Bringing GW back to live again? Possible?

I starter playing again in the last few days. The game seems dead.
Only a couple of thousands of players seem to still be playing.
How can we bring it back to live again?
DO you guys have any ideas? I don't know if my idea may lead me to trouble on this forum, but i think anet should just make GW free to play.
No buy required, just create account and play. But this accounts can't be linked to GW2. If they become religious players like us, they buy it.
I think that a few thousands of new gamers stepping in could revitalize the game again. what do you think?

I think no... don't want the game to get crowded by people trolling the game.

They'll never make it free to play. I don't think there is a way to reinvigorate this game. Stuff like PvP is dead and I don't know what incentive they could add to attract people that wouldn't just make people farm more.

From a the perspective of a GvGer, i'd like to see the dailly tournaments be more accessible to players. At present a lot of lower ranked teams do not enter them because they are concerned about 3 things:

a) heavy loss of rating
b) Not placing top 8 gives no qualifier points --> cant play the monthly.
c) if you are not ranked top 1000, u wont recieve reward points.

Its a change that would never happen, but i would to see the rating change in an AT reduced massively. If teams were not heavily penalised for losing then i think more people might bother to play them. (would also help if you did not need to be top 1k to get RP's as it might encourage lesser guilds to participate) People will argue saying AT's get you to champ range faster etc if u are a good team, but decent teams can farm +200 rating in 2-3 days anyway from ladder if they were actually bothered about champ points :s

Every team that enters should receive qualifier points, even if its just 1. all teams should have the possibility to enter the monthly imo regardless of skill.

Obviously my post adresses tournament play, but i believe ladder is beyond help. Unless rating gains on ladder are increased to the point where not so good teams are able to farm their way into the top 100 from ladder farming alone. If top 100-200 was more easily achievable you might see more players involved in their quest to achieve champion points. This would obviously lead to the current top tier players achieving champion ranks 12+ and stuff, but at this stage i dont think people would hugely care about an already meaningless title becoming a bit more pointless.

@floor
Tourney lowranks will be farmed by strong guilds, giving them a free tourney win, while lowranks will still be discouraged by loosing in 3 minutes.

Rating changes are pointless imo, wheres the sense in making everyone a top100 while they still are on top1k level. This will not make them better, this will make top100 dumb.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Making the game totally free would attract more 12 y/o kids, who would just flame, troll and whine more than the current players. For someone who treats playing as a real hobby, or who earns some money on his own, GW is really cheap.

ofc ur entitled to ur opinion, but i dont entirely see a problem with my suggesion.

The way that a tournament runs, (assuming enough teams entered so there is 4 or 5 rounds), the first round the match ups are random, so the bad teams lose. the 2nd round all the teams who lost are then paired up. So you might win vs other bad ppl, or u might lose again. if u lose again (0/2), then you will now face other teams who are 0/2. The whole system of the tournament is designed so that you get better matches as it progresses into the later rounds. this system is obviously much more effective if more teams participate and there are more rounds.

Regarding ladder, you are sort of correct, top 100 would become far more populated by "bad" people if you like, but this is not really a problem in many ways. If top 100 became more active, higher ranked teams will get matches faster which in turns leads to less smurfing. It also gives lesser players the chance to face the top players on a regular basis without losing significant rating ( ladder is like -5?), this is good practise so people should improve as a result. And I'd also like to say that all of the beginner guilds i know, still have the mentality of "today was a good night guys, +10 rating", or vice versa if they lost rating. So if it became easier to gain rating, surely this leads to more "good nights" and thus people will generally have more fun.

From what i can tell the only real 'problem' as such, would be that the top guilds will win more champs (lol titles?) by beating the new breed of top 100 teams. But due to the nature of smurf guilds etc, this currently happens anyway if im not mistaken. At least if the top guilds actually use their main guilds, teams will lose less rating compared to being rolled by a rank 1000 smurf, have the potential for champ points if they pull off a shock win, and should improve as a result of facing better opposition regularly. Doesnt seem to be too many drawbacks to me :s

Again, feel free to voice ur opinion if u disagree

Making the game totally free would also cause an influx in botters and gold sellers etc. And it wouldn't matter much to them if they get banned, they'd just make a new account...for free? nowai :|

That's a nice idea and all but I would rather not want to see an increase in players. I think Guild Wars is already a respectable size for almost six years now and people have started coming back thanks to all of the new updates. After paying almost eighty dollars for all of the expansions and now seeing it for twenty dollars for the whole game I believe it's already generous enough for the price of Guild Wars.

