Best marketing step ANet could do right now - RELEASE PLAYER NUMBERS

[SpaceMarine.1836]

I am seeing ANet spending more money recently on marketing in forms like paying advertised segments in youtuber videos. But both average consumers as well as influencers seem to share the same sentiment: "It's a dead game" - and it's impossible to argue against it, especially when they bring up the steam charts numbers. On Steam, GW2 averages around 5k concurrent players. 

Most of the hardcore GW2 fans know that Steam player count is only a small fraction, since GW2 had its own non-Steam launcher forever, but none of the players the advertising campaign is targeted at are aware of that. It's clear that the game is very much alive. I assume that the Steam players are about 1/10th of the playerbase. That would put it at the same level as Elden Ring and at about 10x as popular as New World. It would put the game's state in the perspective, which would likely convince a lot of people. The health of playerbase is especially important decision factor when it comes to MMO genre.

So IMO the best thing ANet could do, marketing wise, is to make those numbers public and be proud of them. For a 14 year old game, GW2 is doing extremely well, so it makes no sense to hide this fact from the potential new customers. 

[Triptaminas.4789]

Did u seen final fantasy steam numbers? Seems like dead game to

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, SpaceMarine.1836 said:

I am seeing ANet spending more money recently on marketing in forms like paying advertised segments in youtuber videos. But both average consumers as well as influencers seem to share the same sentiment: "It's a dead game" - and it's impossible to argue against it, especially when they bring up the steam charts numbers. On Steam, GW2 averages around 5k concurrent players. 

Most of the hardcore GW2 fans know that Steam player count is only a small fraction, since GW2 had its own non-Steam launcher forever, but none of the players the advertising campaign is targeted at are aware of that. It's clear that the game is very much alive. I assume that the Steam players are about 1/10th of the playerbase. That would put it at the same level as Elden Ring and at about 10x as popular as New World. It would put the game's state in the perspective, which would likely convince a lot of people. The health of playerbase is especially important decision factor when it comes to MMO genre.

So IMO the best thing ANet could do, marketing wise, is to make those numbers public and be proud of them. For a 14 year old game, GW2 is doing extremely well, so it makes no sense to hide this fact from the potential new customers. 

How is the year 2026 mate?

[Farohna.6247]

I quit playing WoW 10 years ago.  Two years before that people were whining that it's a dead game.  And they would release the numbers since it was bigger than some nations.  So yehhhh, that's not really a good measure.  

Unless you're investing in stock, who cares?  That is not something I looked at when I started playing.  I was interested in the gameplay and friendliness of the community.  

 

[Solvar.7953]

Even if player numbers are released, it can be measured in all sorts of different ways.  People who bought JW?  People who log in at least once day/week/month (what time frame is chosen will affect the numbers).  People who own any expansion/have ever bought the game, etc.

So I doubt releasing numbers would do much to counter 'its a dead game' argument - those who want to push that argument will say based on those numbers, it is a dead game, or that the numbers are bogus, or whatever.

 

[SpaceMarine.1836]

4 hours ago, Solvar.7953 said:

Even if player numbers are released, it can be measured in all sorts of different ways.  People who bought JW?  People who log in at least once day/week/month (what time frame is chosen will affect the numbers).  People who own any expansion/have ever bought the game, etc.

So I doubt releasing numbers would do much to counter 'its a dead game' argument - those who want to push that argument will say based on those numbers, it is a dead game, or that the numbers are bogus, or whatever.

 

Simply - daily concurrent players peak, regardless of what kind of content they have. I'd include even F2P account players. There's no ambiguity in how to measure this particular stat.

And yes, it would very, very easily counter its a dead argument. GW2 has concurrent player numbers around the center of the Steam's top 100 most played games ladder. So if the GW2 player numbers are around 30-50k daily concurrent players peak, then that would put it alongside most popular titles, like Terraria, DayZ, FFXIV, Destiny 2, etc... which all are considered very much alive games.

You could then confront anyone who says GW2 is a dead game by saying that if they consider GW2 dead, then all the other widely popular games in Steam's top 100 played ladder are also dead by their standards, which is obviously not true.

There's simply no scenario for GW2 in which releasing the player numbers stats could hurt the game. It could only help it. It would be extremely cheap yet very effective marketing tool.

