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.

[Koytar]

> "Source from steamdb numbers came from steamdb" thanks for the clarification.

It's in no way irrelevant since it shows how GW2 fares with the competition. Turns out GW2 is not even a competitor based on low player numbers.

GW2: 4,215 players
ESO: 15,759 players

I guess you are too embded with your own deception. I admire your blind dedication.

Edit: Read below, this is now considered by myself: retarded.

> You can keep speculating however, at one point you need to realize all your logic concerning "players outside of steam" applies to every game that has a steam and a non steam launcher as well.

Yes and ? Until Anet doesn't publish the numbers, we can't compare in a technical sense. End of story.

> Also regarding the "provider portal", non Steam players are using that to contribute to Steam numbers. In reality, genuine Steam player numbers are way lower than 4,215. Not sure what leap of logic led you to believe otherwise.

Their choice if they want to contribute to that pointless objective. My reason is convenience. Notes to be accurate.

> indicates you don't understand what steamdb is used for and that causes you to interpret any figure from steamdb as "total playerbase" when it isn't.

We're just correcting bizarre leaps of logic regarding the GW2's population numbers. Wild guesstimates are fine but they don't indicate anything in reality.

Steamcharts indicate the real world performance on products that are on Steam. It's very simple. GW2 is doing very poorly on Steam compared to other mmos. That might the root cause of the anxious speculations since no one wants their favorite game to be smaller than a game like Maplestory.

Now, this, I do agree on. SteamDB as of now, as a reliable source of information, is all we have to say: okay this game has this amount of players that do, directly or indirectly, use steam (as I mentioned, you can use steam_appid.txt to trick steam into thinking you play an another game you own instead). And compare to other MMOs that are also on steam.

As for Epic, you would have to go the same loops concerning purchases they did to steam to Epic all over again. So having an Anet account and purchase through Anet is what I would highly recommend. To avoid any problems that can't be resolved by both Valve and Anet/NCSoft.

For consoles, the problem is the controller, you have to take into account that you need to make everything that a player can interact with a smooth experience on limited amount of buttons. Sure is doable, FFXIV is the prime exemple with the amount of spells and hotbars you can have, imo it would seem very hectic to do. That's only my opinion, if you prefer playing on a controller instead, go for it.

TL;DR : he got a good point.

[ah_puch]

GW2: 4,215 players
ESO: 15,759 players

I guess you are too embded with your own deception. I admire your blind dedication.

And what "deception" might that be? It's literally public information on steamdb. It takes very strong dedication to look at facts and go "you know what, I'm gonna say that's not true!"

Yes and ? Until Anet doesn't publish the numbers,

??

we can't compare in a technical sense. End of story.

Sure we can. GW2 has only 26% of ESO's playercount on Steam.

Their choice if they want to contribute to that pointless objective. My reason is convenience. Notes to be accurate.

Their reasoning is irrelevant. Genuine steamcharts numbers are even lower than 4k due to this.

Now, this, I do agree on. SteamDB as of now, as a reliable source of information, is all we have to say: okay this game has this amount of players that do, directly or indirectly, use steam (as I mentioned, you can use steam_appid.txt to trick steam into thinking you play an another game you own instead). And compare to other MMOs that are also on steam.

So what was the misconception about the steamcharts numbers? When did it appear like the "holy bible of entire population" when it was never implied?

As for Epic, you would have to go the same loops concerning purchases they did to steam to Epic all over again. So having an Anet account and purchase through Anet is what I would highly recommend. To avoid any problems that can't be resolved by both Valve and Anet/NCSoft.

Epic is just another launcher that adds to the total population. Epic is very popular because they keep giving away games for free and ESO launched on Epic during a 75% sale and got tons of players. It makes the population disparity between GW2 and ESO even larger since GW2 only has two launchers and ESO has five.

For consoles, the problem is the controller, you have to take into account that you need to make everything that a player can interact with a smooth experience on limited amount of buttons. Sure is doable, FFXIV is the prime exemple with the amount of spells and hotbars you can have, imo it would seem very hectic to do. That's only my opinion, if you prefer playing on a controller instead, go for it.

Playing mmo on console is an inferior experience not just due to controller but many things. ESO on consoles locked to 30 fps (60 fps on PS5 and Series X), no addon support, 2 week launch delay (expansions and updates launch on PC then come to consoles in 2 weeks) and no having to pay extra for sony/xbox membership. Even so, ESO is super popular on consoles.

