Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Vayne.8563:

The income this quarter is down that’s true. But that doesn’t mean the expansion and free to play are the cause of it. I daresay the way Anet handled the launch of the expansion has far more to do with it. That’s my opinion.

I can’t prove it any more than you can prove your theory.

But you see… I have.

The game makes less post xpac than pre xpac FACT.

You aren’t required to agree and I’d be disappointed if you did, you’ve worked hard backing any direction Anet wanted to take this game.

Math is Proof.

Math doesn’t prove the expansion caused it. Math only proves it’s lower. Assuming the direction of the game instead of say the price of the expansion, or the bad publicity surrounding the decision not to include a character slot…that’s a guess.

Not a fact.

Again with semantics when presented with fact.

The point of an xpac is to increase revenue, fact.
(that’s indisputable)

The game makes less money post HoT, fact.
(that’s indisputable)

Argue the game’s in better shape than ever before all you like but Anet is a business and business isn’t booming, fact.

Fact: You don’t know how much this game would be doing if there had never been an expansion. It could have increased sales beyond what sales would have existed.

That’s your logical fallacy. Can you prove that this game would have remained stable and not fallen if they continued in the same direction that had originally or continued the living story. That’s an assumption.

The fact is you have no real knowledge about whether or not we’re better off now at this point in time than we would be if the expansion had never launched. It’s a guess.

Any business expendature that does not raise revenue is money wasted. If you can’t agree to that then never reply to me again. I’m too old to debate 1+1=2

Aidenwolf.5964:

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Vayne.8563:

The income this quarter is down that’s true. But that doesn’t mean the expansion and free to play are the cause of it. I daresay the way Anet handled the launch of the expansion has far more to do with it. That’s my opinion.

I can’t prove it any more than you can prove your theory.

But you see… I have.

The game makes less post xpac than pre xpac FACT.

You aren’t required to agree and I’d be disappointed if you did, you’ve worked hard backing any direction Anet wanted to take this game.

Math is Proof.

Math doesn’t prove the expansion caused it. Math only proves it’s lower. Assuming the direction of the game instead of say the price of the expansion, or the bad publicity surrounding the decision not to include a character slot…that’s a guess.

Not a fact.

Again with semantics when presented with fact.

The point of an xpac is to increase revenue, fact.
(that’s indisputable)

The game makes less money post HoT, fact.
(that’s indisputable)

Argue the game’s in better shape than ever before all you like but Anet is a business and business isn’t booming, fact.

Fact: You don’t know how much this game would be doing if there had never been an expansion. It could have increased sales beyond what sales would have existed.

That’s your logical fallacy. Can you prove that this game would have remained stable and not fallen if they continued in the same direction that had originally or continued the living story. That’s an assumption.

The fact is you have no real knowledge about whether or not we’re better off now at this point in time than we would be if the expansion had never launched. It’s a guess.

Any business expendature that does not raise revenue is money wasted. If you can’t agree to that then never reply to me again. I’m too old to debate 1+1=2

There’s nothing to debate. This is flat out wrong. There are many business expenses that are necessary and don’t increase profit short term, but do increase profit long term. Anyone can see that.

We’ve had exactly one single bad quarter. That’s it. The but two quarters preceding were better. We don’t have a trend.

You’re saying if you make a business decision and have one bad quarter it’s a mistake. Maybe you don’t know as much about business as you think you do.

Aside from that the expansion launch was botched. Not the expansion itself. The expansion itself isn’t as bad as you’d lead us to believe, in my opinion.

If they botched the pricing,. or the dungeon nerf, or what’s included, that’s called a mistake. But it doesn’t mean the expansion is the reason for the mistake directly. It means other decisions affected sales.

Without knowing if sales would have been higher or lower without the expansion you have no argument.

Not a trend? Watch next quarter

Aidenwolf.5964:

Not a trend? Watch next quarter

I will. My guess is it will be higher than this quarter. I guess we’ll see.

Edit: Assuming the next quarter encompasses the 2 week half price sale, and the launch of LS 3 which I believe it does.

Vayne.8563:

Aside from that the expansion launch was botched. Not the expansion itself. The expansion itself isn’t as bad as you’d lead us to believe, in my opinion.

I actually think the expansion wasn’t that great. No one ( in my opinion) likes to grind just to do content.
But that’s just me being bitter about that…still….

Vayne.8563:

Without knowing if sales would have been higher or lower without the expansion you have no argument.

