Are a large number of players retiring?

prolly just a life and death cycle, u gotta make new friends ^^. lol i bought factions 6 months ago and prop/night 2 months later, so have some of my friends, and others are expressing interest.

Anyway, if you make a note of how many newbs/ complaints about newbs you see out there, you'll prolly be very re-assured that the there is influx of population

I'm curious where and how you have got this huge impression that everyone is leaving the game?

Have people walked up to you and personally said "im leaving" and youve never seen them again! Are you just counting the number of disgruntled players in this website! Are you going by guild numbers falling?

I've also heard lots of people being unsatisfied with the game now, and threaten to leave. Im sure alot do, but who cares!

Let them leave, because its really not having any huge impact on the game as new players are starting all the time.

I really dont like these "GWs is dieing" threads, because people are allowed to leave games if they want to. Im sure you have console games or other PC games that you play for about 2 weeks and then never touch again.

I know I do, yet ive continued to play this game for 2 years + now. I say that speaks loads for the game.

Yes people are leaving, but they are also starting too.

There's a big influx of newbs, but all the ones i've talked to and helped I haven't seen on for days-weeks now.

My guild is actually more active and gotten more members this past 2 weeks than in the past 6 months....

Me, im playing Metroid prime o.o

Because when you leave those games, you aren't really affecting anyone. But in Guild Wars, the less people there are, the less opprutunity there is to find people to play with, group with, etc.

Just wait untill you see al the crammed districts in LA when Mad King Thorn arrives ^^

People tend to find a guild/alliance they enjoy and that becomes the Guild Wars "world" to them. What I mean by that is they use their guild rosters and alliance activity as a barometer of how the game is living or dying. Once some people find that shell of friends, they tend to rarely stray from it.

Just look around. There are tons of people around. The game is fine.

i dont find the game dying at all, my guild, which has had a steady base of 35 players for over 2 yrs, still has a steady base of 35 players, we are PVE only guild and our members just play the game. so most of our members have celebrated over 1 year of memebership and still remain relatively active. i dont bother with PUGS anymore, unless a guildie/alliance member needs help. our alliance has 9 guilds in it and very active, which is nice. so as far as guild wars dying, i think it its more a "point of view" type thing. some palces are more populated some are not, just my 2 cents.

people still pug? and all this time i thought that guildwars was a single player game. go figure

Can't say I'm sad to see em go.

Since the release of Halo 3 my lag situation has significantly improved.

I hear some much squawking about how the pug groups are harder to find. Well they got hard to find when Factions was about 3 months old. Finding a good PUG was always hit and miss to start with.

The game is called Guild Wars not PUG Wars for a reason. Guilds have been my best source of socialization in this game. People can grumble about heroes and the lack of PUG groups all they want but I would say the majority of GW players love Heroes and find them to be a very enjoyable part of the game.

So what if the community is dwindling. Just means the servers will not be working their guts out and the lag will improve for those of us that enjoy the game for what it is and not what we think it should be.

GW 2 is on its way and GW has been out for 2 years now. I don't think it will fade away to nothing, but it has reached its high water mark. It is a great game and I will be playing it for a long time to come. I'll switch to GW2 or stop playing again like I did when I finally tired of Diablo II.

Empires rise and fall, I had hoped that Anet would craft GW into an epic game with over 7 chapters a few expansions and what not but they have decided that it is time to move on and revamp the world of GW. It is the way of things in the game world. Nothing last forever.

QFT. Everyone loves the Halloween event.

I'm semi-retired now, having played this game since the E3 for Everyone right through the betas and through to EotN. That's more than 3 years in one game... it's inevitable that I'd eventually get tired of it. That's quite a long time to be playing a game. I still pop in game a few times a week to check my friends list, but it seems I'm not the only one who has stopped playing. I'll likely keep playing every now and again, but I am actively looking for another game to play. I need a change.

There is nothing else new coming out in the forseeable future that advances the genre in any way, GW2 is our last best hope. WAR and AoC will be out next year, but they are only incremental improvements over typical mmos, and WoW's Wrath of the Lich King expansion, while I'm sure will be fun for a little while, is also an incremental improvement - they are not redesigning the entire game.

GW2 or bust.

