ANet numbers regarding GW2. Discussion.

From the official ANet site I have the following numbers:

1. GW2 (as a whole game) has 11 000 000 (11 millions) players.
2. During the life of GW2 the players created over 53 056 000 (53,05 millions) characters.
3. The 11 millions characters formed 952 000 guilds (almost 1 million).
4. The +53 millions characters completed 430 773 344 hearts (430,77 milions)
5. This is not from ANet site - a friend saw this: The griffon number in game is now over 50 000.

What can I understand from this (almost commercial) announcement:

• 11 millions players ... I saw here on this forum a lot of ppl claiming they have more than one account - payed account. I saw the signature of one colleagues stating he has 30 accounts. That means is more accurate to say that the number of accounts is 11 millions. Players are less.

• 53 millions characters for 11 millions accounts means an average of almost 5 characters per account. Normal you can say. But, I saw here, on this forum, many, many players stating they have tens of characters (some having the maximum number of characters). Even I, a non character addicted, have 13 characters. That means a lot of accounts have less than 5 characters per account. By buying the game you can create 5 characters - this is free after buying the game. And still there are lot of accounts with less than 5. I can conclude from this that the degree of retaining new players is low if you don't play enough to need 5 characters (even for storage space if not for effectively playing)

• 430 773 344 hearts completed. This is IMPRESSIVE at the first look. But, only in core Tyria we have around 330 hearts. That means the core Tyria was completed by +1,3 millions characters. HM? 1,3 from 53 ? That means ~2,5% from all the characters completed the core Tyria. I also saw here, on the Forum a lot of persons claiming that they completed the map several times (some of them tens of times). I completed the map (all the maps, not only Tyria) 3 times. My conclusion: less than 1 million players completed a map discovery in Tyria. Comparing this with the total number of accounts .... that means ~9% of the players completed Tyria.

• Almost 1 million guilds. We have 11 millions accounts, but less than 11 millions players playing the game during its lifetime. That means an average of 10 players per guild. HM. With HoT the tendency was to annihilate the small guilds in favor of the larger (meta) guilds. I think it is an interesting detail if ANet will give us the number of guilds founded after the HoT release.

• Finally: +50 000 griffons. We know (from the more or less accurate data from GW2 efficiency) that HoT lost a lot of players in its 2 year existence. How many - hard to say. But the playerbase was smaller at the end of HoT that at the beginning. And from this smaller playerbase a part bought PoF. From the players with PoF, over 50 000 have the griffon.

Disclaimer: This is my estimation, based on my own observations. It may be inaccurate or entirely wrong. I will post it because it completes what I write:So, I consider that around 40-50% from the PoF players already have the griffon. Why 40-50%? Because in my opinion the percentage of "veteran" players who bought PoF is greater than the percentage of new starters who bought PoF. That means the majority of the PoF owners had the skills and the money to acquire the griffon. Only the time is a problem for some of them.So, this is the reason I considered this percentage. From this, my conclusion is that 100-120 000 players have PoF.

Conclusion: Starting from 11 millions accounts having the vanilla and ending with 0,1 millions owning PoF, it seems that GW2 is doing a very poor job to keep the veterans playing. I don't know if this is related only with the game - for me GW2 seems to be a very good MMO. Maybe the management of this game is a little bit ... wrong?

Please add other numbers if you find. Please correct me if you consider I'm wrong. And please post your own feelings about the numbers ANet listed on the site and based on this, about the future of the game.

Thanks for the patience to read all of this.

The whole latter part seems to be too much of a speculation/ presumption to be even close to a real number, be it higher or lower.Also, quite a considerable part of the 11mil Accounts must be Free-to-plays, no? Those people would probably have no reason to buy PoF, yet. So the number of Veterans who bought PoF must be higher than it seems. Although probably not by much.Anyways, I guess that the Point about Management might not be misplaced, even though based on something that's not complete facts.