I disagree.
The thing about the business world is that you don’t get second chances.
You dont get a “what if”

The sales before were higher before the expansion. We can all agree the numbers tell that fact. It is. indisputably. a fact.

The sales were at an all time low after the expansion.

Now that was 2015- All time low-
From 2012-2014 the numbers never got that low
But last year 2015
All time low.

You cannot say that it wasn’t because of HoT, not when the game was released in 2012 and the numbers NEVER got that low(according to the report) BEFORE HoT.

The numbers, the report, the sales AND the history pretty much point this on the release of this expansion.

sirsquishy.2619:

I will never buy another expansion for this game.HoT taught me that Anet cannot do expansions for GW2 well. It took them 6 MONTHS to fix everything they broke when they released HoT. And they canceled one of HoT many selling points, New Legendary Weapons. I wont buy into that BS again.

Nope, GW2 as is for me here on out. If they want to drop new zones/story and charge for entry into them that is one thing. But to do another complete overhaul of the game? No I will not partake.

we don’t even have the game engine fixed yet. Really, what did we get that we paid for? Not a whole lot.

What exactly did they break? How did they fix it ?

Solori.6025:

Vayne.8563:

Aside from that the expansion launch was botched. Not the expansion itself. The expansion itself isn’t as bad as you’d lead us to believe, in my opinion.

I actually think the expansion wasn’t that great. No one ( in my opinion) likes to grind just to do content.
But that’s just me being bitter about that…still….

Vayne.8563:

Without knowing if sales would have been higher or lower without the expansion you have no argument.

I disagree.
The thing about the business world is that you don’t get second chances.
You dont get a “what if”

The sales before were higher before the expansion. We can all agree the numbers tell that fact. It is. indisputably. a fact.

The sales were at an all time low after the expansion.

Now that was 2015- All time low-
From 2012-2014 the numbers never got that low
But last year 2015
All time low.

You cannot say that it wasn’t because of HoT, not when the game was released in 2012 and the numbers NEVER got that low(according to the report) BEFORE HoT.

The numbers, the report, the sales AND the history pretty much point this on the release of this expansion.

There’s absolutely nothing to disagree with. This is factual.

You can’t know how well something would have done had you not done it. That’s my point.

That is to say without an expansion those numbers could be lower than they are now. There really is no way to know.

That’s factual.

You can say the expansion launched and numbers went down. What you can’t prove is how much they would have gone down if the expansion hadn’t launched. It’s simply not provable.

There really is no way to disagree with that. And that’s my point.

Edit: A baseball manager brings in a pinch hitter. He drives in 1 run. They lose the game anyway. That doesn’t mean if they hadn’t brought in that pinch hitter, they wouldnt’ have 1 more run than they ended up with. There really is no way to know.

Aidenwolf.5964:

But what made me play GW was the freedom to do what I wanted solo, in a group, whatever. That all died with HoT.

What exactly could you solo before that you now cannot? How did that die exactly?

Mitch.4781:

Aidenwolf.5964:

But what made me play GW was the freedom to do what I wanted solo, in a group, whatever. That all died with HoT.

What exactly could you solo before that you now cannot? How did that die exactly?

Without a Taxi go in to any HoT map and complete the meta. The maps are built like mass co-op encounters. I ran all over the world pre HoT and never bothered with servers, it’s a complete shift.

Rewards are participation based not kill based and farming those maps is a nightmare on an unpopulated map when in vanilla GW2 I could and did go anywhere I wanted to do what I wanted.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Mitch.4781:

Aidenwolf.5964:

But what made me play GW was the freedom to do what I wanted solo, in a group, whatever. That all died with HoT.

What exactly could you solo before that you now cannot? How did that die exactly?

Without a Taxi go in to any HoT map and complete the meta. The maps are built like mass co-op encounters. I ran all over the world pre HoT and never bothered with servers, it’s a complete shift.

Taxi-ing has been a thing for a long time. Maybe you don’t remember when servers were seperate and you needed an open temple of balthazar, but I do. I remember having to change servers to get into that map.

I remember how many failed attempts there were at the marionette if you couldn’t get into your home server. You may not remember that, but I certainly do.

And I don’t know any way to do Triple Trouble without getting onto a server that was doing it with a large, organized group.

I remember using server switches to get to unbugged temples and events as well.

I’ve been switching servers almost since launch. Even down to getting a free switch to another WvW server to finally complete the world, because we were the same color ever week.

