GW2 Population: 2018 vs 2016 [Crosspost from Reddit]

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@witcher.3197 said:

@Mogrey.3891 said:don't have much to add but twitch is not a population measurement.

Twitch/youtube numbers alone don't really mean anything, I agree. But if the rapid decline of those numbers certainly does.

It would work for games like LoL or CS:GO. GW2 has never been relevant on twitch or youtube so these numbers are really not worth being bothered with.

[Snrub.1347]

I read much negativity. All I can say is that not everyone has an extra account but instead some are sharing an account (couples).And from all the people (maybe abaout 5) I know who play or played this game (and similar ones), no one ever posted on a forum or subscribed on youtube, twitch or whatever. So think in a supercasual and fun way of playing without any hard content or deeper thoughts.

All this should show is that there are many kind of active players.

[MadFable.1978]

I have never met anyone with more than one account till this thread popped up. So.... I do not think it is common at all. lol

[Raizel.8175]

I don't get the negativity. People seem to forget that the entire MMORPG-industry is in a bad state since some years because of the rise of lootboxes and p2w-elements. Almost every classic F2P-game features those now and these games are even somewhat designed to encourage that nonsense. The number of good MMORPGs certainly became smaller, thus people wander off to other MMORPGs. Besides having friends playing GW2, this is actually one of the main reasons I started GW2 six months ago. Thing is, many MMORPGs turn gear-progression into their main-content, which always devalues old content. That way, many MMORPGs lack living content and actually don't really focus on actual game-experience as the main driving-force of playing the game. I'm quite happy with GW2 the way it is and know some people who switched (back) to GW2 after being unhappy about the way their previous MMORPG turned out. Besides all that, there is also the chinese GW2 to consider. I dare say we should be more optimistic with GW2s longevity.

[Mogrey.3891]

@witcher.3197 said:

@Mogrey.3891 said:

@witcher.3197 said:

@Mogrey.3891 said:don't have much to add but twitch is not a population measurement.

Twitch/youtube numbers alone don't really mean anything, I agree. But if the rapid decline of those numbers certainly does.

you give twitch/youtube way too much credits that you should.

Or you give too little.

even on first release dates gw2 never had many twitch viewers. i don't know why you think twitch is relevant to gw2 population.

[Svarty.8019]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Think it through again.September 2016 was a year after HoT; the new estimate is less than 6 months after PoF launched. We should expect a bigger number. (PS it's 15 months later, not 24.)

Lots of my guildmates returned for a few weeks before and after PoF released, but not many have stuck around, and certainly none play as much as they did for .... years after HoT was released.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

There's some confusion as to why interest the current estimate (3.3 Million) is noticeably larger than the original one (2.6M). Everyone "knows" that interest in MMOs go down as the game ages, so why should these estimates show the opposite? A couple of reasons, the short of which is:

• Numbers spike at key points in a game's life (expansions, DLC, festivals) and ebb down more gradually the rest of the time.
• The particular points in time we're looking at include an older one far, far away from a key date and one that is closer to two key dates (and not far from a third).

In other words, it shouldn't surprise us that the January 2018 estimate shows more interest in the game than September 2016. And that isn't enough data to tell us whether (or how much) interest is declining overall.

---

September 2016 was a year after HoT; the new estimate is less than 6 months after PoF launched. We should expect a bigger number. (PS it's 15 months later, not 24.)

Lots of my guildmates returned for a few weeks before and after PoF released, but not many have stuck around, and certainly none play as much as they did for .... years after HoT was released.

That's looking through the narrow microcosm of a single person's view of the game. Of course there are tons of people who came for PoF and left within 2 weeks, having exhausted it of the content/gameplay of interest to them. And just as of course, there are people who came back and stayed. Each of us individually has no way to measure which group is bigger of even if either group is big.

My point is that interest in the game surges rapidly at particular points in time and gradually drops and when comparing only two dates, it's important to note: how close is each to the most recent surge? September 2016 was a year after an expansion and before Halloween and Wintersday. That's nearly as far from peak interest points as possible. In contrast, January 2018 is less than six months from a better-received expansion, right after Wintersday and not longer after Halloween — it's much closer to peak interest points.

