I feel like Guild Wars 2 is falling off... Anyone agree?

[Fencers]

I still see lots of people around. Population doesn't seem inactive at all.

[Wolfman31]

There will always be a lot of people playing this game because it doesn't cost them anything to play it. But that doesn't mean the game is making good money so in that respect it could be falling off. NCSoft's quarterly reports tend to show GW2's sales as either treading water or declining. Sales spikes are few and far between. The game's future now depends entirely on ArenaNet's ability to sell expansions worth buying, which might be difficult given Heart of Thorns' lukewarm reception. Falling off? Hard to say. Slowly declining? Absolutely. It has been for years. Such a trend will only continue unless ArenaNet can proverbially right the ship and re-instill consumer confidence for its future products.

[Deleted]

At least the players don't seem to be hanging on mmo-champion, not much activity in this forum :P
But my impression is that it seems to have a quite stable and decent population, at least NCSoft quarter reports show that game seems to be healthy financially.

[Erbel]

Felt like there was roughly 100 people at a 3am shadow behemoth the other day. Considering it was on a weekday during the holidays when many people are off/doing finals and with people mostly concerned with doing winter events than world bosses, I'd say it's a solid indicator the population is doing fine.

[InfiniteRetro]

I really tried to take to GW2 but I just can't. I went back to GW1...been a part of an awesome GW Facebook group and the game is still thriving. even my 11 year old son picked up gw1 and enjoyed it more than 2. and GW1 is hell technical. dated somewhat graphically but I prefer how the world looks and works in GW1. for those that wonder if GW1 is dead...it aint not by a long shot.

[Steamfrog]

I play GW2 on and off, and have been for years. I recently returned and can't say I noticed a difference in population at all. So, no.

[Zephyr Storm]

to be honest, I've more than often felt alone in the big momma that is WoW, and I think that has to do with more than just megaservers.
a big reason is probably because in Guild Wars 2 co-operation is pretty much always encouraged so when you see another player in the world it's not strange to help them out or follow them around for a bit because that actually rewards you as well even if you're not in a party. where as with WoW you have to contest for mobs and nodes and the like. Making it feel more like a 'me vs them'.

That statement is actually false when dealing with people in the same faction as you. WoW has implemented mob sharing as long as the people fighting the same mob are from the same faction. And a lot of the big named mobs that you have to kill for world quests in Legion count for everyone participating, regardless of faction.

It's not to the same extent as what GW2 allows all the time, but Blizzard has definitely learned that mob tagging was an inferior and archaic way of handling questing.

[Deleted]

That statement is actually false when dealing with people in the same faction as you. WoW has implemented mob sharing as long as the people fighting the same mob are from the same faction. And a lot of the big named mobs that you have to kill for world quests in Legion count for everyone participating, regardless of faction.

It's not to the same extent as what GW2 allows all the time, but Blizzard has definitely learned that mob tagging was an inferior and archaic way of handling questing.

oh thanks for the clarification. I haven't really played actively in a while. I played a month of WoD and figured it wasn't for me anymore. Then did the same for legion. I never learn

[Deleted]

There is so much to do in the game. You just have to know where to look

[PenguinChan]

2) Mega server technology to make a game feel alive even when the population overall is in the toilet

In almost any game, if you have say... I don't know, maybe a few thousand constantly playing it every day at any given time? You may have a 'dead' game population wise overall, but with any kind of technology like this (Even if they were all on the same server) you wouldn't feel much difference if it has hundreds of thousands playing at the same time.

What I'm trying to say people are obsessed with numbers and they think that'll inhibit their fun -- when in reality no it won't, it's all in their head.

[Kelimbror]

I play in bursts. Played a little during Halloween, a little during Christmas, and now I just started a new character with my brother playing the game for the first time. All the lowbie zones are packed with people, so I can't really agree. Now what's weird is that I haven't even begun to really get into HoT. It's just not as good as the base game. Even with the masteries, which is a brilliant idea and fun to play, I get burned on the samey boring jungle. Playing a low character and going back to zones I've 100% makes me realize the biggest part about the game I enjoyed was the large diversity in landscape.

[theWocky]

For me, I see the game quite active. It's one of my favourite MMORPG's to kill time in. I like that you can focus on actually "completing" a zone. I also did the low level Shadow Behemoth the other day and it was quite early in the morning - must have been well over 100 people.

So, it may be slowly falling off, but the servers don't seem to indicate it. Most servers appear high or medium when I play.

[Zephyr Storm]

Honestly, one of the things that ultimately killed my overall interest in the game and made it get extremely boring for me is the fact that there are basically no roles whatsoever in the game. Everyone is basically DPS. And that made the content extremely limited. Most encounters consisted of dodging OHKO mechanics and made most events into massive zergfests that you just showed up to and spammed your autoattack to receive loot. Even the dungeons which required a "coordinated" effort to do basically boiled down to everyone wearing berserker gear, stacking into a corner, and burning bosses down before they could really do much of anything. Something is wrong with your game design when the most effective way of doing almost anything in the game is to just burn it down before it can do anything back to you.

