Guild Wars 2

So we all heard about the over a million people having bought the game around launch time but I haven’t heard any recent updates. It’s been about 2ish months now and I’m really curious how many people have bought the game and how many active accounts there currently are.

You have to wait for NCSoft to release their 3rd quarter earnings report.

Sales are over two million as of a few weeks into launch. They’ve added two additional servers since that number was made public. Regarding “active accounts”, accounts don’t become inactive because there is no subscription fee. The only way an account becomes inactive is if it is banned. We know from two reports they’ve banned at least 28,000 accounts.

There are no metrics you can have to really judge a subscription free MMO against a subscription MMO because to look at the success of WoW people look at subscription numbers. With a micro-transaction MMO the question really is how much revenue are they pulling in from the gem store combined with new account sales and that number is easy for NCSoft to guard.

The gems to coin exchange rate may be one indicator. This is seeded by undisclosed internal algorithms. The exchange rate for gems to coin is the only mark we really have for the value of gems in GW2. The value of gems have been rising, going from 23s for 100g up to peaking around 70s for 100g yesterday.

ArenaNet is in control of this increase in the value of gems. Why would they increase them in value? For the same reason retailers run sales, to make them more attractive to you. But it’s more like the stock market when it comes to gems. So the goal is probably to slowly raise the value of gems to coin to a certain threshold and then let it begin to drop so people will buy.

The rising value of gems could be an indicator they are trying to pull in more revenue from the gem store which may be because less people are spending in the gem store and they want to make gems more attractive to those who are spending there.

Pandemoniac.4739:

You have to wait for NCSoft to release their 3rd quarter earnings report.

Uhm, thanks but I have no idea what all that means. When will this new earnings report be out and does it show number of sales only or also current active accounts? (I apologies for sounding dense, I don’t know anything about this sort of thing)

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Sales are over two million as of a few weeks into launch. They’ve added two additional servers since that number was made public. Regarding “active accounts”, accounts don’t become inactive because there is no subscription fee. The only way an account becomes inactive is if it is banned. We know from two reports they’ve banned at least 28,000 accounts.

There are no metrics you can have to really judge a subscription free MMO against a subscription MMO because to look at the success of WoW people look at subscription numbers. With a micro-transaction MMO the question really is how much revenue are they pulling in from the gem store combined with new account sales and that number is easy for NCSoft to guard.

Can’t they see the total number of accounts accessed in the past month? As for the first part of your post those are the older statistics I heard about but I’m curious what it’s like now.

Fay.2735:

Pandemoniac.4739:

You have to wait for NCSoft to release their 3rd quarter earnings report.

Uhm, thanks but I have no idea what all that means. When will this new earnings report be out and does it show number of sales only or also current active accounts? (I apologies for sounding dense, I don’t know anything about this sort of thing)

Every publicly owned company has to publish how well they did financially for their investors. If you download the PDF for the second quarter results, you can see some charts showing the performance of the NCSoft published games. GW 2 wasn’t released at the time that report was made, so you won’t see much in there. Any numbers that aren’t in those earnings reports, or in a press release from the company are pure speculation. A lot of companies are announcing their third quarter results, so it should be soon.

I know the reports look a little intimidating at first, but it is worthwhile learning how to read them, because the numbers in them have to be accurate or the company opens themselves up to all sorts of problems. If you want to know “how successful was game X”, and it was published by a publicly traded company, those reports your best source of information.

Edit— Usually companies do a press release with each quarter’s results. It’s a little easier reading than the actual report. Keep an eye on http://www.plaync.com/en/news/press-releases/

From another thread, regarding number of players:
No one outside of the company will have anything related to an accurate number, and unless a press statement is made, no company employee will say.

Sales hit 2 million and probably died down to a trickle after that. If they hit another million mark they would be touting it to the high heavens as it is rare most MMO’s get 3M let along 2M.

Fay.2735:

Can’t they see the total number of accounts accessed in the past month?

Oh they can. But what value is it to them to release information in a way that gamers understand, when we all have seen how that just compels armchair theorycrafting on forums

The investor reports are designed for, well, investors. Will they buy or sell NC stock on the hopes or fears of GW2? Maybe, or not. But they’re probably not thinking that granularly about a company that has a larger library of MMOs. Net positive cash flow, consistent growth, expectations that align with earlier guidance (or at least analyst prediction). I imagine because it’s a new launch the Q3 report will include some highlights of GW2. But it’s also probably going to include the many successes and writedowns they’ve taken for other titles and acquisitions as well.

I just hope a steady 2million true fans stay and all cheaters/goldbuyers/hackers/rushers/exploiters leave the game. Im still enjoying the game alot sinds launch im playing everyday.

Sylvari forever!!!

Well hopefully we’ll hear some clear understandable numbers soon then. All I know is that a lot of people are still buying the game so really interesting to see how well they’ve done since launch, how many people are still actively playing it etc.

It would be interesting to know, but hardly essential to the expansion of the game. There are lots of player, still queues for wvwvw, and further any fluctuation in players does not clearly indicate how much total revenue the game is generating.

Gem shop sales also factor in, and there are some people that spend $100+ in gems, and conversely some that spend $0. As well as others that spend any amount in between.

Im not typically one to buy extras in a game, but I really enjoy gw2, and will probably buy something at halloween if the quality is equal to what has been in game so far.

You don’t need sales numbers, you just have to level a new alt to realize that maps are already getting empty, most events impossible to do because there’s no one else around. Bots on the other end you’re going to see tons of them.

The original question was (paraphrased) “Anyone know what the current sales figures are because I’m curious about them”. You absolutely need sales figures to answer that question.

If you are looking to try and compare it to other games who use a sub based then total sales of the game won’t be help at all. Reading through this people have said 2 mil sold. I will bet money not even close to 2 mil still play the game. Started a new character the other day and the starter zone was bare. ToR has tons of people in all zones still. Rift has people. Heck, even LotR has people.

The only way to see an accurate assessment I guess is see how many people logged on prime time (let’s say 5pm-10pm) when the game came out and compare it to now. Or show all times and how many people on each time.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

ArenaNet is in control of this increase in the value of gems

Only in the sense that they set the algorithms that sets the exchange rate. They have outrightly said that they do not ‘tweak’ the gem exchange rate at all.

bojangles.6912:

If you are looking to try and compare it to other games who use a sub based then total sales of the game won’t be help at all. Reading through this people have said 2 mil sold. I will bet money not even close to 2 mil still play the game. Started a new character the other day and the starter zone was bare. ToR has tons of people in all zones still. Rift has people. Heck, even LotR has people.

We can’t read anything by that. SWTOR has severely consolidated its servers in response to the drop in subs, and it’s also an altaholic’s paradise. Right now in GW2 people have spread out of the lowbie zones, lots have hit 80 and haven’t tired of Orr yet, and some folks who have hit the top have just become dedicated WvWers. In addition, not everyone who is going to make alts has finished with their mains or plays multiple characters concurrently. Gauging by feel and by how many people are in zones isn’t going to tell us much one way or the other because of all the mitigating factors that obscure the picture. I’m wouldn’t even hazard to guess what the average number of active players per day or week or month is because there’s literally nothing worthwhile to gauge it.