Yes, it’s more often now. But it’s not like server swapping was just introduced yesterday either.

In fact, for a year or more now, people have been using it to get into silver wastes maps about to do the breach event, or T4 or higher Dry Top servers.

Edit: With the advent of the upgraded LFG tool, server, taxi-ing to an active map is pretty kitten ed easy. It might annoy you, but I don’t really see why anyone would have an issue with it.

Vayne.8563:

Solori.6025:

Vayne.8563:

Aside from that the expansion launch was botched. Not the expansion itself. The expansion itself isn’t as bad as you’d lead us to believe, in my opinion.

I actually think the expansion wasn’t that great. No one ( in my opinion) likes to grind just to do content.
But that’s just me being bitter about that…still….

Vayne.8563:

Without knowing if sales would have been higher or lower without the expansion you have no argument.

I disagree.
The thing about the business world is that you don’t get second chances.
You dont get a “what if”

The sales before were higher before the expansion. We can all agree the numbers tell that fact. It is. indisputably. a fact.

The sales were at an all time low after the expansion.

Now that was 2015- All time low-
From 2012-2014 the numbers never got that low
But last year 2015
All time low.

You cannot say that it wasn’t because of HoT, not when the game was released in 2012 and the numbers NEVER got that low(according to the report) BEFORE HoT.

The numbers, the report, the sales AND the history pretty much point this on the release of this expansion.

There’s absolutely nothing to disagree with. This is factual.

You can’t know how well something would have done had you not done it. That’s my point..

And I agree, You will never know if something would succeed unless you do it. But if it fails, then it fails.

Vayne.8563:

That is to say without an expansion those numbers could be lower than they are now. There really is no way to know.

That’s a “what if”
The fact is, they released the expansion.
The numbers are in fact lower.
The expansion did not do well for the company.
That’s a fact.

Vayne.8563:

You can say the expansion launched and numbers went down. What you can’t prove is how much they would have gone down if the expansion hadn’t launched. It’s simply not provable.

I agree, but that isn’t the reality.
That is also not pertinent to the discussion at hand.
The expansion launched, the numbers went down.
Years before that, No expansion, the numbers stayed up.
That’s a fact. That can be proven with quarterly reports.
This expansion was not successful.
This is proven in this report.

Vayne.8563:

Edit: A baseball manager brings in a pinch hitter. He drives in 1 run. They lose the game anyway. That doesn’t mean if they hadn’t brought in that pinch hitter, they wouldnt’ have 1 more run than they ended up with. There really is no way to know.

Better analogy.
A baseball team has had a seasoned pitcher for 2 years
They havent lost a game.
The baseball manager decides he wants a new pitcher.
The lose the next game considerably.

Now. History has shown that the Veteran has had a higher success rate that the noobs.
Had the baseball manager kept the veteran in. There is a higher chance they would have won. History shows and validates that record.
But he didn’t. He chose the noob.
They lost because of his choice.

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Mitch.4781:

Aidenwolf.5964:

But what made me play GW was the freedom to do what I wanted solo, in a group, whatever. That all died with HoT.

What exactly could you solo before that you now cannot? How did that die exactly?

Without a Taxi go in to any HoT map and complete the meta. The maps are built like mass co-op encounters. I ran all over the world pre HoT and never bothered with servers, it’s a complete shift.

Taxi-ing has been a thing for a long time. Maybe you don’t remember when servers were seperate and you needed an open temple of balthazar, but I do. I remember having to change servers to get into that map.

I remember how many failed attempts there were at the marionette if you couldn’t get into your home server. You may not remember that, but I certainly do.

And I don’t know any way to do Triple Trouble without getting onto a server that was doing it with a large, organized group.

I remember using server switches to get to unbugged temples and events as well.

I’ve been switching servers almost since launch. Even down to getting a free switch to another WvW server to finally complete the world, because we were the same color ever week.

Yes, it’s more often now. But it’s not like server swapping was just introduced yesterday either.

In fact, for a year or more now, people have been using it to get into silver wastes maps about to do the breach event, or T4 or higher Dry Top servers.

Edit: With the advent of the upgraded LFG tool, server, taxi-ing to an active map is pretty kitten ed easy. It might annoy you, but I don’t really see why anyone would have an issue with it.

I’ve been here every minute you have. Day One minus 3.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Mitch.4781:

Aidenwolf.5964:

But what made me play GW was the freedom to do what I wanted solo, in a group, whatever. That all died with HoT.

What exactly could you solo before that you now cannot? How did that die exactly?

