How many people play gw?

Articus Red

Articus Red

Academy Page

Join Date: Apr 2007

California

E/Me

Is there a website I can go to to see how many people are logged onto guild wars and what not? and all other mmo/rpg games I wanna compared lol

zwei2stein

zwei2stein

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Jun 2006

Europe

The German Order [GER]

N/

Its actually simple:

go to Xfire homepage and lookup GW statistics. Now, since not everyone who plays has Xfire, well use trick to get more accurate number, lookup World of Warcaft players and get ratio of active playerbase:

ratio = #gw / #wow ... this gives you amount of gw players for each wow player. look up currect number of wow players online at blizzard and multiply it with ratio. you have somehow accurate number of gw player.

you can do it for multiple games which give you true number of online players (like eve which has only one server which does show population online.) and average results for greater accuracy.

This ofc assumes that about same percentage of players uses xfire in each game.

Mr. G

Mr. G

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jul 2006

S. Wales

Mo/Me

OR

Gather them all in Great temple and count

...hmm perhaps not, go with what he said

Post it too if you can id be interested to see i mean we've all heared anets fiqures but bleh

garethporlest18

garethporlest18

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jan 2006

[HiDe]

W/

Anywhere from 1- 3million players. Maybe about 400-800k on average a day. Or you could go with the easy statistic...50-5,000,000.

cebalrai

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Mar 2007

Mature Gaming Association

Me/E

Define "active player". Tons of people play occasionally or rarely. Some people login relatively frequently but just for 10 mins.

Malice Black

Site Legend

Join Date: Oct 2005

Well...you can't.

Can't go by accounts sold because some of us have more then 1 account. You can't ask Anet because they don't know either. They could give you a rough idea at best.

zwei2stein

zwei2stein

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Jun 2006

Europe

The German Order [GER]

N/

lets do the maths:

gw:eve is 1.5, eve has 30k pop online usually, hence total online population right now estimates at 50 000 logged-in in players.

gw:wow is 0.08, wow has 4 500 000 users that have logged in in past 30 days. that gives rough population of 350 000 active gw players who logged in in last 30 days.

Pleikki

Pleikki

WTB q8 15^50 Weapons!

Join Date: Nov 2006

???oo ???ugs ???lan [?????????]

I guess ~500-600k /day and around 3milj overall.

Bryant Again

Bryant Again

Hall Hero

Join Date: Feb 2006

It's real hard to tell. We don't know how many copies of those 4mil sold belong to multiple accounts, or how many of those accounts belong to multiple people. The more factors you put in, though, the smaller it looks.

Taki

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: May 2005

N/Me

Doesn't seem like very much. On occasion I get asked to run through an area in GW to show ppl how it looks/plays and there's hardly any ppl where ever I go. Could be that I'm comparing the population to when the game was at its prime but the recent server merge suggests I'm right - that's usually a sign of a declining playerbase.

MithranArkanere

MithranArkanere

Underworld Spelunker

Join Date: Nov 2006

wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigo

Heraldos de la Llama Oscura [HLO]

E/

I think that logged at the same time there must be 40..100k. And being active players around 200...500k (and decreasing).

tasha

tasha

Auctions Mod

Join Date: Jan 2006

UK

Mystic Spiral [MYST]

There's a theory in my alliance that there's surprisingly few people playing which is backed up by the fact we seem to keep bumping into the same people over and over again in different areas at different times. I'd guestimate 400k people worldwide - factor in the number of servers, the timezones and activity and that leaves relatively few online at any one time.

Turtle222

Turtle222

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Oct 2007

:D:D

D/W

you know its bad when you run into the same people after a while of RA/TA.

I mean look at factions, i don't remember the last time people just chilled out in a luxon outpost.

Antheus

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jan 2006

[QUOTE=Turtle222]you know its bad when you run into the same people after a while of RA/TA.[/quote[

Neither of which is a representative measurement of player-base.

Very few people PvP. Of those, very few people RA/TA. As such, you will get a fraction of entire playerbase there. So yes, you'll be dealing with small number of players.

