I've only ever seen one post by anyone from ANET that was written vaguely and could be interpreted in various ways? Was there other info was released on how server populations are determined? Blackout manipulations are fine in that you can say it appears to be a factor, but it doesn't rule out the possibility that the number of players who have a server as Home is not a factor as well. In which case, increasing the population caps can also be indicative of a decline in players.
And none of it is absolutely verifiable with anything that I've seen currently released. Which is why I asked for any other info.
Eh... what? ... OK, I think I caught up. Here's the skinny. If it were based on the number of players calling the server home then the value would never decrease over a short period of time. Why? No subscription, all accounts are always considered active. Agreed? Now, it's observed that the status can go from Full to Very High and back to Full again after a short period of time. By organizing a blackout event, i.e. a player driven event where a significant portion of the WvW community logs off at the same time, we've been able to drop the server status from Full to Very High long enough for guilds to transfer a number of their players to JQ. At a point the status flips back to Full, the event is over and we schedule one again for the next day or so. This would be impossible if status was tied to home population and strongly indicates that it's tied directly to actual logged in population.
And no... Gaffney went to Carbine in 2007, had nothing to do with hiring GW2 staff. He managed the acquisition of ArenaNet and Guild Wars way back when but had nothing to do with hiring.
And no... Gaffney went to Carbine in 2007, had nothing to do with hiring GW2 staff. He managed the acquisition of ArenaNet and Guild Wars way back when but had nothing to do with hiring.
You do realize that most of the leads behind GW1 worked in GW2 right? Did I mention GW2 had subs? Where did I mentione that? That point was to show that you don't take devs at their word. They will obviously bend the truth to help their game. We need to see actual data not PR talk.
And no... Gaffney went to Carbine in 2007, had nothing to do with hiring GW2 staff. He managed the acquisition of ArenaNet and Guild Wars way back when but had nothing to do with hiring.
You do realize that most of the leads behind GW1 worked in GW2 right? Did I mention GW2 had subs? Where did I mentione that? That point was to show that you don't take devs at their word. They will obviously bend the truth to help their game. We need to see actual data not PR talk.
Maybe most of the leads in GW1 worked in GW2, but most of the people working in GW2 did not work on GW1. As a matter of fact, they're still hiring people, a year out. Besides, you missed the point... he had nothing to do with hiring them. He managed the acquisition of the company (and others) for NCSoft.
We've already acknowledged that the status doesn't tell us the actual number of people (simply because we don't know the number). That's a fact, as you've stated and we all recognize. However, the fact that they're increasing the caps on the servers and the servers keep growing IS an indicator of a growing population of players in GW2. It's established that the status represents the number of players logged on at that point in time, as demonstrated by the value fluctuating and the fact that the communities can manipulate it with blackout events in order to squeeze more guilds onto a full server. Based on this observed phenomena we can state the relevance of the status to population.
It doesn't tell us numbers. It does tell us trends.
Trend: A pattern of gradual change in a condition, output, or process, or an average or general tendency of a series of data points to move in a certain direction over time, represented by a line or curve on a graph.
There is nothing i've seen indicating increased server caps. Pin point an exact location of such a topic and maybe I can believe it, and I don't mean 'word of mouth' since obviously other games like SWTOR did that with the 'super server' detail to elude to the fact servers were diminishing and they were trying to compress servers and make it appear as if it was. Hell, a large variety of large titles do this to make its popularity look greater then it is. The only way you can legitamently say it, is if you either
A.) See actually statistical proof from the company detailing the number of players on THEIR CHARTS, not just public released snip its with generalized numbers that can easily be manipulated by advertisement.
B.) Rather then 'claim' its growning, maybe state an observation, one NOT reliant on the word full and maybe say "I've seen a lot more people playing around in the game around me" or something of that nature, which doesn't prove anything and really doesn't warrant a topic (I really feel NO thread regarding population growing or shrinking is a good topic, its often just blatant advertising/flaming of a game).
