Guild Wars 2

I really enjoyed this latest patch. The story was an improvement from previous patches, and the zone was beautiful with intriguing mechanics, but it was simply not enough.

In fact, the entire living story to date is not enough. Someone recently pointed out to me that by this point in Guild Wars, we already had two full-fledged expansions (or campaigns) added to the game.

I’ve noticed from too many people a dying interest in this game to sit here and say nothing. Friends of mine who are die heart fans of the Guild Wars franchise are going off to other games. I’ve even had to find a new guild due to guildies losing interest and going off as well. I don’t want to give up on Guild Wars 2, but I’m starting to get lonely.

People want real content. It’s not there, and the Living Story has done a poor job at providing it. I think that if Arena Net is so set on sticking with this over a conventional expansion, they need to add far more content every other week than what was provided in this last patch.

A+ for quality.
D- for quantity.

They could release an entire expansion but players will rush and finish it all within a month and still leave.

Sadly quantity is different in people’s perspective.

In the end no matter how big the content is people will still blaze through it and then start complaining again the content wasn’t big enough.

Just look at FF14ARR 2.3 release. It looked big but almost all the rushers done everything released in 2.3 already by now due to rushing through the content and we are still 2.5 months away from 2.4 release. Anything now is just repeating the same content over again for dailies or weeklies or just for the sake of repeating them.

You know that the next update is coming TOMORROW right…

The quantity that Arenanet puts out on a bi-weekly basis is astounding. No other game comes close to matching that output rate. If they had released an expansion people would already have finished that content and would now be waiting a long time for the next release.

Sorry that you don’t feel like it’s enough, but it is an incredible amount given the time frame and they’re doing a greta job. If you don’t like it please feel free to game hop?

… every time:

I prefer the living world concept to expansions. The last thing I want is an annual expansion that I’m going to finish in a few weeks, followed by 11 months of nothing.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

… every time:

I prefer the living world concept to expansions. The last thing I want is an annual expansion that I’m going to finish in a few weeks, followed by 11 months of nothing.

The problem I have with that is I finished Dry Top in a day, I have tolerance towards farming but that’s all that was left beyond exploring way points to see if they changed which often times lead to nothing new.

I’m not bashing the game or ArenaNet, so I don’t understand why you’re being defensive?

Regardless of what you may or may not believe, this is a real thing that’s happening. If my personal accounts aren’t enough, just look at how dead WvW is. People are getting burnt out and losing interest.

I agree that they put out an astounding amount while the living story is in place, but all that is irrelevant right now. Look at how much content we have added after 1.5 years of Living Story. It doesn’t come remotely close to a full-fledged expansion, that’s likely to have bi-monthly patches in between.

But the same thing happens in EVERY SINGLE MMO, regardless of whether or not they release expansions. FFXIV 2.0 had a really strong user base when it released, but it’s settled quite a lot despite the fact that they’ve released large content patches and they haven’t gotten over 3million subscribers.

You are always going to see a drop in the player base, there’s a startling number of MMO players who just hop from game to game dissatisfied. GW2 is actually doing insanely amazingly in terms of player retention. The only modern MMO that has consistently held really high numbers is WoW, and that is sort of an anomaly.

Arenanet is using a content release model that speaks to the kinds of players that they want playing the game. If you’re not enjoying it then seriously find something else.

You have NO idea what they’re working on behind the scenes, for all we know they’ve been working on an incredibly large expansion for some time now. Who knows. It seems silly to complain about frequent content releases when having infrequent releases and expansions wouldn’t stop those exact same players from leaving the game. They would finish the expansion and then stop playing.

The great thing about the B2P model is that they don’t have to rely on players resubbing, so having a steady player base who spend money on the gem store is enough.

The other thing to point out is that they’re trying a completely new content release model. They’ve obviously learnt a lot from Season 1 of the living story and it is reflected in the quality of this most recent update. But it’s too early to be complaining, the initial Season 1 releases were quite small because they were about setting things up, it could be the same with this season. Perhaps the update we just had is the smallest and the next update will contain larger content. It’s a wait and see situation.

That is the Necromonger way.

Jeff.4680:

It is not ENOUGH!

It’s sillier to complain about and argue someone’s constructive criticism on an online forum.

I find it astounding that people use anecdotal evidence to conclude that Guild Wars 2 is slowly dying, all while projecting their own beliefs onto the entire gaming community, and refusing to consider that other people may have the audacity to actually like what they do not.

