You will run into a small amount of players in starting zones, but as you will progress through the story your chances of meeting people in the wild will significantly decrease, regardless of the cap, as most people that are doing endgame content spend their time in Agartha or city hubs.

When it comes to the game’s population in general, there are two things to consider. One is that almost all of the story content is completable solo (you might need to overlevel the dungeons a little bit) and even if you don’t want to do it solo it’s fairly easy to find someone in Agartha / City hubs to help you with a dungeon. Keep in mind that SWL’s chat system is quite arcane and the channels only cover their own zone, so for example if you’re in the first zone of Kingsmouth Town, general chat will only cover all instances of Kingsmouth, and as such most adventure zones chats are silent. Agartha and City Hubs channels such as LFG or Trade are the most active if the goal is to find other players.

Endgame content participation is dwindling alongside the playerbase, but it’s still possible to do every single bit of content in the game, especially if you join a cabal (guild). Although for some particular high-tier endgame content events have to be scheduled due to small number of players capable of doing them, and even gathering a 10 people group for a lair (content that pretty much anyone that reached level 50 can participate in) can be challenging during the off-peak time (in a pinch those are still doable with 5 people, so it’s not a catastrophe or anything).

As for P2W aspects, if you feel like spending a little bit of money, the only thing worth buying is patron subscription as that will boost your progression speed by about 50% when it comes to unlocking things, and everything else is either not worth buying at all or ridiculously overpriced. There is absolutely 0 need to pay for anything though.

Bottom line is, playing through the story solo is worth it just for the experience, imo. but set your expectations accordingly if you want to do endgame group content, during some times of the day (especially if you’re not in EU) it can get pretty quiet.

P.S. Don’t use Activity Finder to find anything.

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