Where is everyone?

[firedragon.8953]

Lots of deniers, but there are less active players, especially for high-end or instanced content. I know this from my friend list, not from the LFG tool.
There are reasons with how SoTO is released (not a lot of high-end content, incremental releases, etc.) as well as the Wizard's vault somewhat trivializing the gold per hour of metas, etc.
In short, most players have probably completed what they wanted in the last content patch. Unfortunately, some higher-level players have left GW2 since they felt they aren't being catered to with the recent releases.  The past 3 years also got a boon to player population due to the pandemic, and most of that has probably worn off by now.

But as others have said, it is Wintersday and lots of people are taking part in that. However, I've noticed most metas still go on in maps (I just did Octovine and Inner Nayos yesterday) but there was no LFG (at least when I checked). Both metas had tons of people participating. There's usually a handful of people running around SoTO maps doing the event-chain metas as well.

So yeah, there's no one reason why there are "less players." The reality, is yes, there are less players, but there are still generally enough players to do most content. For fractals, just make your own group and it will probably fill in 5-10 min, especially if you're the healer. lol

Edited December 17, 2023 by firedragon.8953