How to get ROR population up.

[Sulorie]

I am interested in what you did there with wh. If he kills easily now SnB tank in solo. Now I began to understand why very few players play for destruction. Do you plan to increase the blocking for the change of side? The point is, as it stands, it is just a formality. Thank you.

Why you think very few play for destro?

[Gyurza83]

It has been a long time. Based on the size of the population, the summer is not over yet.

[Massn]

For me, the main problem was always the factions balance. Too much depends on who has the most zerg, or who have active guilds. And the periods of total dominance of one faction greatly reduced the desire to play with of opposite faction.

[ChicagoJoe]

I don't think the removal was nessesarry but a significant pop reduction by removing of one single addon would need further explanation.
I think people are picking the easiest argument available.

I guess you are asking how did NB removal result in such big population loss? I can explain what my friends list went through at that time.

One day we logged in and skills not working anymore (everything is constant 3sec GCD), then they ask around wtf is going on and they learn NB is removed from game with a small line notice in patch notes. They ask whether there is something similar that reduces number of keybinds required, and the answer is all other similar addons (even ones with 0 conditionals) stopped working as well. Game suddenly became 30+ button.
At that point some of us had razor nagas that were collecting dust, so we plugged them back and adjusted, some werent so lucky. Some folks had regular mouses (not even side buttons). Most those people were semi casuals who would alt-hop mostly playing on several chars. At that point sequencer was not even in the planning to be made. After quite a long wait first version of sequencer drops and it completely sucks ass. No way of sugar coating it.

This is equivalant of LoL switching to a 20+ button gameplay overnight with no notice and telling people that 'they wanted to do it'.

NB was the 3rd highest downloaded addon in WAR history. Transition out of it was the worst way devs could have done it. Dalen's pet project ranked required blood sacrifice of NB, and he did it in the most arrogant way possible. Oceania timezone is a wasteland now. Dalen probably wanted ranked to be his legacy, but killing off low pop timezones is his real legacy.

He could have blocked NB in ranked only, but no. He had to rub it in. Guess how people react to that, after playing with NB being part of the game since forever.

I had heard NB removal was based primarily on ranked match feedback as well but those developers we played with aren’t really active anymore so I can’t confirm. Pretty sure the main developers restarted the game for scenarios and they are pretty awesome people. I can’t fault them for doing what they want with their labor.

I was never serious enough for ranked but enjoyed hardcore guild city pushes. My guilds are now empty shells and there are a tiny number of city instances. NB wasn’t a difference maker in large scale rvr. Organization and Higher population were. It helped for shifting characters to still be 90% effective as you’d be on your well practiced main. I’d be playing more characters who are currently sidelined.

I’m down to playing once a week now. From 10-12 hours to 1 hour. Please guys just do something. This holiday season is when to re-engage the masses.

[Caduceus]

I think the emphasis as of late has shifted towards highly organized, high skill/high renown rank players, and in that process a lot of players are being left out.

Not only that, but the players who are left out are not taken seriously and in fact often stigmatized by the community as being lazy, unskilled, not deserving of rewards, etc.

This simply pushes people away from the game.

One thing that must be realized is that this approach favoring "the best", will by its very definition cater to a very small group of players that are at the top. And then one must ask themeslves: what keeps the vast majority of players that are NOT at the top interested in the game?

[Xirucio]

How to get RoR population up? Start by following all the RoR Streamers.
Ez.

[holylynx264]

alot of people have left to play MMO's that can actually get progress you will see most of the players leaving to play world of warcraft or guildwars 2 my guild has been permanently moved to guildwars 2 underworld server as we cant even lvl a toon to a single rr past 38 to 40 crr no wonder why people want to get out of this mess maybe drop rr or boost some sort of progress then well see the population slowly come back i have 113 players in my guild that will never come back until they see changes to that and i have been keeping in touch with the past community and they want proof people do not want to come back because the threads will stay the same and new players will avoid until they see the grind drop significantly not to the developers standards im sorry to say and speak the truth of other players.... change me and the other players minds on this. ADDING: people are leaving day by day 20 to 15 players a week and now our usual is 200 on ocieana which used to be atleast 500 at the start of the year if that doesnt tell you to do something then i suggest thowing i shutdown post and be done with it and let Gamesworkshop do theyre jobs with the new mmo. and let this sit in the sand because atm until the grind changes then i would see this game to atleast 50 to 100 by mid next year. thats not playable any mmo developer will tell you that