Personally, I quite like the small story releases, and Gates of Maguuma contained more story content than a typical Season 1 release. If all Season 2 releases are of the same quality, I would be very happy.

Also, I do not see the necessity to add bold text to random passages in sentences. As a rhetorical tool, it is rather unconvincing, and it makes posts look like tabloid headlines.

Jeff.4680:

… constructive…

You keep using that word…

A reason that a lot of expansions in other games keep players busy for longer is that there’s a grind for gear. There’s really no other way to keep players busy. Since this game has relatively little grind, players that rush will be left without things to do pretty quickly. This will be apparent regardless as to whether they release content all at once like an expansion or over time like the living story.

i’m willing to wait and see what happens by the end of the season+feature patch. i love not having to pay for content, but there needs to be more significant gains than launch+season 1 to keep interest.

i, like any reasonable person, understands i won’t get a genuine “expansion worth of content” for free. that would be business suicide…..and they aren’t going to drop the LS+cash shop model unless it proves disastrous (LS 2 will be the test).

moving to a permanent LS model is a good start….so is adding quality new zones. if somehow they can add a new dungeon and worldboss event….2 new weapon sets per class (a range and a melee w/ at least one also having offhand potential….more new traits/utilities, and maybe a new race…..i will be more than happy with “sub-expansion” content for free with regards to PvE. pvp needs new game modes desperately, so i would expect at that too.

EdwinLi.1284:

Sadly quantity is different in people’s perspective.

In the end no matter how big the content is people will still blaze through it and then start complaining again the content wasn’t big enough.

Just look at FF14ARR 2.3 release. It looked big but almost all the rushers done everything released in 2.3 already by now due to rushing through the content and we are still 2.5 months away from 2.4 release. Anything now is just repeating the same content over again for dailies or weeklies or just for the sake of repeating them.

You are missing a major point – FFxiv is still going to have an expansion, which is atm in development.
Besides, both games differ greatly in what they add in patches;
GW2 brings a short story to play through once, maybe a second time for achievements and maybe one more time per alt, plus a new place to grind.
FFxiv adds content, that aims to give the game more longevity.
Not only a story and new raids and dungeons, but also stuff like marks- open world bosses, a whole new class and job, chocobo breeding, housing (seriously, the private and guildhousing in that game is fricking huge), a lot of new quests and side scenarios, a ton of new gear/skins and crafting recipes.
Anet seriously has to step up their game to be able to compete with sqenix in terms of content.

The difference is: gw2 adds content that gets boring after being played for a certain amount of time(s), they need to enhance existing content and the world we already have, giving players a world where they can make their own adventure and not the theme park we currently have. At least that’s my opnion on the matter.

@Crovax, FFXIV is appealing to a different crowd. It’s sub numbers are very low – which is fine because as a sub game it doesn’t need a ton of subscribers to still break even. So yeah, they are able to put stuff like that in, but GW2 is doing just fine with the kind of content they’re releasing at the moment, I don’t see them changing what they’re doing. And to clarify I completely get what everyone is saying, I’ve been playing FFXIV this month because the GW2 story release didn’t take me super long, but GW2 is a B2P game which players can return to whenever they want – it was never designed to be a hardcore gamers paradise.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

@Crovax, FFXIV is appealing to a different crowd. It’s sub numbers are very low – which is fine because as a sub game it doesn’t need a ton of subscribers to still break even. So yeah, they are able to put stuff like that in, but GW2 is doing just fine with the kind of content they’re releasing at the moment, I don’t see them changing what they’re doing. And to clarify I completely get what everyone is saying, I’ve been playing FFXIV this month because the GW2 story release didn’t take me super long, but GW2 is a B2P game which players can return to whenever they want – it was never designed to be a hardcore gamers paradise.

Ding!
FlamingFox gets it!
Exactly where does it state that you can not be playing more then one MMO at any given time? You see, that’s the wonderful thing about GW2… No monthly sub, yet we are still getting new content. I can play when I want, and not feel like I’m wasting my hard earned cash if I don’t play.