It... does nothing. Its just blatent advertisement on your part. You say you aren't doing something using a 'figure' that doesn't prove anything... yet then... you immediately use it....
Eh I'll leave you be. Have fun on your rampant fanboi rant. When you get more sense feel free to make an actual meaninful thread and actually argue why people should join GW2 instead of throwing together a makeshift topic like this as 'proof' without any proof, then i would be more then happy to argue why the game isn't good. I'm not into having things manipulated to fit your needs to 'prove' something you are so desperate to prove.
Again, you are just making it look as if the game is doing poorly by doing stuff like this, even though it might not be doing bad at all.
Again, you are just making it look as if the game is doing poorly by doing stuff like this, even though it might not be doing bad at all.
Bingo. But it is to be expected from fans of a game. It happens with every game from AoC, WAR to SWTOR and GW2.
As it's also expected for those that prefer to troll games they don't even play to deny facts presented to them that somehow reflect positively on the game. Happens with every game as well.
"Full" means nothing. ANET could set 300 concurrent players = Full and call it a day. I didn't believe it when SWTOR and Rift did it, I don't believe it when WoW does it.
I play on a server that is labeled "Medium" in WoW and I barely see any 90s on either faction. I played on a "Very High" server in SWTOR and the population was dead. I have characters on a "High" server in GW2 and rarely see anyone in the main city (HoD).
Look at the sales report, NCSoft released today, based on that GW2 is dropping steadily. In fact, today's Q2 '13 report showed a 20%+ drop in sales from the previous quarter. And 80% drop in sales from the quarter before that.
The game is not gaining people as much as it is losing, which means a net loss. It isn't 5 or 10% its 20%+. The game is declining not growing like the devs want you to believe.
When fans of the game try to tell people the game is not dying, you know there is a problem.
Most of these new quarter sales are micro transactions vs box sales of the first 2 quarters - hence the 80% drop since that quarter, 4Q12, had something like 2 million boxes sales.
I really like GW2 but I'm not buying a GW2 box every quarter.
There was also a big microtransaction sale in March 2013.
If everyone was dumping €15 a month in the game it would have around 650k+ subscriptions.
I doubt most are doing that.
So, yeah, opposed to games where you have a sub, you can't say a loss in sales is equal to a player loss, because there is only so much stuff you can buy from the store (bank slots, character slots, bag slots) and the non permanent stuff (like golem bankers, boosters) or RNG (loot boxes) won't attract certain segments of the population.
GW2 made over $240M in something like 10 months, far outselling GW1.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Again, you are just making it look as if the game is doing poorly by doing stuff like this, even though it might not be doing bad at all.
Bingo. But it is to be expected from fans of a game. It happens with every game from AoC, WAR to SWTOR and GW2.
As it's also expected for those that prefer to troll games they don't even play to deny facts presented to them that somehow reflect positively on the game. Happens with every game as well.
I would love to see actual facts. But I haven't seen anything.
Again, you are just making it look as if the game is doing poorly by doing stuff like this, even though it might not be doing bad at all.
Bingo. But it is to be expected from fans of a game. It happens with every game from AoC, WAR to SWTOR and GW2.
As it's also expected for those that prefer to troll games they don't even play to deny facts presented to them that somehow reflect positively on the game. Happens with every game as well.
I would love to see actual facts. But I haven't seen anything.
Again, you are just making it look as if the game is doing poorly by doing stuff like this, even though it might not be doing bad at all.
Bingo. But it is to be expected from fans of a game. It happens with every game from AoC, WAR to SWTOR and GW2.
As it's also expected for those that prefer to troll games they don't even play to deny facts presented to them that somehow reflect positively on the game. Happens with every game as well.
I would love to see actual facts. But I haven't seen anything.
Ah, see that? Right on cue, denial.
No I am being serious. I would like to see some sort of concrete data.
Again, not scientific at all, but that coupled with indicators from other sources, NCSoft financials, press reports, etc. give me every reason to believe this is one of the most successful releases since WoW and that it is growing, even if that growth is modest, it seems consistent.