So it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that January 2018 numbers are bigger than September 2016. The overall trend for the game might be down, but we're not seeing an overall trend with only two dates.

Again, hardcore fans shouldn't read too much into the numbers and again, intense critics should try not to read too little. These two data points tell us only a tiny piece of a complex story.

[battledrone.8315]

@Astralporing.1957 said:Notice also, that if these estimations were even close to being true, that would mean that out of all the accounts ever made (including f2p), over one-third is still active. That i seriously doubt.

this!

[Granrey.8920]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:the important number is the average of players at any given moment and in my books, it feels like couple thousands at most.

Not sure where you're getting this but it's definitely more than a couple of thousand. You need to start count maps and events. A couple of full dragon stand maps alone is a couple of hundred people. I've seen multiple maps full for Tequatl. The point is if you're on a map, you can't tell how many other of the same maps there are, so I'm not sure how you can tell. Seems to me unlikely that the number is that low though. That's not counting people in raids, fractals, dungeons, WvW and PvP in addition to randomly wandering around different maps.

Today I was in a party with a guy and we ended up multiple times on different maps as we were teleporting around. If that hadn't happened, I'd have not know there was more than one map. And we don't know if those two were the only maps either.

pretty much everywhere I go. I rarely see another player. unless is a boss event, I could see maybe 10 or 15 players.

the game has fragmented the population too much. the chat is usually empty too.

First of all, free to play players can't chat in the map. So if you're on any map that's not in a new zone, a good percentage of the players might be free to play. But more than that, I have no idea what boss events you're going to. There were a ton of people at Dragon Stand today. I know the map for TD for the meta was full because I couldn't get into it, and the next map, the one I was on filled up pretty fast too. The point is the world is big and getting bigger all the time, but no matter where I am and what I'm doing, someone ends up joining in. That wouldn't happen if only a couple of thousand players were online at one time. That's not counting peiople in instances or WvW or Edge of the Mists.

You draw conclusions based your observations but let's pretend you only see 15 people at a boss event. How can you ever know there's not another full map doing that boss event?

I have to talk about my own observation (otherwise, I would be lying or expeculating). lets say, there are 3 million playing at the same time with me but I don't see anyone. what is the point in saying there are 3 million?

if they are distributed in numerous serves, regions, zones, etc.

there was a time in which an MMO had a constant influx of new players and increasing, servers, adding expansions with new territories, zones, dungeons, etc made sense at the time because of this influx.

In that scenario, new players would always see other players around but at this point this model does not work and GW2 seems stuck in model of the past which is reducing player's density.

It's funny when I get the message about transferring me to another server with more player's, then I go and it is the same thing lol

[Bloodstealer.5978]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:the important number is the average of players at any given moment and in my books, it feels like couple thousands at most.

Not sure where you're getting this but it's definitely more than a couple of thousand. You need to start count maps and events. A couple of full dragon stand maps alone is a couple of hundred people. I've seen multiple maps full for Tequatl. The point is if you're on a map, you can't tell how many other of the same maps there are, so I'm not sure how you can tell. Seems to me unlikely that the number is that low though. That's not counting people in raids, fractals, dungeons, WvW and PvP in addition to randomly wandering around different maps.

Today I was in a party with a guy and we ended up multiple times on different maps as we were teleporting around. If that hadn't happened, I'd have not know there was more than one map. And we don't know if those two were the only maps either.

pretty much everywhere I go. I rarely see another player. unless is a boss event, I could see maybe 10 or 15 players.

the game has fragmented the population too much. the chat is usually empty too.

First of all, free to play players can't chat in the map. So if you're on any map that's not in a new zone, a good percentage of the players might be free to play. But more than that, I have no idea what boss events you're going to. There were a ton of people at Dragon Stand today. I know the map for TD for the meta was full because I couldn't get into it, and the next map, the one I was on filled up pretty fast too. The point is the world is big and getting bigger all the time, but no matter where I am and what I'm doing, someone ends up joining in. That wouldn't happen if only a couple of thousand players were online at one time. That's not counting peiople in instances or WvW or Edge of the Mists.

You draw conclusions based your observations but let's pretend you only see 15 people at a boss event. How can you ever know there's not another full map doing that boss event?

