How many players does GW2 have right now?

[Exroyal]

They haven't started in China yet have they?

I imagine a large number comming from there seeing how they are so many.

[DrakeWurrum]

All I know is that if they are sure they hit another sales milestone, I'm willing to bet they wouldn't wait to announce it to continue to drive excitement and generate more news articles. I wouldn't be surprised if they have data that suggests they've hit that sales milestone but they're waiting for confirmation on it before announcing to make sure they don't have any accidents.

On the other hand, they are so busy being careful and cautious in getting the game running properly, especially with how they recently stopped the digital sales, they might be holding off until they've dealt with the primary launch-month issues.

[Gsara]

That Nielsens list made me laugh there is noways wow would be ahead of LoL when it's the most popular online game by far and even now still fun to play.

Actually the top ftp game in the world is WoT, 400+ concurrent users in RU alone and low double digit millions in profit, per month.(article is from march)

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...digit-millions

Apologize for the late response to your post.

[fu3lman]

McDonalds sells a lot more food than Olive Garden. That does not mean McDonalds food is better.

Olive Garden food is arguably no better quality than McDonald's, one just happens to cost more and sell less. If the food was better and cost the same, it would almost certainly sell more. WoW is analogous to McDonald's in respect to having an overall experience that appeals to not only to a wide demographic, but keeps them coming back repeatedly, which is something Olive Garden...of which I can't find game warranting the analogy...can't quite do, despite being reasonably popular. Unless it can be demonstrated that GW2 is an overall better experience, it can't rightfully be argued that the game is 'better' in any meaningful metric.

That said, I've not played GW2, but from what I've gathered, it's got quite a lot going for it.

[DrakeWurrum]

I dunno. Olive Garden is pretty damn popular 'round here. Always packed for dinner.

Besides, who in the hell would argue that Olive Garden's food quality is no better than McDonald's? O_o
It's not exactly a restaurant of fine dining, but it's markedly not fast food quality.

[Edge-]

On the other hand, they are so busy being careful and cautious in getting the game running properly, especially with how they recently stopped the digital sales, they might be holding off until they've dealt with the primary launch-month issues.

That's irrelevant. PR teams will handle all that while ArenaNet proper continues to work on the game. They can continue to drive buzz for the game even if they've stopped selling copies on the website, because that will drive even a bit more interest. The only other explanation is that NCsoft moves slowly with things so the announcement is tied up in approvals and nonsense.

[Beazy]

There has to be a LOT of people still playing. I say that because, last night at 11:30 pm, I was put into the overflow while traveling to a 60 - 70 zone. Which means the zone was packed. . . at 11:30 pm, 1 hour after prime time ended. If this trend continues for the next 3 weeks, we can expect a couple of million players at the bare minimum.

I dont see GW2 failing. Its foundation is freaking great when compared to every MMO released since WoW. This foundation and engine will only get better with time, Just like Blizzard did with WoW. I have no reason to believe this game will fail.

I knew within 2 days that SWTOR would go F2P soon. AoC, WAR, (insert any P2Play mmo released in the last 8 years) were all destined to fail before they were even released. Blizzard and ANet both coded their own engines from scratch, while all the other companies used pre build engines. Thats like going into a meeting with a power point presentation, and the other guy had a shockwave designer build his presentation from the ground up. There is no comparison.

[Deleted]

All I know is that if they are sure they hit another sales milestone, I'm willing to bet they wouldn't wait to announce it to continue to drive excitement and generate more news articles. I wouldn't be surprised if they have data that suggests they've hit that sales milestone but they're waiting for confirmation on it before announcing to make sure they don't have any accidents.

Or rather they are upping their capacity to cope with their sales and to allow new first party sales before they engage PR mode.

[SirRobin]

I'm not sure that GW2 even could "fail." Its a B2P after all. It would be like saying an F2P has failed. While I don't recall Arena Net being very "braggy" with the first game. I do think I recall them reporting each time they broke another million. Though my memory may be fuzzy.

[Edge-]

Or rather they are upping their capacity to cope with their sales and to allow new first party sales before they engage PR mode.

PR mode has never been turned off : P

[Fichek]

Glytch, the reason that your math is off is that multiplying .001% by 1000, brings it up to 1%. So what you're saying is that 4 million is 1% of the GW2 population. Therefore, 400 million is 100% of the population, going by those numbers.

It's possible that the dev mis-spoke, and meant to say "one-thousandth" (which is technically 0.1%) rather than .001%, or even exagerrated and simply meant "It's a miniscule part of the population," of course, but it's worth noting the flaw in your math.

