The MMORPG Guild Wars 2 had its release on Steam after 10 years. The player numbers in the opening week were rather modest, but according to the game’s director, Joshua “Grouch” Davis, that doesn’t matter. Because even before the release on Steam, Guild Wars 2 had an extremely strong phase. The numbers show: In 2022, Guild Wars 2 is doing better than it has in 5 years.
How did the release on Steam go? We looked at the release of Guild Wars 2 on Steam in an article on MeinMMO on Saturday, April 27. We saw:
- Guild Wars 2 received good reviews on Steam: Especially long-time fans praised Guild Wars 2 and helped it achieve 85% positive reviews. Even from MeinMMO’s perspective, the base game of Guild Wars 2 is one of the best free-to-play MMORPGs ever.
- But the player numbers were rather low: New players who started felt intimidated by the max-level players already in Guild Wars 2. For experienced players, there was hardly any reason to start anew on Steam.
- On Twitch, the Twitch Drops caused a temporary spike, but it quickly faded.
So a few days after the Steam release, things looked rather mixed.
Guild Wars 2 is one of the most popular MMORPGs among Germans:
Guild Wars 2 is doing incredibly well – Steam is just a bonus
This is what the game’s director says now: According to a report from a Polish MMORPG site, this image of the Steam release is misleading. The Game Director of Guild Wars 2, Joshua “Grouch” Davis, raves that Guild Wars 2 is currently doing better than at the launch of the expansion, “End of Dragons”, on February 28, 2022 (via mmorpg.pl):
The game is already doing incredibly well; Steam is just the cherry on top. In the weeks leading up to the Steam launch, more players played Guild Wars 2 than at the launch of End of Dragons. The game developed even before the Steam launch. Steam is now just a bonus.
Joshua “Grouch” Davis, Game Director Guild Wars 2
How is the Steam launch going from the director’s perspective?
Game Director Davis says it’s too early to talk about the success of the Steam launch. Because it is important to observe how many players stick around and play consistently: the so-called “retention” rate.
This rate is measured after one day, after 7, 14, and 28 days. The “14 days” number is particularly important: How many players who start with Guild Wars 2 still log in after 2 weeks?
To evaluate this, it is still too early.
However, before the Steam launch, “significant improvements” in retention were noticed. Guild Wars 2 apparently manages to keep players who check out Guild Wars 2 engaged with the MMORPG.
Guild Wars 2 has the highest relevance in 5 years
Can the statements be substantiated in any way? Yes, the data supports Davis. When we look at the global Google interest in Guild Wars 2, we see that in the current year, the interest in the week the expansion “End of Dragons” was released was the highest (100%).
The Steam launch, although it looked “relatively weak”, has now brought interest back to a similarly high level (91% of the peak).
The Steam launch has significantly increased the relevance of Guild Wars 2 again. This is particularly important for ArenaNet because they have struggled for years to create such “attention peaks”.
The two spikes in interest in Guild Wars 2 in 2022 are the highest since 2017. For Guild Wars 2, it is difficult to create such attention peaks, because with the “living world” the story is told like a TV series, which continually progresses.
Players apparently find it hard to jump into an ongoing season if they’ve missed the beginning.
Other MMORPGs like ESO or WoW use DLCs and expansions to continually set triggers to bring players back or gain new ones. Guild Wars 2 lacked this in recent years.
It seems that Guild Wars 2 has managed to create two such entry points in 2022 with the expansion and the Steam launch.
You still have a few hours left to win a great prize for Guild Wars 2 in our giveaway on Steam:
Guild Wars 2: Win the Complete Collection on Steam worth almost €100