It's hard to draw any statistically viable conclusions from the data presented. The error margins are too high with the amount of assumptions that need to be made. You may be right on some or most of this, but it's nearly impossible to determine. In particular, the argument that there are only ~100k players with PoF... this is based on a 40-50% griffon completion, which is based off of a 50k griffon count. I own the core and both expansions and have played for over 5 years, yet I'm a long way from the griffon. I have outstanding achievements and masteries across the map. Additionally, how many of the overall accounts have been created in the last year or two years? Are they vets, new players or in between?

Ultimately, I don't think we can draw a conclusion of poor veteran retention from the data that was presented. There are too many unknowns. I'm enjoying the game, and I hope many will for the foreseeable future.

Just wait for the quarterly NC report. We will see how hard the expansion hit.

Except they're the top game on some sites, top 5 in almost all of them. They're getting to numbers higher than ever before since pof was so great, which means the number is higher now. In any case, the game is clearly not struggling

MMORPGs aren't a popular genre. You also can't judge the amount of people based on Griffons obtained in a short period. There are multiple requirements, story completion, exploration and having 250 gold. The more casual groups wouldn't have had enough time to complete all of it by the time they came to the number posted. Rushing the game and getting everything the first week isn't a normal thing for the average.

Guild Wars, both the original and the sequel, are games people put down for months, sometimes years, and come back to later. Initial release sales numbers are always meaningful, but all MMOs, and especially Guild Wars, have a thicker tail than something like an FPS game, which will sell 80%+ of all copies in the first month.

The number of assumptions here is WAY TOO HIGH to draw any sort of realistic conclusion. You pulled so many numbers out of thin air, this post is simply ridiculous.

Well this was a pretty funny read all things said and done. But, IIRC, Anet didn't give out the numbers for HoT, but some wild speculation similar to what the OP put out, put it at around only 1 million copies sold, and alienated what could constitute a good chunk of their player base, so an equal dip in numbers for PoF would seem reasonable.

Well this was a pretty funny read all things said and done. But, IIRC, Anet didn't give out the numbers for HoT,

right before HoT they made an interview where they claimed they sold 5 mil boxes of a game, still this info is for both core and HoT preorders and has nothing to do with player number.

Too many assumptions to draw a valid conclusion. For example, the guild size calculation ignores people belonging to multiple guilds, so the average guild size could be out by a factor of 5.

A lot of totally brand new players came to the game for PoF. assuming the expansion playerbase of HoT are the only people who own PoF is silly at best. I know plenty of people who only own PoF, but I can say for sure no where even close to 40% of PoF players own the griffon, from the sheer amount of comments I (Still) get about it when using it, and how uncommon it is to see a person on one outside of a large bounty/HP zerg, etc

ArenaNet has the metrics to tell who has multiple accounts (see the old Account Support forums), so your very first assumption may be wrong. There may be 11 million separate purchasers and P4F users, or there may be 11 million separate accounts.

Truly, only ArenaNet know the exact numbers of any of the information, so one could guessimate either way on any of the statements in that infographic. I'm just happy they put a second one out after all these years.

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

Well this was a pretty funny read all things said and done. But, IIRC, Anet didn't give out the numbers for HoT,

They (ArenaNet) didn't make that claim. It came from an article from someone else providing that 'information'.

@Astraea.6075 said:Too many assumptions to draw a valid conclusion. For example, the guild size calculation ignores people belonging to multiple guilds, so the average guild size could be out by a factor of 5.

There's also the fact that before HoT it was very easy to make a 1 person guild and upgrade it enough to get a guild bank, so many people did that for cheap storage so that will affect the numbers too. There's also players, even people who post on the forum, who are not part of any guild at all, but are active, dedicated players.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:ArenaNet has the metrics to tell who has multiple accounts (see the old Account Support forums), so your very first assumption may be wrong. There may be 11 million separate purchasers and P4F users, or there may be 11 million separate accounts.

