This thread made me laugh. On my server everyone is in higher level areas like Orr (crowed), trolling dragons, and WvWvW where there are always queues to get in certain areas ( mainly boarderlands we are taking over or EB)
The mid level zones are empty, cept for people mapping like me or grinding up for the first time. This was like that when I made it to those areas first go around since lots had already powerleved to 60+ doing dragons early on while i was just taking my time playing all the content in a zone.
The problem isn't population. The servers are packed pretty much constantly, even in the morning some servers are still full. The problem is its a giant game, with dozens of zones, multiples for each level range so people get spread out. It also becomes rather top heavy, with lvl 80's spending most their time in Arah, WvW or LA. There are generally plenty of chars in the 1-15 zones and decent amounts in the 15-25 zones, but after that things get spread out.
That said, I never have a problem finding enough poeple to do a Meta event, etc. Even some of the less played zones like Fields of Ruin, when the meta-events pop folks come out of the woodwork heh. I'm on Tarnished Coast though, one of the more populous servers, but even those reading High on a monday night shouldn't have much of a problem. Might help some folks if they joined a fairly sizable guild, so if they need help to complete an event there are folks who can help. But I find that even when /map chat is dead, there are still a few dozen folks around to do events, specially if you call them out. These are some of the biggest zones I've seen in an MMOG, so while you might only see 2 or 3 people while doing them there often are as many as several dozen in these less populated mid-lvl zones.
A tip as well for those on servers that seem 'dead' in the mid-lvl range. When choosing which zone to do next, go to one that has a really big meta-event, like a dragon. Bladeridge Steps (40-50) for The Shatterer. Sparkfly Fen (55-65) for Tequatl the Sunless, and Frostgorge Sound (70-80) for Claw of Jormag. Yes these are all 40+ zones but it doesn't take long at all to get to 40 and into one of these zones which 'always' have folks in them. Before 40 there are a few zones with popular Meta Events, like Harathi Hinterlands (35-45) with the Centaur chieftain in the NE of the zone.
So if you follow this lineup, you'll find plenty of folks from 1-80 (1-25 racial zones are always populated).
The PvE zones on the most servers i transfered to were dead, empty, ghost towns never mind if in Europe or in the USA.
I had to solo the most events when it was possible with my guardian, sometimes one or two players appeared which was like a miracle after meeting no one over a long period of time.
Even Sea of Sorrows or Sanctum of Rall´s PvE Zones are mostly empty these days. The most people are Level 80 and do W v W.
The hype about GW2 has ended, many people just left after they noticed that GW2 isnt for them.
PvE is unattractive , bad loot, bad rewards and commonly grind grind grind. GW2 is a farmer game nothing else. Either do WvW or grind to 80.. some manage to level by crafting..
I think its time for a server merge soon or more people leave ... Guild Wars 2 isnt far away from a real mass exodus.
When login into the game the server usually show HIGH - FULL but the PvE zones are empty......
pls tell me the names of your spooky ghost servers - i wanna get ri of the overflow shit on my full server. oh wait. theyre all full. each and every zone. die more, GW2 ^^
So I just finished making 2 new characters. the first character went through the introductory story with 6 other people. The second one was only with 4 other people.
My thanks to everyone for sharing and I look forward to reading the post of all the honest people on future games as well !
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
Originally posted by eyelolled So I just finished making 2 new characters. the first character went through the introductory story with 6 other people. The second one was only with 4 other people. My thanks to everyone for sharing and I look forward to reading the post of all the honest people on future games as well !
Except its quite obvious you havent read any posts here. Because if you had then you would know whats wrong with your anecdote.
The PvE zones on the most servers i transfered to were dead, empty, ghost towns never mind if in Europe or in the USA.
I had to solo the most events when it was possible with my guardian, sometimes one or two players appeared which was like a miracle after meeting no one over a long period of time.
Even Sea of Sorrows or Sanctum of Rall´s PvE Zones are mostly empty these days. The most people are Level 80 and do W v W.
The hype about GW2 has ended, many people just left after they noticed that GW2 isnt for them.
PvE is unattractive , bad loot, bad rewards and commonly grind grind grind. GW2 is a farmer game nothing else. Either do WvW or grind to 80.. some manage to level by crafting..
I think its time for a server merge soon or more people leave ... Guild Wars 2 isnt far away from a real mass exodus.
When login into the game the server usually show HIGH - FULL but the PvE zones are empty......