The person you replied to said maps were generally empty unless it's force boss fight... dragon stand maps are in my experience of the lastc6 months generally empty until event timer gets close and a few left's appear... that is generally true for a lot of maps until champ trains move in or a boss event spawns.GW2 is to some extent it's own worst enemy in that that world is large and leads to a ot of population fragmentation but of coursecsome of that has to happen for tech reasons but quite a few maps do feel empty a lot of the time... but of course time of day, day of week, time of year and age of game/game progression are all factors in this as well.That said i agree with what Ilconceived said and its what i have always said when these posts are put out by players fixated on numbers even though there is no actual proof just heresay and assumptions.If you able to login and have fun then l is good... when you can't and you don't then... it's time to look at the options for yourself.ANET/ NC Soft k ow the numbers they also know if its still worth keeping it going.. when numbers dictate its not Iam pretty sure we will all know about it soon enough.

[Vayne.8563]

@Granrey.8920 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:the important number is the average of players at any given moment and in my books, it feels like couple thousands at most.

Not sure where you're getting this but it's definitely more than a couple of thousand. You need to start count maps and events. A couple of full dragon stand maps alone is a couple of hundred people. I've seen multiple maps full for Tequatl. The point is if you're on a map, you can't tell how many other of the same maps there are, so I'm not sure how you can tell. Seems to me unlikely that the number is that low though. That's not counting people in raids, fractals, dungeons, WvW and PvP in addition to randomly wandering around different maps.

Today I was in a party with a guy and we ended up multiple times on different maps as we were teleporting around. If that hadn't happened, I'd have not know there was more than one map. And we don't know if those two were the only maps either.

pretty much everywhere I go. I rarely see another player. unless is a boss event, I could see maybe 10 or 15 players.

the game has fragmented the population too much. the chat is usually empty too.

First of all, free to play players can't chat in the map. So if you're on any map that's not in a new zone, a good percentage of the players might be free to play. But more than that, I have no idea what boss events you're going to. There were a ton of people at Dragon Stand today. I know the map for TD for the meta was full because I couldn't get into it, and the next map, the one I was on filled up pretty fast too. The point is the world is big and getting bigger all the time, but no matter where I am and what I'm doing, someone ends up joining in. That wouldn't happen if only a couple of thousand players were online at one time. That's not counting peiople in instances or WvW or Edge of the Mists.

You draw conclusions based your observations but let's pretend you only see 15 people at a boss event. How can you ever know there's not another full map doing that boss event?

I have to talk about my own observation (otherwise, I would be lying or expeculating). lets say, there are 3 million playing at the same time with me but I don't see anyone. what is the point in saying there are 3 million?

if they are distributed in numerous serves, regions, zones, etc.

there was a time in which an MMO had a constant influx of new players and increasing, servers, adding expansions with new territories, zones, dungeons, etc made sense at the time because of this influx.

In that scenario, new players would always see other players around but at this point this model does not work and GW2 seems stuck in model of the past which is reducing player's density.

It's funny when I get the message about transferring me to another server with more player's, then I go and it is the same thing lol

Just seems to me some people don't get how the mega server works. It's all down to what's going on on a specific server at a specific time and nothing else. Too many people see too many people for me to take anyone's word about it. Not just me. Not just one or two people. Every time there's a thread about stuff like this, there's more people saying there's plenty of people than people saying there's not enough people.

Take the example you gave about transfering servers because there's not enough people to fill a server. Well sure. That happens. But the question is why does it happen. It has to do with the design of the mega server. Your server wouldn't have even been created if there weren't enough people to create it. But that doesn't mean that those people are where you are on the the server. So if the Fire elemental or Tequatl happens, then a bunch of maps may be created to handle the overflow. You might have three, four, even five maps. Who knows? The point is once you actually do that boss, everyone leaves that zone leaving many many unpopulated zones. The game shuffles down the zones until everything balances out. People who are aware of how the game works know this is what happens and often know the reason for it. But saying there's no one in my zone where I happen to be is like saying WOW was dead. Even at it's height there were people complaining about the dead mid level zones in WOW. It was just people who didn't understand that WoW pretty much focused people in end game zones and that's where a good portion of the population would be found. Or waiting in cities for the queue to pop.

There are many deserted streets in NYC, even at busy times of day. It doesn't make NYC's population low.