GW2 on console wouldn't work since everyone is anti sub fee and they would have to pay a sub fee to Sony and Microsoft just to play GW2.

[Koytar]

> And what "deception" might that be? It's literally public information on steamdb. It takes very strong dedication to look at facts and go "you know what, I'm gonna say that's not true!"

I do agree that this take I had was the weakest I could pulled in Guild Wars 2's discussion.

> So what was the misconception about the steamcharts numbers? When did it appear like the "holy bible of entire population" when it was never implied?

Might not respond to that, I'll try anyway. I do not want to make the numbers that's registed in steamdb the sole focus. Granted, it is the only metric that we have that doesn't get modified by any factor outside of a play button, and I exclude the possibility of running the game outside of steam.

And the only way to know if the game is still alive is to explore every single corner of the game and see where the most players at. And I'm not the best person to for that because population wise. I'm not too worried for now. It might be an issue later on if the new way for anet to make money isn't worth the effort and will put the game in a true maintenance mode like they did with Guild Wars 1.

> Epic is just another launcher that adds to the total population. Epic is very popular because they keep giving away games for free and ESO launched on Epic during a 75% sale and got tons of players. It makes the population disparity between GW2 and ESO even larger since GW2 only has two launchers and ESO has five.

About the bit of launchers. I spat utter dumb ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. As for Epic, we'll see in an another 10 years or below if Anet/NCSoft think it'll be worth it. Which is possible, but unlikely. I'll have to take a look at the free to play games that was standalone before and got onto epic to see if it made any difference (Dauntless is what I have in mind at the moment). Worth the shot, if they ever consider it.

> Playing mmo on console is an inferior experience not just due to controller but many things. ESO on consoles locked to 30 fps (60 fps on PS5 and Series X), no addon support, 2 week launch delay (expansions and updates launch on PC then come to consoles in 2 weeks) and no having to pay extra for sony/xbox membership. Even so, ESO is super popular on consoles.

Never played mmos on consoles so the only thing that crossed my mind was the controller and the mapping you have to think to make the experience as smooth and comfy as possible. So that subject is out of my league.

> GW2 on console wouldn't work since everyone is anti sub fee and they would have to pay a sub fee to Sony and Microsoft just to play GW2.

That's how the game was since the beginning. Pay once play "forever" (you know, online services and all the cons about server shutting down on day). After Heart of Thorns, the core game went free to play and you have to pay at least one of the expansion to be able to have fun on other contents. So yea, pretty much has a population that will be against sub fee to just play the game.

[Q]

> Koytar původně napsal:

....

Are you aware that he doesn't care what you have to say at all? many others before you have attempted to reason with him, many have debunked his false statements his twisted and manipulated data and blatant lies for over a year and it wont matter because the next day he will repeat the same things just to keep controversial threads in the 1st page specially this one, i can assure you his only interest is having this particular thread all the time at front page because the exaggerated and dramatic title, it will drive new people away that's the obvious purpose and we not helping the community by keeping such thread alive.

[ah_puch]

Might not respond to that, I'll try anyway. I do not want to make the numbers that's registed in steamdb the sole focus. Granted, it is the only metric that we have that doesn't get modified by any factor outside of a play button, and I exclude the possibility of running the game outside of steam.

It's not the sole focus. It's a comparison tool that shows real population numbers and trends, especially useful in figuring out where the game is at compared to other games. Right now, it's barely 25% as played as ESO.

And the only way to know if the game is still alive is to explore every single corner of the game and see where the most players at. And I'm not the best person to for that because population wise. I'm not too worried for now. It might be an issue later on if the new way for anet to make money isn't worth the effort and will put the game in a true maintenance mode like they did with Guild Wars 1.

Lots of players on r/ and other places are talking about empty starter maps. EoD on day 1 had empty maps that felt like a single player game. LFG lists are empty. It's not hard to see how low the population has become over the years.

However,

It's impossible to tell the difference if you weren't playing since 2012 and haven't seen the population changes with your own eyes. Most GW2 fans on here slipped up and said they joined sometime after the pandemic, some even after EoD. Game was already battered and beaten for a long time by then.

As for Steam. Steam launch was hyped up beyond belief, even today there are completely clueless players who make population estimates like

It's really not an issue in GW2 though. Player numbers are fine, in the multiple hundreds of thousands as far as I remember.

that is based on.. well.. a dream they had the night before I guess. Reality is 3-4 players on Steam compared to the estimated 100k players and that should give an indication where the game falls compared to other mmos. Big three is simply out of reach. GW2 should stick to more attainable goals like attracting more players than Maplestory.