I disagree with the entire post. Sorry. When I see posts like this I always have to wonder...
My playtime is often split between afternoon/prime time and late night. Things are fairly dead in most zones in the late night hours, but I haven't had any issues with dead zones any other time.
I almost exclusively lay PvE and am close to the 500 hour mark. I play the game more like a massively multiplayer Skyrim than the way I've played most other MMOs and am still having a blast. If you expect to play this like WoW or any other stale MMO, you may be disappointed. If you can learn to approach the game a little differently, the massive world space, content and freedom are actually a little overwhelming in their awesomeness.
BTW, even during my late night play, I have no issues. DEs scale pretty well and even in the late night hours, people do show up for the bigger events that require a group to complete. I think in ~500 hours I can count on one hand the number of times I have had to abandon a DE because I couldn't complete it alone and couldn't find enough allies to overcome the challenge.
It's funny because most of the complaints come from people who have never gotten to play in Orr (Malcher's Reach) or done the claw, maybe they made it as far Shatterer and gave up lol. I play on Fort Aspenwood btw and no population issues there. Like I said above, middle zones kinda empty since everyone is mostl at the top at this point. Trials will fill the lower levels when they start up.
I play on Ring of Fire (EU). Judging from WvW ranking, our server is probably one of less populated. My main playtime lately is spent by leveling alts. I can feel zones are emptier than before, but they are not ghost towns by any means. More often than not I do DEs with other players.
On the other note... It's normal for game at this stage to lose tons of players. These days many people will give up to the hype and go try a game they actually don't want to play (but everyone is going for it, so I must obey, huh?). After all pretty much everything they argue about is well known before GW2 even came out. They play for a month or two till they finally understand "this game is not for me". I think in about another month or two pupulation will stabilize, guilds will be merged and reformed and all will be fine. After that, maybe they will merge some servers or simply implement idea of "underflow servers".
Right now, you can move to different server at any point of time, it's not paid as in WoW and if you choose one of servers that rank fairly high in WvW, I'm sure there will be enough people playing.
Originally posted by Zeppelin4 Thanks for the laugh. I don't know why I laughed but I did so thanks. To your topic I have no idea though I did login the other day to transfer to a new server for a guild and couldn't because it was full The rest of the servers said full or high so not sure why your having a issue.
He is right tho. I logged in yesterday evening since a long time and pretty much all lower level zones are dead!
I was questing for about an hour or so, before I got totally bored again.... there was not a single player around. :-(
So it seems the game has already become top heavy and no new players joining anymore.
Top heavy? Kinda reminds me of Rift.
Yeah, except in my experience it took a year for Rift to get that way. It took GW2 about 2 months.
Originally posted by Zeppelin4 Thanks for the laugh. I don't know why I laughed but I did so thanks. To your topic I have no idea though I did login the other day to transfer to a new server for a guild and couldn't because it was full The rest of the servers said full or high so not sure why your having a issue.
He is right tho. I logged in yesterday evening since a long time and pretty much all lower level zones are dead!
I was questing for about an hour or so, before I got totally bored again.... there was not a single player around. :-(
So it seems the game has already become top heavy and no new players joining anymore.
Top heavy? Kinda reminds me of Rift.
Yeah, except in my experience it took a year for Rift to get that way. It took GW2 about 2 months.
I liked this game at the beginning but I got bored of it rather quickly. It all felt a little repetitive maybe?
Logged in today after two weeks taking a break to check out what´s new, to my surprise the guild was down from about 140 players to 26.
Was a bit shocked what is going on. Guess I´m moving on too
This guild population loss can be explained in a variety of ways besides the game losing players, in which case it largely isn't (despite what the trolls who haven't even played the game or played it for an hour when it first hit and think they know the game in and out). Free server transfers over the last two+ months have seen a tun of use, servers that are winning at WvW are typically bombarded with transfering players, thus those servers tend to be the most populated. I'm on Tarnished Coast and its about 50/50 that we win or lose and when we are winning it can go from no queues to hour long queues if we are winning and vice versa if we are not. Its frankly a little rediculous. Depending on your server, a loss in guild members could quite easily be associated with transfers. And of course poeple transfer for reasons not associated with WvW, I just wanted to point out that WvW transfers were a serious issue until recently.