Edited August 29 by SpaceMarine.1836

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

all we know is that its likely well over 10,000,000 active (not idle) accounts and about 100,000 concurrent players daily, of which anywhere from 5,000-10,000 play wvw at reset time. these numbers have no official source and are extrapolated from various data we have over the years, but should be more or less in the ballpark.
 

one thing to keep in mind is an active account is not a player;. some hardcore players have a few dozen accounts or more and many have at least two.

 

the player base is healthy enough that a single map meta can spawn up to 5-6 instances of 150-200~ish players each, so it's not uncommon to see about 1,000 players in a single map spread across all the instances especially around the daily reset. also, keep in mind this is happening on a per-region basis.

 

the game isn't dead and if anything still has a more active player base than every other mmo except for final fantasy and world of warcraft.

Edited August 29 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

all we know is that its likely well over 10,000,000 active (not idle) accounts and about 100,000 concurrent players daily, of which anywhere from 5,000-10,000 play wvw at reset time. these numbers have no official source and are extrapolated from various data we have over the years, but should be more or less in the ballpark.

Even without seeing any official statistics, i can tell you that those numbers of yours look massively inflated. Just a cursory look at AP leaderboard can tell you that.

Hint: last info we've had told us there's around 17 million accounts total. 500 AP is enough to get you to top 30%. around 1000 AP is top 20%. Around 2800 AP is top 10%. And many of those top 10% accounts are no longer active.

You can do the count yourself. I can already tell you though that there's no way active accounts can get anywhere close to 10 mil. In fact, it would be amazing if that count was as high as one mil.

Edited August 29 by Astralporing.1957

[Inssengrimm.7924]

12 hours ago, SpaceMarine.1836 said:

since GW2 had its own non-Steam launcher forever

So has FFXIV.
And so is it's population only a fraction of the actual game population.

And there are fanmade census done, and we have some estimates of aproximately how much people play it, and nothing of that would convice some people that the game is not dead. WoW has been dead for decades now, since Cataclysm at least.

Player population has nothing to do with the perception of "some people" that a game is dead or not, you could have one gazillion players logging in daily and some people would argue that "the game is dead". And its only cause such arguments and statements exist only in single-cell brain entities called gamers, which usually just talk in arbitrary, illogical, unrealistic and absurd statements as to point a game with thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and even million of concurrent players and say: "lol dead game".

No, releasing player numbers wouldn't do a thing for marketing.

On the other hand ArenaNet truly is terrible at making ACTUAL promotional material, unlike you know, both genre leaders which have incredible trailers, events, and actually promote their games and even some of the "equals" to Guild Wars 2 like TESO have some incredible trailers out there. The best they ever did in this regard is The Manifesto trailer, and is way outdated.

I really wanted to invite some friends to play Guild Wars 2, but i really have NOTHING to show the game off, aside things like this:

Spoilers for Season 4: This guy has done a better job than anything officially released as "trailers" from ArenaNet.

 

[wolfof.1842]

For perspective in 2024, Janthir Wilds trailer views:

• 214,000 views. 7,000 likes: GW2: Janthir Wilds - Expansion Announcement (3 months ago)
• 72,000 views. 3,800 likes: GW2: Janthir Wilds Launch Trailer (8 days ago)

Official GW2 Youtube channel: 183,000 subscribers

how many more players than Steam 5k concurrent you think play on Anet launcher then?
GW2 is not a small indie game, but also not as big as FFXIV, WoW...

[Triptaminas.4789]

30 minutes ago, wolfof.1842 said:

For perspective in 2024, Janthir Wilds trailer views:

• 214,000 views. 7,000 likes: GW2: Janthir Wilds - Expansion Announcement (3 months ago)
• 72,000 views. 3,800 likes: GW2: Janthir Wilds Launch Trailer (8 days ago)

Official GW2 Youtube channel: 183,000 subscribers

how many more players than Steam 5k concurrent you think play on Anet launcher then?
GW2 is not a small indie game, but also not as big as FFXIV, WoW...

Gw2 player base always was kinda ignoring youtubers and streamers, it's different culture.

Steam numbers is non existant even for most popular mmos in market.. or we'll mmos who is considered most popular.

Twitch and youtube stats like I said, u have to be completely ignorant about this game demographic to think that kitten matters.

Peepeepot can stand in LA and nobody will care, it's not wow where assmangon standing would make everyone peepee their pants in-game chat. There is no personality cult, no zoomers, videos completely irrelevant, u better off looking at the traffic to wiki.