On another note…
Show me the numbers that state GW2 is losing people.
Seriously, I want to see this for myself. I hear it said again and again on these forums, with /zero/ evidence supporting this.
What I see are plenty of players all around.
In fact, if I go look at the North American servers right now… all of them read ‘Very High’ and ‘Full’.
Hmm… This goes quite contrary to what the naysayers keep spouting here ad infinitum and ad nauseam…

Crovax.7854:

GW2 brings a short story to play through once, maybe a second time for achievements and maybe one more time per alt, plus a new place to grind.
FFxiv adds content, that aims to give the game more longevity.
Not only a story and new raids and dungeons, but also stuff like marks- open world bosses, a whole new class and job, chocobo breeding, housing (seriously, the private and guildhousing in that game is fricking huge), a lot of new quests and side scenarios, a ton of new gear/skins and crafting recipes.

But we did get most of these things during season one. Just going by your own examples:

• we got story,
• we got raids and open world boss events (examples: temporary ones like Scarlett invasion, LA destruction and recapturing, boss rush, marionette fight, as well as of course permanent ones such as the jungle wurm, tequatl and the karka queen),
• we got dungeons (again, temporary ones, but also permanent: Aetherpath, various new fractals),
• new maps
• and new jumping puzzles,
• constant changes to existing maps including “a lot of new quests and side scenarios”.
• A ton of new gear, skins and crafting recipes were also added, among them a complete new tier (ascended gear, level 500 crafting) and costumes, as well as a constant output of armor skins – some to buy with gems, some to unlock through playing the content.

The only thing on your list that GW2 hasn’t done is player/guild housing, and I’m just as sad about that as everybody else, and a new class, which I personally don’t need. I would have liked more maps. I would have liked one or two new weapon types. Sure. There is a million things I personally want and didn’t get, but please, be fair.

Your post should really have mentioned the wardrobe system, the constant balances and fixes, the mini games and all the other stuff that ANet sneaks in every few weeks.

I know that people are under the impression that the content that ANet put out was less than one expansion’s worth, but that’s simply not true. My guess is, you think that because you completely forget about most of the stuff that has happened (presumably because it is not currently replayable). Such as the Krait Tower, the SAB, the Molten Facility, EotM, new PvP maps, etc. Yes, I know, I know, “[some of] it was temporary so it doesn’t count!” But if you were there and experienced it, it did count. If all that content was still available (somebody PLEASE put together a complete list to whip out in these threads) it would totally, totally be enough for one expansion. For a start, go here and just read the brief summaries to refresh your own memory: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Release

The fact that much of it is inaccessible now has been discussed to death, with the consequence that ANet is trying trying out their new system of the new content being permanent and replayable.

The other problem may be that we got a bunch of new stuff, but maybe not the stuff you want. Some players don’t care about fractals but want mounts, or Cantha, or whatever, and they always look at what they’re NOT getting instead of what is added. I personally don’t run EotM, but I still acknowledge its existence.

I prefer the FREE content updates provided by GW2 every two weeks to the normal subscription MMO method of releasing limited content every 6 months.

You also had to pay for both of those full-fledged expansions.

Also, by the time the first of those expansions came out, I had already quit GW1 because nothing was happening and I already completed the story and had elite armour on each of my characters.

Lasica.5068:

I prefer the FREE content updates provided by GW2 every two weeks to the normal subscription MMO method of releasing limited content every 6 months.

Well FF14 is the exception since it releases new content every 2.5 months and 1st expansion will be appear after 2.5 update which won’t be released until 5 – 6 months from now. So we’re looking at 9 months or more for FF14 1st expansion.

But that off topic

Now back on Topic:

the 2 week per content is a nice deal considering the limits GW2 has being a B2P model. It not big as a content release every 3 or 6 months but it still new content.

Also due to how the Living Story revolves around affecting the world of GW2 in a permanent way they can’t rush all the Living World S2 story since they need to keep the story consistent with the Main Story Missions.

To be fair with GW1 they were campaigns rather than expansions. And yes there is a difference. I knew a LOT of players in GW1 who had Factions but did not have the original game, the fact that you could just buy ONE of the three and ignore the rest makes it pretty difficult to equate to an expansion. They were taking the same formula each time and creating a new level 1-20 experience, rather than simply adding on to what was already there. GW1 had the fortune of not having to appeal to the hordes of players who want “end-game”, and I think they’re sort of trying to appeal to the same people with GW2. Because lets face it, the game isn’t about a traditional MMO end-game, it’s just about fun content.

Of course it’s not enough, but it is FREE. You paid for the game only, and you got your money’s worth most likely. So i dont see why you and everyone else complain so much. Stop thinking of free living story or even paid expansion as something that has to be given to you.Also, you expecting quantity and quality of free content is just stupid.