Also, folks can join multiple guilds. I myself am in three. One is friends and two others are a PvE and WvW guild. I've joined plenty of others just to see if they are up my alley and I love that I can join one without leaving another generally, though if it doesn't work out, I leave. So a number of those losses could be folks who joined other guilds, liked them more and quit yours.
Last, while some of those losses may well be to folks leaving, it may well just be normal attrition. I've been in plenty of guilds in say WoW (which we know to be successful) that grew rapidly only to shrink back down in slow times, etc. So a guild loosing 3/5ths of their members can be explained in a myriad of ways besides just chalking it up to the game dying.
I just don't understand why so many want this game to fail and thankfully to their detriment, it isn't at all, but rather still growing. Top 10 PC game sales on Amazon.com, #3 top selling PC game in the UK.
I liked this game at the beginning but I got bored of it rather quickly. It all felt a little repetitive maybe?
Logged in today after two weeks taking a break to check out what´s new, to my surprise the guild was down from about 140 players to 26.
Was a bit shocked what is going on. Guess I´m moving on too
What game did your guild move to, or was it one of those mass recruit on day one crap guilds? I mean, if it was actually a group of people that played together and had fun together, maybe there's a reason they forgot to send you the memo about leaving.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Was there an expectation that GW2 wouldn't get top heavy? Was there an expectation that the lower or middle tier content wouldn't empty out? This is going to happen in every game that has levels and gates content in some way between lower level and higher level players.
A server merge is not the answer because the total number of players isn't the issue. Somebody hit on the idea earlier that the opposite of the overflow queues is the way to go. Players are automagically merged onto servers that have higher populations in certain zones, similar to (or the same as) what Blizzard is doing with cross server zones.
Ideally you'd always have enough new players and enough players rolling alts to always have those zones filled, but that's an unrealistic expectation.
** edit ** I am a casual gamer, and it took me about 2 months to hit the level cap in Rift. There were far fewer players in the lower level zones by the time I hit level cap than there were when I started. Which again, is no surprise. How does this even rate a topic for a specific game. It's something that should be in the general MMORPG forums, with every other game that has level gated content.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I liked this game at the beginning but I got bored of it rather quickly. It all felt a little repetitive maybe?
Logged in today after two weeks taking a break to check out what´s new, to my surprise the guild was down from about 140 players to 26.
Was a bit shocked what is going on. Guess I´m moving on too
This guild population loss can be explained in a variety of ways besides the game losing players, in which case it largely isn't (despite what the trolls who haven't even played the game or played it for an hour when it first hit and think they know the game in and out). Free server transfers over the last two+ months have seen a tun of use, servers that are winning at WvW are typically bombarded with transfering players, thus those servers tend to be the most populated. I'm on Tarnished Coast and its about 50/50 that we win or lose and when we are winning it can go from no queues to hour long queues if we are winning and vice versa if we are not. Its frankly a little rediculous. Depending on your server, a loss in guild members could quite easily be associated with transfers. And of course poeple transfer for reasons not associated with WvW, I just wanted to point out that WvW transfers were a serious issue until recently.
Also, folks can join multiple guilds. I myself am in three. One is friends and two others are a PvE and WvW guild. I've joined plenty of others just to see if they are up my alley and I love that I can join one without leaving another generally, though if it doesn't work out, I leave. So a number of those losses could be folks who joined other guilds, liked them more and quit yours.
Last, while some of those losses may well be to folks leaving, it may well just be normal attrition. I've been in plenty of guilds in say WoW (which we know to be successful) that grew rapidly only to shrink back down in slow times, etc. So a guild loosing 3/5ths of their members can be explained in a myriad of ways besides just chalking it up to the game dying.
I just don't understand why so many want this game to fail and thankfully to their detriment, it isn't at all, but rather still growing. Top 10 PC game sales on Amazon.com, #3 top selling PC game in the UK.
All of those might be true, but it is not my experience. My experience is people I know outside of the game, and trust me, they did not server transfer, leave the guild or anything else. They *left* the game. Of the 40 or so people who were regulars in the beginning in our guild, my wife and I are left, and we are on the way out soon. I know they left because I speak to them on the guild forums, and people say what they are going to do.
And by the way, this has happened in the other two guilds I joined when this one started to fade too.
Your points are valid, and they do account for some seeming decline in players, but anecdotally, this game is hemmoraging people from my perspective. They people I like ti play with are gone, and it leaves me with very little energy to look for more, to be honest.
