Last time I was here, Funcom was still using the old forums and the game hadn’t added the word “Legends” yet. Shows how long it’s been.
I’m interested in knowing if there’s still a thriving community here. I’d heard that a lot of people quit in anger after being forced to restart their characters from near total scratch; the only things they got to keep were things they won in promotions or bought with RL $. I don’t know if this is true or not, and I came here to find out. Yes, I know why the character database was purged and the game restarted. The combat system underwent a major overhaul. Maybe even a whole new game engine.
I don’t play MMO’s for the game itself. I play for human contact. If I have to play alone, I can play single-player games. If there’s still a thriving community here, I am interested in the possibility of rejoining it in the near future (not immediately, but within the next couple of months).
I haven’t been around since before the revamp/relaunch. Did the community get bigger? Smaller? Stay around the same?
I’m here to spend time with people. If I will be accepted for that.
The community size has fluctated a fair bit, and it’s currently fairly small. There are still plenty of people to play with though, specially if you join an active cabal.
A lot of people left because of the relaunch - some due to the loss of their characters, some due to the combat and skill changes, and many others because of a lack of new content. (The game engine is the same as in TSW, as are the vast majority of missions.)
I don’t think I’d say the community is really thriving, but there are new players continuing to join, and there are a good number of active social groups. A lot will probably depend on the kind of time zone you’re most likely to be active in - some times are quieter than others.
It’s definitely a smaller player base than before March 2017. Considering the apparent limbo the game is stuck in, change for the better seems unlikely.
It’s a small community and the game isn’t really designed to encourage socializing. As AWOL suggested, finding a cabal that shares your interests (whether that’s PvE content or RP) is your best bet.
Going through the main story you’re practically guaranteed to spend a lot of time on your own unless you can find someone to start a new character to play alongside you. Randomly grouping up for missions doesn’t really happen. Most main missions can be done in a group, but there’s virtually no benefit to it.
The majority of actual group content (five elite dungeons with ten difficulty tiers, one raid with four tiers, two scenario modes) unlocks at level 50.
It wasn’t. TSW is still up and running and your characters are still there. Though depending on how long you were inactive before the relaunch they may have lost their nicknames.
The steamcharts only show you the people playing through steam. I for one never play through steam if i can help it. So it doesn’t account for me, and i’m fairly certain there are others like me. Take the steamcharts for what it is, but for games that can be played without steam, its not going to be 100% accurate.
Peak in not amount of people who played the game this day, it’s just amount in one moment of time. Plus it’s just steam, stand-alone client not included. So you kinda can expect at current game state to see 200+ people online all the time but it’s not the answer about size of community which is definitely way bigger than this. It’s not thousands as in other games but hey, it’s people…
There’s about a thousand people online on the SWL discord server, though there’s no way to tell how many joined but don’t play any more, and how many haven’t joined.
A day went by without anyone posting on SW on these forums, where AoC now has more activity per week than SWL. In-game, for this year’s Samhain event, when Funcom did not bother to port "new’ Samhain content over from TSW? I had never seen that few people in #Sanctuary chat during an event in TSW. So no, I wouldn’t say the community is thriving.
The question is, what exactly do you want to do?
Mostly play group PvE content? If so, SWL honestly isn’t all that great a game because teaming for story content is kind of pointless, while the too-many-tiered ‘elite’ endgame is a mindnumbingly boring grind with comparatively little to do. (TSW had a more varied endgame, for starters.)
Mostly RP? SWL is still good for that because of the unique setting. As others have said, try to find a cabal that matches what you like.
The evidence seems to contradict you there… 2/week vs 11/week.
Forums of games which have been unchanged for a long time are rarely bustling hives of activity. The forums are often used when people are looking for advice or have a problem, there’s not really much that is organised through here community wise.
I’m not saying that the community is particularly huge any more, but you’ll find a lot more activity on the official game discord (which some frequent forum users dislike so try to avoid and ignore).
The best way to participate in the community really is via a cabal. There are still active cabals spread through the different timezones, and it really helps improve your odds at getting groups for whatever type of activity you enjoy. It rather comes down to whether or not you want a massive range of people that you’ve never met to play with, or are content to socialise with the same group of people. If you don’t mind a smaller group, then there’s still plenty to do.
Though looking in the AoC forum, it looks like there’s been one post in a single thread in the last week (other than Andy’s server restart announcement), so I’m not sure how reliable that particular count is.