You do know they doubled their player base recently purely with the launching of the game in China? Also, it’s not likely they are going to go down the path where they release an expansion that is like receiving GW2 for the first time (although it would be nice), however with the release of Oculus coming at some stage that will reopen the entire world in an entirely new way from scratch and all old content will be able to be seen in a new light – literally.

The key is to find balance (which is usually the key to most things). I currently play two different MMO’s. GW2 offers me fresh content every fortnight which lasts a few days, and the other offers me bigger content every few months that lasts a few weeks. Just like you would go to the snow in winter, and the beach in summer.

Wait what, are you honestly trying to say the the Oculus Rift is going to have some kind of impact on GW2? It’s not, most people don’t have the money or need for a superfluous VR headset O_o.

Niii Yu.4572:

Of course it’s not enough, but it is FREE. You paid for the game only, and you got your money’s worth most likely. So i dont see why you and everyone else complain so much. Stop thinking of free living story or even paid expansion as something that has to be given to you.Also, you expecting quantity and quality of free content is just stupid.

Whether it’s free content or not is irrelevant, This is a business and if you owned a buisness and had a 1000 customers which dropped to 500 and gradually continued to drop you would wonder where you was going wrong.

Anet needs to keep people interested in this game and sadly they are failing to do that.

Colly.4073:

Anet needs to keep people interested in this game and sadly they are failing to do that.

Do you have evidence to back up that claim?

Lasica.5068:

Colly.4073:

Anet needs to keep people interested in this game and sadly they are failing to do that.

Do you have evidence to back up that claim?

I keep asking for that too. Never see anything.
In fact, this is what I do see… at 2:38 AM EST on a Monday night/Tuesday morning… I’m not an expert, but that hardly seems like a prime time to me…

EdwinLi.1284:

Sadly quantity is different in people’s perspective.

In the end no matter how big the content is people will still blaze through it and then start complaining again the content wasn’t big enough.

This is a rather typical response to these threads and I feel it misses the point completely. Yes, rushers would be done with the expansion in a few weeks. Why should we normal people care? Playing GW2 until it had very little content left took me over half a year and an expansion would probably occupy me for just as long. However, even for me, the new content in LS tends to take a day to complete. It’s a very small amount of content, unless you’re really fond of farming.

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

I keep asking for that too. Never see anything.

A large part of it is people using personal experiences and projecting them onto the rest of the player population.

dekou.6012:

EdwinLi.1284:

Sadly quantity is different in people’s perspective.

In the end no matter how big the content is people will still blaze through it and then start complaining again the content wasn’t big enough.

This is a rather typical response to these threads and I feel it misses the point completely. Yes, rushers would be done with the expansion in a few weeks. Why should we normal people care? Playing GW2 until it had very little content left took me over half a year and an expansion would probably occupy me for just as long. However, even for me, the new content in LS tends to take a day to complete. It’s a very small amount of content, unless you’re really fond of farming.

I don’t like that Episode 1, specifically, is being used as the standard for updates, when everyone, even the anti-ArenaNet players, recognizes that Dry Top is really small compared to past updates. But I would argue that it contains the same amount of content, just condensed/restricted to a small map. Dry Top lacks in chain Events, but there’s quite a variety for a Living Story map, they’re just quicker to get to.

Lasica.5068:

Colly.4073:

Anet needs to keep people interested in this game and sadly they are failing to do that.

Do you have evidence to back up that claim?

WvW and SPvP come to mind. WvW isn’t even debatable. Where there were once queues there aren’t. Where there were once zergs there are outmanned buffs. Many WvW guilds have quit, many top SPvP teams have quit as well. Even in PvE it was very apparent when only a handful of servers could even complete the LS content. You had to guest to the top servers to have a chance at doing it. Heck even on a mid-tier server the temples weren’t even being done. It’s all anecdotal, I can provide some numbers but I’m sure you’ll attempt to dismiss them.

At the end of GW2’s first month on Xfire:
~9000 players
Hours per day: 35,000
Avg Hours per player: 3.89

Currently:
~ 558 players
Hours per day: 2048
Avg Hours per Player: 3.67

Change:
Players dropped by 93.8%
Hours per day dropped by 94.1%
Avg Hours per player dropped by 5.7%

The numbers look even worse if you use the first week of GW2 vs now(13k players and 70k+ hours)

The weekly GW2 graph on Xfire also shows a downward trend even with the LS release bump.

