It's an extremely casual friendly paradise mmo and B2P. It will never retain the 3 million people who bought it. As people played and got to end game they had nothing to do. The hard core pvpers moved on.. the raid crowd moved on...the sandboxers moved on..etc It just doesn't have staying power to keep millions playing. At best, a few hundred thousand devoted fans will stay for a while once more and more mmos in 2013 come out.
Since I like to be fair, I feel I should admit I was wrong about GW2 and the level of success it would enjoy.
I honestly expected the game would be all but dead ~3-4 months post release in terms of player activity and forum interest. I thought most people would be fed up with it - and I expected it to be much less of a success than it seems to have become. Now, I never expected failure - definitely not, but I thought it would be facing a widespread and heavy backlash right around now.
I'm not personally into the game - and I have a lot of bad things I could say about it, but I will spare you the negativity in this thread. It seems my tastes are, indeed, merely my tastes - and they obviously don't apply to as many people as I expected.
All I can say is that I was wrong - and I'm happy that so many people are enjoying a new and shiny MMO, even months after release. I'm sure we'd all love to have that feeling - and I'm envious of it.
Anyway, congratulations to ANet and the people playing GW2!
I appreciate your post and your ability to recognize that though GW2 doesn't suit your tastes, many others are still enthusiastically playing this game.
My server is so popular that we're listed as "full" most times of the day and it's difficult for new people to join this server. I just voluntarily participated in a 30 minute "black-out period" in an attempt to allow more people to transfer to my server who wish to join us in WvW. What's prompting this is that free server transfers end in less than a week.
It's an extremely casual friendly paradise mmo and B2P. It will never retain the 3 million people who bought it. As people played and got to end game they had nothing to do. The hard core pvpers moved on.. the raid crowd moved on...the sandboxers moved on..etc It just doesn't have staying power to keep millions playing. At best, a few hundred thousand devoted fans will stay for a while once more and more mmos in 2013 come out.
Name one MMO that has manage to retain ALL who bought it.
if it got sub I'll stop playing by now or even after box sub got over; but it b2p, so no reason to stop.
for p2p it will be fail, but as it b2p it may look like a success. Only to be honest, and I don't want to troll, I would prefer to play next x-pack of GW1.
The BEST reason to stop playing a game is because you don't find it fun anymore or you have something against the company. I won't tell you how to use your time, but if you're spending it on "nothing much" than that says enough
I guess my question is what defines 'success' in this context? Who decides how it is derived?
Success in general is subjective (unless you pull in financials which I dont think anyone has the actual numbers here) -- so hard to see how you could argue one way or another effectively?
But more importantly - why does it matter? It has nothing to do with liking/disliking the game.
The success is defined by those that made the project.
Success is NOT subjective term IF you have clearly defined goals.
If success is subjective then you dont know what your goals are and is a sure way to failure, because you can define success or failure to whatever you want (and that is a failure in itself).
Example (once again): WoW is a failure because it has gnomes OR WoW is success because it has gnomes.
Subjectively proclaiming game "success" or "failure" is laughable.
Originally posted by Tayah
It's an extremely casual friendly paradise mmo and B2P. It will never retain the 3 million people who bought it. As people played and got to end game they had nothing to do. The hard core pvpers moved on.. the raid crowd moved on...the sandboxers moved on..etc It just doesn't have staying power to keep millions playing. At best, a few hundred thousand devoted fans will stay for a while once more and more mmos in 2013 come out.
Soooo, if the game doesnt please every single soul that tried it and has 100% retention its failure? Really?
And hardcore PvPers didnt leave. Youre very wrong on that one.
It probably only has about 500K-800K players actively playing. That is a success but far from what most thought. It sold 3Million and only retained a 3rd of its client base so to me that = failure.
Honestly curious of where you pulled that number out of...
It is completely made up. Considering that GW2 doesn't use some technical marvel it should follow the same lines as other games.
3000 - 4000 is normally considered full load for populations.
GW2 has 51 servers and that puts you at 150k - 200k users, but we will give GW2 the benefit of the doubt and say all their servers are really active. This puts us at an active user base of 300k.
Obviously not an accurate number, but one that uses some sort of reference point.
It probably only has about 500K-800K players actively playing. That is a success but far from what most thought. It sold 3Million and only retained a 3rd of its client base so to me that = failure.
Honestly curious of where you pulled that number out of...
