remained a Top 20 game streamed on Twitch with spikes around big announcements like the recent Heart of Thorns expansion.”
The audience number on twitch spiked during HoT, not the active players ingame (as I understand the article). I also watched some streams on twitch, but never layed a finger on HoT, so I shouldn’t really count as an monthly player (heck, I don’t even log in anymore).

Sorry if my comments come by a bit rude, but I just wanted to correct the statement that HoT is the cause of a larger player base.

Nethertheless, the 1.5 million pre F2P are still pretty impressive.

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Posted by: Kraggy.4169

Kraggy.4169

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

The number of times I’m plagued with “this map is closing” crap every day I don’t think it’s an illusion.

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

The number of times I’m plagued with “this map is closing” crap every day I don’t think it’s an illusion.

Actually it’s because mega server is still very broken.

Some must fight so that all may be free.

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Posted by: Agares.6073

Agares.6073

That mega server is broken talk is so much bs dungeons empty wvwvw empty new maps empty but somehow more people are playing yea right….

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

That mega server is broken talk is so much bs dungeons empty wvwvw empty new maps empty but somehow more people are playing yea right….

Why would people play dungeon if not for reward or achivement? they are boring snooze fest in the first place and people only run them because of unbalanced reward.
Wvw is broken as hell so why would peolle be playing them. If mega server is not broken then can you explain why is there more than 10 Dragon Stand overflow at a time? Also a few days ago GW2 got 10k viewers on twitch and usually we only get 3k, so 7 k people just randomly decided they want watch pvp now right?

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Posted by: Doam.8305

Doam.8305

That mega server is broken talk is so much bs dungeons empty wvwvw empty new maps empty but somehow more people are playing yea right….

Pretty much Megaserver was a way to mask shrinking numbers as prior ever single server had there own individual maps and events. You had to guest to other servers back then to even complete the most basic of events and during lving season people would always bum rush one of the 3 only truly active servers and I usually went to Blackgate.

With Mega server what used to be 10+ maps of lets say Kessex hills is now only a single map and when that map is full it creates an overflow amp. There are 24 US servers and that used to be 24 map instances the only accurate gauge to your servers population is core WvW however my WvW server like many others is dead. I’m also rather sure the reason they don’t inclusde district travel is because then people will know how many instances of a particular map exists and thus they’d get an estimate of how active.

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

That mega server is broken talk is so much bs dungeons empty wvwvw empty new maps empty but somehow more people are playing yea right….

Pretty much Megaserver was a way to mask shrinking numbers as prior ever single server had there own individual maps and events. You had to guest to other servers back then to even complete the most basic of events and during lving season people would always bum rush one of the 3 only truly active servers and I usually went to Blackgate.

With Mega server what used to be 10+ maps of lets say Kessex hills is now only a single map and when that map is full it creates an overflow amp. There are 24 US servers and that used to be 24 map instances the only accurate gauge to your servers population is core WvW however my WvW server like many others is dead. I’m also rather sure the reason they don’t inclusde district travel is because then people will know how many instances of a particular map exists and thus they’d get an estimate of how active.

Are you joking? Then please explain 10+ overflow for AB and DS and mega server telling you the map is empty while I zerging with hundreds of people.

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Posted by: Doam.8305

Doam.8305

That mega server is broken talk is so much bs dungeons empty wvwvw empty new maps empty but somehow more people are playing yea right….

Why would people play dungeon if not for reward or achivement? they are boring snooze fest in the first place and people only run them because of unbalanced reward.
Wvw is broken as hell so why would peolle be playing them. If mega server is not broken then can you explain why is there more than 10 Dragon Stand overflow at a time? Also a few days ago GW2 got 10k viewers on twitch and usually we only get 3k, so 7 k people just randomly decided they want watch pvp now right?

Did you seriously just attempt to use twitch to get an accurate sense of player population!? The sheer fact you had to resort to that is proof enough of desperation. Furthermore this game lacks districts so If you’d like to share how you know 10 instances of DS existed then please I’m all ears. However if you say you based this off of 10 separate LFG requests for DS than that too is desperation. DS is every two hours and every two hours just prior to the reset and right after the reset the calls for taxi go out and those ten request will literally come from a single map. There is usually one active org DS and a hobbled together map that gets organized as it goes.

Even SW is being completed with less than a full map these days as a simple check of LFG and you can always find a spot for VW. In the day maps used to get full at the 70% mark and this is bad because the vast majority of request remain SW as the reward system in HoT is so poor people have returned to SW and DS to farm for loot.