Don't need to bring it back to live you just need 12-ish active people in guild to have great time and there is a lot of active guilds in game at least for pve . For pvp it could be harder .
Unless you are one of the players who ''enjoy'' playing with pugs .

Basically, it would make the game just like an internet messageboard about the game.

Been playing for almsot 4 years, I don't think it's dead... GvG is dead in my eyes but...other than that...

you sure? a week or two ago i saw plenty of people, 4 districts in a tutorial area, to me, doesn't seem dead. You gotta look in the right places, but this MMO is a significant amount livelier than it was 2 years ago.
join a guild, go to the main cities. you'll see plenty of people around.

You convinced me , i think that would be a really good idea , but i would also like to be able to play GvG alone with heroes ( or even mercenary henchs; or let's say 6 heroes+2 humans) and i think there would be some more players doing AT's then...
I don't think it would be a real problem since top guilds would faceroll most of them and people would register sec accs for nothing since there would be more guilds playing.....
It would also help for people who want to register " hard tournaments "... Some people aren't registering because there are 6-7 top50 guilds and they know people will just rage and forfeit after they lost twice...

Very nice idea though it would revalorise all PvP since rest would be really hard to fix....

Pre is where it’s at.... you missed the memo There is a new well not so new title and it is only 1k at a time and no death leveling involved. Not to mention the 3 gold collectible drops. Pre has at least 4 districts every time I log in.

To bring it back they need to announce GW2 release/specs. They need to and add some mini spoilers in GW in anticipation of the release. Scavenger hunts ~ collect things~ some NEW monsters run amuck ~ stop them now etc... all from GW2. People are ready for GW2 and sick of waiting. Unfortunately it looks to be still 9 months plus from release (at least from the recent PC gamer May edition) Don’t get me wrong they need to finish it / perfect it. Hate to have a Cyrsis 2 multiplayer fiasco like crytec did.

For people starting new it is still fun to play, but to start for collectability the market is sour ... basically done. The ecto farming frenzy has ruined it. Inflation is way too high. Sorry its not the 90k for a 20% sundering mod days. (inserts lack of auction house complaint)

The release of the HOM spiked play but people have hit there levels they want to hit and are happy with where they are at. I am sure some are still working on some titles.

On the radar

Diablo 2
Old republic
Rift is released
Etc… they pull people away and will in the future

Just watching the forums and seeing regular posters disappear is the call sign

For a game 6 years old, I don't consider it dead at all. The fact that it also still such an active fansite says a great deal as well.

There's also GW2 to consider. As yet, it has not received what I would term "a great deal" of media attention. Sure, we may hear a lot about it - but in the main, that's because we're fans of the title already, and we're quick to click on any reference to GW2. But in the general "gamer cloud" of the 'net, on TV, etc., GW2 has not been publicized to the extent it eventually will. When that starts there will likely be a significant influx of new (or returning) players to GW1, especially since the Hall of Monuments provides a tie-in between account rewards in GW2 based on your activities in GW1.

For many of the same reasons others have already mentioned, I don't think making it free (in the sense of not needing to buy a CD key) is needed... or a good idea.

Actually...if Anet made the game totally free at this point it wouldn't surprise me, it would actually make sense and go with the trend of making things more accessible (I'm referring to titles).

We paid for the game back then, now people get it for free.
We grinded for the titles back then, now people get them easily.

With all the possible places for people to be..sometimes it is hard to see how many people are playing---prophecies, factions, nightfall, eye....as well as american, european, asian and international districts---the player base is really spread over a lot of game.
as well as
lots of people are now just playing with their heroes--no need to stick around an outpost when your trusty band of ...heroes ...is there at your beck and call.

as for pvp.....cant help there as I have never done any.

Ah stereotypes, the world would cease to function if they died.

But in all seriousness Guild Wars has a lot of inactivity but it also depends where you're playing and at what time.

look at ddo and lotro GW could easily go completely f2p if they did that they would make up for the money in cash shop for costumes, etc.

btw from my online experience younger kids are more mature than older ones, i am 21 and so are all my friends around this age, we act like a bunch of idiots. i see 12-15 year olds with epic grammar and acting like adults. stereotypes are funny aren't they?