Yes. such stuff propably will bring a LOT people back, since it is fun, and is rare enough so that people dont get tired of it, for a while. But then they would go back to limbo.

Judging from my FL activity and Guild activity, most of veterans are out. From guild of 30 die-hard people (those were times when we were able to sync 8+8 man missions with less than hour of preparations...) it went to guild of 3 while others have month+ absence.

I used to open FL and have 20-30 depenable people online, now its 2-3.

Unlike other "gw is dyeingozoomg", this is kinda more serious as its not rant about latest nerf in disguise....

I play when I have goals... and I keep finding stuff as soon as I say "oh man I'm bored with this game, what could I do...". I've invested 5k+ hours into this, so to me, there's no way I'm dropping it. I have friends - that is more than enough to keep me into it. I've been working to get armors for my characters for a year, so I've got pretty much what I -wanted-.

I like stuff and I have the possibility to get it, so I'm eventually going to get new goals. Getting UAX (something I should have done a LONG time ago), getting armors I like and didn't bother getting yet, start to PvP, high-end weapons, working toward titles on my main char...

So I say that I'm bored with GW, but tomorrow I'll be farming or working on titles... because I have the possibility.

A lot of us came to this game specifically because it has a reasonable level of respect and support for solo players while still allowing multiplay when the mood strikes or friends are around. No forced grouping (except in elite areas, which needs to be fixed) is one of the greatest strengths of the game model.

As to the original question (grammatically mangled as it is), anyone's going to get tired of a game after playing it for a few thousand hours, so it's inevitable that a lot of players that have been around for a long time are going to be leaving. Fortunately there's still a steady influx of new players, so it doesn't really matter that much.

I hate questing, so I usually do it with heroes/henchies so I can be done with it ASAP. When I was playing Prophecies I was the type to PUG everything, and I didn't care about effectiveness. It might have taken me 10 tries, but I'd do the quest.

The problem comes when you make friends that are at your level, or when you're being taught by other people. All of a sudden, you start to realize that you can be good. And all of a sudden, a lot of people in this game are ineffective. You also notice that people are totally immature, and you lose interest with PUGs because you'll KNOW what happens - your tank will rush to the next mob and blame the monk, who was already low on energy because he had to heal the ele who was tanking because the tank went AFK without warning.

What scares me is that new people, who would be in for learning the game mechanics, are facing this; an immature community who will call them "noobs" for being totally new at the game and necessitating help to learn playing.

QFT

It happens to most of the players. Then is time for them to either:
1) Find good guild/alliance, and continue to enjoy the game while playing in good, organized groups with players who know what to do, both PvE and PvP, and more importantly, have fun while doing it.

or...

2) Play some more with H&H and get bored with it, then come here on Guru to make thread how GW is dying, and how everyone needs to know that you are quiting.

Well, I just ran a friends-and-family guild devoted to buddy gaming. We had about twenty members at our height; it's down to ONE now.

Yup, just me.

Of the five people in this household who played, I am the only one remaining.

My oldest daughter left because she was tired of seeing some builds nerfed and others not. She might come back if full hero parties are implemented and the armor-stacking nerf is fixed.

My middle and youngest daughters' social circles moved to WoW. They likely won't return.

My wife moved to LotRO and WoW for several reasons. She is the ultimate casual gamer, and was very angry when one of her non-farming builds was severely nerfed. Plus, she feels that WoW has a better sense of humor and more socialization.

We had five copies of every chapter, but bought only ONE copy of GW:EN, for me, so I could see how the storyline wrapped up. Right now, there is almost no interest in GW2, mostly due to unhappiness with ANet's current "design" choices.

Note that GW was an obsession in this household until last December.

I play sporadically, and watch the forums to see where GW is going. With over 2500 hours invested, I'm hoping that ANet will start concerning itself with serious casual gamers, and stop catering to farmers and hard core players. But I doubt that will happen.

Unless something major occurs, I will be gone once the Bonus Missions are released in November. At that point, I'll only be playing WoW (in part because that's where *my* friends and family went) and LotRO.

I *might* stay interested in full hero parties are implemented, and Hard Mode for GW:EN is something more interesting than "faster monsters."

