Guild Wars 2: Despite a moderate launch on Steam, the boss rejoices – “The MMORPG is doing incredibly well”

The MMORPG Guild Wars 2 had its release on Steam after 10 years. Opening week player counts were mediocre, but according to the game’s boss 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 will be better than it has been in 5 years.

How was the release on Steam? We looked at the release of Guild Wars 2 on Steam on MeinMMO in an article on Saturday, April 27th. We saw:

• Guld Wars 2 got good reviews on Steam: Longtime fans in particular praised Guild Wars 2, giving it 85% positive reviews. From MeinMMO’s point of view, too, the basic game of Guild Wars 2 is one of the best Free2Play MMORPGs ever.
• But player numbers have been meager: New players starting out have been intimidated by the max level players already in Guild Wars 2. For experienced players, there was little reason to start fresh on Steam.
• On Twitch, the Twitch Drops caused a short-term jump, which quickly subsided.

A few days after the Steam release, things looked rather mixed.

Guild Wars 2 is one of the most popular German MMORPGs:

Guild Wars 2 is doing incredibly well – Steam is just a bonus

That’s what the boss of the game says now: As reported by a Polish MMORPG site, this image of the Steam release is deceptive. Guild Wars 2 Game Director Joshua “Grouch” Davis gushed that Guild Wars 2 is doing better than when the expansion, End of Dragons, launched on February 28, 2022 (via mmorpg.pl):

The game is already doing incredibly well, Steam is just the icing on the cake. More players played Guild Wars 2 in the weeks leading up to Steam launch than when End of Dragons launched. The game was already evolving 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 boss’s perspective?

Game Director Davis says it’s still too early to talk about the success of the Steam launch. Because here it is important to observe how many players stay with the bar 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?

It is still too early to assess that.

Before the Steam launch, however, “significant improvements” in retention were noticed. Guild Wars 2 is apparently currently succeeding in binding players who look into Guild Wars 2 to the MMORPG.

Guild Wars 2 is at its highest relevance in 5 years

Can the statements be understood in any way? Yes, the data proves Davis right. If we look at global Google interest in Guild Wars 2, year-to-date interest was highest (100%) the week the End of Dragons expansion was released.

The Steam launch, while looking “relatively weak”, has now brought interest back to a similarly high level (91% of peak).

So the Steam launch has significantly increased the relevance of Guild Wars 2 again. This is especially important for ArenaNet, which has struggled to create “attention highlights” like this for years.

The two spikes in interest in Guild Wars 2 in 2022 are the highest since 2017. It’s difficult for Guild Wars 2 to garner such attention spikes because with Living World you’re telling the story like a TV series, which keeps progressing.

Apparently, players find it difficult to get into an ongoing season if they have missed the beginning.

Other MMORPGs such as ESO or WoW use DLCs and expansions to repeatedly set stimulus points to bring players back or win new ones. Guild Wars 2 has lacked that in recent years.

It looks like Guild Wars 2 managed to create two such entry points in 2022 with the expansion and the Steam launch.

You still have a few hours to win a grand prize in our Guild Wars 2 Sweepstakes on Steam:

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