I myself watch just friend stuff and some theorycrafter stuff, least I care is trailers. 

Doomers here like

>oh look at the steam!!!!

>oh, the final fantasy have sub 10k playing there? Then look at YouTube!!!

Yeah this one might be harder to ridicule as unless u understand this game demographic it will make no sense and u imply dead game. 

Neither marketing nor actual video creator culture here was ever supported here by devs, the results of media presence is years of playerbase conditioning and neglect of media.

My twitter accounts have more impressions that all gw2 related accounts combined. U maybe want to talk about twitter too?

Edited August 29 by Triptaminas.4789

[Robban.1256]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Hint: last info we've had told us there's around 17 million accounts total. 500 AP is enough to get you to top 30%. around 1000 AP is top 20%. Around 2800 AP is top 10%. And many of those top 10% accounts are no longer active.

 

AP is not a good metric to look at, it changes way to little. Specially if you only play 1 game mode, and you do the same every time you login.

 

Also we  have official AP data. From what I can see when I logged in to the site, lowest top 50 percentile is 144AP, top 50 percentile is 203AP. Highest top 60 percentile is 457AP.

Highest top 70 percentile around 950AP. Highest top 80 percentile is  2373AP. Highest top 90 percentile is 41941AP. https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/eu/achievements

 

 

[Triptaminas.4789]

8 minutes ago, Robban.1256 said:

AP is not a good metric to look at, it changes way to little. Specially if you only play 1 game mode, and you do the same every time you login.

 

Also we  have official AP data. From what I can see when I logged in to the site, lowest top 50 percentile is 144AP, top 50 percentile is 203AP. Highest top 60 percentile is 457AP.

Highest top 70 percentile around 950AP. Highest top 80 percentile is  2373AP. Highest top 90 percentile is 41941AP. https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/eu/achievements

 

 

Dead game, it's over, dead game!!!

Turn the servers off, turn it off

[wolfof.1842]

42 minutes ago, Triptaminas.4789 said:

Gw2 player base always was kinda ignoring youtubers and streamers, it's different culture.

Steam numbers is non existant even for most popular mmos in market.. or we'll mmos who is considered most popular.

Twitch and youtube stats like I said, u have to be completely ignorant about this game demographic to think that kitten matters.

Never talked about content creators, this is official GW2 expansion trailers by ArenaNet on Youtube.

Saying GW2 players don't watch new trailer of the game on Youtube? It's like saying no one ever use google in their life...

What do you think the game demographic looks like, we are people from 1890 who never used internet? 😀

[Triptaminas.4789]

3 minutes ago, wolfof.1842 said:

Never talked about content creators, this is official GW2 expansion trailers by ArenaNet on Youtube.

Saying GW2 players don't watch new trailer of the game on Youtube? It's like saying no one ever use google in their life...

What do you think the game demographic looks like, we are people from 1890 who never used internet? 😀

I don't watch trailers, it's pointless, I read blog post and articles. 

As gamer I know trailers is bunch of lies basically this 

 

 

It doesn't surprise me even a little that as old gamer demographic as this doesn't care about trailers. 

I care of what's delivered. Em I representation of all player base? Definetly not, but even in it's prime gw community was like that, it's just how it is. It's like trying to point out english media presence of Korean only game or smtg. Like this convo is pointless because of personal increduility of yours

Edited August 29 by Triptaminas.4789

[Astralporing.1957]

19 minutes ago, Robban.1256 said:

AP is not a good metric to look at, it changes way to little. Specially if you only play 1 game mode, and you do the same every time you login.

 

Also we  have official AP data. From what I can see when I logged in to the site, lowest top 50 percentile is 144AP, top 50 percentile is 203AP. Highest top 60 percentile is 457AP.

Highest top 70 percentile around 950AP. Highest top 80 percentile is  2373AP. Highest top 90 percentile is 41941AP. https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/eu/achievements

Tip: those numbers you see are based on your friends/guildmembers, not all players, so they're only general approximation of real breakpoints (for example, on my version of the list i have someone at 2810 AP while still within 80% range, which is around 500 AP more than what you see as your "highest top 80% percentile"). Doesn't change the overall ranges all that much, but it's good to remember that they are only an approximation due to us not being able to see the whole list.