But the NCSoft report don't show a sales growth. One was released just today. Sales for ANet were down 20% from the previous quarter. And it would be safe to assume it will drop again during Q3 '13 mainly due to increased competition.
Also, their payment model is not as friendly as F2P. F2P has less barrier to entry. When GW1 launched it could stand on its payment model, the market has changed. Now most games even good ones are all F2P/B2P.
Again, not scientific at all, but that coupled with indicators from other sources, NCSoft financials, press reports, etc. give me every reason to believe this is one of the most successful releases since WoW and that it is growing, even if that growth is modest, it seems consistent.
But the NCSoft report don't show a sales growth. One was released just today. Sales for ANet were down 20% from the previous quarter. And it would be safe to assume it will drop again during Q3 '13 mainly due to increased competition.
Also, their payment model is not as friendly as F2P. F2P has less barrier to entry. When GW1 launched it could stand on its payment model, the market has changed. Now most games even good ones are all F2P/B2P.
Not if GW2 release in Asia.
And GW2 made a bunch more money than GW1 and that is 10 months vs 8 years.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
not really just people that used to play 3-4 month after release came back same for me i just play the living world ,see what offer and what i tem im going for it then log out after few minutes not even an hour of gameplay ,the game offer nothing new ATM only cosmetic stuff . for that reason im moving to ff14 till anet trow some expantion so ican play a month and finish all again ;/ then came back to FF .
Again, not scientific at all, but that coupled with indicators from other sources, NCSoft financials, press reports, etc. give me every reason to believe this is one of the most successful releases since WoW and that it is growing, even if that growth is modest, it seems consistent.
But the NCSoft report don't show a sales growth. One was released just today. Sales for ANet were down 20% from the previous quarter. And it would be safe to assume it will drop again during Q3 '13 mainly due to increased competition.
Also, their payment model is not as friendly as F2P. F2P has less barrier to entry. When GW1 launched it could stand on its payment model, the market has changed. Now most games even good ones are all F2P/B2P.
You do understand that you can sell less than the prior quarter and still see the population increase, yes?
Originally posted by Volkon Now we're up to at least four FULL servers again. A few months back they boosted the server caps when eight or so wound up full, and the eyes of any dedicated WvW players will assure you they've never been reduced. This is definitely a good sign for the game, but sadly it also means if we want to squeeze more guilds in for WvW on JQ we'll have to organize black out events again, or possibly find times it dips to very high as time zones log off...
Maybe it is supposed to appear to be growing.
Have they published any numbers related to population or server caps? What number does "FULL" stand for? What about 3, 6, 9 months ago?
I thought they publish only financial info as they are obliged to by law.
Maybe its population is really growing which would be great for the game and its community, but it is not possible to determine with practically no information besides server status which noone but ANET knows what it stands for.
Scepticism is not necessarily a bad thing you know.
Like I'd mentioned before, we don't know what "Full" means as a number. However, there are a few things we do know...
1. The population is based on people logged on to the server at that point in time. The fact that server populations can fluctuate over the course of a day shows that, as do the fact that "blackout events" work to manipulate the population shown. Wrong
2. They've been increasing the amount of people allowed per server over time, at least three times that I can recall. The most recent took us from something like eight full servers and the rest very high to having a bunch fall to medium and the fullest ones very high. If they can increase server capacity they can reduce capacity as well, to make the game appear, 'fuller', then it is in comparison to before. It's a marketing tool to save face, which they borrowed for Fun.com when AOC started tanking
3. They've never decreased the population caps on the servers. Believe me, the WvW crowd, especially the Tier one crowd, would notice this and scream bloody murder. The answer to this is in the above link as well but the simple fact is that noone in WvWvW woiuld notice if there was a decrease due to the above stated reasons.