Without a Taxi go in to any HoT map and complete the meta. The maps are built like mass co-op encounters. I ran all over the world pre HoT and never bothered with servers, it’s a complete shift.

Taxi-ing has been a thing for a long time. Maybe you don’t remember when servers were seperate and you needed an open temple of balthazar, but I do. I remember having to change servers to get into that map.

I remember how many failed attempts there were at the marionette if you couldn’t get into your home server. You may not remember that, but I certainly do.

And I don’t know any way to do Triple Trouble without getting onto a server that was doing it with a large, organized group.

I remember using server switches to get to unbugged temples and events as well.

I’ve been switching servers almost since launch. Even down to getting a free switch to another WvW server to finally complete the world, because we were the same color ever week.

Yes, it’s more often now. But it’s not like server swapping was just introduced yesterday either.

In fact, for a year or more now, people have been using it to get into silver wastes maps about to do the breach event, or T4 or higher Dry Top servers.

Edit: With the advent of the upgraded LFG tool, server, taxi-ing to an active map is pretty kitten ed easy. It might annoy you, but I don’t really see why anyone would have an issue with it.

I’ve been here every minute you have. Day One minus 3.

Well then it’s not a complete shift. lol

Aidenwolf.5964:

Mitch.4781:

Aidenwolf.5964:

But what made me play GW was the freedom to do what I wanted solo, in a group, whatever. That all died with HoT.

What exactly could you solo before that you now cannot? How did that die exactly?

Without a Taxi go in to any HoT map and complete the meta. The maps are built like mass co-op encounters. I ran all over the world pre HoT and never bothered with servers, it’s a complete shift.

Rewards are participation based not kill based and farming those maps is a nightmare on an unpopulated map when in vanilla GW2 I could and did go anywhere I wanted to do what I wanted.

Um.. But we’ve had the taxi system for yonks? People taxi’d in for Orr, Teq, Triple Trouble etc etc. All way before HOT was even out. If anything HOT made it easier because of the squad system. There are still dozens of events and encounters that can be solo’d in HOT. I literally spent the weekend doing just that.

If Heart of Thorns, the expansion, caused income to drop, why weren’t Q4-2015 and Q1-2016 the lowest quarters ever?

And what will be said if the next quarter, Q3-2016 isn’t the lowest quarter ever? Will that be because of the expansion, as well? Won’t that quarter have Heart of Thorns sales in it?

Solori.6025:

Vayne.8563:

Solori.6025:

Vayne.8563:

Aside from that the expansion launch was botched. Not the expansion itself. The expansion itself isn’t as bad as you’d lead us to believe, in my opinion.

I actually think the expansion wasn’t that great. No one ( in my opinion) likes to grind just to do content.
But that’s just me being bitter about that…still….

Vayne.8563:

Without knowing if sales would have been higher or lower without the expansion you have no argument.

I disagree.
The thing about the business world is that you don’t get second chances.
You dont get a “what if”

The sales before were higher before the expansion. We can all agree the numbers tell that fact. It is. indisputably. a fact.

The sales were at an all time low after the expansion.

Now that was 2015- All time low-
From 2012-2014 the numbers never got that low
But last year 2015
All time low.

You cannot say that it wasn’t because of HoT, not when the game was released in 2012 and the numbers NEVER got that low(according to the report) BEFORE HoT.

The numbers, the report, the sales AND the history pretty much point this on the release of this expansion.

There’s absolutely nothing to disagree with. This is factual.

You can’t know how well something would have done had you not done it. That’s my point..

And I agree, You will never know if something would succeed unless you do it. But if it fails, then it fails.

Vayne.8563:

That is to say without an expansion those numbers could be lower than they are now. There really is no way to know.

That’s a “what if”
The fact is, they released the expansion.
The numbers are in fact lower.
The expansion did not do well for the company.
That’s a fact.

Vayne.8563:

You can say the expansion launched and numbers went down. What you can’t prove is how much they would have gone down if the expansion hadn’t launched. It’s simply not provable.

I agree, but that isn’t the reality.
That is also not pertinent to the discussion at hand.
The expansion launched, the numbers went down.
Years before that, No expansion, the numbers stayed up.
That’s a fact. That can be proven with quarterly reports.
This expansion was not successful.
This is proven in this report.

Vayne.8563:

Edit: A baseball manager brings in a pinch hitter. He drives in 1 run. They lose the game anyway. That doesn’t mean if they hadn’t brought in that pinch hitter, they wouldnt’ have 1 more run than they ended up with. There really is no way to know.