[Granrey.8920]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:the important number is the average of players at any given moment and in my books, it feels like couple thousands at most.

Not sure where you're getting this but it's definitely more than a couple of thousand. You need to start count maps and events. A couple of full dragon stand maps alone is a couple of hundred people. I've seen multiple maps full for Tequatl. The point is if you're on a map, you can't tell how many other of the same maps there are, so I'm not sure how you can tell. Seems to me unlikely that the number is that low though. That's not counting people in raids, fractals, dungeons, WvW and PvP in addition to randomly wandering around different maps.

Today I was in a party with a guy and we ended up multiple times on different maps as we were teleporting around. If that hadn't happened, I'd have not know there was more than one map. And we don't know if those two were the only maps either.

pretty much everywhere I go. I rarely see another player. unless is a boss event, I could see maybe 10 or 15 players.

the game has fragmented the population too much. the chat is usually empty too.

First of all, free to play players can't chat in the map. So if you're on any map that's not in a new zone, a good percentage of the players might be free to play. But more than that, I have no idea what boss events you're going to. There were a ton of people at Dragon Stand today. I know the map for TD for the meta was full because I couldn't get into it, and the next map, the one I was on filled up pretty fast too. The point is the world is big and getting bigger all the time, but no matter where I am and what I'm doing, someone ends up joining in. That wouldn't happen if only a couple of thousand players were online at one time. That's not counting peiople in instances or WvW or Edge of the Mists.

You draw conclusions based your observations but let's pretend you only see 15 people at a boss event. How can you ever know there's not another full map doing that boss event?

I have to talk about my own observation (otherwise, I would be lying or expeculating). lets say, there are 3 million playing at the same time with me but I don't see anyone. what is the point in saying there are 3 million?

if they are distributed in numerous serves, regions, zones, etc.

there was a time in which an MMO had a constant influx of new players and increasing, servers, adding expansions with new territories, zones, dungeons, etc made sense at the time because of this influx.

In that scenario, new players would always see other players around but at this point this model does not work and GW2 seems stuck in model of the past which is reducing player's density.

It's funny when I get the message about transferring me to another server with more player's, then I go and it is the same thing lol

Just seems to me some people don't get how the mega server works. It's all down to what's going on on a specific server at a specific time and nothing else. Too many people see too many people for me to take anyone's word about it. Not just me. Not just one or two people. Every time there's a thread about stuff like this, there's more people saying there's plenty of people than people saying there's not enough people.

Take the example you gave about transfering servers because there's not enough people to fill a server. Well sure. That happens. But the question is why does it happen. It has to do with the design of the mega server. Your server wouldn't have even been created if there weren't enough people to create it. But that doesn't mean that those people are where you are on the the server. So if the Fire elemental or Tequatl happens, then a bunch of maps may be created to handle the overflow. You might have three, four, even five maps. Who knows? The point is once you actually do that boss, everyone leaves that zone leaving many many unpopulated zones. The game shuffles down the zones until everything balances out. People who are aware of how the game works know this is what happens and often know the reason for it. But saying there's no one in my zone where I happen to be is like saying WOW was dead. Even at it's height there were people complaining about the dead mid level zones in WOW. It was just people who didn't understand that WoW pretty much focused people in end game zones and that's where a good portion of the population would be found. Or waiting in cities for the queue to pop.

There are many deserted streets in NYC, even at busy times of day. It doesn't make NYC's population low.

I'm not complaining about being moved from one server to another. I do think is the right thing to do when the server has low population. I always says yes when I get the message.

However, yoiu are still being moved to one that looks having low population too. regardless if there are millions of players logged in.

in your example of empty streets in NY. having millions of people in NY does not correlate as I don't go to NY to interact with others but in a MMO you expect to.

[Vayne.8563]

@Granrey.8920 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Granrey.8920 said:the important number is the average of players at any given moment and in my books, it feels like couple thousands at most.

Not sure where you're getting this but it's definitely more than a couple of thousand. You need to start count maps and events. A couple of full dragon stand maps alone is a couple of hundred people. I've seen multiple maps full for Tequatl. The point is if you're on a map, you can't tell how many other of the same maps there are, so I'm not sure how you can tell. Seems to me unlikely that the number is that low though. That's not counting people in raids, fractals, dungeons, WvW and PvP in addition to randomly wandering around different maps.

