From the official Guild Wars site:
That’s a very interesting way of putting it.
Someone who wasn’t paying attention might easily (and entirely understandably) jump to the conclusion there were five million Guild Wars players.
That’s simply not true.
As the first line of the accompanying press release notes, that number refers to over five million units sold for the entire franchise. Thus far, the Guild Wars franchise comprises of three main campaigns — Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall — and one add-on campaign, Eye of the North. I’ve got one of each of those titles and thus personally account for 4 units.
ArenaNet released the “4 million!” press release last August so we know at least the company has sold about a million units in six months. Again, that’s units, not players or accounts.
To the best of my knowledge, ArenaNet has never been forthright about players or account numbers. However, in a 2006 interview, NCSoft head honcho Robert Garriott estimated that “100,000 people play Guild Wars across the US and EU at any given time, and 1.5-2 million total every month.”
Has the number of active players gone up or down since then?
The number of active players might have gone up if players burned out from other MMOs decided to give ArenaNet’s unique (and relatively accessible) take on the MMO genre a whirl. The number of active players might have gone down if, as expected, Guild Wars players themselves burn out on the 3-year-old MMO. Only ArenaNet knows for sure.
Do the numbers ultimately matter? ArenaNet certainly thinks they do or it wouldn’t be releasing these press releases.
Do these numbers matter to players? It shouldn’t but I think it does, and I think that has everything to do with perception.
Discerning gamers would prefer to play a game to discover the merits or its demerits on their own. They might read reviews to keep informed but they’re savvy and smart enough to form their own opinions.
On the other hand, the vast majority of gamers tend to have a herd-like mentality in their appreciation of a game. They don’t read reviews; they’re influenced by meta-scores. They don’t play demos or watch gameplay videos; they look at how popular the game is.
I believe a big part of World of Warcraft’s appeal to those type of gamers is its success. ‘If 10 million players are playing it, it must be good,’ is the rationale there. That’s not exactly smart — best-selling doesn’t necessarily mean best quality — but it’s not entirely baseless. Players wouldn’t stick with a game with a monthly fee if they believed it was awful.
The other reason why the numbers matter is they reassure players there are other players to play with or against, a crucial factor for multiplayer games. A great multiplayer design isn’t going to matter if there’s no one to PvP or PvE with.
I think that explains the ArenaNet’s crowing of 5,000,000. The problem is the figure is not that impressive when you scrutinise the details.
Showing how many units sold/player subscriptions is a sign of the game did not reached it intended sales target (on the verge of down fall)and they are trying to get more new player to join in by showing how popular the game is(was). Arena Net also showing signs of negligence recently (Polar Bear Incident)and they just recently “nerf” so many skills until they are unusable (i.e. a hex that only last only 3 sec at rank 12 ? Puleszz…). Why can’t we have things like the good old days such as the Sorrow Furnace add-on, additional storage per campaign instead of the old repeating weekend events nowadays.I understand that ANet is working hard on GW2 at the moment & GW is a essentially casual game but they do have to spend some time to cater to some of the existing player requirements/request in order maintain the player base or else if things turn out like the above mentioned incident they will surely end up losing more player instead gaining them.
Well, I have little idea what the player numbers are so I don’t think it’s fair to assume the game is less popular.
But you make an excellent point about keeping the playerbase happy with events and new content while waiting for GW2. There are too many other MMOs out there and I don’t think ArenaNet can afford to bleed players to them. Once players opt for WoW’s intensive and endless treadmill, it will be very difficult to get them back.
I doubt a Sorrow’s Furnace-type mini-expansion is coming but we might very well see another bonus mission pack within a few months.