I wanna join your family

WoW, EQ and many other games make socialization so much easier. In fact this is their main difference to GW, and I think the heavily instanced nature is to blame for this.

I think this is the reason for their "bigger" instances in GW2.
They might become like WoW zones - Duskwood, Elwynn, or whatever they are called. With a zone chat and dozens of players in the zone.

Except Vizunah and Unwaking Waters, GW is always a 1 party game, and this party can consist of 1 player and 7 henchies.

@ChaoticCoyote: My best friend is playing WoW, and several of my other friends, too. Makes me always sad, as I do not like it as much as they do. Little chance to make them GW players.

Heh, I met my wife gaming, back in the old pen-and-paper days of RuneQuest and AD&D... the daughters grew up using computers since they were in diapers (the oldest is now 18).

My wife leaving GW was a real blow; we liked buddy gaming a lot. However, my wife doesn't play often-enough to have built up decent heroes, and she isn't interested in running a hero team anyway. So in the more difficult areas, we were forced to use three stupid, badly-designed henchmen (since I can only bring three heroes myself.)

We have much more fun buddy gaming in WoW and LotRO, where henchmen don't exist and aren't required.

ANet's choices since last December have driven us away from the game. They prefer to promote class discrimination, cookie-cutter builds, and difficulty-by-steroids over clever game design and supporting solo and buddy gamers.

Such is life -- fortunately, there are other games.

In Guild Wars, there is no real reputation that follows players around. You'll almost never encounter the same person twice. Since there is no accountability for being bad or for treating other people like shit, people have no incentive to change their ways.

If people could actually accumulate bad reputations, and end up getting blacklisted by the community (as happens to ninja looters in mmos), behavior would improve.

What's wrong with GW's buddy gaming? I don't think there's a lot you can't do with just two people.

Spawn camping is fun

You do have a valid point though.

Just like all games there is always going to be an ebb and flow to a games players. There will be players quit and new players start. As long as new content comes about it will continue this way. The problem comes about with gw is that now that there will be no content for possibly 2 yrs, the community will indeed shrink. The game does now cater less to groups than it did in the past, but allows for the casual gamer to be able to pick up the game and play most of the areas without having to spend hrs on end trying to find a competant group ( we have all been there ) Heros as many of you and myself have allowed for this ease of use but also has caused the community to be less one because of lack of interaction when you have these heros you can rely on 95% or more of pve. If you look back at Prophecies, you will see that most missions from the desert on minimum required you at least early on to bring other humans. Now if you need to do those, you can hero/henchway it with ease with a little knowledge and decent hero builds. As for the new chapters, with heros they have allowed people to circumvent any need for those parties on hard mish/quest because they would rather go with possible a little idiotic AI they could count on, over a possible total idiotic human that they have no clue if they got leroy or someone with a brain.

lol why?

I screw around as much as anyone else, if not more..just ask my guildies

As for spawn camping..it's naughty, but I never took WoW all that seriously so I didn't really care..

My wife doesn't want to build up or run heroes. I can only run three heroes. Hence, we're stuck with three dumb, annoying, gimped henchmen.

Okay, we could buy GW:EN for my wife's account and get her a few level 20 heroes quick -- but frankly, she just isn't interested any more. She'd found a fun play style for the 2-3 hours a week she can play; ANet nerfed that playstyle into oblivion. Yes, she could find another build; no, she doesn't want to. Why should she have to change her PvE game just because Izzy wants to speed up PvP?

It's all about fun. This is not work -- it is supposed to be FUN. And for casual players, that doesn't mean grinding to equip heores or learning a new build every time ANet does a "balance" update.

Yes, I can bludgeon my way through normal mode with henchmen -- that doesn't make it FUN.

It's subjective. There are casual players like you who no longer consider the GW environment a fun place to spend some time in, and there are casual players like me who enjoy everything GW has to offer, regardless of nerfs or grinds or henchmen. Personally, I think being forced to think outside your usual build can be pretty interesting, too.

Addressing the thread title, every game goes through these cycles, and they become more and more pronounced as the game ages. It's really nothing unique or noteworthy.