Truly, only ArenaNet know the exact numbers of any of the information, so one could guessimate either way on any of the statements in that infographic. I'm just happy they put a second one out after all these years.

I suspect that is the number of accounts created, because that's what I'd do if I was creating this infographic. The purpose of the article was to promote PoF and celebrate GW2 so far so it's in their interest to use the largest accurate count of player numbers, which would be the number of accounts created. But it's also likely to be far easier to get that number than anything more accurate. No sense in spending ages trying to identify duplicate accounts and determine who counts as an active player, only to end up making yourself look worse.

But even if they wanted to do it trying to get a more accurate count of current players could be difficult. Sure you could look for accounts logging in from the same IP address and say those are duplicates - but can you be sure it's 1 person with multiple accounts and not a family playing together (or taking turns on the same PC, so they never log in at the same time)? Likewise how do you determine that someone has quit when the game doesn't have a subscription?

Well, they must have some accurate way to determine who owns what accounts, else they (Chris Cleary) wouldn't ban multiple accounts from the same user as stated in the old Account Support sub-forum. /shrug

I agree it is probably created accounts, but the OP's guesses are nothing more than that: guesses.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

Well this was a pretty funny read all things said and done. But, IIRC, Anet didn't give out the numbers for HoT,

I am under the impression it was authorized message.

Where did the OP's info originate from? I've checked the homepage and can't see anything related to this

Basing anything on GW2efficiency numbers is suspect. All that can accurately be said is that X number or Y% of GW2 players registered on GW2efficiency have W or Z. Calling such data "more or less accurate" is not correct, as it is a biased sample of the entire player-base.

@Randulf.7614 said:Where did the OP's info originate from? I've checked the homepage and can't see anything related to this

Here you go: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-path-to-the-desert-in-numbers/

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

Well this was a pretty funny read all things said and done. But, IIRC, Anet didn't give out the numbers for HoT,

Unfortunately not.

@Randulf.7614 said:Where did the OP's info originate from? I've checked the homepage and can't see anything related to this

Much of it is simply made up. The raw numbers are the top (GW2 (as a whole game) has 11 000 000, 53 056 000 characters, 952 000 guilds , and 430 773 344 hearts) are from an infograph ANET released: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-path-to-the-desert-in-numbers/

50k griffon count was from the Arenanet AMA on reddit that occurred last week on Friday

All the other numbers are wild speculation, unsubstantiated hearsay, and violently unsound mathematics.

@Cristalyan.5728 said:From the official ANet site I have the following numbers:

1. GW2 (as a whole game) has 11 000 000 (11 millions) players.
2. During the life of GW2 the players created over 53 056 000 (53,05 millions) characters.
3. The 11 millions characters formed 952 000 guilds (almost 1 million).
4. The +53 millions characters completed 430 773 344 hearts (430,77 milions)
5. This is not from ANet site - a friend saw this: The griffon number in game is now over 50 000.

What can I understand from this (almost commercial) announcement:

• 11 millions players ... I saw here on this forum a lot of ppl claiming they have more than one account - payed account. I saw the signature of one colleagues stating he has 30 accounts. That means is more accurate to say that the number of accounts is 11 millions. Players are less.

• 53 millions characters for 11 millions accounts means an average of almost 5 characters per account. Normal you can say. But, I saw here, on this forum, many, many players stating they have tens of characters (some having the maximum number of characters). Even I, a non character addicted, have 13 characters. That means a lot of accounts have less than 5 characters per account. By buying the game you can create 5 characters - this is free after buying the game. And still there are lot of accounts with less than 5. I can conclude from this that the degree of retaining new players is low if you don't play enough to need 5 characters (even for storage space if not for effectively playing)

• 430 773 344 hearts completed. This is IMPRESSIVE at the first look. But, only in core Tyria we have around 330 hearts. That means the core Tyria was completed by +1,3 millions characters. HM? 1,3 from 53 ? That means ~2,5% from all the characters completed the core Tyria. I also saw here, on the Forum a lot of persons claiming that they completed the map several times (some of them tens of times). I completed the map (all the maps, not only Tyria) 3 times. My conclusion: less than 1 million players completed a map discovery in Tyria. Comparing this with the total number of accounts .... that means ~9% of the players completed Tyria.