Also, as for WoW a guild declining, ours did as well. The difference is, the same rate of decay was measured in months, and even years (three years before total collapse) and the same thing happened in GW2 with the same players in two months.
It was like watching the usual MMORPG guild life span with the fast forward button held down.
As to the sales numbers, they are what makes this game successful to Anet, but they have little meaning to my personal play experience. Those new players come and go, fading away like the others. For the people I play with, this game simply has no longevity.
I do not want the game to fail, I would never wish that on any game. People work too hard to make these, they pour their life into it. But that said, why do those who like it demand approval from those who feel worn out by it? People who are unahappy have just as much right to express that unhappiness as you do your enthusiasm for the game. It feels good to commiserate and know you are not the only one who felt that way.
Originally posted by Zeppelin4 Thanks for the laugh. I don't know why I laughed but I did so thanks. To your topic I have no idea though I did login the other day to transfer to a new server for a guild and couldn't because it was full The rest of the servers said full or high so not sure why your having a issue.
He is right tho. I logged in yesterday evening since a long time and pretty much all lower level zones are dead!
I was questing for about an hour or so, before I got totally bored again.... there was not a single player around. :-(
So it seems the game has already become top heavy and no new players joining anymore.
Top heavy? Kinda reminds me of Rift.
Yeah, except in my experience it took a year for Rift to get that way. It took GW2 about 2 months.
good point.
Nope - it took Rift 3 weeks to get that way but those players did leave not wanting to pay a sub for doing nothing for 9 months wiaiting for the first miniscule expansion. I was there at the beginning - it took one bloke 12 hrs to max out a character.
Do you really think server merges are the answer to having low population in low level areas? Most peoples alts have outlevelled that content. Merging servers would cause more problems than it would solve.
I am in 7 different guilds, each for their own aspect of the game, and the only one empty(as in, no one online) is the MMORPG.COM guild. Guess you guys like to hit it n quit it. but the pvp guild, spvp guild, pve guild, FOTM guilds(two guilds, one for lower levels one for higher) and dungeon guilds are full of people online(some repping, some not, but online)
I cant speak for server population, but my guilds are hopping along just fine, so to me, imo, game is fine.
They included all the best drop rates, content and gear into a single dungeon. Why go anywhere else? Devs shot themselves in the foot. Gonna be a while before it gets any better in the zones.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Originally posted by NaughtyP They included all the best drop rates, content and gear into a single dungeon. Why go anywhere else? Devs shot themselves in the foot. Gonna be a while before it gets any better in the zones.
Look at the date of the OP.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Originally posted by Kyleran Originally posted by Random_mage Wow, people are dense. Hes saying the lower level zones are empty and there needs to be a way to fix that. Dont be fooled by the full notice on the server status screen. It simply means the server is full, not active players, but full of accounts created. If the servers were full as stated, there may be a log in que, and we would get more notices that we could leave the overflow server. I havent gotten any of this, even though my server is full. Also, there is no longer a queue to enter the eternal battlegrounds, which is a nice, but goes to show that the server pops are down. Sorry, but its the truth.
It is surprising how many people are totally missing the OP's point, however there hasn't been a theme park game made that hasn't fallen prey to this particular issue.
About the only way to fix it is to figure out a way to get an influx of new players, I'd say the holidays will bring another round along with folks who may reroll an alt when they have some extra free time to play.
With most games it's a blessing for latecomers when the early zones thin out. GW2 mechanics turn very grindy when you don't have a zerg to play along with.
Comments
This thread made me laugh. On my server everyone is in higher level areas like Orr (crowed), trolling dragons, and WvWvW where there are always queues to get in certain areas ( mainly boarderlands we are taking over or EB)
The mid level zones are empty, cept for people mapping like me or grinding up for the first time. This was like that when I made it to those areas first go around since lots had already powerleved to 60+ doing dragons early on while i was just taking my time playing all the content in a zone.
Starter level areas, depends on the day.
The problem isn't population. The servers are packed pretty much constantly, even in the morning some servers are still full. The problem is its a giant game, with dozens of zones, multiples for each level range so people get spread out. It also becomes rather top heavy, with lvl 80's spending most their time in Arah, WvW or LA. There are generally plenty of chars in the 1-15 zones and decent amounts in the 15-25 zones, but after that things get spread out.
