1 million copies?

How is it possible that the game sold 1 million copies?
Lets say that today only 100000 people play guild wars.
There are about 20 districts.
So there should be 5000 players throught the whole game.
I dont think I have seen 5000 players throught the game I have played.
So how can it be that so many people have purchased the game?

How far have you gotten in the game, because if your still in pre-searing thats not even half-way close to the amount of people in post-searing.

How do you mean there are only 20 districts? Each party gets their own map, so you wouldn't see them, there are loads of cities and outposts, and not everybody plays their copy of guild wars. Your calculation thing would mean that all 5000 people happen to be in the same place at the same time. Most people spend their time out in the field anyway.

Are you saying 100,000 OVERALL or in one region or what? Please clarify.

i have no clue all i know when i go and play the game a lot of the districts there just not many people in them and some there is noone in them at all its like people are tired of it or something it seems to have happened after the so called big update and it makes it real hard to do any of the missions because u cant get a good group together to beat it

maybe they track store sales.

maybe they even keep track of the accounts people have activated from games they bought.

as for the number of people you see did you check every spot on the map for district numbers and add them up?

the district number you see is for that specific point on the map and not the total for the game.

also maybe 90+ percent are out doing something and are not counted in any district.

I am after ascending.
My assumption is that 100000 play overall guildwars, which means 900000 do not log in at all.
In most player gathering places (cities, outpost etc) there are no more then 20 people. Only in bigger places there are about 50 people.
Also these numbers are correct usually for district 1 and not for the other districts, which are usually almost empty and in some places do not exist.

I am just wondering how is it that there are so many people logged in, but it is not reflected in the cities of the game.
The amount of people bought the game is like O(n^2) and the people in the game is like O(n) if you know what I mean.
What do you think?

Maybe after two monthes most people stop playing the game, or play very little.

that is very true.

this was never meant to replace EQ or WOW as a place to play constantly.

you play it until you are bored , put it on the shelf until a big update like we just had comes out play that until bored and back on the shelf.

you arent paying a monthly fee so it costs you nothing to wait.

the only thing that counts is if you got your moneys worth of fun out of it and then buy the next chapter.

i have gotten much morefun/dollar than most games so i will be getting the next chapter.

when OBLIVION is released i will get that and vanish there for awhile and return for the next chapter or big update whichever comes first

The number of districts in each outpost increases with the number of people online - I've seen Droknar's when it was packed and had about 135+ districts.

Ok, 1 million total, that's 1.0 * 10^6.
Let's say a typical player plays 1 hour a day (Reasonable), So at any given time, only 1/24 of the 1 million will be online. Seeing how I spend like 40 minute on a quest and 10 minutes in a city, we will assume most players do so as well. For the sake of simpler calculations, let's say it's 1.0 * 10^6 * 1/20 *1/5, that's 1.0 * 10^4. There is like 10 districts in major cities and about 5 active district in minor ones, so that's over 100 districts, so the number gets down to less than 1.0 *10^2 people per district. That still seems a little more than what we see everyday in a district, why?

BECAUSE:

1. A GREAT number of people only play PvP OR is playing with RP characters in a Arena.
Or they are out farming (Which means they spend very little time in cities).

2. Some people stop playing after playing for a while.

3. Some people buy multipe accounts to get more characters.

I say, that 1 mil bought the game

only about half of that still play.

And less than one quarter of that are all on at the same time.

See? so basically you only have...

1,000,000
-500,000
----------
500,000
^ 4
---------
125000

So basically at once at most 125000 people are on at once!

Then there are about 50 cities so

125000
^ 50
---------
2500

Then we take that, and have 15 districts per city...

2500
^ 15
-------
166

Which means, that there are about 166 people/town at any given time.

Then take that, and put that into districts

166
^ 15
------
11

That leaves you with 11 people on average in a district in a small town at any given time.

I believe that clears everything up, no?

Not to mention there are farmers, and people outside of town.

There is at least a dozen people on my guild roster who no longer play the game. My guild as an active group is gone now. There's maybe 3 total who play actively or semi-actively. You're looking at 20% retention rate at best. Keep in mind most of these people have played since the first week the game came out, so you can be sure that they got their money's worth and don't regret having played. They just moved on when they were done with it.

The game lacks depth and variety. That's not a criticism, it is what it is. What is there is rich and plays well, but ultimately it's not an Everquest or World of Warcraft. At some point most people will move on and be replaced with new blood.

Well it is possible. Cause not all people are in the same time zones. A lot of people are just causual players meaning they may play an hour or two a day or just on weekends. You have people working 1st 2nd and 3rd shifts meaning they play just in the mornings, evenings, or nights. And don't forget those kids who have to go to school and homework. Also alot of people are doing missions and pvp and such. All I'm saying is they are a lot of reasons and factors that Anet did sell 1 million copys of GW.

P.S. Me and my husband have our own copies of GW and my dad has 3 for (him, his girlfriend, and my brother). So others could very well have more than one copy per person. I myself am thinking on getting a new copy just for the extra character slots, but I'm thinking about waiting for chapter 2 to come out before I do.

Copies sold != Number of people playing

They ( Arena.Net ) only stated they sold 1 million copies, there's no mention of how many people are playing the game... all the pseudo-math in here amounts to pure speculation. We should cheer for A.Net and hope they sell a million more copies, that way we'll continue to get content and updates for this game!

edit: as long as content and updates generate more sales that is

Yeah I totally agree with this statement

3 Cheers for Arena.Net!!!

To summarize all of this: You have to think, not all of the people will play on an american server. Also, there are so many districts in each server it, like 30 districts of ascalon america, 29 on europe, 35 on korea, and so on. Also, you forget about ALL of the other places as well. Also there are people who go solo on missions, so you will rarely see them, then there are those in the arenas.

Ummmm maybe most people are in missions or explorable areas or in PvP or GvG battles?

and are you forgetting that there are Korean and European servers that you can't see?

Brightstar, you divided district twice in your calculations, it's 166 per district according to your math.

1/4 players on at any given time? Impossible, because that would mean that everyone play 6 hours (on average), that's a little bit TOO MUCH. :P