It is completely made up. Considering that GW2 doesn't use some technical marvel it should follow the same lines as other games.
3000 - 4000 is normally considered full load for populations.
GW2 has 51 servers and that puts you at 150k - 200k users, but we will give GW2 the benefit of the doubt and say all their servers are really active. This puts us at an active user base of 300k.
Obviously not an accurate number, but one that uses some sort of reference point.
1. It uses overflow so it can actually hold more people than what cap is.
2. Concurent users are far in numbers from active useres
3. You have no numbers as well as person who posted his, so your numbers are no more or less correct than his ;P
Ignoring the suspicious "facts" being thrown around in the thread, I have to say thank you to the OP. Sarcastic or sincere, you're right about one thing... a lot of people feel that their interest in MMO's has been restored with this game, myself included, and that's what I want everyone to feel too. There are even people that love MMOs that I hate, but so what? We're all on one side or the other to someone else.
I didn't mean to suggest it was a huge success - but simply a success.
There's no way it's not a success with the amount of attention and forum activity we're seeing still.
As for numbers, I have no idea - and it's obvious that the amount isn't too impressive - or ArenaNet would have made them public.
But given my opinion about the game and its design - I honestly didn't expect this level of continued dedication by fans. They very clearly struck a chord with a significant segment of the gaming populace - and that's not a trivial accomplishment.
This forum is and has always been a breeding place for GW2 fanbois, which are the most obnoxiously loyal group of fanbois ive seen in gaming in 15 years. The game could be a steaming pile of dung and the GW2 forums would still be flush with activity. I wouldn't consider forum activity a sign of anything here... In some cases it might even be a bad sign.
but yeah, 3 million copies sold is nothing to sneeze at, and the game's not bad... Even if I personally can't get into it. It's real saving grace is that it never adopted a subscription, otherwise it would have fell flat on its face like the rest.
i think it would have did extremely well if that had been smart enough to have a proper PvP infrastructure and ELO system in at launch. I think they really blew it on that one. The games PvP is a lot of fun.
Quite the opposite. This forum is a breeding ground for sandbox hipsters, who are so cool that the games they want to play don't even exist yet.
GW2 is the latest themepark success, and has consequently drawn the ire of these hipsters / trolls.
Since I like to be fair, I feel I should admit I was wrong about GW2 and the level of success it would enjoy.
I honestly expected the game would be all but dead ~3-4 months post release in terms of player activity and forum interest. I thought most people would be fed up with it - and I expected it to be much less of a success than it seems to have become. Now, I never expected failure - definitely not, but I thought it would be facing a widespread and heavy backlash right around now.
I'm not personally into the game - and I have a lot of bad things I could say about it, but I will spare you the negativity in this thread. It seems my tastes are, indeed, merely my tastes - and they obviously don't apply to as many people as I expected.
All I can say is that I was wrong - and I'm happy that so many people are enjoying a new and shiny MMO, even months after release. I'm sure we'd all love to have that feeling - and I'm envious of it.
Anyway, congratulations to ANet and the people playing GW2!
It probably only has about 500K-800K players actively playing. That is a success but far from what most thought. It sold 3Million and only retained a 3rd of its client base so to me that = failure.
They do not have sub, so how you got info how many are "actively" playing? I might play every day, but maybe few days not. So ... where do I fit here? Btw, wherever I go in this big world, there is always somebody there and de are not such big problem for lack of players (compared i.e. to Rift).
It's an extremely casual friendly paradise mmo and B2P. It will never retain the 3 million people who bought it. As people played and got to end game they had nothing to do. The hard core pvpers moved on.. the raid crowd moved on...the sandboxers moved on..etc It just doesn't have staying power to keep millions playing. At best, a few hundred thousand devoted fans will stay for a while once more and more mmos in 2013 come out.
Ohhh how I wish I could be like you and so many others who post on the GW2 forum here. I wish I could just spew complete bullshit and frame it as facts, so nonchalantly at that. I wish I could do it and still feel good about myself.
And for all those people who keep talking about GW2 being a casual paradise or having a low skill cap (boxsnd and others). You have to be aware you are confusing "skill cap" with your own personal low "skill ceiling." Just thought you should know.
One of the GW2 devs just said recently on MMOFTW live that they were seeing a rise in player activity, not a decrease. So your assumption that they have 500k-800k active users is likely poppycock. Truth is we don't know what the numbers are. But the servers, from what i've seen, have been consistantly busy as all heck since launch.