That said, I never have a problem finding enough poeple to do a Meta event, etc. Even some of the less played zones like Fields of Ruin, when the meta-events pop folks come out of the woodwork heh. I'm on Tarnished Coast though, one of the more populous servers, but even those reading High on a monday night shouldn't have much of a problem. Might help some folks if they joined a fairly sizable guild, so if they need help to complete an event there are folks who can help. But I find that even when /map chat is dead, there are still a few dozen folks around to do events, specially if you call them out. These are some of the biggest zones I've seen in an MMOG, so while you might only see 2 or 3 people while doing them there often are as many as several dozen in these less populated mid-lvl zones.
A tip as well for those on servers that seem 'dead' in the mid-lvl range. When choosing which zone to do next, go to one that has a really big meta-event, like a dragon. Bladeridge Steps (40-50) for The Shatterer. Sparkfly Fen (55-65) for Tequatl the Sunless, and Frostgorge Sound (70-80) for Claw of Jormag. Yes these are all 40+ zones but it doesn't take long at all to get to 40 and into one of these zones which 'always' have folks in them. Before 40 there are a few zones with popular Meta Events, like Harathi Hinterlands (35-45) with the Centaur chieftain in the NE of the zone.
So if you follow this lineup, you'll find plenty of folks from 1-80 (1-25 racial zones are always populated).
pls tell me the names of your spooky ghost servers - i wanna get ri of the overflow shit on my full server. oh wait. theyre all full. each and every zone. die more, GW2 ^^
So I just finished making 2 new characters. the first character went through the introductory story with 6 other people. The second one was only with 4 other people.
My thanks to everyone for sharing and I look forward to reading the post of all the honest people on future games as well !
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
I disagree with the entire post. Sorry. When I see posts like this I always have to wonder...
My playtime is often split between afternoon/prime time and late night. Things are fairly dead in most zones in the late night hours, but I haven't had any issues with dead zones any other time.
I almost exclusively lay PvE and am close to the 500 hour mark. I play the game more like a massively multiplayer Skyrim than the way I've played most other MMOs and am still having a blast. If you expect to play this like WoW or any other stale MMO, you may be disappointed. If you can learn to approach the game a little differently, the massive world space, content and freedom are actually a little overwhelming in their awesomeness.
BTW, even during my late night play, I have no issues. DEs scale pretty well and even in the late night hours, people do show up for the bigger events that require a group to complete. I think in ~500 hours I can count on one hand the number of times I have had to abandon a DE because I couldn't complete it alone and couldn't find enough allies to overcome the challenge.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
I liked this game at the beginning but I got bored of it rather quickly. It all felt a little repetitive maybe?
Logged in today after two weeks taking a break to check out what´s new, to my surprise the guild was down from about 140 players to 26.
Was a bit shocked what is going on. Guess I´m moving on too
Secrets of Dragon?s Spine Trailer.. !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwT9cFVQCMw
Best MMOs ever played: Ultima, EvE, SW Galaxies, Age of Conan, The Secret World
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I play on Ring of Fire (EU). Judging from WvW ranking, our server is probably one of less populated. My main playtime lately is spent by leveling alts. I can feel zones are emptier than before, but they are not ghost towns by any means. More often than not I do DEs with other players.
On the other note... It's normal for game at this stage to lose tons of players. These days many people will give up to the hype and go try a game they actually don't want to play (but everyone is going for it, so I must obey, huh?). After all pretty much everything they argue about is well known before GW2 even came out. They play for a month or two till they finally understand "this game is not for me". I think in about another month or two pupulation will stabilize, guilds will be merged and reformed and all will be fine. After that, maybe they will merge some servers or simply implement idea of "underflow servers".
Right now, you can move to different server at any point of time, it's not paid as in WoW and if you choose one of servers that rank fairly high in WvW, I'm sure there will be enough people playing.
After they do a free one and get rid of some the many unpopulated.
Yeah, except in my experience it took a year for Rift to get that way. It took GW2 about 2 months.
good point.
This guild population loss can be explained in a variety of ways besides the game losing players, in which case it largely isn't (despite what the trolls who haven't even played the game or played it for an hour when it first hit and think they know the game in and out). Free server transfers over the last two+ months have seen a tun of use, servers that are winning at WvW are typically bombarded with transfering players, thus those servers tend to be the most populated. I'm on Tarnished Coast and its about 50/50 that we win or lose and when we are winning it can go from no queues to hour long queues if we are winning and vice versa if we are not. Its frankly a little rediculous. Depending on your server, a loss in guild members could quite easily be associated with transfers. And of course poeple transfer for reasons not associated with WvW, I just wanted to point out that WvW transfers were a serious issue until recently.