[Everdin]

alot of people have left to play MMO's that can actually get progress you will see most of the players leaving to play world of warcraft or guildwars 2 my guild has been permanently moved to guildwars 2 underworld server as we cant even lvl a toon to a single rr past 38 to 40 crr no wonder why people want to get out of this mess maybe drop rr or boost some sort of progress then well see the population slowly come back i have 113 players in my guild that will never come back until they see changes to that and i have been keeping in touch with the past community and they want proof people do not want to come back because the threads will stay the same and new players will avoid until they see the grind drop significantly not to the developers standards im sorry to say and speak the truth of other players.... change me and the other players minds on this. ADDING: people are leaving day by day 20 to 15 players a week and now our usual is 200 on ocieana which used to be atleast 500 at the start of the year if that doesnt tell you to do something then i suggest thowing i shutdown post and be done with it and let Gamesworkshop do theyre jobs with the new mmo. and let this sit in the sand because atm until the grind changes then i would see this game to atleast 50 to 100 by mid next year. thats not playable any mmo developer will tell you that

1. Threadnecromancy is an issue!

2. "I have an army behind me waiting to join the servers all on my command if you fulfill my wishes" ... epic

3. Yesterday nearly the end of EU Primtime it had 944 Players count

4. Won't bet on a better MMO from GW

[Dackjanielz]

I think the emphasis as of late has shifted towards highly organized, high skill/high renown rank players, and in that process a lot of players are being left out.

Not only that, but the players who are left out are not taken seriously and in fact often stigmatized by the community as being lazy, unskilled, not deserving of rewards, etc.

This simply pushes people away from the game.

One thing that must be realized is that this approach favoring "the best", will by its very definition cater to a very small group of players that are at the top. And then one must ask themeslves: what keeps the vast majority of players that are NOT at the top interested in the game?

Yes the focus should be the majority not the top minority.

[SJHarrison4115]

I'm kind caught in the middle here. On one hand I agree that no developer attention should be focused on PVE at this point, it's not why we play this game.

However, I do agree that some tuning towards gearing is required, it's fine for people whom have been playing already 10 years and don't have anything to do but feel satisfied in their own superior gear because they invested hours upon hours of their lives on it.

For people whom are new/returning and have a life (full-time job, family, sporting commitments etc.) It's untenable and the only option to getting somewhere towards an okay gear past CR40 is to do PVE... Again, an issue, why do we need to PVE to get back to decent PVP it's truly bizarre.

Also, for much the same reasons as above in terms of available time, people like me for instances, don't really want to join a guild because we might get 3 hours tops of an evening and we don't want to hinder other players with our limited availabilty.

I don't think every career having a DPS Spec with reliable Healing is a great idea, but there are plenty of hybrid specs that should 100% be increased.

Right now, the blob on blob combat of T4 RvR is just... exhaustingly zergy and frankly really doesn't challenge a player or engage them all that mentally (apart from perhaps WB leaders).

You're a healer? Just AOE heal and you can be effectively braindead and still successful.
You're a tank? Hey, a little bit of involvement here, make sure to punt and use your defensives to keep the dps safe.
You're a DPS? Press the same two maybe three abilities constantly to do AOE dps and perhaps consider an auto-clicker so you can have a nice nap at the same time.

The PVP in this game feels exemplified by the T1 RvR experience, where it's uncommon (in my experience and timezone) to have blobs, but rather groups of 6-10 engaging across multiple BOs and heck, having some SOLO play capability.

If nothing else, as the population slowly but steadly dwindles to nothing, the time periods where people will have nothing to do will become greater in duration and frequency. Enhancing the Solo Experience fixes that.

EDIT: Apologies, I didn't see how necro this thread was.