So based on observation in lieu of actual numbers we still can see that the overall population of the game is indeed growing. I think it was Blackgate to be the first to recently hit Full again, then TC, followed by SoR and JQ... that order may not be 100% accurate, but it gives a visual of the growth. All of this is based on your undying need to validate your chosen love of ANET to internet people on this forum. You have no clue and nor do I. The only real way to check success if through annual reports, but I'm sure if they come back positive you'll be the first one to tell us all about it..
Nothing conclusive. Just 2 sides to yes it works, no it doesn't and a bunch of reasons but nothing that explains what mechanics are involved. At least, nothnig official. Although, I do believe they happened and that people were able to move at that time. I just think there is more to it.
Nothing conclusive. Just 2 sides to yes it works, no it doesn't and a bunch of reasons but nothing that explains what mechanics are involved. At least, nothnig official. Although, I do believe they happened and that people were able to move at that time. I just think there is more to it.
Originally posted by Volkon Now we're up to at least four FULL servers again. A few months back they boosted the server caps when eight or so wound up full, and the eyes of any dedicated WvW players will assure you they've never been reduced. This is definitely a good sign for the game, but sadly it also means if we want to squeeze more guilds in for WvW on JQ we'll have to organize black out events again, or possibly find times it dips to very high as time zones log off...
Maybe it is supposed to appear to be growing.
Have they published any numbers related to population or server caps? What number does "FULL" stand for? What about 3, 6, 9 months ago?
I thought they publish only financial info as they are obliged to by law.
Maybe its population is really growing which would be great for the game and its community, but it is not possible to determine with practically no information besides server status which noone but ANET knows what it stands for.
Scepticism is not necessarily a bad thing you know.
Like I'd mentioned before, we don't know what "Full" means as a number. However, there are a few things we do know...
1. The population is based on people logged on to the server at that point in time. The fact that server populations can fluctuate over the course of a day shows that, as do the fact that "blackout events" work to manipulate the population shown. Wrong
Eh... what's wrong? It's a demonstrated fact that blackout events work to manipulate the server status.
2. They've been increasing the amount of people allowed per server over time, at least three times that I can recall. The most recent took us from something like eight full servers and the rest very high to having a bunch fall to medium and the fullest ones very high. If they can increase server capacity they can reduce capacity as well, to make the game appear, 'fuller', then it is in comparison to before. It's a marketing tool to save face, which they borrowed for Fun.com when AOC started tanking
Actually they couldn't. Accounts are still tied to the servers whether or not people are playing them, so reducing the cap puts them at risk of people trying to come back later and blowing things up.
3. They've never decreased the population caps on the servers. Believe me, the WvW crowd, especially the Tier one crowd, would notice this and scream bloody murder. The answer to this is in the above link as well but the simple fact is that noone in WvWvW woiuld notice if there was a decrease due to the above stated reasons.
That's a lie. It would be noticed because it would affect the flow of players.
So based on observation in lieu of actual numbers we still can see that the overall population of the game is indeed growing. I think it was Blackgate to be the first to recently hit Full again, then TC, followed by SoR and JQ... that order may not be 100% accurate, but it gives a visual of the growth. All of this is based on your undying need to validate your chosen love of ANET to internet people on this forum. You have no clue and nor do I. The only real way to check success if through annual reports, but I'm sure if they come back positive you'll be the first one to tell us all about it..
It's based on observation. We've seen cap increases, we've seen blackout events, we've seen servers refill as more people come in.
GW2 is a B2P game. GW2 earned steadily much more than 5% of its initial sales every month. By your oversimplfied argument alone, GW2 is very likely to be growing and/or making tons of money in the cash shop. Based on the Q2 2013 sales report at best you could claim GW2 is not potentially growing as fast as before, but you could never claim that its not growing at all "based" on them. Thank you for proving that point even from the most rabid kind of WoW fanboys side of view.
I consider building an argument on basis of facts and deliberately making incoherent conlusions or paraphrasing information in misleading ways, to fabricate pseudo arguments as entirely different things. Dont bother to claim you resort to the prior, when near all you do is fall back to the later.