It is a huge project that involve us basically rewriting the entire way how models and assets load.
Jan update is our first major improvement – models that appear near you will first be a low res model that act as a placeholder until the whole character is loaded in. This will fix those “invisible” characters that appear next to you that some of you are currently experiencing.
Next major step is how do we show more models and more things happening on screen. We are doing a lot of internal testing and it is looking very promising.
We are going to stay away from doing massive open world events with hundreds of people until we get culling fixed.
AoEs in WvW
Guys working on skll balance are still trying to decide what to do. Some of it will be going through and evaluating all the AoEs in the game and trying to pick out a couple that are over the top and making some tweaks.
We don’t want AoEs to be as strong or more powerful than a single target damage spell in the same amount of time when it has the capacity to hit 5 people instead of 1.
There are some skills right now that you always use no matter what and they are not necessarily situational or you time them properly. We want there to be a lot of tactics and thought that goes into the things that you do. That will be part of the strategy when we look through the AoE skills.
We don’t want to make them useless, we just want to make them working as intended and we noticed that there are a couple right now that are not.
Bunker Elementalist on your watchlist – what does it mean?
Watchlist means we are seeing it as a very common build. This warrants the discussion is this the meta that we want to have right now. Is it fun to play as, is it fun to play against? If the answer is yes to both, then we don’t change it. If it is no, then we will take a look at it and tweak it a little bit.
If it is not fun to play as, and play against, is probably something we don’t want to see in our game.
Watchlist means someone is sitting around watch people playing Ele bunker 24/7.
Engineer feels weak compared to my guardian – what classes are the team looking to tweak?
(Host) – Engineer Grenade build was on the watch list before and it was changed accordingly. To be fair, the engineer is still awesome with the grenade build. (Colin) – yes that is what I run on my character and I agree.
We are looking at all professions at all times, we try not to just look at a single profession at any one time. That is a really dangerous thing to do and you are not look how it affects the entire game.
The guardian is intended to be meaty-tough, engineer is more for people who are looking to play with versatility, tricks, and gadgets. If there is something on engineer we need to tweak, we will take a look at it.
In GW2, the 8 professions are very closely split between the game population, which you don’t see in a lot of other games.
Most popular race is human? Yea, same with all other MMOs with humans – the most popular race is human. Lowest played race in GW2 is the Charr.
this part about eng makes me laugh - nade eng a nice build?! was average after jughernaught nerf but hey who play crappy dmg grenades?? and almost fail to hit cause the grenades are so slow landing, come on im playing WxWxW most of the time and i see more or less no nades around, (i have 1 engºand 1 necro L80 full soldier/carrion/zerker exotic), and engº and necros are by far the less played class's on WxWxW , ele's by other side are 50% from WxWxW population right now, cause they survive as no other class they are OP abused on Downed state, they have lots of combos/stuns/knock backs as no other class and guess what they have 100's of boons and the best AoE's from the game so who needs another class (ok mesmers and thiefs are needed too, for mass port culling).
Conclusion , i need lot's of hours to develop my skill with eng and necro and still they are average, eng as ultra might rifle 4 elixir's build and necro as master corruption build ( only builds viable to play WxWxW), they really need to fix classes and please we can live with some OP features from Eles but not all those features.
Originally posted by Fendel84M One of the GW2 devs just said recently on MMOFTW live that they were seeing a rise in player activity, not a decrease. So your assumption that they have 500k-800k active users is likely poppycock. Truth is we don't know what the numbers are. But the servers, from what i've seen, have been consistantly busy as all heck since launch.
Awesome, I figured things were improv....... I mean... DOOM! DOOOOOOM! ALL IS LOST! BURN THE HERETIC!
I'm actually seeing more people playing mid and lower levels zones lately. Not sure if it's because of new players or everyone is running around trying to find where this new "ghost town" is.
EDIT: take care Bachus, sorry I missed your thread.
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.
It probably only has about 500K-800K players actively playing. That is a success but far from what most thought. It sold 3Million and only retained a 3rd of its client base so to me that = failure.
Honestly curious of where you pulled that number out of...
It is completely made up. Considering that GW2 doesn't use some technical marvel it should follow the same lines as other games.
3000 - 4000 is normally considered full load for populations.
