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.

[mysaga]

They are. But still GW2 is probably more agressive on merging instances in order to keep population up. ESO doesn't care about that as far as I am aware. At least I didn't get any message to volunteeringly switch instances or stuff like that.

[ah_puch]

Where is the content? Where is the "more frequent updates"? Why didn't SoTo bring more players?

I can overlook the technical qualities suffer abit, but imo all content have been on a downward direction since eod development started and that is harder for me to overlook. I had so much drive and excitement going into eod and the hopes of a more solid dev cycle. I have never cared so little as I do now. Story and gameplay is pointless as it is.

i am very happy, that i got a new job which forces me to spend more time in working and less time in playing this game. Yes, i love gw2. Yes, i love what they build around this guild wars universe. I love the combat, mounts, visuals.

But nowdays gw2 is like an sinking ship. Less to do, just grind for a legendary no one knows something about it, and the story gets worse and worse.

Yes, besides a lot of people, quantity matters. These maps are way too less and they are way too boring designed. The first soto map.....ok, fine. But the second is just good old rectangle gw2 with a boring meta.

The new-old frac is buggy, the strikes are irrelevant and have no motivation for players to do, and other OW-content is buggy or is a copy of another meta.

Harvest temple meta was a great example of anet trying something new and more difficult. But it got instant flamend and all players whined...and now we got the result: boring, too easy and unneccessary metas.

Gw2 is a sinking ship and we better get off . I am glad that my new job is my rescue boat.

[Sassy Robot]

The game is "old" and never reached the level of success they wanted. That's fine, but it wasn't the revolutionary next step in MMO design that they claimed it would be. They definitely oversold the package. Fair enough. That's marketing.

But now most people who still care about MMORPG's, an increasingly niche genre in 2023, have played these games. We've tried GW2, and unless we liked it then, we won't like it now.

There isn't going to be a resurgence for any of these games. Be grateful for the communities you still have. They are old, only getting older, and the industry has moved away from MMORPG's.

[ah_puch]

GW2 tried to be different but stepped on the brakes so fast and only 3 years after launch they brought class trinity and raids into the game because they were bleeding players faster than they can keep em. They pushed the panic button again after seeing WOW launched Dragonflight but it was too little too late. "Hey come back! We have skyscale at home! Please come, we'll give it free. Hey, not coming? Please don't leave!". They didn't come back. SoTo turned out to be a failure just like EoD.

Also there are players still trying to deceive new players by glorifying GW2 in every single topic. Someone flat out denied the p2w store that sells in game gold for real cash and hero points. "b-but what are you winning?" Not winning any top spot in the mmo lists that's for sure ;) Someone defended pve and pvp bots. Someone denied steamcharts showing the population being dwarfed by bigger mmos. Someone denied game is having trouble even competing against Maplestory. The list goes on. So sad though but understandable since the past 2 years were full of failures and fiasco and most of these people joined in random dates during the pandemic or even later.

Imagine missing out on what this game was really like in 2012 and 2013 before any layoffs, content droughts or population loss that forced the megaservers. Empty lfg pages, deserted maps, bots instead of players were unheard of. Now people even look at a post about empty lfg pages and say "oh because they fill so fast" or "nobody uses lfg". Same minds who came up with "oh but steamcharts is fake, go to first google search instead". Embarrassing.

[mysaga]

Originally posted by Sassy Robot:

The game is "old" and never reached the level of success they wanted. That's fine, but it wasn't the revolutionary next step in MMO design that they claimed it would be. They definitely oversold the package. Fair enough. That's marketing.

But now most people who still care about MMORPG's, an increasingly niche genre in 2023, have played these games. We've tried GW2, and unless we liked it then, we won't like it now.

There isn't going to be a resurgence for any of these games. Be grateful for the communities you still have. They are old, only getting older, and the industry has moved away from MMORPG's.

I know so many people who had to try GW2 several times before it "clicked" for them. A common reason for this seems to be going into this game expecting it to be "just another WoW clone" and not open minded enough for the stuff that GW2 does different. Especially regarding the questing and handing out a clear guideline on "where to go next" and "what to do next". Some MMORPG players are simply not used to the freedom of setting their own goals and emphasis on exploration and struggle with this. Once they know what this game looks like and they come back with an open mind, their perception usually changes. Sure, it still is not the game that fits everyone. But if you didn't like it before, you still might liking it the next time you give this game a chance.
To some degree this applies to other MMORPGs as well, as all of them are evolving over time and previous pain points might have changed or you have grown out of the pain and don't care about it anymore. It took three times for me until I stayed with ESO as my secondary MMORPG besides GW2.

There is a bit of a resurgence of the MMORPG genre in the recent years. With New World, Lost Ark and some other games already being released and some more in development, the genre is far from dead, even though certainly far from what it was in the 2000s. Additionally we have also seen a lot of "MMOfication" of other genres. "Looter shooter" and battle royals allowing many players to play together or against each other. Online co-op modes and inserting stuff like dungeons or group compositions following the "holy trinity" (hero shooters).

