Why Guild Wars Will Have the Largest Pop.

I've read a few posts on various sites with people concerned about a lack of players in the game world due to ArenaNet's "new company" status and the little GW media we've had so far.

However, I can put your fear to rests: no servers, one world. Even if GW has half the players of most MMORPGs, I'm guessing that the worlds will be at least twice as packed as you are used to.

Opinions?

Well, according to EB Games™, Guild Wars is one of the best-selling preorder PC games year-to-date in North America. More than 500,000 players have participated in public preview events in the US and Europe. So there is obviously going to be a good amount of players.

Technically, Guild Wars does have servers, they're just not utilized in the same way as other games. Rather than tons of sloppy servers trying to link together, Guild Wars uses fewer main servers and instead has different "Districts" within each server, so that people can easily jump between districts and hook up with their friends.

I really think that Guild Wars will do fine if they keep to the plan, Word of mouth seems to be working EXTREMELY well. GuildWars has spread like wildfire between my friends ive gotten at least 3 people myself to not just try a preorder but to buy the game, All of them never heard of it before. I got my brother hooked after just one beta weekend and even my family. People will be drooling for this game when they realise it was made by one of the main guys who made some of the best RPG's of all time. Guild Crac.. er Wars will do just fine, people feel much more comfortable buying a game without montly fees. You just wait till the reviews come out.

I too think this game is going to smash sales records. What news I have heard of it is all glowing. It is strange that there is very little press coverage i.e T.V, spots, mag covers or even articles in Gameinformer,or GMR or such.. The Word of Mouch is Great and I tend to trust that better than ad hype any way. I have noticed some people ( Cough WOW players Cough ) spreading lie like it will not last without fees or that give them half a year and they will charge. What I say to that is soon ypu will be all alone in your Fee charging Lagging Zone restricted Servers while I (and about half a million other people) have fun playing GW.

There I said my piece now I can sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

To agree with the previous posters, word of mouth does seem to be doing some good. I bought the preorder from word of mouth, and because of me no less than 8 have also! gg Anet

Yeah, I have noticed some lies/rumors have been spread. Like I was talking to some of my friends about it, trying to get them interested, and they thought Guild Wars charged fee's, expansions were required, game won't last a year, etc. Kind of made me wonder where they got this nonsense.

I started looking at this game when my older brother at GameCrazy pointed at it's preorder box and said "That game is supposed to be bad ."(Bad meaning Good)

So, I guess in a way I did get it from Word of Mouth.
I haven't even played a BWE yet and I've already paid in full for it.

well, the main reason I was interested in GW is that I heard it from a member of my cs:s clan and, so far, we have been able to get a good 15-20 ppl to join our GW portion of our clan. I think that the biggest source of GW's player base will be from clan's and friends because of the G vs G feature and the ability to...well, I haven't quite played GW yet but I am looking forward to playing it in this upcoming BWE. But what has drawn me is not only the stunning graphics and the policy of no monthly fee's, but also, from what I hear, the large amount of the game dedicated to Guilds and the whole Guild system. In CS:S, you can't really gain too much fame as a clan while in GW, you can be recognized

Actually even if you look at the number of players playing the BWE's it's still a good number of people. Personally I read about it about a year ago and have been waiting to play ever since. I personally turned about 3 people on the the game and all are waiting in eager antisipation. One Guy I turned on the the game bought and sent some of his friends from Diablo2 the pre-order just so they could all play it togeter. I do hope that they will do the big game release, but most advertising seemes to be towards console games rather than PC games, when was the last time you saw a display for a PC game like those for X-Box's Halo 2.

I think there will be more than double the preorder numbers when it goes on the shelf

Seriously a box saying MMORPG or Online roleplaying game NO MONTHLY FEE !!

Then people will say the following:
"Im a Rich man whu cares about fees, well the game looks awesome ill buy it"
"Damn why did i buy World of Warcraft, this games AWESOME!!!" he buys it...
Me: "WOW YEAH FINALLY APRIL 18th!! THE DAY OF THE NO MONTHLY FEE REVOLUTION BEGINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I buy it...

I think it's going to be really good. I forget how i heard about it, actually, but I was trying to find an alternative to WoNF (world of no friends) as my group has branded it, due to one of our friends being consumed by it since its release until his mom cancelled his account. Anyway. I got just about everyone in my town that I know well to get it. Even the WoW guy. So I think Word Of Mouth is the way to go. If i had seen it on a commercial on TV first I probably would have shrugged it off like most games.