That good enough for numbers? I’d love to analyze more numbers but I couldn’t find where they are tracked on Raptr and I don’t think steam tracks it either. ArenaNet doesn’t really release numbers and anything they do say is questionable. Like if they say we have 400k unique logins each month, that sounds good. But if 50% of those logins only play for 5 minutes it’s not very indicative of the overall health of the game. So for LS stuff if most people only login the first day and play for 2-3 hours and don’t login again until the next release the game isn’t doing that great.

OP is clearly trolling 6 months of sub PER PERSON is $90 AND THATS JUST FOR ONE PERSON!!!!!!! plus!!!! $40+ to buy the expansion, $130+ a person with a game that has hundreds of millions playing is a giant never ending gold mine, while anet makes $0 every 6 months of subs and $0 off releasing huge content such as the LS, so out of the budget for content the very high price just to keep your developers that make the content, and what lil profit nc_soft gets back into their pockets your expecting them to bankeupt both companies by losing profit to add more nonprofit content that equals the content of the highly priced sub game??? When you start giving anet high end hundres of millions of dollars is when they will give you more content, anet gets nothing from its players but what little it makes from the gem store, and the gem store seems to be really lacking with stuff worth spending dollars on so thats not much nc_soft isnt just a developer they also created and developed CoH/CoV plus expansions, nc_soft teamed with anet alone makes gw the best game out there 2 mmo developers teaming up giving us LS content every 2 weeks for ZERO dollars, i will always be in love with gw2 the developers are far better than any 2-bit on the blizzard team, blizzard uses subs as a crutch while anet does the real work and thrives off of their hard work, i buy gems for gold just to support them, i dont have to, but i WANT to because they are such an amazing duo of corporations.

Rip: CoH/Cov

I personally would like to see expansion but not in the traditional sense. If every season was like expansion we paid for it once and got the whole season but at the same release rate of 2 weeks. The only thing this would change is the budget they are on so bigger releases.

I also thought it would be nice to have an expansion in between seasons. Maybe a 6 month break between S2 and S3 where an expansion pack is released and we head towards jormag. Then back to season 3 where they continue that story arc.

We maybe able to get those new legendary weapons/armor/anything sooner. We would probably see more dungeons and fractals.

With that being said i like how it is now and i only expect so much from no sub and they have surpassed it with s2 so far. This one release of s2 blows s1 away. Journal is massive improvement and new zone is awesome and exciting. I think GW2 in great condition and defiantly not dying. Excited to see what coming up. keep it up ANET.

Fyi now that anet is charging for ls releases that people miss or werent playing for, that increases sales which increases budget which pays for MORE content, more is coming, you just gotta stop being so greedy
edit: china will have to pay for s1 when it is released on journal big budget increase when they do $$$$$

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Wait what, are you honestly trying to say the the Oculus Rift is going to have some kind of impact on GW2? It’s not, most people don’t have the money or need for a superfluous VR headset O_o.

To me it’s like moving from black and white TV to colour TV. Plus the cost right now is about what you would expect for a second monitor so I don’t think its that far out of the reach of most people.

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Lasica.5068:

Colly.4073:

Anet needs to keep people interested in this game and sadly they are failing to do that.

Do you have evidence to back up that claim?

I keep asking for that too. Never see anything.
In fact, this is what I do see… at 2:38 AM EST on a Monday night/Tuesday morning… I’m not an expert, but that hardly seems like a prime time to me…

The server ratings have never been good for judging server population. I can guarantee you that some servers listed at very high will near ghost towns and others will have a moderate population. They use some weird equation that’s based on the number of “active” accounts on the server. That’s why at 4am BG can still be full yet there are maybe 100 people on it. No one but the devs know the specifics, what we do know is that it is a terrible way to judge populations. Well except that the top 3 servers are the most populated and kaineg is basically dead.

Distaste.4801:

<snip>

At the end of GW2’s first month on Xfire:
~9000 players
Hours per day: 35,000
Avg Hours per player: 3.89

Currently:
~ 558 players
Hours per day: 2048
Avg Hours per Player: 3.67

Change:
Players dropped by 93.8%
Hours per day dropped by 94.1%
Avg Hours per player dropped by 5.7%
<snip>

If you are going to use Xfire as proof, consider that it gives GW2 as 2048 hours/day and WoW as 6475 hours/day and WoW officially has 7.6 million subscribers.

