Since almost no games companies like to release demographics, all evidence is necessarily anecdotal or observational, so take that as a warning, but it's my impression that school-age players are a vanishingly-small minority in most of the online games I play. GW2 does probably skew as young as any but even there it seems as though anyone under college age stands out as the exception.
I was more of the opinion that interest in gaming drops off during the summer, when better weather, vacation time and the competing attractions of outdoor activities from kayaking to barbecues draw players away from the keyboard and into the great outdoors. Or at least the back yard. The plethora of events, I contended, is designed to mitigate that loss, to claw back some ground, dissuade people from putting their subscriptions on hold, keep the cash shop registers ringing.
This year, of course, is about as atypical as it could get (we hope). You might expect some extra activity. But it happens every year. Summer comes and every MMORPG lights up like the carnival's come to town, which in some games it literally has.
In World vs World we 're enjoying the return of the popular-with-many, loathed-by-some No Downed State. This is a switch-flick event whereby ANet turn off whatever flag it is that lets your character fall to the ground and twitch like a swatted wasp for anything up to half a minute while your enemies try to put you out of your misery.
This has all kinds of implications, some of which apply to most everyone, others which only affect individual classes. I won't go into details or we'll be here until long after the week-long event has ended. Suffice to say, some people like it because it makes clashes between large groups fast, furious and above all decisive, three things they usually are not. It also makes ganking people a lot more efficient, if less fun for the ganker, since a favorite tactic has always been to make the downed victim squirm for as long as possible before finally administering the coup de grace.
It's hard to say exactly how popular No Downed State really is because every time ANet employ this crowd-pleaser they accompany it with a bunch of bonuses. This time we're getting
- 25% bonus to reward-track progress
- Gain double WXP
- Receive a 50% bonus to magic find
All of which bring the PvXers in by the coachload. On reset night there was reportedly a queue or almost 200 to get in to Eternal Battlegrounds in my Tier 4 match. By the time I got to play over the weekend that was down to around fifty and during the week it's sometimes dipped as low as half a dozen. All of those are way higher than normal.
That event's going well, then, but it pales into total insignificance compared to the return of another of ANet's favorites, the PvE juggernaut known as World Boss Rush.
This is a gimme by anyone's standards. It involves no changes to the game at all other than the addition of some bonus rewards. If you're in on a World Boss kill you get some extra boxes to open and that's it. Oh, and there's a series of "Community Goals", whereby the server keeps track of... erm... something... it's never been clear to me what... and when the event ends everyone gets a care package based on how well the "community" did. Or something. It's vague.
But it's evidently quite clear enough to bring in the crowds. I got swept up in the Rush yesterday and ended up doing a whole bunch of World Bosses. I just missed the Frozen Maw when I logged in but I caught it on it's next pop so that was a straight two hours.
It's a popular event, then. Only, you can do it every day, all year, every year. Those same bosses spawn at those same times forever. On any given day, any month, there's always a "boss train" running. This event is literally "what we do every day" and the bonus rewards are literally "more of the same things we always get".
For me, the attraction is the crowds. Obviously I don't love screen-freezes but I do love being in zergs so big they cause screen-freezes. To me, GW2's USP is a huge, chaotic, disorderly rabble charging across the countryside in an explosion of neon fireworks. That's what I don't pay my money for. So I'm happy.
I also really like the third event on the card, the Queen's Pavillion. This is a double-header holiday event in which Divinity's Reach is twinned with Labyrinthine Cliffs, of which (not very much) more later.
The second is Queen's Gauntlet, a series of one-on-one cage fights between your character and a named NPC. I did that the first year it appeared and got as far as the penulitimate opponent. Couldn't beat the very last one. Haven't really bothered with it since other than to tick off one of the easy round one challenges for the daily.
Third and by far the most enjoyable in my book is Boss Blitz, a round-robin event in which you have to defeat six Legendary bosses in a set time. This one has all the things I like about group events in GW2 - it takes tactics, organization, communication and discipline. If you use the LFG tool to get into an organized squad it can go like clockwork. If you just pug it in a random map it can be anything from a hysterical clownshow to a name-calling debacle. Fun for all the foul-mouthed family!
I got into an excellent squad on my first try and knocked off several Gold runs in a row. Yesterday I happened on a random PUG map that was both good-natured and intelligent and we peeled off a string of silvers. I'm waiting for my disaster map. I'm sure it won't be long in coming.
And so, it seems does everyone else. Mrs. Bhagpuss was complaining that so far she hasn't been able to find a single group, let alone a squad, advertising on LFG to do anything in the Cliffs. I was there for a few minutes this morning and in that brief time I heard two people complaining in map chat that the zone was dead and no-one was doing any of the events there.
I must say I haven't bothered this year. The Cliffs events tend to be on timers long enough to make hanging around waiting for things to begin feel very annoying. Plus they last quite a long time and the map is very awkward to navigate. Compared to any of the other three all-you-can-kill buffets in the current feeding frenzy, Labyrinthine Cliffs feels creaky and old.
World Boss Rush and No Downed State each last a week, although they started at slighty different times. According to the wiki, Festival of the Four Winds goes on a bit longer than that, until 1 September. Maybe that will give Labyrinthine Cliffs a chance to come into its own for a few days.
I kind of doubt it. We'll be into the Eighth Anniversary celebrations and the underwater mount by then. Remember when we didn't have anything to do in GW2? Remind me. When was that again?
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I always thought GW2 would skew older than normal population-wise. It’s based on an older franchise, after all, and pitched toward being an alternative MMO from WoW style vertical progression - so someone drawn to it would have to have at least a couple years’ experience with other MMOs.
ReplyDeleteSchool-age kids are probably mostly all in Fortnite, League of Legends, and whatever the newer things on the block are these days. Animal Crossing? Fall Guys? It is, after all, not done fo hang around in the same spaces as your mom/dad or grandma/grandpa. Facebook was dropped like a hot potato once the middle age group glommed onto it, for example.
My impression is that GW2 skews fairly young - for an AAA western MMORPG. That sub-category in itself puts the average age well above schoolage, though. I'd guess late teens going into the low 30s, maybe, although it's hard to tell. I tend to judge by the tone, language and topics in open map chat, all of which seem significantly younger in GW2 than other MMOS I play.
DeleteBut then, the other ones I play have positively geriatric demographics. It's completely normal to hear people talking about their grandchildren in both EQ and EQII. I'm always positively amazed to hear anyone in either game claim to be anything much under 40. I would guess LotRO is similar although the IP may bring in a few juniors. Ditto SW:toR, although both Tolkein and Star Wars are "family" franchises at the very least, which usually means young children and parents/grandparents, with adolescents staying the hell away.
The f2p imports I've played always seem to have a younger-feeling crowd. I think being pure F2P brings in the kids, as does the anime look-and-feel. As with pure population numbers, I'd dearly love to see some actual hard numbers on all of this but we never will.