Guild Wars will have many more players than the traditional fee based MMORPG's. The "no monthly fee" put it in an entire different class, where it should be compared to sales figures for single player games.

It is not certain more people will be online at any one time, because there is much less grinding. The average GW player will spend much less time on GW than the average DAoC player will spend on GW. He will have much more fun though

But more people will be available to play with, because GW only has two worlds (apparently Europe and North America have been combined). The "districts" concept are so much better than "servers" to divide players into manageable chunks, because with servers you have to divide according to the most populated areas, making the less populated areas appear deserted. With "districts", all areas will appear equally populated (after release), there will just be fewer districts in the less popular areas.

I used to play Diablo, D2, C&C, warcraft I II & III, Every Final Fantasy game made, Ultima and the lot. Once the MMORPG scene hit, I was all over Everquest where I had tons of fun. However it just got too boring, after 3 years of playing and growing my character, spending countless hours grinding, those long 10 hour raids where all you do is swing your sword when the Main Tanks says assist. I always felt like the game was just a treadmill with a dangling carrot hangin' in your face. I switched over to SWG when it first came out, and that was an exersize in futility. Even now that game is just barely getting to an enjoyable point. I of course had to try out FFXI, as a Square fan since the begining. But the game was farely typical and quite a slow pace. Once I canceled my account on EQ, FFXI, and SWG, I was pretty much turned off of MMORPG's. I am not sure if the games are just not as fun as they used to be, or more likely, I am looking for different things from my MMORPG these days.

I read alot about EQ2, WoW. I was intrigued but not won over by either. Don't get me wrong, the lore and artistic style of Warcraft was fantastic. But after seeing WoW beta, I was not all that impressed with the bright colors and comic look for the game. It was basicaly the Warcraft3 look zoomed down. And for that game, it was probably to best move to keep true to the original style, but I am just not submersed into that world. On the flip side, EQ2 looked fabulous, but (and I think I am not alone in this one...) Screw SOE!! Lots of friends are all about their WoW characters now, and I have watched and inquired about it. Still, I couldn't fork out any dough for this game, it still feels like the same 'ol, same 'ol.

In my deeper searching for an upcomming MMORPG, I ran across two games in development that peaked my interest. The first was a game called "Twilight War: After the Fall", a MMORPG shooter style that is using Valve's Source engine. And of course "GuildWars" was the other. The moment I read up on the NCSoft, Areanet and the Business Model they a using for this game, I was hooked. And after watching developer interview from gamespot.com and hearing about the commitment to removing the Time Sinks, Grinding, Monthly fee's, and bringing "Skill" back into the online RPG I immediatly purchased my preorder. I used my friend pass on a co-worker and he bought the game in time for the next BWE, and his friend pass is working on another coworker for us.

I believe alot of people out there like me, who are looking for a new MMORPG that doesn't just feel like more of the same. I think there will be a large number of people who currently play WoW, SWG, EQ 1&2, and will still maintain that account and purchase a copy of Guildwars, thanks to the "No Monthly Fee" thang. Once they get going, we will see them alot more on guildwars than their previous rpg's. WoW looks fun, but pvp will never be as fun as Guildwars and the focus on questing in WoW is at best par with GuildWars so a lvl 60 WoW character who gives GuildWars a try is gonna find little reason to return to WoW. EQ2 looks great, but it's alot-o-grind and no PvP really, besides the craptastic SOE and their lack luster dedication to their own products or support of them. Word of mouth and those Friend BWE Keys is the best advertising angle these companies could have gone. My guess is that EQ2 will be warped in only a few days and WoW will take longer to draw players out of but in 3-6 months GuildWars will have a larger player base.

It would probably do them good to put a few comercials up the week before release, just to attempt to get those virgin MMORPG people out there who are not in the community already. However, a month after the game is release it will all be water under the bridge. All the other MMORPG's will be sweating player attendance, while GuildWars will probably be sporting the largest concurent player base of all.

Actually, the illusion of "population" is a constant with the district "system". More players = more districts ... not more players running around "on my screen"

Who cares if its F2P or P2P? Its only 15$ a month and it'll keep some of the immature folk out.

I heard about it from a friend, and managed to get 5 people hooked on it, just from word of mouth.