7,600,000 X (2,048/6,476) = 2,403,458

So a very healthy population for GW2 indeed.

Unless Xfire is a completely bullkitten source that no one in their right mind should be using as proof in an argument.

Colly.4073:

Niii Yu.4572:

Of course it’s not enough, but it is FREE. You paid for the game only, and you got your money’s worth most likely. So i dont see why you and everyone else complain so much. Stop thinking of free living story or even paid expansion as something that has to be given to you.Also, you expecting quantity and quality of free content is just stupid.

Whether it’s free content or not is irrelevant, This is a business and if you owned a buisness and had a 1000 customers which dropped to 500 and gradually continued to drop you would wonder where you was going wrong.

Anet needs to keep people interested in this game and sadly they are failing to do that.

Like another poster below you said, Do you have any evidence for that? You probably dont, and yes you’re correct that you would wonder what you did wrong, which makes me think that people are not really leaving the game because if they did, anet would stop releasing gem store crap and maybe release more game content(which seems to be problem with people who leave the game) and fix their 1 milion bugs for example.

ArenaNet has information on how many people leave/join,buy their gems and they are making profit. So why change when you are profiting off the current state of the game? When they start getting less or lose profit they will change and you will see better and more content in the game. Until then, you will keep getting gem store,farm nerfs and little content.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

@Crovax, FFXIV is appealing to a different crowd. It’s sub numbers are very low – which is fine because as a sub game it doesn’t need a ton of subscribers to still break even. So yeah, they are able to put stuff like that in, but GW2 is doing just fine with the kind of content they’re releasing at the moment, I don’t see them changing what they’re doing. And to clarify I completely get what everyone is saying, I’ve been playing FFXIV this month because the GW2 story release didn’t take me super long, but GW2 is a B2P game which players can return to whenever they want – it was never designed to be a hardcore gamers paradise.

I totally get what you’re saying but I think we’re talking about different things.
To clarify: GW2 imho lacks content that inspires you to go out into the world and actually do stuff. I’m not talking about LS which funnels players into one area every time to get the story, grind events for 2 weeks and then move on to the next update.

I played both games and from what i’ve seen ffxiv has (in addition to hardcore raids) the exact type of content, anet is aiming for, but not delivering as much.
Just an example: Last time i played ffxiv, I didn’t want to raid, so I was looking for other stuff to do and found a super cute mini pet i wanted to get.
I looked up what i needed to craft that thing and had a pretty huge list of things to get.
Now in gw2 i’d just buy stuff off the tp because of anets anti-farming DR – i can’t just farm x amount of stuff I need. Ffxiv inspires me to go out into its world and on an adventure – I’m completely free.
Long story short: took me several days to get everything, but after finding a good crafter, who put all that stuff together the experience was so much more rewarding
than anything I ever did in gw2 (liadri aside).
You don’t need difficult or ‘hardcore’ content, just don’t hand everything to your players and give them the tools to make their own story through gameplay.

I can grab some friends and just go out, doing small open world bosses or treasure hunts, heck, that game even has a gardening system for your house and a breeding system for your pets.
GW2 adds a new minigame every now and then in addition to the ‘half an hour of story plus new skin on the tp’ but what they need to do is add stuff in the world.
Don’t even get me started in actual producion quality and QA. Since you probably played the main storyline and hildibrand questline, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Lasica.5068:

If you are going to use Xfire as proof, consider that it gives GW2 as 2048 hours/day and WoW as 6475 hours/day and WoW officially has 7.6 million subscribers.

7,600,000 X (2,048/6,476) = 2,403,458

So a very healthy population for GW2 indeed.

Unless Xfire is a completely bullkitten source that no one in their right mind should be using as proof in an argument.

You’re right with this one, if anything, this only shows Xfire is losing users. Guild Wars 2 has nothing to do with it. And to the OP do you really think certain employee’s at ArenaNet don’t get to hear about their active users monthly or quarterly from higher-ups? Players don’t need to ring the alarm, they will do so themselves when they find it neccesary. All you can do is provide feedback, but as stated above, due to the nature of LS1’s temporary content alot has been forgotten even though they did add a ton of stuff. If the first episode of LS2 is the ‘least’ they will add in each chapter there is no reason to complain about a lack of updates. The only thing you should voice your concerns about is the type of content, and even that seems to be enjoyed by a ton of people.