I haven't read this whole thread, but for what it's worth, I've actually just recently gotten back into Guild Wars after nearly a year of inactivity. I played since the betas, quit a month or two after the game came out, played again for about a month when Nightfall came out (my brother bought it, not I this time), and now I'm playing again now that GW:EN came out. I still haven't gotten Factions, but I may when the price drops. I've actually had more fun playing GW:EN than Nightfall. I think the promise of these new races is what really has me interested in it again. I have high hopes that GW2 will become what GW1 should have been from the start, but only time will tell.

I hardly play anymore, and if I do play it's usually with a specific group of people, doing some sort of high-end PvE. I imagine it's like any game you play continuously over a long period of time, most people will lose interest if the innovation from the developers dies.

The fact that Guild Wars is free online is probably what keeps most players online anymore. If the game were subscription based, I'd have quit a long time ago.

its been 1 month i didn't play, i downloaded the client today, 200000 files..., logged in, walked around in gwen, logged out, created a ranger in pre, did the first quests=, and stopped playing again. I just cant stand playing this game for more than few minutes before getting bored to death, guess those 28 months are enough for me. I also bought wow, and started playing (since all the people i know play it), when you play with friends its awesome as hell, people are far more helpful than in guildwars...sometimes im just walking and then i see some mage cast a buff on me for no reason and i was like....O_o "thx".Btw, i dont know why some people say that higher players can kill you and will wait next to you to kill you every time, i was in a town with my mage and saw 10-15 lvl 60+ killing every npc,(i was with one of my friends who play that day) and i said to myself "this is it, these guys are going to camp and kill me im screwed" but hey they didn't since they cant unless im the one who attack them, their names are in yellow (wich is neutral i think) so, so far ive had great time with WoW. mmm i think i got a bit away from the subject here.

Well anyways, when i logged on gw, there was probably 6 people online in my guild, 1 in my f list. There was quite allot of people in gwen outposts, but everyone was playing with heroes. The social part of this game is IMO dead, and its one of the reasons i see old players leave. And also, there is no real accomplishment in gw. Anyways, these days i play WoW...a game i used to hate for no real reason, its fun even tho im not a big fan of the graphics. I might buy gw2 so i can make a fresh new start, i aint going to use the HoM bonuses either since i will just spoil my fun.

I suggest that they make an expansion called GW:Back to the past, wich will update your client to the first 3-4 months (even before sorrows furnace update) those days IMO are the best days this game had, even tho there was some bugs and stuff.

I have noticed that things changed a bit recently. Part of the blame falls on the original model of guild wars. While most games come out with expansion packs, Guild Wars came out with standalones. Expansion packs = content for everyone. Standalones create some content for old players and some content for new players.

I think Guild Wars is proving that some form of a grind is needed to keep players going. At the same time, we all know the problems/complaints that grinding also brings with it.

I personally thought the "new game every 6 months" concept was brilliant. So why did they scrap it? Something tells me we’d still see the format if it was profitable. The fact that they decided to leave the format, even though GW2 is over a year away says it didn’t generate enough money to keep it going.

I do think GW2 was a good idea, let’s face it this game could use a graphical upgrade, as well as some fresh new ideas. But how in the world will they keep GW2 alive? People don’t want to grind, but they also don’t want to run out of things to do. How the heck do you balance that out? Seems impossible to me if PvP can’t do it (which clearly is the case). PvP didn’t take off like I think we all expected it would when GW1 was still in beta. It seems like PvE is still the core of the game.

Housing isn’t a bad way to pump lots of extra hours into a game…just look at 4,000 year-old Ultima Online. Perhaps GW2 needs to also consider adding crafting to keep people busy…but who wants another WoW clone?

To the best of my knowledge, out of my original guild, there are only 3 of us that actively play. My current guild has diminished from nearly 100 to under a dozen. Of all the names in my friends list, it is rare to ever see more than 1 or 2 playing at any given time. So yes, there is a constant attrition in players.

My own playing time has been heavily impacted by my work schedule. I once averaged 20-30 hours a week, but now I'm lucky to get in 5 hours in a week. It's not a factor of other games stealing my playtime. It's just that I don't have that amount of freetime anymore. Several other former GW players that I know face the same problem. We work and have families, and it's tough to make time for gaming.