Anyway, yes, APs are not a good metric. Still, in this case they're good enough. There's enough APs available you get through just playing (without actively meaning to obtain them) to get you to at least 2k very fast. Any active player that is not very new will be in that top 10% (90th percentile on leaderboards).

Based on that, it should be clear that claims of this game having 10 million active players are not just a bit off, but rather veer in the realm of complete bunk.

[SpaceMarine.1836]

6 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

one thing to keep in mind is an active account is not a player;. some hardcore players have a few dozen accounts or more and many have at least two.

Yes, but they are almost never concurrent. It makes little to no sense for players with alt account to run the game twice, because they can't really farm both at once, unless they use bots. They will usually log out of one account and log back into another, so multiple accounts will never be counted as concurrent during one specific point in time. You probably didn't read, but I explicitly stated peak. 

I have explicitly said peak concurrent daily players, meaning a largest number of players active at an exact point in time during 24 hour, one-day period. And then ANet would simply release the average. Let's say "In August of 2024, the peak concurrent daily players ranged between 28k to 43k." That's it.

I mean look above me. Everyone is just arguing about what these numbers could be, so it's all the more reason to have specific numbers instead of people arguing with each other about the data no one has access to. It is literally in the best interest of ANet, the game itself, existing players and potential new players for these numbers to be public. There's no scenario where releasing the numbers could hurt the game in any way in its current state.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Look at it this way - Currently, ANet pays many YT content creators to have short sponsored segment in their videos showing GW2 trailer in the background while reading off some pre-written promotion statement. If the part of the statement contained a sentence that GW2 has "Millions of unique players playing every month with around 40k concurrent players on average.", the whole sponsored segment would hit totally different. And the money spent of it would've paid off much, much more.

Edited August 29 by SpaceMarine.1836

[wolfof.1842]

33 minutes ago, Triptaminas.4789 said:

I don't watch trailers, it's pointless, I read blog post and articles. 

As gamer I know trailers is bunch of lies basically this 

It doesn't surprise me even a little that as old gamer demographic as this doesn't care about trailers. 

I care of what's delivered. Em I representation of all player base? Definetly not, but even in it's prime gw community was like that, it's just how it is.

I think you are in minority, actively not watching trailers... first time I heard this today honestly

People are always curious to look, it's a video game, they want to see new content, new zones, music, story. 
I believe more people quickly watch a new trailer, than reading pages and pages of articles, blog post...

[SpaceMarine.1836]

1 minute ago, wolfof.1842 said:

I think you are in minority, actively not watching trailers... first time I heard this today honestly

Not only that but he's also not what this thread is about. It's not about people whom already play GW2, it's about ANets inability to properly attract new people to play the game. GW2 that has this unfortunate kitten cake aura. It reminds me of those videos of edible cakes that look like hyper realistic real world object. GW2 is essentialy a kitten cake. It looks like kitten from the outside, but once you take a knife and cut into it, you realize it's just a cake, and a really good one at that. But ANet markets it just as a kitten, forgetting to mention its a cake.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

The numbers might not be there.

I am concerned that IoJ has a very bad gameplay loop once you finish all the scavenger  hunt achievements in both zone. All I can find as the end game loop is doing the hearts at least 14 times, plus whatever the repeatable adds to the 14 times. There is a reason Wayfarer's Henge  gets complaints, and I find it baffling that anet made the entire expansion end game loop revolve around doing heart quests. I would rather have map wide meta events like dragons end or Inner Nyos than doing heart quests with the slowest moving bar. 

[AliamRationem.5172]

4 minutes ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

The numbers might not be there.

I am concerned that IoJ has a very bad gameplay loop once you finish all the scavenger  hunt achievements in both zone. All I can find as the end game loop is doing the hearts at least 14 times, plus whatever the repeatable adds to the 14 times. There is a reason Wayfarer's Henge  gets complaints, and I find it baffling that anet made the entire expansion end game loop revolve around doing heart quests. I would rather have map wide meta events like dragons end or Inner Nyos than doing heart quests with the slowest moving bar. 

Definitely a legit concern.  Beautiful maps.  Some fun events.  But is the replay value there?  What's going to make me want to gather honey and turn into a salmon once the achievements are done?

[Teknomancer.4895]

23 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Definitely a legit concern.  Beautiful maps.  Some fun events.  But is the replay value there?  What's going to make me want to gather honey and turn into a salmon once the achievements are done?