• Almost 1 million guilds. We have 11 millions accounts, but less than 11 millions players playing the game during its lifetime. That means an average of 10 players per guild. HM. With HoT the tendency was to annihilate the small guilds in favor of the larger (meta) guilds. I think it is an interesting detail if ANet will give us the number of guilds founded after the HoT release.

• Finally: +50 000 griffons. We know (from the more or less accurate data from GW2 efficiency) that HoT lost a lot of players in its 2 year existence. How many - hard to say. But the playerbase was smaller at the end of HoT that at the beginning. And from this smaller playerbase a part bought PoF. From the players with PoF, over 50 000 have the griffon.

Disclaimer: This is my estimation, based on my own observations. It may be inaccurate or entirely wrong. I will post it because it completes what I write:So, I consider that around 40-50% from the PoF players already have the griffon. Why 40-50%? Because in my opinion the percentage of "veteran" players who bought PoF is greater than the percentage of new starters who bought PoF. That means the majority of the PoF owners had the skills and the money to acquire the griffon. Only the time is a problem for some of them.So, this is the reason I considered this percentage. From this, my conclusion is that 100-120 000 players have PoF.

Conclusion: Starting from 11 millions accounts having the vanilla and ending with 0,1 millions owning PoF, it seems that GW2 is doing a very poor job to keep the veterans playing. I don't know if this is related only with the game - for me GW2 seems to be a very good MMO. Maybe the management of this game is a little bit ... wrong?

Please add other numbers if you find. Please correct me if you consider I'm wrong. And please post your own feelings about the numbers ANet listed on the site and based on this, about the future of the game.

Thanks for the patience to read all of this.

There is lots wrong with this analysis and the conclusion isn't even relevant. It's not about how many veterans Anet are keeping playing. It's about how many people are spending money on gems., regardless of their GW2 experience. Make NO mistake, this is a business. It's about how much money it makes and in a game with no sub, the number of players is not the fundamental measure of the health of the game.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:Where did the OP's info originate from? I've checked the homepage and can't see anything related to this

Aha thanks. An article I had missed

cheers

What the hell makes people think HoT lost many players? I came back to gw2 because of HoT's, HoT doesn't feel like a single player experience even if HoT did lose "casuals" it made up for it with a really dedicated raiding community and people like me who do everything and felt outside of pvp core tyria was faceroll the keyboard and farming for 250 lodestones for fashionwars 2.

And personally i'd take a dedicated few then the many who are just passing through. And one little caveat, i have no proof of this but in my experience dedicated players tend to buy stuff the game more often on a longer timespan, i believe HoT increased the life span of GW2 because it pulled alot of people from FF14 (and prolly other mmos but i can't speak on them) because HW launch was terribly balanced at launch i was one of those who returned to this game and was pleasantly surprised at the HoT maps, new fotm, and raids. And from what i see now there are far more people even now in HoT maps then PoF maps because after you do story where's all the fun and the loot and the group content?

Yep its in HoT.Sorry i just had to get that out so many people on the forums hate on HoT

And to the topic, PoF expansion is success the only mistake i believe anet made is ruining the black lion chest with all these crappy god damn raptors and a lack of new cosmetics for the new expansion gem and non gem.

Also remember new players come and go and casuals have no real foundation in the game, for example raiding guilds and wvw guilds the players there tend to have been around since core, they buy gems regularly (or don't if they have gotten everything that they have wanted). Casuals don't have that dedication to login everyday for 2-3years buy 50$ in gems on Black lion chests for a back pack or something. I appreciate your intention OP but your far from the actual scope of what makes an mmo successful