In addition, several of the things that drew us to GW as casual gamers have changed since the beginning. GW is no longer a casual game. We simply do not have the time it requires to tackle multi-level dungeons or grind for titles. Some casual players I know that would play GW, don't play it any longer specifically because of those kinds of changes.

I do know of some other new players that have recently gotten the game and play it regularly, so there is hope for keeping up the ranks. However, in a few more years, it seems likely that there will be fewer and fewer new recruits, due to competition from other games...including the forthcoming GW2

Short answer, yes. After 28 months of playing, doing all the same things over and over with multiple characters makes me want to puke. The stupid grind, lack of interesting content, crappy rewards, and nerfs makes people (regardless of how long they've been playing) quit. Semi-retired atm currently looking to buy/build a new high-end pc. I miss the people I played with (not the actual game). Planning on returning when I get a new pc and hopefully Anet will have added Hardmode for EotN.

It's like a lot of people have been saying. The game is over 2 years old and realistically there have only been content additions in all that time and no real changes to the game mechanics. The most innovative thing added was the "mission" formats and dungeons in GW:EN.

I've never ever gotten bored playing this game, but I've certainly gotten burned out from over playing a few times. I'll play like a fiend, every spare minute I can squeeze in, for weeks or a few months and then taper off and go do something else for a bit and come back for another round.

The thing of it is, ANet apparently never intended the PVE part of this game to be as popular or long term as it has been. They've taken steps to add long term things into the game to give the obsessive 2k+ hour players things to do, but the speed at which they can create content and still progress on the new projects is limited. The game engine and core design just isn't really made for ultra long term players. That people have found the game enjoyable enough to invest that vast amounts of time that some of us have done, probably amazes the devs to no end. Afterall PVE was intended to really only be the gateway to PVP in the first place.

All that really means is that getting tired of the game after 2 years isn't at all unusual. That its taken so long for that to happen in so many cases is astounding. The whole point of the game design was that you play it for a while then go PVP or put it aside til the next chapter or whatever came along.
THAT was the original intention and given that, we were practically expected to find other things to play or do, rather than obsess over the limited content.

Right now I've got over 20 games installed on my pc. GW is the only "MMO" type game. I have yet to see another one that I'd be willing to spend money to play every month, although the amount itself isn't an issue. I can pay for any of the current market's games with less than an hour's pay. But when GW gets to be too much I play shooters, rts, or even other rpgs and come back when I'm ready.

Lately I've been having another go at Sacred (D2 knockoff that is quite fun) along with GW, because my GW playing partner can't get GW to connect for some reason. The one thing I notice that Sacred, Like D2, and most MMO's and rpgs in general is more about the equipment rather than story. I'll play for hours hoping to get a set item or unique drop and have gold falling out of my ears. I guess that is really the biggest difference for me when it comes to GW. I don't have to worry about getting stronger items.. I already have those and can actually play just to do the story line, missions, and quests, and my ability to get through those is directly related to the builds I am using rather than the toys I play with. It's the best gaming setup I've ever actually encountered, which why I keep coming back and have invested more time in GW than I have any other game I've played in 30 years of playing games on console or pc.

So even though people come and go, it'll be a long while before GW "DIES" and I hope they truly do bring over the best GW has to offer into GW2. Gods only know how I'll manage playing both. lol I do think thought that when GW2 does come out, and if the small benifits we are to receive from our HoM are cool enough, that there'll be a big resurge in GW1 for a while when people go back and start maxing out titles again or adding the things they need to add to the hall to get the goodies they really want.

Sorry if that got too rambly.. I just got a tooth pulled yesterday and am writing to you from Vicodin Land today

Multi-Level dungeons are doable in about 45 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the dungeon and the ability of the players. Even if you only get a few hours to play a day, should still be enough to finish a dungeon.

I do agree that the endgame "content" of titles is really retarded.

All the people I play with still play daily.

Most of the few people I used to talk to regularly have either left for good or almost never play anymore, and when they do it's just to pop on for a few minutes to say hi. I find myself playing less and less lately, too. I used to play regularly, daily. But now it's just a half hour or so every few days. Things are just getting really boring.

Well, that doesn't mean GW fails at providing good buddy style play. That's like complaining you can't win at tennis without a racket. The tools are there, you'll just have to grab them.