Distaste.4801:

WvW isn’t even debatable.

Edge of The Mists was created to address the long queue times for that exact reason. By creating a smaller version that supported plenty of overflows, people who wanted to PVP openly could do so without having to wait.

Lasica.5068:

Unless Xfire is a completely bullkitten source that no one in their right mind should be using as proof in an argument.

I don’t even use it.

We have seen one episode of season 2 so far. It is far to early to rate or evaluate the content and quantity of the whole season + the future feature pack. After 6-8 episode we can do a preliminary review if Arenanet fulfilled the personal expectations. Complaints based on one episode sound a little kittenildish in my ears

You do not need one big expansion to launch a huge amount of content. You can release it as a more or less steady flow. Turbine gave up on big expansions for LOTRO. The content is provided in portions each quarter. Arenanet cut the content in even smaller pieces and ship it for free. Even Turbine ships the updates for LOTRO for free if you choose that way of shipment. Alternatively you buy it via shop or you rent it for a monthly fee. The system is very similar to the LW concept Arenanet follows.

Zones in games I finish in one or two daily sessions. Dungeons require one daily session. After this time I have seen all things. To stretch the content many publishers introduce artificial hurdles to prolong the time you have to stay in the new content.

Honestly, what they put out will never be “enough.”

It does not matter if it comes to us in two week chunks, or once a year expansions. The same thing is going to happen every time. Certain people will devour it (“I completed Dry Top in a day”) and then the chant for “more more more, gimme gimme gimme” resumes. Content cannot be made at the same rate at which we the players consume it.

It’s because of that, that designers start putting things in like weekly raid lock outs, time gating on material crafting, daily to do lists. Its busy work to keep people occupied so that they can continue to develop in a relative modicum of peace.

Personally, I would like to see both approaches used in the game. Keep living story, let it set the stage, lead us to each of the dragons. Maybe have it cover some of the recon involved. Then give us an expansion that covers the actual ‘campaign’ of taking out the dragon. The actual missions involved. During the period of time at people are working through the expansion, have the living story portray side things happening in the world. This other dragon is stirring, this other bad guy has come to the fore and also requires dealing with. The Tengu are ready to come out of seclusion and now we’re turning our sights on Cantha. Or something else has happened, now we’re looking at Kralk, but we need to deal with Joko in Elona. Then Elona or Cantha become full expansions. So many possibilities. So many options on where they could go and how they could do things.

dekou.6012:

This is a rather typical response to these threads and I feel it misses the point completely. Yes, rushers would be done with the expansion in a few weeks. Why should we normal people care? Playing GW2 until it had very little content left took me over half a year and an expansion would probably occupy me for just as long. However, even for me, the new content in LS tends to take a day to complete. It’s a very small amount of content, unless you’re really fond of farming.

A typical response but also a logical one.

Like I said the amount of content quantity is different for each person.

Each person plays at different pase and values the level content at different rates.

As of now you are only assuming a expansion will fill you up to half a year but in reality that is only a assumption based on your ideal timeframe in your ideal content quntity. For all we know the content of a 1st expansion may only fill you up for 2 to 3 months which is far less time than half a year (6 months).

No one knows as of now what a expansion will bring nor what will be the quantity of that content.

Also Season 2 is only on its first release which is a bit early to say if the content is big enough since it hasn’t pass the 3 month yet due to new parts of the content being released every 2 weeks. We have to first wait and see how much content is released within a 3 or 6 month time frame to be able to compare it to another MMO that would have released all that content on day 1 of a 3 or 6 month content release rather than separating it within a 2 week timeframe.

Lasica.5068:

Distaste.4801:

<snip>

At the end of GW2’s first month on Xfire:
~9000 players
Hours per day: 35,000
Avg Hours per player: 3.89

Currently:
~ 558 players
Hours per day: 2048
Avg Hours per Player: 3.67

Change:
Players dropped by 93.8%
Hours per day dropped by 94.1%
Avg Hours per player dropped by 5.7%
<snip>

If you are going to use Xfire as proof, consider that it gives GW2 as 2048 hours/day and WoW as 6475 hours/day and WoW officially has 7.6 million subscribers.

7,600,000 X (2,048/6,476) = 2,403,458

So a very healthy population for GW2 indeed.