Well the thing you missed was the huge drop in active users after the first quarter 40% to 50%, it then churns 5% to 10% a month. Obviously, this is not "evidence", it was said by some MMO developers. And off course it is over simplified, because that is how the data is presented. The best thing for companies to do would be to release the info themselves, but why would they if the news is bad?
Where exactly is your proof of this "growth", all the facts say otherwise. Are these incoherent conclusions or fabrication?
Speaking of incoherent conclusions. Blizzard fanboy? What? Blizzard investor? What?
My server is really busy and annoyingly good in WvW (we been the red side forever and I still need 1 keep in one borderland and 3 in the other to get my 100%).
I am not sure if the population is rising though, it seems to be about the same as september last year to me. There was a drop last winter and late autumn though but at least my servers seems to filled up again since then.
Comments
Eh... what? ... OK, I think I caught up. Here's the skinny. If it were based on the number of players calling the server home then the value would never decrease over a short period of time. Why? No subscription, all accounts are always considered active. Agreed? Now, it's observed that the status can go from Full to Very High and back to Full again after a short period of time. By organizing a blackout event, i.e. a player driven event where a significant portion of the WvW community logs off at the same time, we've been able to drop the server status from Full to Very High long enough for guilds to transfer a number of their players to JQ. At a point the status flips back to Full, the event is over and we schedule one again for the next day or so. This would be impossible if status was tied to home population and strongly indicates that it's tied directly to actual logged in population.
Hopefully that explains it well enough.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Subs? In this game there are no subs.
And no... Gaffney went to Carbine in 2007, had nothing to do with hiring GW2 staff. He managed the acquisition of ArenaNet and Guild Wars way back when but had nothing to do with hiring.
Oderint, dum metuant.
You do realize that most of the leads behind GW1 worked in GW2 right? Did I mention GW2 had subs? Where did I mentione that? That point was to show that you don't take devs at their word. They will obviously bend the truth to help their game. We need to see actual data not PR talk.
Maybe most of the leads in GW1 worked in GW2, but most of the people working in GW2 did not work on GW1. As a matter of fact, they're still hiring people, a year out. Besides, you missed the point... he had nothing to do with hiring them. He managed the acquisition of the company (and others) for NCSoft.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Trend: A pattern of gradual change in a condition, output, or process, or an average or general tendency of a series of data points to move in a certain direction over time, represented by a line or curve on a graph.
There is nothing i've seen indicating increased server caps. Pin point an exact location of such a topic and maybe I can believe it, and I don't mean 'word of mouth' since obviously other games like SWTOR did that with the 'super server' detail to elude to the fact servers were diminishing and they were trying to compress servers and make it appear as if it was. Hell, a large variety of large titles do this to make its popularity look greater then it is. The only way you can legitamently say it, is if you either
A.) See actually statistical proof from the company detailing the number of players on THEIR CHARTS, not just public released snip its with generalized numbers that can easily be manipulated by advertisement.
B.) Rather then 'claim' its growning, maybe state an observation, one NOT reliant on the word full and maybe say "I've seen a lot more people playing around in the game around me" or something of that nature, which doesn't prove anything and really doesn't warrant a topic (I really feel NO thread regarding population growing or shrinking is a good topic, its often just blatant advertising/flaming of a game).
It... does nothing. Its just blatent advertisement on your part. You say you aren't doing something using a 'figure' that doesn't prove anything... yet then... you immediately use it....
Eh I'll leave you be. Have fun on your rampant fanboi rant. When you get more sense feel free to make an actual meaninful thread and actually argue why people should join GW2 instead of throwing together a makeshift topic like this as 'proof' without any proof, then i would be more then happy to argue why the game isn't good. I'm not into having things manipulated to fit your needs to 'prove' something you are so desperate to prove.
Again, you are just making it look as if the game is doing poorly by doing stuff like this, even though it might not be doing bad at all.