Today I was in a party with a guy and we ended up multiple times on different maps as we were teleporting around. If that hadn't happened, I'd have not know there was more than one map. And we don't know if those two were the only maps either.

pretty much everywhere I go. I rarely see another player. unless is a boss event, I could see maybe 10 or 15 players.

the game has fragmented the population too much. the chat is usually empty too.

First of all, free to play players can't chat in the map. So if you're on any map that's not in a new zone, a good percentage of the players might be free to play. But more than that, I have no idea what boss events you're going to. There were a ton of people at Dragon Stand today. I know the map for TD for the meta was full because I couldn't get into it, and the next map, the one I was on filled up pretty fast too. The point is the world is big and getting bigger all the time, but no matter where I am and what I'm doing, someone ends up joining in. That wouldn't happen if only a couple of thousand players were online at one time. That's not counting peiople in instances or WvW or Edge of the Mists.

You draw conclusions based your observations but let's pretend you only see 15 people at a boss event. How can you ever know there's not another full map doing that boss event?

I have to talk about my own observation (otherwise, I would be lying or expeculating). lets say, there are 3 million playing at the same time with me but I don't see anyone. what is the point in saying there are 3 million?

if they are distributed in numerous serves, regions, zones, etc.

there was a time in which an MMO had a constant influx of new players and increasing, servers, adding expansions with new territories, zones, dungeons, etc made sense at the time because of this influx.

In that scenario, new players would always see other players around but at this point this model does not work and GW2 seems stuck in model of the past which is reducing player's density.

It's funny when I get the message about transferring me to another server with more player's, then I go and it is the same thing lol

Just seems to me some people don't get how the mega server works. It's all down to what's going on on a specific server at a specific time and nothing else. Too many people see too many people for me to take anyone's word about it. Not just me. Not just one or two people. Every time there's a thread about stuff like this, there's more people saying there's plenty of people than people saying there's not enough people.

Take the example you gave about transfering servers because there's not enough people to fill a server. Well sure. That happens. But the question is why does it happen. It has to do with the design of the mega server. Your server wouldn't have even been created if there weren't enough people to create it. But that doesn't mean that those people are where you are on the the server. So if the Fire elemental or Tequatl happens, then a bunch of maps may be created to handle the overflow. You might have three, four, even five maps. Who knows? The point is once you actually do that boss, everyone leaves that zone leaving many many unpopulated zones. The game shuffles down the zones until everything balances out. People who are aware of how the game works know this is what happens and often know the reason for it. But saying there's no one in my zone where I happen to be is like saying WOW was dead. Even at it's height there were people complaining about the dead mid level zones in WOW. It was just people who didn't understand that WoW pretty much focused people in end game zones and that's where a good portion of the population would be found. Or waiting in cities for the queue to pop.

There are many deserted streets in NYC, even at busy times of day. It doesn't make NYC's population low.

I'm not complaining about being moved from one server to another. I do think is the right thing to do when the server has low population. I always says yes when I get the message.

However, yoiu are still being moved to one that looks having low population too. regardless if there are millions of players logged in.

in your example of empty streets in NY. having millions of people in NY does not correlate as I don't go to NY to interact with others but in a MMO you expect to.

You're STILL missing the point. If 5 servers open for a specific timed event, and all those servers get a massive decrease in population after that event is over, then ALL those servers will end up low pop and you're likely to be moved to another low pop server over and over until there's only one or two servers left. Changes nothing I said.

I once met a guy in Metrica, new player who said he barely saw any players playing. As fate would have it, the Fire ele was almost up, so I moved him a very very short distance away and suddenly the guy is like look at all these players.

There's also the issue of character model limits set in graphics. I sometimes keep it low for performance purposes and it looks like less people, until I raise it.

You don't know how many people are on a server. You know how many people are standing around you.

[elrin.4750]

If there are a lot of players, I personally don't feel it. I mean, I don't like seeing the same people again and again on WB events., always that corny commander in Teq, an empty LFG, etc etc. I want to see/meet some other people dmnit.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

I like this game

[Granrey.8920]

@elrin.4750 said:If there are a lot of players, I personally don't feel it. I mean, I don't like seeing the same people again and again on WB events., always that corny commander in Teq, an empty LFG, etc etc. I want to see/meet some other people dmnit.

exactly, who cares if there are 10 million players that you don't feel.