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Posted by: Doam.8305

Doam.8305

That mega server is broken talk is so much bs dungeons empty wvwvw empty new maps empty but somehow more people are playing yea right….

Pretty much Megaserver was a way to mask shrinking numbers as prior ever single server had there own individual maps and events. You had to guest to other servers back then to even complete the most basic of events and during lving season people would always bum rush one of the 3 only truly active servers and I usually went to Blackgate.

With Mega server what used to be 10+ maps of lets say Kessex hills is now only a single map and when that map is full it creates an overflow amp. There are 24 US servers and that used to be 24 map instances the only accurate gauge to your servers population is core WvW however my WvW server like many others is dead. I’m also rather sure the reason they don’t inclusde district travel is because then people will know how many instances of a particular map exists and thus they’d get an estimate of how active.

Are you joking? Then please explain 10+ overflow for AB and DS and mega server telling you the map is empty while I zerging with hundreds of people.

Explained it in another post however you brought up AB and people don’t do TD because the failure rate of Chak G. is to high. They also don’t do VB because it’s a LFR map now and the DS takes a commitment to time. AB is the only viable choice and even then most people have returned to the core maps. Also how do you know the overflow count!?!?!?!?!

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Posted by: mbhalo.1547

mbhalo.1547

I think those numbers can be just PR talk. Usually after initial explosive increase in population, only a small fraction of players that stays after MMOs go F2P. So you measure those numbers not in the first week of F2P, but after 3-6 months have passed.

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

That mega server is broken talk is so much bs dungeons empty wvwvw empty new maps empty but somehow more people are playing yea right….

Why would people play dungeon if not for reward or achivement? they are boring snooze fest in the first place and people only run them because of unbalanced reward.
Wvw is broken as hell so why would peolle be playing them. If mega server is not broken then can you explain why is there more than 10 Dragon Stand overflow at a time? Also a few days ago GW2 got 10k viewers on twitch and usually we only get 3k, so 7 k people just randomly decided they want watch pvp now right?

Did you seriously just attempt to use twitch to get an accurate sense of player population!? The sheer fact you had to resort to that is proof enough of desperation. Furthermore this game lacks districts so If you’d like to share how you know 10 instances of DS existed then please I’m all ears. However if you say you based this off of 10 separate LFG requests for DS than that too is desperation. DS is every two hours and every two hours just prior to the reset and right after the reset the calls for taxi go out and those ten request will literally come from a single map. There is usually one active org DS and a hobbled together map that gets organized as it goes.

Even SW is being completed with less than a full map these days as a simple check of LFG and you can always find a spot for VW. In the day maps used to get full at the 70% mark and this is bad because the vast majority of request remain SW as the reward system in HoT is so poor people have returned to SW and DS to farm for loot.

Twitch viewer are part of out community and represent the amount of people caring about pro scene, A massive increase in viewership can represent a fair amount of pvp population.

I know DS has 10 overflow because friends and lfg, taxi a few then join on friends and guildies for a few, some of the maps are empty while others are full.

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Posted by: mbhalo.1547

mbhalo.1547

Why would people play dungeon if not for reward or achivement?

Because dungeons are fun? Think about new players, that didnt grind them for 3 years until their fingers started to bleed.

Also a few days ago GW2 got 10k viewers on twitch and usually we only get 3k, so 7 k people just randomly decided they want watch pvp now right?

And ingame ads saying “Go watch pvp on twitch” have nothing to do with that?

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

Why would people play dungeon if not for reward or achivement?

Because dungeons are fun? Think about new players, that didnt grind them for 3 years until their fingers started to bleed.

Also a few days ago GW2 got 10k viewers on twitch and usually we only get 3k, so 7 k people just randomly decided they want watch pvp now right?

And ingame ads saying “Go watch pvp on twitch” have nothing to do with that?

They were there for every pro league?

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Posted by: warbignime.4610

warbignime.4610

I think those numbers can be just PR talk. Usually after initial explosive increase in population, only a small fraction of players that stays after MMOs go F2P. So you measure those numbers not in the first week of F2P, but after 3-6 months have passed.

True that, it was said the number was measured in October.

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Posted by: Fluffball.8307

Fluffball.8307

The responses in these threads always crack me up. “(I am mad at anet for _ so) The game is dying, no one plays.”

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Posted by: Loxias.2375

Loxias.2375

I’d think that 25-50% of the playerbase made a second or third free account after f2p for guild, mat and tp purposes. That would be a fairly large impact on “active playerbase” if just one login a month counts as “active.”