Bingo. But it is to be expected from fans of a game. It happens with every game from AoC, WAR to SWTOR and GW2.
As it's also expected for those that prefer to troll games they don't even play to deny facts presented to them that somehow reflect positively on the game. Happens with every game as well.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Most of these new quarter sales are micro transactions vs box sales of the first 2 quarters - hence the 80% drop since that quarter, 4Q12, had something like 2 million boxes sales.
I really like GW2 but I'm not buying a GW2 box every quarter.
There was also a big microtransaction sale in March 2013.
If everyone was dumping €15 a month in the game it would have around 650k+ subscriptions.
I doubt most are doing that.
So, yeah, opposed to games where you have a sub, you can't say a loss in sales is equal to a player loss, because there is only so much stuff you can buy from the store (bank slots, character slots, bag slots) and the non permanent stuff (like golem bankers, boosters) or RNG (loot boxes) won't attract certain segments of the population.
GW2 made over $240M in something like 10 months, far outselling GW1.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I would love to see actual facts. But I haven't seen anything.
The population is very healthy on most servers. End of discussion.
Btw, their supposedly biggest Living Story update coming up next week. Stay tuned
Ah, see that? Right on cue, denial.
Oderint, dum metuant.
No I am being serious. I would like to see some sort of concrete data.
But the NCSoft report don't show a sales growth. One was released just today. Sales for ANet were down 20% from the previous quarter. And it would be safe to assume it will drop again during Q3 '13 mainly due to increased competition.
Also, their payment model is not as friendly as F2P. F2P has less barrier to entry. When GW1 launched it could stand on its payment model, the market has changed. Now most games even good ones are all F2P/B2P.
Not if GW2 release in Asia.
And GW2 made a bunch more money than GW1 and that is 10 months vs 8 years.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
The population appears to be growing still.:
not really just people that used to play 3-4 month after release came back same for me i just play the living world ,see what offer and what i tem im going for it then log out after few minutes not even an hour of gameplay ,the game offer nothing new ATM only cosmetic stuff . for that reason im moving to ff14 till anet trow some expantion so ican play a month and finish all again ;/ then came back to FF .
You do understand that you can sell less than the prior quarter and still see the population increase, yes?
Oderint, dum metuant.
This looks like a job for....The Riviera Kid!
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/wuv/wuv/Blackout-events
Nothing conclusive. Just 2 sides to yes it works, no it doesn't and a bunch of reasons but nothing that explains what mechanics are involved. At least, nothnig official. Although, I do believe they happened and that people were able to move at that time. I just think there is more to it.
(I'm assuming that's your thread Volkon?)
Oh hey, it is. Cool, thanks Geez.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Oderint, dum metuant.
For all the "GW2 is in decline" Come on out on Friday night and see for yourself how "Dead" these servers are.
This game can also spread population very easily since all of it is enjoyable( PVE Events and Dungeons/Fractals , Spvp in the Mists, World vs World)
Only reason I can see for decline is no easy way to Guild v Guild. And even those events are even happening. Like this Guild v Guild German Bollaball match http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcVzFLl77zM&feature=player_embedded (and yes that "ball" is a player)
Well the thing you missed was the huge drop in active users after the first quarter 40% to 50%, it then churns 5% to 10% a month. Obviously, this is not "evidence", it was said by some MMO developers. And off course it is over simplified, because that is how the data is presented. The best thing for companies to do would be to release the info themselves, but why would they if the news is bad?
Where exactly is your proof of this "growth", all the facts say otherwise. Are these incoherent conclusions or fabrication?
Speaking of incoherent conclusions. Blizzard fanboy? What? Blizzard investor? What?
My server is really busy and annoyingly good in WvW (we been the red side forever and I still need 1 keep in one borderland and 3 in the other to get my 100%).
I am not sure if the population is rising though, it seems to be about the same as september last year to me. There was a drop last winter and late autumn though but at least my servers seems to filled up again since then.
I play on Seafarers rest BTW.