Pre expansion statistics!

A few interesting statistics from Heart of Thorns, before we enter Elona. The statistics are from gw2efficiency, I know they are by no means representative of the entire population, however they are statistics we can use. It's hard, unless you really want to, to zero your heart of thorns currencies. It's very possible to zero LS3 currencies, because they can be salvaged and/or consumed, however the statistics do show us some interesting trends. I know you can get currencies from PVP and WvW, but doing so requires unlock of the episode and purchase of the expansion.

The big question is: Will Path of Fire do better than Heart of Thorns, worse, or one of the same?

Anyway, on to the statistics:91.5% have at least 1 airship part, meaning they own the expansion88.5% have at least 1 lump of Aurillium, meaning they moved past Verdant Brink83.5% have at least 1 ley line crystal, meaning they moved past Auric Basin75.5% have at least 1 crystalline ore, meaning they moved past Tangled Depths63% have at least 1 bloodstone ruby, meaning they played in Bloodstone Fen57.5% have at least 1 petrified wood, meaning they played in Ember Bay55.5% have at least 1 fresh winterberry, meaning they played in Bitterfrost Frontier55.5% have at least 1 jade shard, meaning they played in Lake Doric54.5% have at least 1 fire orchid, meaning they played in Draconis Mons47.5% have at least 1 orrian pearl, meaning they played in Siren's Landing

There is a clear downward trend here.

If Path of Fire zones have their own unique currencies then we can see how those compare to Heart of Thorns. It will be very interesting to see.

The curve looks normal to me. There are people stopping on the way, constantly leaving, until the game reach its core (+/-) "auditorium". When Xpac come on Friday we will have a spike and then in time the curve will follow the same path. Its an ocean with waves and storms...

problem is HOT is very high difficulty. hard to traverse region populated with hard mobs. you could get stuck in one zone and just give up, never getting any further to other zones. also some maps are gated by Living Story, which obviously not every follows.

Taking into consideration that the players registered to the gw2efficiency are somewhat more "hardcore" than the usual casual player, I'm afraid that the real statistics may be "darker" than this. Why dark? Because if you look at the first line - 91,5% from the GW2 players own the expansion - and at the last line - 47.5% played in Siren Landing - we can conclude that on the 2 years period after release, HoT already lost more than half of its players. Why "lost"? Because you only need to login into game and then to enter Siren Landing to gather one pearl. That means more than half of the players did not even login during that period.

@mazut.4296 said:The curve looks normal to me. There are people stopping on the way, constantly leaving, until the game reach its core (+/-) "auditorium".

Well, we don't know the number of HoT copy sold by ANet. I don't know what ANet considers a healthy "core auditorium". But I think this is the result they wanted and expected by releasing HoT.

Some notes:GW2efficiency started showing all the stats (and became famous) after the release of Heart of Thorns so it's normal that most of the users on it (91.5%) also bought Heart of Thorns.The difference between 91.5% and 47.5% shows us how many of the registered players stopped playing at some point after the release of the expansion and up to the release of the final episode.There is no metric for Dragon's Stand to see the difference between Tangled Depths and Dragon's Stand.There is a rather huge drop (20%) between Tangled Depths and Episode 1, which means many left after finishing Heart of Thorns and didn't come back. It's possible that it was due to the content drought (outside Raids) after the release of Heart of Thorns, something that the developers said won't happen again. If they do it properly and LS4 begins shortly after Path of Fire, then that same huge drop shouldn't happen again.

Can't wait for the Path of Fire stats :wink:

HoT was a minor failure and they admit it by not giving any sales numbers. It was too short, too expensive and "too hard" for the casual crowd (too hard hitting mobs, too hard to navigate). They did much better with the Living Story 3. Unfortunately, this came far too late, after they lost momentum. A great mistake and they won't do it again. I think they made it better this time around although I still think the expansion is a bit thin compared to the competition; they tell us it's all about content but there are 5 maps and no dungeons, no raids, no additional race, no new starting zone nor weapons, crafting and other features which usually come with expansions. I know we can expect new raids and 1-2 fractals. But this is so few, compare this to other games which usually give us 4-5 new dungeons per expansion 1-2 raids at release and 2-3 raids later. Anyway, still looking forward.

Crystalline Ore should give a rough idea of how many either made it to the end of the story, or played in DS.

The drop in season 3 is natural, since it took a year to start, then the 2-3 month gaps in between. If this happens with season 4 however, expect them to drop the episodes and switch to quicker expansions. Siren's is odd, considering the expansion brought people back and that's the one everyone is getting for free.

Talking about "failures" the problem> @ProtoGunner.4953 said:

HoT was a minor failure and they admit it by not giving any sales numbers.

It's hard to talk about failures in a game where the active population cannot be measured.How many of the active players of the game bought Heart of Thorns and how many new players entered the game with the expansion?That's how you measure success and failure of the expansion, and since knowing the amount of active players is problematic, it's not easy to find out.

I mean, the game sold so many million copies, you can't expect all of them to buy the expansion and call it a failure because they did not. That's not a failure of the expansion but of the core game to keep those players interested until the expansion was released.

Nice job with these stats, but it will more accurate with Anet stats :)

@Healix.5819 said:Crystalline Ore should give a rough idea of how many either made it to the end of the story, or played in DS.

The drop in season 3 is natural, since it took a year to start, then the 2-3 month gaps in between. If this happens with season 4 however, expect them to drop the episodes and switch to quicker expansions. Siren's is odd, considering the expansion brought people back and that's the one everyone is getting for free.

Crystalline Ore is at 75.5%, I will add it to the top. I didn't know it even existed as a metric