[unidrathegamer]

I am a new player, and I just joined. The personal story enchanted me. I liked the heart system and the start of the game in general. I liked how in general this MMO makes your character's story and gameplay about everyone else, not just you. The design of the game makes me feel like I am part of a community, not just Big Hero(TM) out to save the world and get cheered at. I liked it so much that I purchased an expansion.

The game didn't seem empty to me as a new player, but maybe it was because I played on weekends and Friday nights. There seem to be plenty of people then. It was a while before I noticed any places or times where there seemed to be fewer people. I'm not sure if it depends on the server.

On the other hand, I agree that the marketing needs work. The reason I played was because I heard "Fear Not This Night," and I wanted to check out the game. If I wasn't a music geek, I would not have tried this game because advertisements always made it look too cutesy for my tastes.

[armyguy]

> Koytar původně napsal:

And source for that 4k players come from... SteamDB!

Wow, shocker, it is irrelevant since it's not from Anet.

Wait for it....

> Koytar původně napsal:

Edit: For people who believe in ah_puch, remember that game existed without steam from 2012 to 2022. And then appear on steam. AND the standalone launcher still exist as you can use -portal to use your anet account if, for some reasons (like me basically), go through steam anyway.

So yes, we have more than 4k people playing the game. How much ? I don't know, ah_puch doen't know, nobody knows for sure. Unless Anet gives in an official way the amount of players that was live since the birth of the game. We can only speculate.

And there it is. He debunks the only verifiable numbers and says it doesn't matter because there's other numbers out there that we can only speculate on.

> Koytar původně napsal:

And, at least, for this game specifically, steamdb shouldn't be considered the Holy Bible of player amount.

Maybe not but it can be used against other steamdb numbers to give an indication of the game.


According to MMO-population, which no doubt you will disagree with because..... well, reasons, 19.02 million total players, 361.4k active players. The active player number IS NOT at any one time. Not clear if active player number is based on account use per week or day or if 1 person logs in 361.4k times in a week/day. And don't be stupid, I know no one can log in that many times. (Side note, MMO Population has an activity scale, 1 being abysmal, 10 being very active, GW2 was rated at, 2) Not sure if either of those numbers reflect ANet going to the Asia market but I do suspect the Asia release is included in the 19.02 million number and not the active player number as the Asia market is a separate entity now. Spread 361.4k over 53 servers and you have just shy of 7k per server. Hence the reasoning behind the mega server and server linking in wvw. ANet acknowledged the lack of players even though sycophants/zealots/shills can't. ANet also acknowledges the lack of people on core maps and has spread different events on the core maps. I can't say with certainty but I'm pretty sure that maps with world bosses don't get the extra events like rifts, marionettes, bounties, etc.

[likous]

unidrathegamer původně napsal:

I am a new player, and I just joined. The personal story enchanted me. I liked the heart system and the start of the game in general. I liked how in general this MMO makes your character's story and gameplay about everyone else, not just you

I have always played the story with a friend and in GW2 you can play the story in a group. There are some bits of story that the secondary player is another character to support your friend.

As a warning, I tell you that the game becomes somewhat more difficult in the expansions. I recommend that you study your class well

[unidrathegamer]

likous původně napsal:

unidrathegamer původně napsal:

I am a new player, and I just joined. The personal story enchanted me. I liked the heart system and the start of the game in general. I liked how in general this MMO makes your character's story and gameplay about everyone else, not just you

I have always played the story with a friend and in GW2 you can play the story in a group. There are some bits of story that the secondary player is another character to support your friend.

As a warning, I tell you that the game becomes somewhat more difficult in the expansions. I recommend that you study your class well

Thank you for the warning. I'll keep that in mind.

[Barnahizi]

GW2 is not dying game is great game is not greedy game feel warm combat is best in genre mounts best in genre they said more expansions will come and more things that makes exciting

[ah_puch]

GW2 is not dying game is great game is not greedy game feel warm combat is best in genre mounts best in genre they said more expansions will come and more things that makes exciting

So what exactly has come? Where is the content? Zero new content since November 7th of last year. If that doesn't tell you the game is in trouble I don't know what will. Most likely scenario is everybody is aware of it but choose to believe in their own idealized version of the game that doesn't exist. Now it makes sense why anyone look at cold hard data like the steamcharts and say "Hmm, you know what I'm gonna say that's not true!" Something is definitely off.

