Guild Wars 2 is dying — What do we do about it?

[AuldWolf]

Okay, first of all, the metrics.

MMO populations in 2023[mmo-population.com], and the Steam metrics[steamcharts.com].

The numbers are low (340~k total, Steam and via ArenaNet), and they're dropping consistently with no rises, even when sales occur.

Why do I think this is happening? Three reasons.

1. The New Player Experience is Awful

New players are forced to start off with the racial storylines, which are middling to okay as narratives go. The bigger problem is that there's no maintenance for the old zones, so they're riddled with bugs. And no one plays in these old zones, so when new players turn up it looks like a ghost town.

What's the solution?

ArenaNet needs to squish the maximum level down to 20, because levelling doesn't matter anymore. Then they need to create a new player island where new players level up from 1-20 in fresh, new, well-maintained content.

The island will bring them up to speed on the story. Following this, when they hit 20 (the new max level), they're given choices as to where they can go. These choices are curated to be the most well-maintained by ArenaNet.

2. ArenaNet's Marketing is Rubbish

When ArenaNet does bother to market, they market the game as a casual-friendly title that respects your time. This isn't true. The turtle being locked behind the horrible Soo-Won event, the Skyscale, and many other examples exist which are contrary to this. When new players hop into the game expecting a casual-friendly experience that respects their time? They're going to feel alienated.

What's the solution?

ArenaNet needs to unify their messaging and marketing with the game. Either they need to market Guild Wars 2 as a very grindy, hardcore, Asian MMO-styled experience or they need to rebalance the game to match their marketing. The lack of unity between the two is a bait and switch, and it means that no one who'd enjoy the game is checking it out and vice versa. Their marketing is a huge problem.

3. The Community is Increasingly Toxic

Here, on Reddit, and on the official forums. I've just seen a rise of very aggressive toxicity. And the only complaints I've ever seen leveraged against the game is that it isn't anti-woke enough, which is silly. Often, the aggression goes towards new players asking questions about the game, or wondering what the health of the game is.

What's the solution?

The community needs to encourage more positive interactions, with less hate. Talk about what they like about the game, focus on fun features, community events, and fashion wars. These are the things that say a game is healthy to someone who's checking it out. This never happens with Guild Wars 2. We only ever see the community being incredibly toxic, with some very aggressive denial regarding the current health of the game.

We all know that this signals a dying game, so the toxicity has to stop. ArenaNet could help with this with a little messaging suggesting how the community could help the game (with suggestions like my own, here). From a source of authority, the community might listen. This could be further incentivised with competitions with prizes to be a good community member.

Conclusion

Guild Wars 2 is dying, the metrics say so. It's got a 340~k pop and it's dropping like a stone. That's a number that never goes up, only down.

Can Guild Wars 2 be saved? Yes, I think so. It would just take ArenaNet caring about it to make that happen. The community has to want that, and focus their energy on ArenaNet rather than alienating newbies which would just result in the game dying even faster.

[takeshi miike's gozu on dvd]

Originally posted by AuldWolf:

Okay, first of all, the metrics.

MMO populations in 2023[mmo-population.com], and the Steam metrics[steamcharts.com].

The numbers are low (340~k total, Steam and via ArenaNet), and they're dropping consistently with no rises, even when sales occur.

Why do I think this is happening? Three reasons.

1. The New Player Experience is Awful

New players are forced to start off with the racial storylines, which are middling to okay as narratives go. The bigger problem is that there's no maintenance for the old zones, so they're riddled with bugs. And no one plays in these old zones, so when new players turn up it looks like a ghost town.

What's the solution?

ArenaNet needs to squish the maximum level down to 20, because levelling doesn't matter anymore. Then they need to create a new player island where new players level up from 1-20 in fresh, new, well-maintained content.

The island will bring them up to speed on the story. Following this, when they hit 20 (the new max level), they're given choices as to where they can go. These choices are curated to be the most well-maintained by ArenaNet.

2. ArenaNet's Marketing is Rubbish

When ArenaNet does bother to market, they market the game as a casual-friendly title that respects your time. This isn't true. The turtle being locked behind the horrible Soo-Won event, the Skyscale, and many other examples exist which are contrary to this. When new players hop into the game expecting a casual-friendly experience that respects their time? They're going to feel alienated.

What's the solution?

ArenaNet needs to unify their messaging and marketing with the game. Either they need to market Guild Wars 2 as a very grindy, hardcore, Asian MMO-styled experience or they need to rebalance the game to match their marketing. The lack of unity between the two is a bait and switch, and it means that no one who'd enjoy the game is checking it out and vice versa. Their marketing is a huge problem.

3. The Community is Increasingly Toxic

Here, on Reddit, and on the official forums. I've just seen a rise of very aggressive toxicity. And the only complaints I've ever seen leveraged against the game is that it isn't anti-woke enough, which is silly. Often, the aggression goes towards new players asking questions about the game, or wondering what the health of the game is.

What's the solution?

The community needs to encourage more positive interactions, with less hate. Talk about what they like about the game, focus on fun features, community events, and fashion wars. These are the things that say a game is healthy to someone who's checking it out. This never happens with Guild Wars 2. We only ever see the community being incredibly toxic, with some very aggressive denial regarding the current health of the game.

We all know that this signals a dying game, so the toxicity has to stop. ArenaNet could help with this with a little messaging suggesting how the community could help the game (with suggestions like my own, here). From a source of authority, the community might listen. This could be further incentivised with competitions with prizes to be a good community member.

Conclusion

Guild Wars 2 is dying, the metrics say so. It's got a 340~k pop and it's dropping like a stone. That's a number that never goes up, only down.