Also, folks can join multiple guilds. I myself am in three. One is friends and two others are a PvE and WvW guild. I've joined plenty of others just to see if they are up my alley and I love that I can join one without leaving another generally, though if it doesn't work out, I leave. So a number of those losses could be folks who joined other guilds, liked them more and quit yours.
Last, while some of those losses may well be to folks leaving, it may well just be normal attrition. I've been in plenty of guilds in say WoW (which we know to be successful) that grew rapidly only to shrink back down in slow times, etc. So a guild loosing 3/5ths of their members can be explained in a myriad of ways besides just chalking it up to the game dying.
I just don't understand why so many want this game to fail and thankfully to their detriment, it isn't at all, but rather still growing. Top 10 PC game sales on Amazon.com, #3 top selling PC game in the UK.
What game did your guild move to, or was it one of those mass recruit on day one crap guilds? I mean, if it was actually a group of people that played together and had fun together, maybe there's a reason they forgot to send you the memo about leaving.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Was there an expectation that GW2 wouldn't get top heavy? Was there an expectation that the lower or middle tier content wouldn't empty out? This is going to happen in every game that has levels and gates content in some way between lower level and higher level players.
A server merge is not the answer because the total number of players isn't the issue. Somebody hit on the idea earlier that the opposite of the overflow queues is the way to go. Players are automagically merged onto servers that have higher populations in certain zones, similar to (or the same as) what Blizzard is doing with cross server zones.
Ideally you'd always have enough new players and enough players rolling alts to always have those zones filled, but that's an unrealistic expectation.
** edit **
I am a casual gamer, and it took me about 2 months to hit the level cap in Rift. There were far fewer players in the lower level zones by the time I hit level cap than there were when I started. Which again, is no surprise. How does this even rate a topic for a specific game. It's something that should be in the general MMORPG forums, with every other game that has level gated content.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You can't get the good rewards from lower zones.
But if you're having trouble getting parties, why are you not in a guild?
<Welcome to my world>
All of those might be true, but it is not my experience. My experience is people I know outside of the game, and trust me, they did not server transfer, leave the guild or anything else. They *left* the game. Of the 40 or so people who were regulars in the beginning in our guild, my wife and I are left, and we are on the way out soon. I know they left because I speak to them on the guild forums, and people say what they are going to do.
And by the way, this has happened in the other two guilds I joined when this one started to fade too.
Your points are valid, and they do account for some seeming decline in players, but anecdotally, this game is hemmoraging people from my perspective. They people I like ti play with are gone, and it leaves me with very little energy to look for more, to be honest.
Also, as for WoW a guild declining, ours did as well. The difference is, the same rate of decay was measured in months, and even years (three years before total collapse) and the same thing happened in GW2 with the same players in two months.
It was like watching the usual MMORPG guild life span with the fast forward button held down.
As to the sales numbers, they are what makes this game successful to Anet, but they have little meaning to my personal play experience. Those new players come and go, fading away like the others. For the people I play with, this game simply has no longevity.
I do not want the game to fail, I would never wish that on any game. People work too hard to make these, they pour their life into it. But that said, why do those who like it demand approval from those who feel worn out by it? People who are unahappy have just as much right to express that unhappiness as you do your enthusiasm for the game. It feels good to commiserate and know you are not the only one who felt that way.
Nope - it took Rift 3 weeks to get that way but those players did leave not wanting to pay a sub for doing nothing for 9 months wiaiting for the first miniscule expansion. I was there at the beginning - it took one bloke 12 hrs to max out a character.
<Welcome to my world>
I am in 7 different guilds, each for their own aspect of the game, and the only one empty(as in, no one online) is the MMORPG.COM guild. Guess you guys like to hit it n quit it. but the pvp guild, spvp guild, pve guild, FOTM guilds(two guilds, one for lower levels one for higher) and dungeon guilds are full of people online(some repping, some not, but online)
I cant speak for server population, but my guilds are hopping along just fine, so to me, imo, game is fine.
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Look at the date of the OP.
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About the only way to fix it is to figure out a way to get an influx of new players, I'd say the holidays will bring another round along with folks who may reroll an alt when they have some extra free time to play.
With most games it's a blessing for latecomers when the early zones thin out. GW2 mechanics turn very grindy when you don't have a zerg to play along with.