Quote:
I mean look at factions, i don't remember the last time people just chilled out in a luxon outpost.
Have you ever dealt with GW community? There is no reason to chill with them. RA or balthazar's D1 is good indication why *NOT* to chill out. Some of the stuff that goes on in those outposts is creepy, incredibly juvenile, or simply moronic.

And the rest are either new players, who are busy struggling through the missions, or title grinders, who again, are busy in non-outpost areas.

NeHoMaR

NeHoMaR

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Feb 2006

Mmm, I was thinking in 10.000 to 20.000 people online at the same time. You can go to every outpost/district and count yourself, plus people inside missions/areas/PvP.

Tip: AFAIK, the max people in a town is 100 players.

ArenaNet never show that info, because it could look too small players online for understand where are the 3 millions game copies sold.

Even with only just 10.000 players online all the time, 75% of that people don't play more than 3 hours per day, so that means a LOT of people play in a day, because the 10.000 players at this moment are not the same players in the next 3 hours.

I know WoW is a very successful game, and maybe that is the reason of that websites with all stats by server, race, class, very impressive amount of players online, BTW; even more impressive if you think they all are paying a monthly fee, amazing!

// Side Note: Why WoW is so successful? I am not really sure, the only difference is it is open (not instanced), and have crafting, fishing, etc, and mounts, auction house, 90% of game is soloable, 70 levels? did I miss something? Add all that things plus other new things to GW2 and people will leave WoW, I suppose.

Turtle222

Turtle222

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Oct 2007

:D:D

D/W

Quote:
Originally Posted by Antheus

Neither of which is a representative measurement of player-base.

Very few people PvP. Of those, very few people RA/TA. As such, you will get a fraction of entire playerbase there. So yes, you'll be dealing with small number of players.



Have you ever dealt with GW community? There is no reason to chill with them. RA or balthazar's D1 is good indication why *NOT* to chill out. Some of the stuff that goes on in those outposts is creepy, incredibly juvenile, or simply moronic.

And the rest are either new players, who are busy struggling through the missions, or title grinders, who again, are busy in non-outpost areas.
You don't understand what i am implying. Yes very few people PvP, however, in comparison to years ago, i didn't meet the same people twice, now i do. Yes, what you say is true, not many do PVP, but i know PVP enough to notice the difference.

Yes i have dealt with the GW community. How does it matter if their intelligence/maturity level is measurable only to a Hyena. What matters is the player base. I am just commenting on the numbers of players, not how many little fiends there are in luxon outposts

Antheus

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jan 2006

Quote:
Originally Posted by NeHoMaR
// Side Note: Why WoW is so successful? I am not really sure, the only difference is it is open (not instanced), and have crafting, fishing, etc, and mounts, auction house, 90% of game is soloable, 70 levels? did I miss something? Add all that things plus other new things to GW2 and people will leave WoW, I suppose.
Because in WoW, everyone is a winner. No matter how unskilled or not interested the player is, just keep hitting the buttons, and you'll progress. Literally.

Competitive games will never be as popular. When looking at MMO target market, majority of potential customers are "unskilled". Not in a noob sense, but in a sense that the competitive aspect, either implied or passive simply doesn't matter to them.

And as surprising as it may seem, the raid playerbase of WoW is very small. A large number of players, perhaps 30-40% will never reach maximum level. Several percent of playerbase will never even log in!

What WoW has shown is that true skill has no place in MMOs. Players don't want it. They want time sinks. Pointless activities that through some numbers improve their character.

Single player games have started to cater to wider markets. That means, they need to provide 8 hours of gameplay! That is the median time played!

For everyone who wants more than 8 hours of content, there's MMOs, where expected subscription duration is 6 months.

There's a common misunderstanding that subscription is a barrier. $15/month is not a lot of money. When SOE upped the price of station pass to $25 it didn't change a thing. But $15 has been proven by market to be a price players will pay without hesitation.

Players more frequently avoid subscription based games because they perceive them as scam or as involuntary involvement - very rarely because of price. Anyone with any kind of income can put $15 aside for a game - how much does cell phone cost per month? How much does internet access cost per month?