[Nereikia.3507]

So that person used total numbers of Gw2efficiency accounts (and /r/GuildWars2 's subscribers) to count

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:estimates of the currently-playing GW2 community

So, I estimate that GW2's current "active" population to be around 3.3 Million.

And then, when ppl pointed out that he/she didn't understand the meaning of those "subscribers counts", the redditor added another obscure statement:

EDIT2: as many of you have pointed out, people tend to never unsubscribe from subreddits, and that almost nobody would unregister API keys from GW2Efficiency. both of these are true. we're already seeing the effect for GW2Efficiency: when i made my first post over a year ago, GW2Efficiency was giving me a low estimate compared to subreddit subscribers; now, it gives a slightly higher estimate. however, the remainng metric, unique visitors per month, isn't affected by "dead" subscribers, and it currently gives a similar estimate. unique subscribers is vulnerable to temporary spikes around major releases, but that will resolve itself within the next month or so.

"Methodology"?!For God's sake! :p :#

[Tolmos.8395]

One thing that really kills me in these discussions is how wrapped up everyone is in MILLIONS are players.

Y'all, I've been an MMO fanboy for 20 years now, and I gotta tell you that comparing anything to World of Warcraft's numbers is a losing game. WoW was a freak of nature, here in the west (Korea has some like it, though); the perfect product for the time it released, and now emotional investment keeps those numbers high. Every other game after it had a huge handicap trying to reach that success, and you would be better off not even considering their sub numbers when you talk about other games.

Here's the deal. I've played EVE online for years, and I can tell you that a game can feel VERY alive, even crowded, with 300,000 active players. Not three MILLION, but three hundred thousand. How many players do you interact with on a daily basis? Maybe 200-300 tops, right? Maybe a little more. Assuming only 10% of active players are online at any given time, that's 30,000 players playing all the time. That's a lot; it really is. It may not sound like it, in this day and age, but a lot of games have been doing great with that many players. In fact, those games are still running today.

Even if you cut the total number of active players from the OP in half, and have 1.15 million players... that's a hell of a lot of people. That's over 115,000 people online at any given time. That's killer, folks. With the skins/outfits/other gem store stuff, those 1.15 million are probably spending more on average than a subscription game would, so I would say that Anet is doing just fine.

My point is: relaaaaaaaax. It's great to know the numbers, and to try to figure them out, but don't in any way let the theoretical numbers concern you. As long as we can keep even 1/10 of the numbers from OP playing, this game will be alive for a good while longer.

[Brazzi.2045]

Could never believe that gw2 got more than 500k active players, i dunno how it is in NA, but in EU in both pvp and wvw you will see mostly same ppl for a past years, cant be that other two and a half million are just doing pve only.

[battledrone.8315]

@Tolmos.8395 said:One thing that really kills me in these discussions is how wrapped up everyone is in MILLIONS are players.

Y'all, I've been an MMO fanboy for 20 years now, and I gotta tell you that comparing anything to World of Warcraft's numbers is a losing game. WoW was a freak of nature, here in the west (Korea has some like it, though); the perfect product for the time it released, and now emotional investment keeps those numbers high. Every other game after it had a huge handicap trying to reach that success, and you would be better off not even considering their sub numbers when you talk about other games.

Here's the deal. I've played EVE online for years, and I can tell you that a game can feel VERY alive, even crowded, with 300,000 active players. Not three MILLION, but three hundred thousand. How many players do you interact with on a daily basis? Maybe 200-300 tops, right? Maybe a little more. Assuming only 10% of active players are online at any given time, that's 30,000 players playing all the time. That's a lot; it really is. It may not sound like it, in this day and age, but a lot of games have been doing great with that many players. In fact, those games are still running today.

Even if you cut the total number of active players from the OP in half, and have 1.15 million players... that's a hell of a lot of people. That's over 115,000 people online at any given time. That's killer, folks. With the skins/outfits/other gem store stuff, those 1.15 million are probably spending more on average than a subscription game would, so I would say that Anet is doing just fine.