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Posted by: Absconditus.6804

Absconditus.6804

EU, NA and Asia are all separate, it’s a big world, there’s three different game modes, several parts of that are instanced (which is a good thing), e.g., Story sequences, Activity matches, sPvP matches, and so on forth. I never felt GW2 was low population though. I always ran past someone, even in the middle of the night. It feels just right, it did back then, and it does today. Any more and it’d feel overly populated and saturated with players.

Vella Absconditus | Human Mesmer
Seafarer’s Rest

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

The number of times I’m plagued with “this map is closing” crap every day I don’t think it’s an illusion.

You clearly don’t understand how the system works. People move maps all the time. Plenty of maps have an event on them or a guild mission people do, and the guild moves to the next mission moves maps. They didn’t necessarily stop playing they’re simply on a different map.

So if you get that a map is closing that means there were enough people to spawn that extra map in the first place.

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Posted by: Kraggy.4169

Kraggy.4169

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

The number of times I’m plagued with “this map is closing” crap every day I don’t think it’s an illusion.

You clearly don’t understand how the system works. People move maps all the time. Plenty of maps have an event on them or a guild mission people do, and the guild moves to the next mission moves maps. They didn’t necessarily stop playing they’re simply on a different map.

So if you get that a map is closing that means there were enough people to spawn that extra map in the first place.

I have a good idea how the system works, thanks, ‘mega servers’ aren’t new or novel server tech.

However, you make my point for me, if a handful of guildies are enough to create a map and for it to close when they leave clearly that doesn’t indicate a large population, does it?

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

The number of times I’m plagued with “this map is closing” crap every day I don’t think it’s an illusion.

I don’t think you understand how the mega-server works. Basically as more and more people log into a specific map, more and more copies of that map are created. In order for all those maps to have emptied out, they have to have been created in the first place.

So you’re on a map, say something like Brisban Wildands, and some guilds are doing missions. As soon as they finish their bounty on that map, they leave en masse. That means there are far fewer people on that map. But the map might not have existed before that guild went there.

You dont’ see them, maybe because they’re on the other side of the map, but it doesn’t mean they weren’t there.

One guy in my guild told me this week that he was in an empty zone in VB. That no one else was in the whole zone.

So I popped a tag at a champ and in a very very short amount of time, there were 20 people there. The zone wasn’t empty. It was perceived as empty.

Now there wasn’t just one champ on this map. It was nighttime and five champs were all up.

If there were 20 people at each of those, that’s 100 people on the map. We didn’t see 100 people though, only the people who were on my tag.

To add to that, there were probably also people flax farming, or just trying to get hero points, or just trying to unlock waypoints that weren’t at any of the boss locations.

Maps can’t close if there aren’t enough people to create them in the first place.

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Posted by: Rauderi.8706

Rauderi.8706

Anecdotal evidence, but two of my guildies just dropped to “go on break” in the past two days. One stated he was bored of the Mastery grind, the other that he didn’t like the tone and feel of the game, even though he was excited for raids.

I’m just going to let that hang a bit. :\

Many alts; handle it!
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632

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Posted by: MaximillianVonSchatten.6278

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278

So assuming 48 servers, that’s 31,000 per server (at 1.5 million). You’d think we’d be able to muster more than 3 people in our BL for WvW in primetime.

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Posted by: JoeytheHutt.1742

JoeytheHutt.1742

One guy in my guild told me this week that he was in an empty zone in VB. That no one else was in the whole zone.

So I popped a tag at a champ and in a very very short amount of time, there were 20 people there. The zone wasn’t empty. It was perceived as empty.

Now there wasn’t just one champ on this map. It was nighttime and five champs were all up.

If there were 20 people at each of those, that’s 100 people on the map. We didn’t see 100 people though, only the people who were on my tag.

To add to that, there were probably also people flax farming, or just trying to get hero points, or just trying to unlock waypoints that weren’t at any of the boss locations.

Maps can’t close if there aren’t enough people to create them in the first place.

So it could also mean that there was only 20 people in the map? Or maybe just 10, and 10 players popped in, saw your tag and thought “wow. People”
I do think the megaserver need some tuning, but the “change map” spam I get sometimes, especially in “old” Tyria, make me think on a different question.
How many overflows are there in total?
Imagine the world boss train. Just to take a number, like 400, are doing that. Lets say thats enough to open 3 new instances. They kill the boss, and move on, as trains do, leaving 2-3 empty maps, wich causes me to get the notification to change map 1 – 2 or sometimes 3 times If I happen to be there.
It would appear there are lots of players to create all these overflows, though it could be the same train, the same one group of players, that go around and create most of those overflows.
It would be interesting to know.