[𝒞𝒶𝓉𝓎𝒶♡]

I see it's the holidays time and spirit, filling the stamina bar of the usuals, so they have the energy to post their same old spam. :D

We made a friendly bet with my bestie, on how long we gonna see the same messages from the same 3 people. Winner gets month worth of buff foods and oils for WvW. :P So something good can come from observing the brain rot of the "ESOfam" one game andies posting their daily nonsense. :D

I see must be the all all talk guy, since cannot see their post due to (good decisions are good, aahhh.. *sips tea*)

Hows ESO by the way kekw? ^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyrRaSwpfHk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWeTQrCmTNE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyppsgy2i4A

Bonus clip for luls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJTrTTFjbko

[Elvis]

don't feed the ahpuch, new post means more food

[mysaga]

Originally posted by Lelu💜:

Hows ESO by the way kekw? ^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyrRaSwpfHk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWeTQrCmTNE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyppsgy2i4A

Games can happily coexist - don't feed the mmo tribalism. Those videos are 10+ months old and don't necessarily reflect the current state of the game. It has problems for sure - which is why ESO is my secondary and GW2 is my main.

[𝒞𝒶𝓉𝓎𝒶♡]

Originally posted by mysaga:

Originally posted by Lelu💜:

Hows ESO by the way kekw? ^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyrRaSwpfHk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWeTQrCmTNE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyppsgy2i4A

Games can happily coexist - don't feed the mmo tribalism. Those videos are 10+ months old and don't necessarily reflect the current state of the game. It has problems for sure - which is why ESO is my secondary and GW2 is my main.

They DO in fact reflect the current reality. I went to check the game at Necrom launch, same stuff. And of course i have like friend or two who still occasionally play it and stream it (so i see it all with my own eyes also, even if currently the game is not installed).

Cyrodiil lag is often exactly the same, the new server helped like for 1 update, then it went to same. I literally still am discord friends and in ESO discord with all the pvp players, and i was in a "carry guild" and in trifecta guilds. One can even hear my voice in group chat in one of the old Class Reps raid groups in an ESO event. ^^

So i THINK i know what i am talking about. Why you think majority of the old trial groups are gone from the game?

All that is left really is the casual overland "Skyrim Lite" players, who solo through story mostly, and then play other games for actual gameplay or competitive modes?

The endgame is "dead" (crown crate gifting stopping made PVE old players stop, like majority, it was the last "goal" there to keep going, so had something as sort of goals, since that game does not reward for game play, everything is in shop, and no conversion like in GW2).

ESO has become as you said, a secondary, or even a 3rd pick tier mmo. Sad times.

And not feeding, i play FFXIV as my raid game.

Just showing some clips to our favorite GW2 forum ESOfam member who posts their dailies. So will i. It's like my own dailies from now on. Maybe i should go on ESO discussions with them? :) People could grab the popcorn. Holidays spirit and all, gotta share the love and clips!

And yes, all of those clips can make right now. I watched the best Magblade of EU servers stream the other day, he said the lag is as worse as was before the new server. I've played with him and saw him win almost all duel competitions while i still played and he spent like 6 hours each day in Cyrodiil, same as me. So i trust his word AND i trust my eyes, the lag was horrible, it was visible on the stream, all the same skill delays as when i did quit over a year ago.

[Elvis]

lolu you post is food for days for the aphuch edit please

[Tiberius]

Wait.. ppl actually thought gw2 is growing despite the fact that anet themselves are actively scaling down the expansion size?

[𝒞𝒶𝓉𝓎𝒶♡]

Originally posted by Odyssey:

lolu you post is food for days for the aphuch edit please

I luckily don't have to read their posts anymore, looks so more clean when adds same message trolls into the good old list. :D

[mysaga]

Originally posted by Tiberius:

Wait.. ppl actually thought gw2 is growing despite the fact that anet themselves are actively scaling down the expansion size?

...in order to increase frequency. And both official statements as financial reports support the "growth", while still not disclosing how big or small the playerbase actually is. Don't mix several things when you don't fully understand either of them.

[𝒞𝒶𝓉𝓎𝒶♡]

Originally posted by Tiberius:

Wait.. ppl actually thought gw2 is growing despite the fact that anet themselves are actively scaling down the expansion size?

I personally don't think GW2 is "growing" hugely in pop, more like staying the same is with a small influx of new players (since several streamers have gave the game a chance and tried it again this year, even few thousand viewers streamers always bring in people, facts), but it's going steadily.

And having 20% increased revenue from a game last year or two, means they have for next year AT LEAST the same budget as for this year. So we be getting content same as now. Yes, maybe the new SotO model feels "drip feeding" to some, but personally i like it. Smaller content updates but with also smaller intervals in between them. A lot of people dislike 2-3 years intervals with huge content drought the last year before next expansions especially.

So personally liking the current model.

Of course, my critique still is: Anet please, give back all our old 6th part rune effects as Relics, still WAY too little amount of them as choices. So that alone is like a big minus for me. So not 100% happy until i get more, way more of them. I like what they do with the new weapons tho etc. :)

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by mysaga:

Originally posted by Tiberius:

Wait.. ppl actually thought gw2 is growing despite the fact that anet themselves are actively scaling down the expansion size?

...in order to increase frequency. And both official statements as financial reports support the "growth", while still not disclosing how big or small the playerbase actually is. Don't mix several things when you don't fully understand either of them.

To increase frequency? Did you forget we also received FREE living world episodes, which were as big as Soto? Yea ofc financial report is growing with how many gemstore content they pump out every day (and if you bother to compare their result to other mmo, gw2 looks extremely pathetic. So pathetic that it's not even the biggest money maker in ncsoft)