I know that the new "raids" have changed that up some, but I don't do raiding anymore in my MMOs. I don't have the time to commit to doing raiding content like I did several years ago. And even with the "roles" that the new specializations and raids brought into the picture, it's still just a half-assed attempt at adding roles to the game.

Also, the way Arenanet decided to start handling new content killed it for me as well. The Living Story bullshit was some of the most shallow, short, and boring content I've ever seen added to an MMO.

I could be off on some of this now though. I haven't really touched HoT simply because I refuse to give Arenanet anymore money at this point. They'd have to change their stances on a lot of things and actually deliver meaningful content that most people would consider an expansion worthy of monetary compensation.

Oh, and I'm still extremely salty that most of the shit they talked about in their manifesto never made it into the game, made it in as a bastardized form of it, or straight up was the exact OPPOSITE of what they said. The game they tried selling to us before launch sounded amazing. The game we got after launch was anything but.

Oh, and I also refuse to support MMOs that are nothing but blatant cash grabs with their in-game shops. Which GW2 definitely is. Unfortunately most MMOs seem to be going that way nowadays -_-.

[Edge-]

Oh, and I also refuse to support MMOs that are nothing but blatant cash grabs with their in-game shops. Which GW2 definitely is. Unfortunately most MMOs seem to be going that way nowadays -_-.

How? I can't say I've ever felt "forced" into the cash shop in any way, shape, or form. What about it makes it a blatant cash grab?

[Kelimbror]

How? I can't say I've ever felt "forced" into the cash shop in any way, shape, or form. What about it makes it a blatant cash grab?

To me it's the pinnacle of everything a cash shop should be. Ultimate aesthetics and convenience, fairly reasonable prices, constantly rotating supply, still good rewards on all of those fronts in the game, can use game currency to buy items via conversion.

I honestly don't see any flaws with their cash shop, beyond not liking gamble boxes in general, but at least every box comes with currency for weapon skins.

[Edge-]

To me it's the pinnacle of everything a cash shop should be. Ultimate aesthetics and convenience, fairly reasonable prices, constantly rotating supply, still good rewards on all of those fronts in the game, can use game currency to buy items via conversion.

I honestly don't see any flaws with their cash shop, beyond not liking gamble boxes in general, but at least every box comes with currency for weapon skins.

Yeah, the "worst" bits are stuff like unlocking additional bag slots, but even that's pretty standard/tame for MMO's. I can't say I've ever seen anything that I find particularly objectionable or troubling in the cash shop, though at the same time there hasn't been too much that was very attractive to me either.

Like, GW2 has one of the least obtrusive cash shops I can think of in a MMO. The "worst" bit of it is that it's the default window that opens when you try to get to the AH, but I can't imagine that's too troubling for anyone.

[Arewn]

Like, there is barely people online compared to before... Is it time to realize World of Warcraft is the go-to...?... As much as I hate to say it..

I don't see how perceive player base decline in GW2 = WoW is the go-to.
In my circle, even ignoring GW2, WoW isn't even relevant anymore. It's "that one game we used to play". And, when occasionally seeing news about going "lol this is still a thing?"

That's not even to say WoW is "bad", it's more an expression of the fact that a "go-to" game is personal.

Even we're going by relevance and popularity though, wouldn't FF14 be the "go-to"?

[Zephyr Storm]

How? I can't say I've ever felt "forced" into the cash shop in any way, shape, or form. What about it makes it a blatant cash grab?

Not that it forces you into buying anything, but that while I was still playing, pretty much all the events and updates that took place were more or less geared towards trying to get people to buy the limited time items available in the cash shop. None of them were necessary mind you, but it started to become a problem for me when I noticed the events were more about tempting people to buy the limited time cosmetics than actually adding any kind of worthwhile content to the game. AKA, shallow content delivery with Anet being more worried about people buying gems.

Was a huge turnoff for me.

[Valeron]

The cash shop hasn't been that way in a long time Zephyr. Right now when I play, I don't even realize it has a cash shop for all intents and purposes.

[Thelxi]

Like, GW2 has one of the least obtrusive cash shops I can think of in a MMO.

That is objectively wrong. Given the fact that you can exchange cash shop currency to gold and vice versa , the cash shop is not just obtrusive but directly connected to everything that involves gold in the game, which by design is almost everything.

My mind is blown that even now people still fail to make this connection, but to call it one of the least obtrusive cash shops you have ever seen is absurd. Perhaps you are referring to the cash shop outfits and lack of cash-shop exclusive power items?