Better analogy.
A baseball team has had a seasoned pitcher for 2 years
They havent lost a game.
The baseball manager decides he wants a new pitcher.
The lose the next game considerably.

Now. History has shown that the Veteran has had a higher success rate that the noobs.
Had the baseball manager kept the veteran in. There is a higher chance they would have won. History shows and validates that record.
But he didn’t. He chose the noob.
They lost because of his choice.

Look it’s a question of relativity.

We know that the expansion didn’t raise revenue past the two quarters it raised revenue. But then we don’t know what the revenue would have been like if the expansion had never been announced. It’s entirely possible the revenue would have been less for the entire period.

The idea that a 4 year old game is going to continue making the same money without an expansion is like betting a a pitcher with a lower era.

Sales were gradually going lower because the game was getting older. The expansion raised the sales for two quarters, then there was a dip. It’s only one quarter, and not enough to show a trend.

The expansion is 9 months old. The expansion likely raised the intake of the company or two quarters.

9 months is a really long time for an expansion to keep pulling without more content added to it, which is not the expansion itself.

Look at WoW subscriptions 9 months after their expansions come out. There’s a huge number of people leaving. That doesn’t mean their expansions didn’t raise revenue. It just means people played the expansion and stopped playing after they did everything in the expansion they wanted to do.

That 9 month mark is a lot of pressure to put on an MMO expansion.

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Mitch.4781:

Aidenwolf.5964:

But what made me play GW was the freedom to do what I wanted solo, in a group, whatever. That all died with HoT.

What exactly could you solo before that you now cannot? How did that die exactly?

Without a Taxi go in to any HoT map and complete the meta. The maps are built like mass co-op encounters. I ran all over the world pre HoT and never bothered with servers, it’s a complete shift.

Taxi-ing has been a thing for a long time. Maybe you don’t remember when servers were seperate and you needed an open temple of balthazar, but I do. I remember having to change servers to get into that map.

I remember how many failed attempts there were at the marionette if you couldn’t get into your home server. You may not remember that, but I certainly do.

And I don’t know any way to do Triple Trouble without getting onto a server that was doing it with a large, organized group.

I remember using server switches to get to unbugged temples and events as well.

I’ve been switching servers almost since launch. Even down to getting a free switch to another WvW server to finally complete the world, because we were the same color ever week.

Yes, it’s more often now. But it’s not like server swapping was just introduced yesterday either.

In fact, for a year or more now, people have been using it to get into silver wastes maps about to do the breach event, or T4 or higher Dry Top servers.

Edit: With the advent of the upgraded LFG tool, server, taxi-ing to an active map is pretty kitten ed easy. It might annoy you, but I don’t really see why anyone would have an issue with it.

I’ve been here every minute you have. Day One minus 3.

Well then it’s not a complete shift. lol

I’m LOLing at your refusal to admit you’re part of the problem. Walk around a HoT map for fun and tell me it isn’t a shift.

WvW server switch you brought that up? Absolute joke.

Mitch.4781:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Mitch.4781:

Aidenwolf.5964:

But what made me play GW was the freedom to do what I wanted solo, in a group, whatever. That all died with HoT.

What exactly could you solo before that you now cannot? How did that die exactly?

Without a Taxi go in to any HoT map and complete the meta. The maps are built like mass co-op encounters. I ran all over the world pre HoT and never bothered with servers, it’s a complete shift.

Rewards are participation based not kill based and farming those maps is a nightmare on an unpopulated map when in vanilla GW2 I could and did go anywhere I wanted to do what I wanted.

Um.. But we’ve had the taxi system for yonks? People taxi’d in for Orr, Teq, Triple Trouble etc etc. All way before HOT was even out. If anything HOT made it easier because of the squad system. There are still dozens of events and encounters that can be solo’d in HOT. I literally spent the weekend doing just that.

Orr was unique in that regard. It was at launch the only map that needed a Taxi and it was nerfed to the ground because it was avoided. They made an entire xpac around the pre nerfed Orr or SW map style and it’s killing them.

Aidenwolf.5964:

HoT and FREE TO PLAY! Did not in any way increase revenue for Anet or their parent company NCSoft. The game made less Q2 2016 than at any point since launch.

Since we’re talking facts, this statement is factually incorrect.