Can Guild Wars 2 be saved? Yes, I think so. It would just take ArenaNet caring about it to make that happen. The community has to want that, and focus their energy on ArenaNet rather than alienating newbies which would just result in the game dying even faster.

mmo population is literally a worthless, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ resource. https://mmo-population.com/about/ literally on their website, they use reddit as their basis and most recent publicly known player count for their calculation. it's especially ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up with the blackouts because the data isn't updated rn. the same website rn shows that GW2 is at 350k~ players https://i.imgur.com/KUxjpKI.png and will stay that way until leddit blackout ends.

even stats on games like roblox are incorrect despite giving live player count. https://i.imgur.com/541Z9He.png vs real numbers https://i.imgur.com/BNIat8K.png

even ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wildstar is on the list with active players despite having closed servers few years back. you can find other dead and unreleased games on the list with apparent active players or inaccurate ones like spiral knights which rn on mmo pop has 12k players but on steam charts it has 100 players, there is no other way to play that game so.

[takeshi miike's gozu on dvd]

Originally posted by AuldWolf:

Can Guild Wars 2 be saved? Yes, I think so. It would just take ArenaNet caring about it to make that happen. The community has to want that, and focus their energy on ArenaNet rather than alienating newbies which would just result in the game dying even faster.

anet needs to get their hands off gw2, they have a gem on their hands that they geniunely don't know what to do with. outside of using ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ resource that is mmopop i generally agree with you. anet is seemingly mentally incapable of fixing old content for some god awful reason, they let people mtx ♥♥♥♥, balance team is non existant and gw2 marketing is geniunely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

first thing new player will notice is that they have to shill out 100$ for living world + expansions to get full experience, otherwise they will get only parts of it with the expansions and will ahve to use youtube or other means to catchup with the story (which is mid but that's besides the point). that ♥♥♥♥ will scare off most people.

[Tuathaqin]

Way to be positive, mate. Well done.

[likous]

I agree on some points, on others not so much. Since once again, you stopped playing the game. The turtle NO LONGER NEEDED to defeat the boss. There is a vendor that you buy the first step for the turtle.

[Vee]

How is the Soo-Won event horrible? It's literally one of the most fun and rewarding events in the game.

Have you played since the release of EoD? They made the event easier to complete and there are always people running it. I do it almost daily with a 100% succeess rate with randoms. So horrible.

[Vee]

Also these copy-paste posts are becoming very annoying.

[ah_puch]

GW2 subreddit is gone as well, they didn't even wait for July 1st to close it. Good riddance.

[nose;candy]

go sleep

[takeshi miike's gozu on dvd]

Originally posted by ah_puch:

GW2 subreddit is gone as well, they didn't even wait for July 1st to close it. Good riddance.

??? alot of subreddits rn are closed down indefinitely due to reddit ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ policy. alot of reopened ones are debating whether to close down again but this time without due date of opening

[ah_puch]

Yeah, they were supposed to wait until July 1st but decided to extend the blackout indefinitely. Reddit's new pricing is insane, no one could afford that. All in all, this hurt users the most and not the company. They will make more money now that the third apps are gone and people will have to use the official app.

[takeshi miike's gozu on dvd]

Originally posted by ah_puch:

Yeah, they were supposed to wait until July 1st but decided to extend the blackout indefinitely.

alot subs did tbh.

[DocCovington]

About the claims made in this thread: ANet is currently reworking the engine. They basically promised the spaghetti code would be a thing of the past and bugs could be fixed permanently when they are done. They also promised to brush up and revive the old zones once they are done with the aforementioned task.

The problem I see until then is that some players might not be patient enough to wait this rework phase out. Another problem is the recently released story content - if that's going to be the future quality level for the time being (i.e., until they have the resources for rich content again), then good luck.

[Kage No Senshi]

AuldWolf I agree with you 100%.
I started the game when parth of fire relised and was amazing for me and town in older maps was not ghoost but was litte bit players.
I have all dlc but not played them all, some of them really sucks and was enoying to play, Part of Fire and Heart of Thorns was amazing 10 of 10 but I dislike living world season story,
last DLC I never played it and just walked around new map and disapointed by old monsters as remake.
played elementalist as my first class and main class got power dps nerf and then nerf after nerf then I got catalyst was so bad that I uninstall game directly and stop to play for a while and now I play raids and fractals some times when I do not have nothing to do.
I do not like to farm in maps but did when I explore 100% all maps and did one time only.
I want some thing new not old stuff like new DLC as a remake of every FOE.

I enjoy most of my time by fractals/dungeon/raids and they did not bring new ones,
start to lose my apptipe to game when I get close to +1000Li and 50k ufe.
could keep play the game even if catalyst is horoble experience if there was like 20cm in fractals and raids and more bosses. pvp is not funn any more and wvw too.

there is a loot things they have to do for fix the game, when I played back in the day as a new player I had to play game at dx9 and convert the game to dx12 beta now we have +200fps in game on maxed options but back then playing with slower PC and had 90fps was okej.

getting in to raids and fractals is not that hard when you can trick people with fake li and old ufe back in the day and then we did not hace killproof so getting a player who grefing or even a bot was not fun but I think thats normal when people are new to game and we hace to be frendly to new players, when a player does not do his job in high tier players thats makes me mad when I have to struggle with a troll player.

[Xeph The Tamagotchi]

I really have no clue how people claim they see no people. No nater the map I find groups running around. As for new player it's only "tough" because ppl are use to the hand holding questing that gw2 did not offer.

[LSD]

Originally posted by Xeph The Tamagotchi:

I really have no clue how people claim they see no people. No nater the map I find groups running around. As for new player it's only "tough" because ppl are use to the hand holding questing that gw2 did not offer.

No one has ever described gw2 as "tough".
People hate the heart system cos it takes whats bad about other MMO questing systems and somehow makes it infinitely worse.