I can't believe the old zones and content stay this busy. Genius effort there.

Silverwastes, nub zones with world bosses and without and zones from launch are all busy with people. The outdoor event system has really been refined here and it's impressive. Rift, WoW and Warhammer online never got that right to name just a few games. In GW2 it appears to be the bulk of your activity. Really nice job!

I agree. :)

It's one of the things I think GW2 does really well - the down-levelling system means playing in low level maps can still be fun and (potentially) challenging and rewarding for level 80 players, and that means Anet can put world bosses and collections and even new content like the beetle races and the Ley Line Anomalies into those maps to give us an incentive to go back.

You can't ever be sure you're done with a map, even when you've got 100% completion and done all the stuff which currently sends you there, there might be new content added.

Yes, it’s awesome having players and amazing events in low level zones. It was so epic right out of the bat, playing in an army against a world boss when I just started. My only other experience is WoW, and after this, I don’t think I can ever go back to WoW leveling.

Unfortunately, many of the mid level zones are pretty empty. They could use some additional events to draw players in.

Yeah, I hang out a lot in the lower zones because I'm such a casual player. I enjoy helping out others there.

Its brilliant really.

Design max level core content so that it is not challenging so that returning to lower level zones does not feel like too much of a difficulty dowgrade.

more like that it makes lower level zones stay relevant. Case in point ascended material crafting. You need raw mats from all tiers.

I don't think the down-leveling is very relevant anymore, as a factor to keep old content important, those that can survive any of the expansion zones will find low level zones a total joke, regardless of the stat decrease. And let's not forget the bland design and lack of mechanics of most core zones, compared to the expansions and you can see no matter how much your stats are decreased, you will still go through the content by pressing 1 on your keyboard.

Crafting Ascended and Legendary items requires materials from all tiers of play, meaning those early zones will get enough players even just for those. Further, the item rewards (rare/masterwork gear) scale with your level, not the level of the enemy, some say they even got legendary precursors from level 5 mobs, so everything is possible. They keep old zones relevant

@maddoctor.2738 said:I don't think the down-leveling is very relevant anymore, as a factor to keep old content important, those that can survive any of the expansion zones will find low level zones a total joke, regardless of the stat decrease. And let's not forget the bland design and lack of mechanics of most core zones, compared to the expansions and you can see no matter how much your stats are decreased, you will still go through the content by pressing 1 on your keyboard.

YMMV but I actually am glad that the core maps don't have a lot of mechanics to go around. Maybe I'm a terminally casual player, but sometimes it's just nice to go to a map and being able to go a few steps without being run to the ground by hostiles/environment effects or this zone or that NPC being blocked/disabled because of a mapwide meta event. So for me that alone is a reason to actually revisit the core maps sometimes - I can just chill, enjoy the view, maybe do some random map completion and still participate in guild chat or check the TP on the side.

@maddoctor.2738 said:I don't think the down-leveling is very relevant anymore, as a factor to keep old content important, those that can survive any of the expansion zones will find low level zones a total joke, regardless of the stat decrease. And let's not forget the bland design and lack of mechanics of most core zones, compared to the expansions and you can see no matter how much your stats are decreased, you will still go through the content by pressing 1 on your keyboard.

Crafting Ascended and Legendary items requires materials from all tiers of play, meaning those early zones will get enough players even just for those. Further, the item rewards (rare/masterwork gear) scale with your level, not the level of the enemy, some say they even got legendary precursors from level 5 mobs, so everything is possible. They keep old zones relevant

For me it's not so much the stat decrease which is important as that it 'justifies' high level characters in low level maps getting level appropriate drops and XP. In a lot of games I've played if you go back to a lower level map most/all the drops will be useless (if you get them at all) and quests and kills will give no XP at all - because otherwise it would be far too easy to stay in those low level maps and grind your way up, but then it's almost pointless to stay in those maps or return to them unless you're a hardcore completionist who wants to do absolutely everything. Whereas in GW2 you never reach a point where playing on a map won't reward you, which makes it a lot easier for Anet to add reasons to go back and play there.

Can you imagine many people would be willing to do things like the legendary bandit, ley line anomaly and bloodstone crazed beast events if they knew they'd get no XP or decent drops?

Dailies and world bosses have a lot to do with this - I'd like to see more of it/revamps. The invading Joko forces have been a nice touch I think, giving higher level players incentive to visit lower lvl maps and giving low lvl players a glimpse of things to come. But overall I agree with the OP that they've done a very good job keeping all the maps as busy as possible. There's a few where I doubt I can find people for some of the more time-consuming events, but that's what LFG is for.