Q4 15 revenue was up by something like $15M over the median revenue of the prior 3 quarters. Q1 16 revenue was up by a significantly lesser amount (~$8M) over that same median. There is no reason to believe that that is attributable to anything but HoT sales. So, while NCSoft did indeed state that PFF conversions to paying customer were disappointing, HoT itself did increase revenue. By ~$23M.

If you look back at the game’s financial history, this is not the first revenue decrease which occurred associated with a dearth of new content . Also, as the game has aged, there has been a general downward progression in revenue with up-spikes here and there. The most significant spike up (percentage-wise) was in Q4 15, with HoT launch. This downtrend is in the latter stages of a lengthy content drought, preceded by an XPac, which was preceded by a similarly long content drought.

What you’re trying to do is to blame this past quarter’s revenue decrease on HoT. I don’t believe we can point to one factor and say, “That’s it!” Was HoT a factor? For some people, sure. But was it the nature of the content, the price point, the perceived low volume of content, the perceived “screwing” of veterans by linking core? I think it’s fair to say that all of those had an impact. It’s also fair to say that 2 lengthy content droughts had something to do with it.

It’s fine for you to look at the game with bias because you dislike both HoT and PFF. However, bias tends to distort perception. It can also lead to erroneous statements, such as, “HoT … did not in any way increase revenue for Anet or their parent company NCSoft.”

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If Heart of Thorns, the expansion, caused income to drop, why weren’t Q4-2015 and Q1-2016 the lowest quarters ever?

And what will be said if the next quarter, Q3-2016 isn’t the lowest quarter ever? Will that be because of the expansion, as well? Won’t that quarter have Heart of Thorns sales in it?

The question is if we are talking about sustainability or short term gain with that.
Of course HoT brought money to the table. Anet already confirmed that it did, but they also confirmed that it did not bring in the amount they had waited for, at least in certain aspects like box sales.

And regarding the question of falling profits in any case, that is speculative. What is not speculative is that the time period where Anet first gained some money and then lost more money than in the time before it was put online falls squarely in the time HoT had its heyday. That does not mean that it is the sole culprint, but it certainly means that it did not swing the pendulum around either.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Aidenwolf.5964:

HoT and FREE TO PLAY! Did not in any way increase revenue for Anet or their parent company NCSoft. The game made less Q2 2016 than at any point since launch.

Since we’re talking facts, this statement is factually incorrect.

Q4 15 revenue was up by something like $15M over the median revenue of the prior 3 quarters. Q1 16 revenue was up by a significantly lesser amount (~$8M) over that same median. There is no reason to believe that that is attributable to anything but HoT sales. So, while NCSoft did indeed state that PFF conversions to paying customer were disappointing, HoT itself did increase revenue. By ~$23M.

If you look back at the game’s financial history, this is not the first revenue decrease which occurred associated with a dearth of new content . Also, as the game has aged, there has been a general downward progression in revenue with up-spikes here and there. The most significant spike up (percentage-wise) was in Q4 15, with HoT launch. This downtrend is in the latter stages of a lengthy content drought, preceded by an XPac, which was preceded by a similarly long content drought.

What you’re trying to do is to blame this past quarter’s revenue decrease on HoT. I don’t believe we can point to one factor and say, “That’s it!” Was HoT a factor? For some people, sure. But was it the nature of the content, the price point, the perceived low volume of content, the perceived “screwing” of veterans by linking core? I think it’s fair to say that all of those had an impact. It’s also fair to say that 2 lengthy content droughts had something to do with it.

It’s fine for you to look at the game with bias because you dislike both HoT and PFF. However, bias tends to distort perception. It can also lead to erroneous statements, such as, "HoT … did not in any way increase revenue for Anet or their parent company NCSoft."

Did NCSoft make more money from the GW IP in Q2 2016 than they did in Q2 2015? No.

Now speaking for myself, as a consumer who owns a GW2 Collector’s Edition, every GW game, and has next to his monitor a stack of GW2 gem cards as a reminder of what I’ve spent on this Buy to Play game…

Free to Play, the overpriced xpac, and the absolute shift from casual non-MMO to wannabe hardcore MMO ruined the IP for me. I’ve always been critical of Anet since they removed unid dyes from harvesting in 2012. I smelled a cash grab and called them out. I hated the ascended gear that ran counter to what we were sold. They as a company have never lived up to the promise that was Guild Wars 2.

Why did this bother me? Because I genuinely believe this could have been an elite MMO, and they’ve constantly shot themselves in the foot trying to grab the low hanging fruit of gem sales.

