Guild Wars 2

While doing some internet browsing today I came across a few GW2 ads. I noticed something interesting about them which made them much different from other recent ads.

None of them even mentioned HoT, and the animated ads themselves all featured reviews and ratings given to the game from sources when it launched, rather than the expansion, citing the game’s critical acclaim from 2012, with absolutely no sign or trace of the new content whatsoever.

Other ads for the past year or so have all featured the HoT name and logo.

Seems kind of odd, and begs the question if ANet is trying to distance itself from the expansion due to its poor sales performance and underwhelming reviews/overwhelming negativity surrounding it.

On the other hand, it could suggest the next expansion may be coming up fairly soon and they don’t want to market the “soon”™-to-be-old-expansion’s content nearby a new release, although I do see this as kind of strange to not advertise the game as it’s sold.

Thoughts?

A new movie with a lead actor that won a couple of Oscars forty years ago, and who has done nothing worthwhile since, will emphasize, “with two time Oscar award winning actor ….”

Its not necessarily an effort to distance the actor from poor roles, just a common tactic of pointing out the positives.

I have never seen a single ad for GW2, besides those generated by Google Ads.

Maybe they are old ads from before HoT?

I frequently see adds for gw2 on various sites such as not always right and Reddit so there are current adds out there. I admit I never looked that closely at them. They do usually mention the level 80 boost and have a general description.

I think maybe theyre just outdated lol. anet doesn’t put up those ads, the website owners do.

Don’t think they’re out-dated; my browsing habits haven’t really changed over the past few years and I’m certain that on a few of them (since I visit these sites often), the sites had HoT-related ads when it launched/since its launch. Defaulting back to old ads is definitely something new.

Ashen.2907:

A new movie with a lead actor that won a couple of Oscars forty years ago, and who has done nothing worthwhile since, will emphasize, “with two time Oscar award winning actor ….”

Its not necessarily an effort to distance the actor from poor roles, just a common tactic of pointing out the positives.

Just seems kind of odd to be happening now, don’t you think?

Maybe they don’t want to remind people of the kitten-storm that happened when HoT was released, and the thing with the sale… oh and editing the wiki/website page… Can’t remember what it was exactly….

They don’t really need to advertise HoT. What they’re advertising is the free game for new players, so they’re showing the original reviews. Free players then get HoT advertising within the game.

I dont get the logic some people assume here with " they have old non hot adds cause they are avoiding the bad release"… but when someone goes to gw2 web site its all about hot , s3 living story and a option to buy hot in order to have a full account?

Common marketing strategy I would say: to get new players into GW, what do you use ? An add that display a free game or an add that says “Spend 45€ to get Heart of Thorne” ? It is only logical to use the first one since f2p players also get an inside game advertisement to buy HoT

Getting people in the f2p game is better marketing than trying to get people to spend money on a game they haven’t touched yet.

HoT got very little media coverage. Big gaming sites like Gamespot didn’t even review the expansion. Just shows how unimportant the franchise has be come. It’s a shame… Compare it to – let’s say Overwatch – an you get about 100 times the media coverage. Also GW2 seems to most people practically nonexistent. A shame, they had the attention before HoT release but lost momentum. Hopefully the game well be back on track with the announcement of the new expansion (that hopefully won’t take another two years like the first one…).

I’ve seen Anet HoT ads and Guild Wars 2 ads both, and recently.

Guild Wars 2 is advertised as a free to play product, which it is. HoT is advertised to people who generally own Guild Wars 2 already.

The trick is to get more people into the game and free is the way to do it.

Anet isn’t trying to distance themselves from HoT.