Unless Xfire is a completely bullkitten source that no one in their right mind should be using as proof in an argument.

It does not work that way. The stats per game do not cross over and represent anything for other games. Otherwise using your numbers GW2 started with 82 million players, which we obviously know isn’t true. Also you’re using time played and not number of users. Time played per user is a good idea of the health of the game, but not what you want to use here. The only way to get an estimate would be to know how many players both games had at the same point in time and then give an estimate. IE if WoW had 10 million users at 10k xfire players, 1 xfire player would be equal to 1000 players. If GW2 had 3 million users and 10k xfire players, 1 xfire player would be equal to 300 players. Then with those numbers/ratios you could compare them.

Knowing that though lets use it. GW2 had ~ 13k users when it released and sold 2 million in it’s first month. Each xfire user represents 154 players. That means the current population of GW2 given the 558 xfire users would be 86k. Let’s consider that GW2 then sold another 1.8 million copies. Applying the same 96% drop seen on xfire we can safely add another 72k to that number. So ~158k people regularly playing GW2. All this of course is not including the asian market,

Do I think that’s 100% accurate? No, GW2 being B2P will certainly have bigger peaks should they put out a patch that brings people back, that’s the best part of B2P. Do I think it’s representative of the core playerbase? It’s about right. 150k-200k Seems in the ballpark.

Ronin.7381:

Distaste.4801:

WvW isn’t even debatable.

Edge of The Mists was created to address the long queue times for that exact reason. By creating a smaller version that supported plenty of overflows, people who wanted to PVP openly could do so without having to wait.

Lasica.5068:

Unless Xfire is a completely bullkitten source that no one in their right mind should be using as proof in an argument.

I don’t even use it.

EotM was created to address queue times, 100% agree. You missed the small fact though that the maps aren’t filled enough to even have a queue. A lot of maps often have outnumbered on them because they are that empty. So we can extrapolate one of two things. Either there is a population drop causing maps to be empty and thereby sending what’s left of the population into EotM for populated PvP, OR EotM is so popular with WvW players that they don’t want to play the old maps. A cursory glance at WvW forums would suggest the former and not the later. EotM is hated by a lot of WvW players and given the karma trains it certainly isn’t where you go to PvP unless you have a big enough group to turn away the trains. However if that was a often occurrence than players wouldn’t view EotM as the place to farm…

It doesn’t matter if you use Xfire or not. They provide simple statistics, they aren’t infallible 100% concrete stats but they certainly give an idea. You wouldn’t be the first to rebuke their worth, but I think you should talk to the SWTOR, WAR, AoC, AION, etc players who thought they were worthless too. “SWTOR isn’t dying! Xfire stats aren’t accurate at all!” Cut to SWTOR going f2P. Those stats provide a trend that is potentially applicable to the overall population. IE if 50% of xfire users stop playing a game then ~50% of the overall playerbase has probably quit as well.

Now here is my quest for all the xfire haters. Provide proof that the game is still doing well in the western market. It’s even less provable as the “unreliable” xfire stats aren’t on your side. Let’s get one thing straight though, I don’t think GW2 is near death or anything. I just don’t think it’s doing nearly as well as the happy go lucky fans here seem to think. The asian market release will certainly help, but I don’t have high hopes for Gw2 or ArenaNet. They need to restructure to get the bad management out and pay competitive wages to keep talent. Otherwise this game will never be anywhere near it’s potential.

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Lasica.5068:

Colly.4073:

Anet needs to keep people interested in this game and sadly they are failing to do that.

Do you have evidence to back up that claim?

I keep asking for that too. Never see anything.
In fact, this is what I do see… at 2:38 AM EST on a Monday night/Tuesday morning… I’m not an expert, but that hardly seems like a prime time to me…

You do realize those are account numbers and not any indication of numbers actually playing the game?

I’ve noticed this too. The living story is not end game, WvW and sPvP is the end game because they are both dynamic (even despite no map changes). Anything you do in PvE basically fuels the former.

Running around through PvE maps (including dry top), the numbers just simply aren’t there anymore. I’m thankful I completed my dry top achievements when I did; this new set of content will be yesterdays news in 2 weeks or less.

Yes Gw2 is losing players, but games arent expected to hold people forever. If they do wan’t to keep people engaged, you do it through permanent content and you do it by addressing your end game.

Of course not everyone will agree with me, but the numbers speak for themselves; there just aren’t as many people in these maps anymore.