The 19 minute mark of this video is when they killed GW2. Notice how MO brings up the 40 “Free” updates to GW2 almost as if he’s promising that with HoT. Then he gives my game away. I don’t play FTP games.

https://youtu.be/veJMHxgUGxM

Healix.5819:

22414 posts and 3873 unique posters, excluding ArenaNet. For comparison, there are 180360 posters on these forums, 10450 of which have posted in the last 90 days.

Do you record the feed or are there other tools I don’t know?

My main take away from this is that 2Q2016 was the lowest quarter, the reasoning for this is nebulous we could argue forever about what we believe it was that caused it but without ANets analytic’s we will never know for sure its all assumption. What we do know is their desired action to correct it.

“What we are planning to do going forward is that we are going to shorten the span for the next launch of the expansion pack. So right now we are in the phase for preparing for the 2nd expansion pack we ae going to shorten the launch timing between the different boxes that we launch to create more momentum”

This tells me that they believe the content drought was the main factor (this is an assumption yours may vary). They wish to correct this by accelerating the expansion pack release schedule.

My question is do we believe this will be successful? What would they need to produce, at what price point, on what schedule, for it to be successful?

The content drought has gone by LS3 has started, HoT has launched it can’t be taken back and if they spend too much time on it future content will suffer. Simply put whats done is done and it cant be undone. I’m looking forward to the future of the game not dwelling on the past.

Aidenwolf.5964:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Aidenwolf.5964:

HoT and FREE TO PLAY! Did not in any way increase revenue for Anet or their parent company NCSoft. The game made less Q2 2016 than at any point since launch.

Since we’re talking facts, this statement is factually incorrect.

Q4 15 revenue was up by something like $15M over the median revenue of the prior 3 quarters. Q1 16 revenue was up by a significantly lesser amount (~$8M) over that same median. There is no reason to believe that that is attributable to anything but HoT sales. So, while NCSoft did indeed state that PFF conversions to paying customer were disappointing, HoT itself did increase revenue. By ~$23M.

If you look back at the game’s financial history, this is not the first revenue decrease which occurred associated with a dearth of new content . Also, as the game has aged, there has been a general downward progression in revenue with up-spikes here and there. The most significant spike up (percentage-wise) was in Q4 15, with HoT launch. This downtrend is in the latter stages of a lengthy content drought, preceded by an XPac, which was preceded by a similarly long content drought.

What you’re trying to do is to blame this past quarter’s revenue decrease on HoT. I don’t believe we can point to one factor and say, “That’s it!” Was HoT a factor? For some people, sure. But was it the nature of the content, the price point, the perceived low volume of content, the perceived “screwing” of veterans by linking core? I think it’s fair to say that all of those had an impact. It’s also fair to say that 2 lengthy content droughts had something to do with it.

It’s fine for you to look at the game with bias because you dislike both HoT and PFF. However, bias tends to distort perception. It can also lead to erroneous statements, such as, "HoT … did not in any way increase revenue for Anet or their parent company NCSoft."

Did NCSoft make more money from the GW IP in Q2 2016 than they did in Q2 2015? No.

Now speaking for myself, as a consumer who owns a GW2 Collector’s Edition, every GW game, and has next to his monitor a stack of GW2 gem cards as a reminder of what I’ve spent on this Buy to Play game…

Free to Play, the overpriced xpac, and the absolute shift from casual non-MMO to wannabe hardcore MMO ruined the IP for me. I’ve always been critical of Anet since they removed unid dyes from harvesting in 2012. I smelled a cash grab and called them out. I hated the ascended gear that ran counter to what we were sold. They as a company have never lived up to the promise that was Guild Wars 2.

Why did this bother me? Because I genuinely believe this could have been an elite MMO, and they’ve constantly shot themselves in the foot trying to grab the low hanging fruit of gem sales.

The 19 minute mark of this video is when they killed GW2. Notice how MO brings up the 40 “Free” updates to GW2 almost as if he’s promising that with HoT. Then he gives my game away. I don’t play FTP games.

https://youtu.be/veJMHxgUGxM

You’re right, this game didn’t make more money year on year in the same quarter. A skeptical person might think that maybe games do make less money when they’re a year older. I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to say that that’s the case.

I think the pro and the con teams have their points.

On the side claiming HoT hurt Guild Wars 2, I don’t think anyone can gainsay that. HoT has obviously hurt the brand. It wasn’t well-received. It didn’t live up to expectations. It didn’t even deliver everything it promised to deliver. That’s a failure.

