Guild Wars 2 sees player numbers increase following post-launch slump

After an impressive launch, Guild Wars 2 suffered a drop in player numbers after it launched last year. Now people are heading back to Tyria slowly but surely, and the designers believe it's a result of newly-introduced fortnightly updates.

Lead designer Isaiah Cartwright told Polygon "We've been able to stabilize since the post-launch decline, and we're seeing slow but steady growth in concurrent players and also overall."

No numbers were mentioned, but Cartwright stressed that any MMO will see a drop in players immediately following launch. They were able to plan for that drop and, by analysing player data, decided that bi-weekly content drops would keep players coming back.

As a result ArenaNet has succeeded in keeping a great deal of the original Guild Wars players, though the original game is still popular enough to remain profitable.