Redfeather1975

Redfeather1975

Forge Runner

Join Date: Sep 2006

Apartment#306

Rhedd Asylum

Me/

Well there's me....
and Dave over in Moosejaw....
Andy plays too.
Oh, yeah we got Beth in Labrador.

ummmm. 5?

HawkofStorms

HawkofStorms

Hall Hero

Join Date: Aug 2005

E/

Quote:
Originally Posted by zwei2stein
Its actually simple:

go to Xfire homepage and lookup GW statistics. Now, since not everyone who plays has Xfire, well use trick to get more accurate number, lookup World of Warcaft players and get ratio of active playerbase:

ratio = #gw / #wow ... this gives you amount of gw players for each wow player. look up currect number of wow players online at blizzard and multiply it with ratio. you have somehow accurate number of gw player.

you can do it for multiple games which give you true number of online players (like eve which has only one server which does show population online.) and average results for greater accuracy.

This ofc assumes that about same percentage of players uses xfire in each game.
That.... is actually really smart, especially if you do bother to do it over multiple games over a long peroid of time to find average ratios.

To those who are sceptical, that is basically what they do with calculating how many people watch specific television shows. Networks find out the ratios what 1 million randomly selected people (just an example) watch, then multiple it out by the population of the entire country that owns a television.

HawkofStorms

HawkofStorms

Hall Hero

Join Date: Aug 2005

E/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Antheus
Because in WoW, everyone is a winner. No matter how unskilled or not interested the player is, just keep hitting the buttons, and you'll progress. Literally.

Competitive games will never be as popular. When looking at MMO target market, majority of potential customers are "unskilled". Not in a noob sense, but in a sense that the competitive aspect, either implied or passive simply doesn't matter to them.
Sry for the double post, but I disagree. Halo 3 (and pretty much any multiplayer oriented FPS) is a multiplayer game based on competition. It is very popular. I don't think that is a valid generalization (though it is a good point).

WoW is successful because Blizzard is successful. Blizzard had a long standing name in delivering excellent games. 3 of the top 10 highest selling computer games of all time were released by Blizzard (starcraft was number 1 for a while, only beaten by the Sims and Sims 2, which are only successful because they tapped into a new market share, women). Impressive for a company that has only made like 7 games ever. A.net is a brand new company.

Snow Bunny

Snow Bunny

Alcoholic From Yale

Join Date: Jul 2007

Strong Foreign Policy [sFp]

I assume it to be total: about 2 mil, active: 500k, everyday: 200k

Antheus

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jan 2006

Quote:
Originally Posted by HawkofStorms
Sry for the double post, but I disagree. Halo 3 (and pretty much any multiplayer oriented FPS) is a multiplayer game based on competition. It is very popular. I don't think that is a valid generalization (though it is a good point).
Halo 3 is successful for the same reason. It's the FPS equivalent of WoW. It's not that good. As FPS go, it's pretty mediocre.

Quote:
WoW is successful because Blizzard is successful.
Blizzard's success is a consequence.

WoW is built on lessons learned by SOE from EQ. Read SOE's publications on how to attract masses - make everyone a winner. They've documented observations from EQ in many scientific studies.

Key to success in MMO is making everyone a winner, regardless of effort. This is the legacy of EverQuest. Blizzard just used Vivendi's $100 million to polish everything that SOE couldn't, and media connections that international entertainment consortium brings to spread WoW far enough.

For the record - WoW's US market share at peak was only 3 times that of Everquest many years ago. The remaining 7+ million come from Asian markets, where a strong marketing campaign was launched. Again, lessons from EQ were used to adjust the content for those markets. Gold farmers included. Now compare the numbers vs. investment. Compared to everquest, WoW cost 10 times more at least - and it only managed to reach 3 times the gamers.

Sadly, players play little role in today's MMO development. It's all just entertainment business. And that is something Vivendi did for Blizzard.

Quote:
I assume it to be total: about 2 mil, active: 500k, everyday: 200k
The numbers Anet published on their server infrastucture would indicate they can handle between 80k-120k concurrent. Whatever the exact number, during events they are often exceeded, leading to lag.