I dont think GW will beat WoW. They are at 1.5 million subscribers and climbing.

Ya WoW is a good game, but i also like GW a little better!

The only reason WoW has that many subscribers is because of the name behind the game. Not to mention Blizzard fan boys. Once ANet makes a name for themselves and gamers realize that ANet cares about their fans and not making piles of cash (well I'm sure the cash is second ) then you'll see Guild Wars surpass WoW.

I do, and no it won't.

What is $15 a month?
GW has no monthly fee.

I'm all for guildwars. They've perhaps compiled all of the best ideas to make this an awesome original game. Lets keep spreading the word

That is bs. WoW has been decreasing. You can tell just by how much it would cost you to buy a maxed out character at ebay. 100-150 bucks for a max level, max gear player is dirt cheap. That is almost in the range of Horizons before it went bankrupt.

I will admit one thing though, if those subscriptions go up some, it's going to because of the chinese servers. But anyone with experience in L2 would say good luck with that.

Its not BS mate, their subscriptions are climbing. They will hit 2 million pretty soon.

Sure, everything is comming down in prices, does not mean people are leaving the game. They will not go bankrupt, 1.5 million X $15 a month is alot of money.

I agree 100%. I have heard about this game a long time ago, but the thought completly slipped my mind until a guild member of mine from EQOA IMd me one day telling me how awesome it was. Alot more of my friends would be playing it if the specs wern't so high up there. (Its pretty high compared to what my friends play on.) I had a $200 upgrade just so I could play the game. To the original poster, I havn't heard anyone, or read anything, that said there were not going to be alot of players playing GW. If anything, I believe the fan base/player base is going to be enormous.

Looks like Im not the only one

its all about guild wars man! i think there will be plenty of people in the game, ive played games with a much smaller population and it was still fun, but this is pretty massive feeling, and im sure after it comes out, friends of people who bought it will see it ans want to buy it then and so on, so it may only grow!

And you think that's a lot? Especially considering how long it's been on the shelves now? For a Blizzard game, that's pretty abysmal. Diablo II had 1.5 million pre-sales; even with no pretty pre-order goodie package, 1.5 million people went out and put down money for that game before it was even out.

GW is not a subscription based MMORPG like WoW. It's a buy once and play all you like game, just like all the Battle.Net games that are ArenaNet's heritage ("For us, this is BattleNet 2.0" -- Jeff Strain, founder of ArenaNet). It should sell accordingly.

If you think 1.5 million is a lot, you've set your sights way too low. GW should get that easy, and then some...

also, considering that there will be expansions in the future, the number would increase as more people see how much the world expands beyond its normal bounds.
1.5 Million does sound low...would over 3 million be reasonable enough to assume?

I was sayin IF it had a fee, it would keep the immature bnet kiddies among other immature people out. Personally, id prefer P2P. It would defiantly help, most parents wont allow their kids to use their credit-cards, its such a small fee anyway. If it was P2P, it would no-doubt assist them in bringing more content to us. A 15$ fee would bring 1) A more friendly, helpful community and 2) More content. You could say their gonna release loads of content already, and they are, but those funds would allow them to make even MORE content.

i also am a word of mouth customer

...no.
Well, some people want to be ripped off, I guess.
Right. Or, not.
You mean like WoW has gotten so many content updates, or rather haven't?
Can you say WoW community?
Yeah, fee games have a lot of content... That's all they have, lots of mass produced repetitive content to keep you playing and thus paying.

I fail to see how anyone could assume that being well, dumb enough to pay for a game every month that you already paid for would imply that said person wouldn't be an immature git. Money doesn't imply intelligence. Neither does age for that matter.

I see P2P kinda like how I see the lottery. It's a tax for people who failed Math.

Haha, that's great. I am going to quote that.

I agree (although that WoW number is worldwide, and it's how many people bought the game, not how many still play it). At a minimum it's now 1,499,999 since I kicked WoW to the curb.

Looking into my crystal ball, I see the game opening with about 175,000 subscribers the first day, and then snowballing over the next month until it reaches around 400,000. I expect it will hover around that number for another few months and then go over 500,000. When the first expansion comes out I would expect it to hit 700,000.

Those are North American hypothetical numbers. Factor in Asia and you can pretty much triple them.

Btw, that is the same crystal ball I looked into when I married my first wife.