My point is: relaaaaaaaax. It's great to know the numbers, and to try to figure them out, but don't in any way let the theoretical numbers concern you. As long as we can keep even 1/10 of the numbers from OP playing, this game will be alive for a good while longer.

CCP is a small team, they dont need that many players to survive, AFAIK anet has around 400 employees, so they need a much bigger playerbaseCoX still had around 350 k players, when they shut that down, so...no

[Lord Of The Tree.5249]

Out of 3.3 million players, I wonder how many of them are Bots.

[BigmanD.3846]

This seems like a joke lmao, there definitely isn't anywhere near 3 million active players. I'd put the closer estimate to around 50 to 100k players max. Maybe even lower, If the game had a population anywhere near 500k, there would be enough niche players that would make things active, dungeons would still have a small but playable number of actives and PvP wouldn't take up to 10 minutes to find a match even as a new player.

[mortrialus.3062]

@BigmanD.3846 said:This seems like a joke lmao, there definitely isn't anywhere near 3 million active players. I'd put the closer estimate to around 50 to 100k players max. Maybe even lower, If the game had a population anywhere near 500k, there would be enough niche players that would make things active, dungeons would still have a small but playable number of actives and PvP wouldn't take up to 10 minutes to find a match even as a new player.

My PvP queue times average about two minutes.

[Hindenburg.3415]

@BigmanD.3846 said:This seems like a joke lmao, there definitely isn't anywhere near 3 million active players. I'd put the closer estimate to around 50 to 100k players max. Maybe even lower, If the game had a population anywhere near 500k, there would be enough niche players that would make things active, dungeons would still have a small but playable number of actives and PvP wouldn't take up to 10 minutes to find a match even as a new player.

Yep. Dead fractals (t1-t2 at least ) for the most part of the day. Dead dungeons at any time. 6-7 mins for spvp.3 millions ? Good joke.

[Sojourner.4621]

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Mourningcry.9428 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Mourningcry.9428 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Mourningcry.9428 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Mourningcry.9428 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:Ok so in 2016, when HoT came out, GW2 was making around 17 - 30 Million a Quarter, with anywhere between 1.9 - 2.5 million players. So roughly, everyone was spending some where around at least 10+ quarter, Or put another way,

everyone

was buying at least a one 10 dollar/400 gem purchase a quarter. With a bit more being bought on occasion. Not bad.

in 2018, we have 3.3 million and an average of 13 million a quarter, which means on average everyone is spending around 4 dollars a quarter.

That means player spending has been cut in over half over 2 years, while they have increased their overall player numbers.

They released Q4 financials?

Q4 would be heavily influenced by PoF expansion sales, so would not be a good metric.

Forgive me then, but where is the 2018 number you're using coming from?

I said

average

so I was using the

Average

spending over the last year.

I'm sorry, now I'm really confused... so, you're only using 2017Q1 & 2017Q2 sales figures versus 2016Q1-4? And population estimates from?

What I'm getting at is, and maybe I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but I'm not seeing the apples to apple comparison of financials.

Ultimately, I'm not even seeing what an estimated average spend per user is supposed to demonstrate. It doesn't equate in anyway to the financial health of the company.

Actually I am using 2016Q2 to 2017Q2 sales, because 2017Q3 was PoF pre-launch sales.

It means in short.. we have more people playing and spending less. Draw from that whatever you want.

It kinda, sorta, but not really, means that... for that period of time.... and by not really, I'm mean it doesn't.

At the simplest level, account population is not 1-1 versus actual person. So, at best you have average sales per account, not customer... which offers even less insight from a financial perspective.

And it doesn't really matter what I draw from it, you're the one putting it out there. What matters is you're throwing those statistics out there for interpretation. When in fact, those statistics don't represent what you're claiming they do.

Well, here is what we have, Anet has more people playing and making less money.

Draw from that, whatever you want.

We have no way of telling that... see q2 2016-q2 2017 is the time period where it says we had only 2.6mil players... e.g. LESS PLAYERS PLAYING... now in 2018 POST PoF LAUNCH we have around 3.3 mil... so ignoring the unreleased PoF quarterly numbers is retarded and has no basis in reality. It fits your rhetoric but it's also bad math.