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Posted by: HtFde.3856

HtFde.3856

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

The number of times I’m plagued with “this map is closing” crap every day I don’t think it’s an illusion.

You clearly don’t understand how the system works. People move maps all the time. Plenty of maps have an event on them or a guild mission people do, and the guild moves to the next mission moves maps. They didn’t necessarily stop playing they’re simply on a different map.

So if you get that a map is closing that means there were enough people to spawn that extra map in the first place.

I have a good idea how the system works, thanks, ‘mega servers’ aren’t new or novel server tech.

However, you make my point for me, if a handful of guildies are enough to create a map and for it to close when they leave clearly that doesn’t indicate a large population, does it?

A handful doesn’t quite do the trick but when we do an organized Dry Top we try to get our own map and ferry people in as needed. We usually need like 30+ people to sync-enter portals (or click waypoints) to ensure a new map after 1 to 3 attempts.

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Posted by: Eval.2371

Eval.2371

Active players is a very loose term. From my experience in the gaming world it means people that logged in played longer than 5 minutes in the last 6 months are considered active.

Until anet defines what the criteria is for being an “active player” it can be skewed to show any kind of large number

[Cya] TC Roamer/Scout
I Play WvW to have fun. I don’t find it fun anymore. Therefore I don’t play.

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Posted by: DresdenAllblack.1249

DresdenAllblack.1249

Who cares what the numbers are. The only facts you need are try doing an event in one of the new maps, esp. the third or fourth. Is it the raid that has really hampered game pop? Or is it exterior forces? Fallout, CoD, SWBF?

Whatever the case it doesn’t feel the same in the jungle.

Angelina is free game again.
Crystal Desert

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Posted by: kuritsutian.2987

kuritsutian.2987

maybe most of them are done with the first maps and moving progressively to latest ones, dragon outpost seems more rewarding

Suddenly in the Forums Everyone is now a Game designer!

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Posted by: ZachAttack.3957

ZachAttack.3957

maybe most of them are done with the first maps and moving progressively to latest ones, dragon outpost seems more rewarding

Yeah, I usually see a kittenload of taxis for DS.

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Posted by: mcwurth.2081

mcwurth.2081

That mega server is broken talk is so much bs dungeons empty wvwvw empty new maps empty but somehow more people are playing yea right….

Pretty much Megaserver was a way to mask shrinking numbers as prior ever single server had there own individual maps and events. You had to guest to other servers back then to even complete the most basic of events and during lving season people would always bum rush one of the 3 only truly active servers and I usually went to Blackgate.

With Mega server what used to be 10+ maps of lets say Kessex hills is now only a single map and when that map is full it creates an overflow amp. There are 24 US servers and that used to be 24 map instances the only accurate gauge to your servers population is core WvW however my WvW server like many others is dead. I’m also rather sure the reason they don’t inclusde district travel is because then people will know how many instances of a particular map exists and thus they’d get an estimate of how active.

Are you joking? Then please explain 10+ overflow for AB and DS and mega server telling you the map is empty while I zerging with hundreds of people.

thought maps/servers could only have 150 people in it?

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Posted by: Tirien.1326

Tirien.1326

People that say the population is shrinking, where is the proof then?
Didn’t they just say Active players 3,1 million?

If you can show hard proof that this is infact a lie, and that the game is dead, then go out and find some. If this game feels more alive, more active and has players on all zones, how could it be dying or on the brink on death?

I play WoW aswell, and i swear to God those 5,3 million subscribers where da hell are they? Every single zone i go to is more or less dead, i see no onem, even stormwind is a ghost town, does this mean that the game has less than 5,5 million subs or whatever it is right now? No, just because i don’t see them doesn’t make them not-real.

So the numbers and the fact that it seems HoT did very well, i would say Gw2 is here to stay atleast 3 more years, which is GREAT!

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Posted by: HtFde.3856

HtFde.3856

People that say the population is shrinking, where is the proof then?
Didn’t they just say Active players 3,1 million?

If you can show hard proof that this is infact a lie, and that the game is dead, then go out and find some. If this game feels more alive, more active and has players on all zones, how could it be dying or on the brink on death?

I play WoW aswell, and i swear to God those 5,3 million subscribers where da hell are they? Every single zone i go to is more or less dead, i see no onem, even stormwind is a ghost town, does this mean that the game has less than 5,5 million subs or whatever it is right now? No, just because i don’t see them doesn’t make them not-real.

So the numbers and the fact that it seems HoT did very well, i would say Gw2 is here to stay atleast 3 more years, which is GREAT!