It seems to be a matter of the map focus; JW maps feel a lot more like sandboxy choose-your-own-adventure kinds of places rather than the big scripted events on timers. I'm enjoying just running around and jumping in on whatever random event comes up. Yes, the heart-token-exchange thing is weird and I'm still not quite used to it yet (on the first one, I could have been done with the thing but didn't realize I had to actually sell those tokens for completion, doh!). It feels much better than the repeatable PoF hearts where you have to do it every day if you want to buy from that vendor, but it's still a strange means of progression. I assume replayability for most will come from the upcoming-release content; so far we only have the setup part of the story after all.

Meanwhile I'm enjoying the gorgeous and varied maps we already got, where most of the mounts have niches where they're useful (except the turtle and jackal). Warclaw is fine, but IMO Janthir is more fun for griffon-flying than even the SotO maps. 🤩

[wolfof.1842]

53 minutes ago, SpaceMarine.1836 said:

If the part of the statement contained a sentence that GW2 has "Millions of unique players playing every month with around 40k concurrent players on average.", the whole sponsored segment would hit totally different. 

I think total numbers are also hard to present, advertise..

Because people know WoW and FFXIV are already bigger any way.
Then you have other MMOs released on consoles too: 

1. WoW ?
2. FFXIV: PC, Xbox, PS4
3. ESO: PC, Xbox, PS4
4. Runescape: PC, Android, iOS
5. Black Desert: PC, Xbox, PS4

Runescape publish concurrent players on homepage, currently:

• Runescape 3: 123,950 concurrent players
• Olds. Runescape: 106,863 concurrent player

Consoles, mobile is a big market but GW2 is only available on PC.
What rank # would GW2 be, and would people not try #1, #2, #3 first any way?

[AliamRationem.5172]

14 minutes ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

It seems to be a matter of the map focus; JW maps feel a lot more like sandboxy choose-your-own-adventure kinds of places rather than the big scripted events on timers. I'm enjoying just running around and jumping in on whatever random event comes up. Yes, the heart-token-exchange thing is weird and I'm still not quite used to it yet (on the first one, I could have been done with the thing but didn't realize I had to actually sell those tokens for completion, doh!). It feels much better than the repeatable PoF hearts where you have to do it every day if you want to buy from that vendor, but it's still a strange means of progression. I assume replayability for most will come from the upcoming-release content; so far we only have the setup part of the story after all.

Meanwhile I'm enjoying the gorgeous and varied maps we already got, where most of the mounts have niches where they're useful (except the turtle and jackal). Warclaw is fine, but IMO Janthir is more fun for griffon-flying than even the SotO maps. 🤩

Don't get me wrong. I think lowland shore is a good map.  I love the aesthetic and there's a great mix of events.  I'm enjoying my time there so far.  But long term?  No big event with rewards to keep me coming back.  "Wait until another map releases" doesn't answer that concern.

[Triptaminas.4789]

17 minutes ago, wolfof.1842 said:

I think total numbers are also hard to present, advertise..

Because people know WoW and FFXIV are already bigger any way.
Then you have other MMOs released on consoles too: 

1. WoW ?
2. FFXIV: PC, Xbox, PS4
3. ESO: PC, Xbox, PS4
4. Runescape: PC, Android, iOS
5. Black Desert: PC, Xbox, PS4

Runescape publish concurrent players on homepage, currently:

• Runescape 3: 123,950 concurrent players
• Olds. Runescape: 106,863 concurrent player

Consoles, mobile is a big market but GW2 is only available on PC.
What rank # would GW2 be, and would people not try #1, #2, #3 first any way?

 

1 hour ago, wolfof.1842 said:

I think you are in minority, actively not watching trailers... first time I heard this today honestly

People are always curious to look, it's a video game, they want to see new content, new zones, music, story. 
I believe more people quickly watch a new trailer, than reading pages and pages of articles, blog post...

Idc what u think mate, u suggesting gw2 go mobile and compare it to runescape. U clearly not familiar with this demographic, nor understand what tab action and action game is. U also think consoles still relevant, which is on its own kinda hilarious considering Microsoft binning the consoles and whole industry in panic there.

Reading your posts is waste of my time so I skimmed thru it only out of basic respect.

Just try to understand that gw2 appeals to different demographic than u used to and understanding all related to mmo industry be easier to you