[Pixel]

GW2 is an okay game but I think the biggest issue is how they teach the combat and perhaps how it works. There are a lot that might not be up for the later difficulty and they just leave. They could improve retention by trying to teach this in the early game by bringing it up to speed with the current design in the later expansions. This way people are ready for what lay ahead and at least understand it better.

It also sucks there aren't world bosses in later expansions from what I could see. Dungeons were abandoned and apparently so were world bosses. They could add a random queue for dungeons at least so perhaps more could see them without trying to get a group together. I never see any LFG dungeon people nobody is running these.

Also kind of sucks I didn't see anymore world altering stuff since LWS1 in later expansions. They had a cool idea there with tower of nightmares in at least how it looked and changed up an entire zone.

[ah_puch]

It's really easy to tell apart a healthy mmo from a dead one, just take a look here. On reddit, posts exposing how poorly the game is doing are immediately silenced and deleted. That sub is being run by a massive fan who cannot fathom anything negative being said about the game.

Just recently someone pointed out the game is so deprived of content, a generic looking helm skin that now makes everyone look exactly the same has generated massive excitement. Content drought is so unbearable now, even with the "business model change" that promised "more frequent content".

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1ajjf86/are_we_this_deprived_of_content/?sort=controversial

"Awaiting moderation" and people deflecting "let people have fun" or "fashion is the true endgame" trying to conceal and hide how poorly the game has been doing since 2021. Any comments that agree are immediately downvoted by fans. That's a telltale sign of a dead game, backed up by real data as well. Playerbase have shrunk into laughable levels. 2k players on steam.

[Varyn765]

Lots of decent points and lots of abysmal hot takes as well going around here, figure why not chip in my two cents.

I'm most definitely a 'casual' gamer and from when I first played to now I have around 700hr in-game and a good chunk of that is leveling, class experimentation, and even just being AFK watching a stream or just idly doing busy work. Since getting back into it I've nearly beaten PoF on 3 characters, have the griffon unlocked, and am working towards getting a couple friends caught up before jumping into SotO.

It seems like people are forgetting the core reasons MMO games are so fun and just want to complain about something. It takes a certain type of gamer to look at an MMO game and be willing to jump into that type of long-term commitment, but on top of that GW2 is very goal driven. Your average gamer is dumb as a box of rocks. They want on-screen prompts, minimap waypoints, easy how-to guides on youtube, all of that. So when you have a game that goes 'nope, figure it out for yourself or get involved with the player base' they choose to leave. As they should.

GW2 is actually pretty damn fun for me and I haven't even bothered to join a guild yet, mainly because most of the RP guilds on NA are dead and-or I'm not willing to dive into end-game content just yet. The game definitely isn't 'dead' by any stretch of the imagination but it's also not super popular in NA it seems. That's a demographic issue and not so much a dev issue. Friends and I have this same discussion about games like Hell Let Loose because it has a small but tight knit community in NA but is huge in EU and elsewhere. It looks like the same is true of GW2. American gamers, on average at least, are just not interested in anything that isn't the newest, shiniest thing.

People like MightyTeapot and company have actually made some decent points on this. If you want people to get engaged with end-game content you have to make that content accessible to newer players, and to do that they need to have players WILLING to get better and not just stagnate in the core game because they don't want to build properly or learn rotations. I've seen some people on youtube whining about "gatekeeping" and to just "let players have fun." To which the latter is a viable option, but not for the health of end-game. If you want people to raid you have to train them and build them up, you need patience and a willingness to step up and actually be the person in charge.

Everybody wants to complain about the issue but never step up and be the solution, instead they just want to blame ANEt, who is NOT without fault here, for the problems of the player base. All ANet can do is produce content, and no dev can pump out the amount of content people are whining about. Way back you got ONE game and nothing until an expansion. Now everyone wants the ONE game, a season, a DLC, then another season, now an Xpack, so on and so forth. But they want all that for the same price as just that one game. It doesn't work that way.

[Thorgar]

Every MMO I have played over the years has been declared dead at one time or another. For example when I played Everquest have of my guild mates lived in Alaska. They would play during the 24 hour light cycle months and not play during the night cycle. So when they didn't play the numbers would appear lower, even though they maintained there accounts.

Numbers are just that numbers. They will reflect up or down based on playing habits. With GW2 not having a subscription to play, the real impact can't be determined by online numbers. Every game can use improvements and GW2 is no exception. However, GW2 does a lot that is fun and good.