What exactly enables you to draw the conclusion that HoT did well? The fact that GW 2 went f2p and had its numbers rise? Had nothing to do with HoT. So – what makes you believe HoT did/does well.

The fact that GW2 went f2p isn’t a strong success sign …

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Posted by: HtFde.3856

HtFde.3856

maybe most of them are done with the first maps and moving progressively to latest ones, dragon outpost seems more rewarding

Yeah, I usually see a kittenload of taxis for DS.

Well, only for the first minutes after the map has restarted and the question is … how many maps? You can see 10 taxis in lfg – all from the same map …

PMI – Dzagonur Rallybot :)

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Posted by: sephiroth.4217

sephiroth.4217

and how many of these accounts are alt accounts of existing players?

Most players I know have 2+ accounts. Majority of them made another account when HoT was released.

1.5 million accounts jumped to 3 million accounts, the math is there.

Personally I don’t notice these new players, generally in que against the same 10ish people everyday.

I mostly play for the new Free-For-All arena in PvP lobby.
….. And Elementalist.

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Posted by: Tumult.2578

Tumult.2578

We are also less than a year from the start of log in rewards. That likely still has a significant impact on both numbers of accounts.

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Posted by: mcwurth.2081

mcwurth.2081

and how many of these accounts are alt accounts of existing players?

Most players I know have 2+ accounts. Majority of them made another account when HoT was released.

1.5 million accounts jumped to 3 million accounts, the math is there.

Personally I don’t notice these new players, generally in que against the same 10ish people everyday.

I do not notice it either. So far I have only been playing on the first map of HoT and it is always asked to taxi in more people. probably due to the raid people hogging up player slots now.

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Posted by: Bloodstealer.5978

Bloodstealer.5978

yeah, the instanced maps with a ~150 player cap does create an illusion of not so many people playing. Also that might count also the asian region(China) which is separate from NA and EU and probs has atleast as many players.

The number of times I’m plagued with “this map is closing” crap every day I don’t think it’s an illusion.

I don’t think you understand how the mega-server works. Basically as more and more people log into a specific map, more and more copies of that map are created. In order for all those maps to have emptied out, they have to have been created in the first place.

So you’re on a map, say something like Brisban Wildands, and some guilds are doing missions. As soon as they finish their bounty on that map, they leave en masse. That means there are far fewer people on that map. But the map might not have existed before that guild went there.

You dont’ see them, maybe because they’re on the other side of the map, but it doesn’t mean they weren’t there.

One guy in my guild told me this week that he was in an empty zone in VB. That no one else was in the whole zone.

So I popped a tag at a champ and in a very very short amount of time, there were 20 people there. The zone wasn’t empty. It was perceived as empty.

Now there wasn’t just one champ on this map. It was nighttime and five champs were all up.

If there were 20 people at each of those, that’s 100 people on the map. We didn’t see 100 people though, only the people who were on my tag.

To add to that, there were probably also people flax farming, or just trying to get hero points, or just trying to unlock waypoints that weren’t at any of the boss locations.

Maps can’t close if there aren’t enough people to create them in the first place.

Yes maps absolutely can close when there are less players than the threshold requires.. that’s why you get a timer before auto map close.
However what is happening now is that maps are just randomly closing without warning, even full maps busy completing meta’s suddenly get squashed without rhyme or reason.. so yes the megaserver trash is broken and is a nothing more than a way to disguise dwindling populations in the first place.. just a different take on forced server merging, which is what many other MMO’s have had to do at some point in the course of their life.
Dwindling numbers are nothing new to any MMO, especially one like GW2 that runs a non sub model – how they accurately measure their population, I guess we will never really know, especially as every player can hold a bucket load ofF2P accounts now on the back of their main, but core game maps and now even newer maps are showing signs of a population downturn to me… but that of course doesn’t necessarily means the game is failing it might merely be settling back down to that plateau all MMO’s reach at some point after a game goes live or has a major update/expac.

To me its not that the population might be dwindling, its that new maps and features are already suffering so soon after an expansion landed and then additionally impacted by a very poor megaserver system.

(edited by Bloodstealer.5978)

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Posted by: Sicarius.4639

Sicarius.4639

Colin I believe gave the numbers of guilds completing GHs, if every guild that did it had the max 250 players, that would give us somewhere around 1.4m people buying the expansion. Our guild of 20+ did it, so take that as that absolute top figure (most guilds are not 250).

Although of those 20 I’m someone who also doesn’t have the expansion. I’d say Expansion numbers are sitting below 1m. Also saw a nice little reminder to buy the expansion popped up in the daily spot yesterday.

(edited by Sicarius.4639)