WvW development, playerbase and forum statistics (2018)

Forum statistics (2018):

We often hear people mentioning how insignificant the WvW playerbase is when talking about the lack of attention or development effort given to the mode. The playerbase is regarded as small, unprofitable or unlikely to spend (despite the gem-transfer circus) and distanced from the community at large with its server- and playergroup communities with an uninterest in forums. While not necessarily untrue, and without suggesting forum stats tell a whole story, a quick unscientific gander at the forums suggests something else. When the new forums released they came with post and view counter and a quick overview gives us this:

• PvE (General, game as a whole) -11K threads, 216K posts
• sPvP (Structured PVP, tournaments, leagues, & events) - 4.2K threads, 78K posts
• WvW (World vs. World) - 2.5K threds, 66K posts
• sPvE (Fractals, Dungeons, and Raids) - 1.2K threads, 32K posts

Not something surprising without context, but

Given that the only slightly larger sPvP forums have a roadmap with concrete development goals and markers reached for 2018 including multiple new maps, tournaments, rewards, QoL and nothing mentioned about 6-year old game-breaking issues, it does stand out a little bit. If eg., people climbed the sPvP ladder better when others did not play we would have heard about it, I imagine. The general section as a whole is not more than 4x larger (hinting at that WvW as a mode would at least be on average slice in the game). That sPvE gets so much love despite being half the size of WvW is a sore thumb brought up elsewhere so let's not delve into that now more than to highlight that it isn't just raids (with its own development team), it encompasses both raids, dungeons and fractals with separate development assets and attention.

Instead, what really stands out in this quick-form of metrics is this:

The original World Structuring announcement sits at 165k views (omitting the updates on the same topic).

• Nothing in the other mode-forums comes close to it.
• Nothing in the news and announcements section comes close to it.
• Nothing in the game release notes section comes close to it ... barring one: The sept 22 2017 update sits at only a slightly larger 205k views

So what happened sept 22 2017? Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire!

The game release notes for PoF as a whole has 200k and WvW World restructuring sits at 160k (+40+20k).

It does wake some thoughts in my mind, what about yours? If you got them, scribble them down below.

I think Anet really underestimate the true potential of WvW.I play this game for 5 years (5k hours total) and i never really understood how people could have fun on this mess (WvW), but i always enjoyed competitive game modes, it's what keeps me playing every game, tbh.

Till one day, i was on heart of the mists enjoying map chat while on queue and some random dude pvt me and said: "hey, you play engi? wanna join us on wvw?". I was in another server and the guy paid my transfer only asking to join them if i was online during their wvw raid times. My main guild atm was on that server, and this i thought "why not?".

This happened 3 months ago and was the best thing that happened to me in 5 years playing the game. Playing with a guild group, in voice comms, that knows what they're doing and are willing to help you improve is absolutely great. I'm still learning the ins and outs of the game mode, of course, but i simply switched all my playtime to wvw. The rest of the game is just boring, really.

If you're reading this, BLANE, ty mate! You guys are awesome :DAnet, if you're reading this, believe me, make this game-mode a bit more "newbie-friendly" and i'm sure A LOT more people will stay playing GW2.

Actually I think a more persuasive argument would be gems spent on world transfers compared to gems spent on other things.

Although your analysis is insightful.

I mean. It is OBVIOUS wvw players buy from the gemstore. Just watch a group of them glide over a cliff. SO many different gliders. I see outfits, gathering tools, weapon skins...and wvw sure isn't rewarding enough gold to just convert.

The trouble is that for many of us it isn't the only thing we do. So does the $100 I just spent on gems get counted as wvw income or pve since I spend my time when not rallied doing various non wvw things?

I wish I could check a box when buying gems...hey. Count this as THIS type of gameplay.

Clearly there's pieces to this puzzle that we simply cannot make sense of from the outside looking in. I cannot blame them for being reluctant to say much to us about wvw development because anything they say at this point is not likely to be received well. I'm sure that they are aware that they have had a valuable opportunity to carve out a niche with wvw and kind of failed to capitalize on it as much as they probably could have. It's an insightful thread but I doubt you're telling them anything they didn't already kind of know.

@Etria.3642 said:I mean. It is OBVIOUS wvw players buy from the gemstore. Just watch a group of them glide over a cliff. SO many different gliders. I see outfits, gathering tools, weapon skins...and wvw sure isn't rewarding enough gold to just convert.

The trouble is that for many of us it isn't the only thing we do. So does the $100 I just spent on gems get counted as wvw income or pve since I spend my time when not rallied doing various non wvw things?

I wish I could check a box when buying gems...hey. Count this as THIS type of gameplay.Maybe people run with standard models and then proclaim that WvW people dont run PvE, lol.But yeah. Literally everyone has something thats PvE. The amount of legendaries on any given WvW map in prime probably exceeds LA.

I really only play for wvw now. Pve is stale and pvp has hilariously bad balance.

Since no other mmo on the horizon has a better combat system than gw2, there is still plenty of time to capitalize on it in wvw. It is baffling that they don't have an interest in doing so.

Wish games like CU and Pantheon would hurry up with their alphas so maybe NCSOFT (anet) will care about their playerbase again.

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Etria.3642 said:I mean. It is OBVIOUS wvw players buy from the gemstore. Just watch a group of them glide over a cliff. SO many different gliders. I see outfits, gathering tools, weapon skins...and wvw sure isn't rewarding enough gold to just convert.

The trouble is that for many of us it isn't the only thing we do. So does the $100 I just spent on gems get counted as wvw income or pve since I spend my time when not rallied doing various non wvw things?

I wish I could check a box when buying gems...hey. Count this as THIS type of gameplay.Maybe people run with standard models and then proclaim that WvW people dont run PvE, lol.But yeah. Literally

everyone

has something thats PvE. The amount of legendaries on any given WvW map in prime probably exceeds LA.

the PvE numbers probably get inflated a bit by locking all the new reward tracks behind living story, most of my guild does it to get access to the new stats but I don't think many of us would otherwise

You have to also take into account that a portion of pve players also only ever post in the gw2 reddit forums "because of certain reasons", which is also mostly about pve topics than wvw or spvp on like a 10-1 ratio, since the devs favored responding to topics in there and doing their ama's for releases for many years. A greater portion of the game still does pve and a good portion of those "willing to pay more than a sub amount per month" probably inhabit the pve side of the game, they have their fancy metrics to keep track of all that I'm sure.

But yeah in my opinion wvw has been the greatest wasted potential in this game, it would take quite a number of big developments to wvw to line up to draw players back to it at this point.