Good thing you sternly corrected him after first wholeheartedly agreeing with him. It really makes you look credible and completely objective when these matters are concerned. This is the reason why diehard fans of any franchise are quite annoying. No amount of logic can get through to you people.

Anyways, the 0.001% was taken out of context of the article. They said that the amount of people they banned for offensive names and language was less than 0.001% without mentioning the exact number. All they wanted to say was that the amount of bans for those kind of offenses was miniscule because press was, as usual, exaggerating things.

[DrakeWurrum]

Good thing you sternly corrected him after first wholeheartedly agreeing with him.

Sarcasm on the internet? DOESN'T HAPPEN!

Now who looks credible? Really bud, if you're going to make a post where at least half of it is trying to insult somebody, that instantly destroys any credibility you could've had. There's no reason to post things like that, especially when 90% of all forum posts are simply sarcastic or right-out trolling. (yay for made-up statistics!)

[Fichek]

Sarcasm on the internet? DOESN'T HAPPEN!

Now who looks credible?

I know you were sarcastic. Glytch was sarcastic as well.
There is 0 sarcasm in two previous sentences.

[DrakeWurrum]

I know you were sarcastic. Glytch was sarcastic as well.
There is 0 sarcasm in two previous sentences.

Glytch's sarcasm is usually more obvious than that, so I'm expecting that he just made an honest mistake. O_o

[Fichek]

Glytch's sarcasm is usually more obvious than that, so I'm expecting that he just made an honest mistake. O_o

Nah, i'm quite convinced he was sarcastic. Just like you.

[Nastified]

How many butthurt WoW players does WoW have right now?

Blizzard thinks so much of their player base they'll actually wait a month to patch the screwed up professions and a potentially PvP-unbalancing bug. Hey, you're just that important to them.

[Gentlepenguin]

I dunno. Olive Garden is pretty damn popular 'round here. Always packed for dinner.

Besides, who in the hell would argue that Olive Garden's food quality is no better than McDonald's? O_o
It's not exactly a restaurant of fine dining, but it's markedly not fast food quality.

Social stigmas are skewing your perceptions. McDonalds is not intrinsically bad, Olive Garden is not superior in quality. There are exceptions, but to even judge the quality you have to throw away the idea that McDonalds serves bad, cheap, quick, easy food, and take into mind the same food supplier for Olive Garden also supplies Burger King. Slightly off-topic though I'm sure there's parallels to be drawn between the stigma WoW has in the gaming/mmo community.

[DrakeWurrum]

you have to throw away the idea that McDonalds serves bad, cheap, quick, easy food

The problem is that they do. Regardless of their food supplier, it has everything to do with what food is supplied, how they store it, how they prepare it, how they cook it, and how they serve it. Beef is beef regardless of which cook uses it, (That said, as a Texan who has grown up around far too many rednecks and ranchers, not all beef is equal), but that doesn't mean the meal you get from it is the same quality meal.

[Gentlepenguin]

Then you've handily pulled the wool over your own eyes. Put a toothpick in a big mac and serve it on a silver platter, it's still a big mac, it will just cost more. I suppose Famous Dave's serves better BBQ than all the South.

[DrakeWurrum]

Put a toothpick in a big mac and serve it on a silver platter, it's still a big mac, it will just cost more

This here is precisely the issue. The Big Mac is not just a Big Mac because of the boxes and copyright crap McDonald's put on burgers sold in their fast food chains.

It's also a Big Mac because of the way it's cooked on the grill, the way it's seasoned, and the way the burger is put together. Have you ever worked at McDonald's?

The meat that goes on the grill in McDonald's is cooked in 30 seconds or less. I forget the exact time, been years - but I distinctly remember that I put 9 frozen pieces of really-cheap (seriously, they had documents pinned to walls and easily ready by employees - what they buy for their food is so ridiculously cheap and in such ridiculous bulk, that I'm shocked it's not being air-dropped for starving people in Africa) all-beef patties on the grill, shaking some salt/pepper over each one, then pushing the button on the grill. A big secondary heating plate comes down on top of the meat, pressing down against it, and it all stays like that for a good thirty seconds (or however long the exact time is supposed to be). Then, after it's cooked, I pile all 9 of those burger patties into a heating tray, that's left sitting at the end of the sandwich-making line for... I think it was up to 30 minutes, for somebody to order a product that uses that particular bit of meat.
On top of that, the grills aren't regularly cleaned properly between batches. You basically scrape it, put more meat down, and go again. Soon you've got a nice thick coating of burger grease being cooked alongside each beef patty.

I guarantee you, Olive Garden does it different. (do they even serve burgers? If they did, I doubt they buy the same bulk-boxes of frozen beef patties)