Guild Wars 2

I’m pretty new to gaming, especially MMOs.

I noticed a group of players marching from boss to boss in the starter zone (a “train”?). This was helpful for getting gear, but I found I wasn’t really playing my profession during these fights, so I’ve focused back into the events and exploration to refine my ability use and timing.

As I went into zones adjacent to the starter zone, however, the player population dropped way down. Is this because players are leveling-up using the starter “trains”, and have no need of the 15+ zones? I do like the adventuring, but when can I expect to see players again?

Just me and the bugs out here!

There are two trains.
1: The queensdale train
2: The frostgorge train

the first is indeed primarly used for leveling characters. But as you figured out for yourself, it is not very good for your first character cause you dont get to learn how to play.

The forstgorge train is in a max level map and is mostly done to grind money.

Now you are in a new map and you encounter the reall activeness of the game. How active or unactive it is depends off course on your server. So I have no comment or judgement. Just saying that Queensdale is artificial active due to the train.

Also, I am assuming you are in Kessex hills. This place is nowadays deserted. The living story was there and changed the map a lot. This means it is actually harder now then most level 15-25 maps. On top of that, the experienced players have been there since halloween to do the living story content. So there is a lil bit of Kessex Hills sickness as well.

My first recommendation is to check out a different level 15-25 area. This is the list and how to get there
Brisban wildlands: west Kessex hills, there is a portal in the northwest corner.
Diessa platue: North of the black citadel (charr home town), there is a portal directly from the black citadel (near the black lion trade post)
Snowden drifts: North of Houlbrak (norn town), to get there you need to go through wayfairer foothills (norn starter area). this wayfairer foothills is east of Houlbrak, when you enter, go strait left (north) and keep going north. the portal to Snowden is in the northwest corner of this map.

If going to these map doesnt change your experience you might want to try and guest on higher populated servers.

As for where the most players are
- the two trains
- in dungeons
- in WvW/pvp
- in town at the trading post
- at the current living story (at the moment in lornar pass and bloodtide coast, but thats for level 40-ish or higher)

Actually it’s better to world-explore, and harvest every single resource node you find. Levelling speeds are comparable to train usage if you run fast enough, profit is greater as you don’t eat waypointing costs but take a heck load of resources (the 15-25 iron ores, soft wood logs and carrots are especially worthwhile), and world completion makes doing everything else easier later on as you’ll have all the waypoints you ever need… plus, it is a Legendary requirement anyway, and it puts a nice star next to your character name.

Of course, it takes more skill to solo everything then to follow in a zerg where you basically can’t die, but that also trains you for content later on, while queensdale training to 80 leaves a new player still hopelessly inexperienced.

All of my level 80 characters have >60% world completion, and got to 80 from open world content (and for 4 of them, 500 crafting in 1/2 disciplines) alone. I dungeon exclusively with level 80 characters only to optimise completion speeds, and because drops in the mid level range are worth a lot (linen especially) – so I’d want to stay in normal exploration until 80.

Even after 80 I revisit almost all the maps daily in my 80s to harvest resources from permanent rich nodes, which yields more than 10 gold a day easily.

Thanks much for the info and advice! I’ve been stashing resources (even for crafts I don’t have yet). I do like the zone map completion, and did this in Queensdale. I’ll head into Brisban. Glad I asked!