GW2 has 51 servers and that puts you at 150k - 200k users, but we will give GW2 the benefit of the doubt and say all their servers are really active. This puts us at an active user base of 300k.
Obviously not an accurate number, but one that uses some sort of reference point.
Sorry, but that math doesn't apply to GW2, at all. GW2 has a massive game world, so physically it can sustain more players. Each zone is it's own virtual space and all the zones that make up a "shard" may be spread across many physical servers. Then GW2 also offers overflow servers if a particular zone reaches a population cap.
The cap per zone is limited technically. The ability to spawn overflow servers ensures that the technical limit is not an absolute limit. Each shard can always accomodate more players when need be. Thus, the server caps that Arenanet are setting for a server to be considered "full" are not based on the normal technical limits, or even due to limited worldspace. I'd assume that the numbers are adjusted to try to ensure that the need for overflow servers is minimized. Overflow servers are a great alternative to server queues, but they do fragment the population, so balance needs to be struck.
The point is that the absolute limits per server are likely much higher than the genre average, caps based on desired player density aside from technical limits are higher as a result of the massive world space and trying to apply industry average server capacities to GW2 is absolutely pointless.
When guesting and paid server transfers are instituted later this month, server caps will likely become moot. Paid server transfers will be priced based on how full a particular server is and may become the only mechanism to limit populations on a given server. (I'd love to see the free market twist expanded to actually pay players to transfer to an underpopulated server, but it remains to be seen if Arenanet will go that far).
There is, of course, still a limit based on physical server capacity, but that seems to be a cap on players per data center, rather than per shard and that capacity can be increased as needed. As average play hours have settled into a more sustainable range for an established MMO, it's actually very likely that the number of accounts per server have increased substantially since launch and probably will be able to increase a bit more before they would ever need to add new shards. We can not even assume a "churn rate" equivalent based on the number of new box sales that occur with out an increase in the number of shards, due to the way that GW2's server structure is managed.
Comments
It's an extremely casual friendly paradise mmo and B2P. It will never retain the 3 million people who bought it. As people played and got to end game they had nothing to do. The hard core pvpers moved on.. the raid crowd moved on...the sandboxers moved on..etc It just doesn't have staying power to keep millions playing. At best, a few hundred thousand devoted fans will stay for a while once more and more mmos in 2013 come out.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
I appreciate your post and your ability to recognize that though GW2 doesn't suit your tastes, many others are still enthusiastically playing this game.
My server is so popular that we're listed as "full" most times of the day and it's difficult for new people to join this server. I just voluntarily participated in a 30 minute "black-out period" in an attempt to allow more people to transfer to my server who wish to join us in WvW. What's prompting this is that free server transfers end in less than a week.
Hero Evermore
Guild Master of Dragonspine since 1982.
Playing Path of Exile and deeply in love with it.
Name one MMO that has manage to retain ALL who bought it.
That's right captain obvious....none.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
The BEST reason to stop playing a game is because you don't find it fun anymore or you have something against the company. I won't tell you how to use your time, but if you're spending it on "nothing much" than that says enough
for me gw2 is still my number one mmo atm
at xmas i took a break as i had been playing it constant since release
i bought the secret world what a mistake i dont think ive played 10 hours its only after buying the seccret world i relise how good gw2 really is
ive also been playing dishonored and a few other games i bought over xmas
but in the last week or so ive gone back to gw2 and its still as good as the day i bought it
The success is defined by those that made the project.
Success is NOT subjective term IF you have clearly defined goals.
If success is subjective then you dont know what your goals are and is a sure way to failure, because you can define success or failure to whatever you want (and that is a failure in itself).
Example (once again): WoW is a failure because it has gnomes OR WoW is success because it has gnomes.
Subjectively proclaiming game "success" or "failure" is laughable.
Soooo, if the game doesnt please every single soul that tried it and has 100% retention its failure? Really?
And hardcore PvPers didnt leave. Youre very wrong on that one.
It is completely made up. Considering that GW2 doesn't use some technical marvel it should follow the same lines as other games.
3000 - 4000 is normally considered full load for populations.
GW2 has 51 servers and that puts you at 150k - 200k users, but we will give GW2 the benefit of the doubt and say all their servers are really active. This puts us at an active user base of 300k.
Obviously not an accurate number, but one that uses some sort of reference point.
1. It uses overflow so it can actually hold more people than what cap is.
2. Concurent users are far in numbers from active useres
3. You have no numbers as well as person who posted his, so your numbers are no more or less correct than his ;P
Ignoring the suspicious "facts" being thrown around in the thread, I have to say thank you to the OP. Sarcastic or sincere, you're right about one thing... a lot of people feel that their interest in MMO's has been restored with this game, myself included, and that's what I want everyone to feel too. There are even people that love MMOs that I hate, but so what? We're all on one side or the other to someone else.
Quite the opposite. This forum is a breeding ground for sandbox hipsters, who are so cool that the games they want to play don't even exist yet.
GW2 is the latest themepark success, and has consequently drawn the ire of these hipsters / trolls.
They do not have sub, so how you got info how many are "actively" playing? I might play every day, but maybe few days not. So ... where do I fit here? Btw, wherever I go in this big world, there is always somebody there and de are not such big problem for lack of players (compared i.e. to Rift).
I see gw2 only as success.
Ohhh how I wish I could be like you and so many others who post on the GW2 forum here. I wish I could just spew complete bullshit and frame it as facts, so nonchalantly at that. I wish I could do it and still feel good about myself.
And for all those people who keep talking about GW2 being a casual paradise or having a low skill cap (boxsnd and others). You have to be aware you are confusing "skill cap" with your own personal low "skill ceiling." Just thought you should know.
this part about eng makes me laugh - nade eng a nice build?! was average after jughernaught nerf but hey who play crappy dmg grenades?? and almost fail to hit cause the grenades are so slow landing, come on im playing WxWxW most of the time and i see more or less no nades around, (i have 1 engºand 1 necro L80 full soldier/carrion/zerker exotic), and engº and necros are by far the less played class's on WxWxW , ele's by other side are 50% from WxWxW population right now, cause they survive as no other class they are OP abused on Downed state, they have lots of combos/stuns/knock backs as no other class and guess what they have 100's of boons and the best AoE's from the game so who needs another class (ok mesmers and thiefs are needed too, for mass port culling).
Conclusion , i need lot's of hours to develop my skill with eng and necro and still they are average, eng as ultra might rifle 4 elixir's build and necro as master corruption build ( only builds viable to play WxWxW), they really need to fix classes and please we can live with some OP features from Eles but not all those features.
Awesome, I figured things were improv....... I mean... DOOM! DOOOOOOM! ALL IS LOST! BURN THE HERETIC!
I'm actually seeing more people playing mid and lower levels zones lately. Not sure if it's because of new players or everyone is running around trying to find where this new "ghost town" is.
EDIT: take care Bachus, sorry I missed your thread.
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.
Sorry, but that math doesn't apply to GW2, at all. GW2 has a massive game world, so physically it can sustain more players. Each zone is it's own virtual space and all the zones that make up a "shard" may be spread across many physical servers. Then GW2 also offers overflow servers if a particular zone reaches a population cap.
The cap per zone is limited technically. The ability to spawn overflow servers ensures that the technical limit is not an absolute limit. Each shard can always accomodate more players when need be. Thus, the server caps that Arenanet are setting for a server to be considered "full" are not based on the normal technical limits, or even due to limited worldspace. I'd assume that the numbers are adjusted to try to ensure that the need for overflow servers is minimized. Overflow servers are a great alternative to server queues, but they do fragment the population, so balance needs to be struck.
The point is that the absolute limits per server are likely much higher than the genre average, caps based on desired player density aside from technical limits are higher as a result of the massive world space and trying to apply industry average server capacities to GW2 is absolutely pointless.
When guesting and paid server transfers are instituted later this month, server caps will likely become moot. Paid server transfers will be priced based on how full a particular server is and may become the only mechanism to limit populations on a given server. (I'd love to see the free market twist expanded to actually pay players to transfer to an underpopulated server, but it remains to be seen if Arenanet will go that far).
There is, of course, still a limit based on physical server capacity, but that seems to be a cap on players per data center, rather than per shard and that capacity can be increased as needed. As average play hours have settled into a more sustainable range for an established MMO, it's actually very likely that the number of accounts per server have increased substantially since launch and probably will be able to increase a bit more before they would ever need to add new shards. We can not even assume a "churn rate" equivalent based on the number of new box sales that occur with out an increase in the number of shards, due to the way that GW2's server structure is managed.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