On the other hand, the game was already getting old and stale long before HoT. Not enough content updates. A bunch of excuses to rerun content for rewards, because there was no new content coming out.

I think the game was already in decline before HoT, and HoT boosted it for a couple of quarters. But HoT was a small expansion that they overcharged for. So it didn’t sell well and the residual ongoing effect is that it didn’t keep profits flowing long term.

This company has squandered an opportunity with the expansion, no matter how you slice it. But the downturn in sales is probably caused by more than just an expansion that didn’t hit the mark.

The game is getting older. It’s just not so shiny anymore.

nighthawke.3075:

My main take away from this is that 2Q2016 was the lowest quarter, the reasoning for this is nebulous we could argue forever about what we believe it was that caused it but without ANets analytic’s we will never know for sure its all assumption. What we do know is their desired action to correct it.

“What we are planning to do going forward is that we are going to shorten the span for the next launch of the expansion pack. So right now we are in the phase for preparing for the 2nd expansion pack we ae going to shorten the launch timing between the different boxes that we launch to create more momentum”

This tells me that they believe the content drought was the main factor (this is an assumption yours may vary). They wish to correct this by accelerating the expansion pack release schedule.

My question is do we believe this will be successful? What would they need to produce, at what price point, on what schedule, for it to be successful?

The content drought has gone by LS3 has started, HoT has launched it can’t be taken back and if they spend too much time on it future content will suffer. Simply put whats done is done and it cant be undone. I’m looking forward to the future of the game not dwelling on the past.

Fair enough for you but the past got them here. GW2 was “the fastest selling MMO ever.” © and they’ve broken something. We all have opinions on what that something is or if there is something broken at all as players but the numbers say they have a problem.

I won’t buy another xpac in the current Anet climate and won’t buy another gem, that should worry them.

Aidenwolf.5964:

nighthawke.3075:

My main take away from this is that 2Q2016 was the lowest quarter, the reasoning for this is nebulous we could argue forever about what we believe it was that caused it but without ANets analytic’s we will never know for sure its all assumption. What we do know is their desired action to correct it.

“What we are planning to do going forward is that we are going to shorten the span for the next launch of the expansion pack. So right now we are in the phase for preparing for the 2nd expansion pack we ae going to shorten the launch timing between the different boxes that we launch to create more momentum”

This tells me that they believe the content drought was the main factor (this is an assumption yours may vary). They wish to correct this by accelerating the expansion pack release schedule.

My question is do we believe this will be successful? What would they need to produce, at what price point, on what schedule, for it to be successful?

The content drought has gone by LS3 has started, HoT has launched it can’t be taken back and if they spend too much time on it future content will suffer. Simply put whats done is done and it cant be undone. I’m looking forward to the future of the game not dwelling on the past.

Fair enough for you but the past got them here. GW2 was “the fastest selling MMO ever.” © and they’ve broken something. We all have opinions on what that something is or if there is something broken at all as players but the numbers say they have a problem.

I won’t buy another xpac in the current Anet climate and won’t buy another gem, that should worry them.

What could they do in the future to win you back?

Aidenwolf.5964:

Vayne.8563:

The biggest thing is normal traffic patterns. You can see it in WoW for years. The ycome out with an expansion, get a huge boost in population for 6 months or so, and then subscriptions plummet. It happens all the time.

In WoW it’s people not subscribing. Here, it’s people not playing and not buying stuff in the cash shop.

Heart of Thorns came out 9 months ago. During those 9 months we mostly have PvP and Raids as updates. Who would have not expected sales to drop?

There’s just no evidence HoT is the reason for the drop.

There is empirical data showing that the game is in the worst financial shape in it’s existence less than a year after HoT. This is fact, we like facts.

HoT and FREE TO PLAY! Did not in any way increase revenue for Anet or their parent company NCSoft. The game made less Q2 2016 than at any point since launch.

Had the game continued to run LS S1 style instead of a box would it have done better financially? There is no way to know for sure, but what is known, what can be proven is that the expansion has left the game less profitable than it was before.

Opinions are great and some of you have made it a life’s mission to attempt to counter me and people similar to my thoughts on the state of the game over the years. These numbers show quite clearly that the game is in trouble.

At least i would mostly still play it if it had continued in the LS1 style.
Oh and beside all the hate i also liked when we had actually new ARMOR-SETS in
the gemstore instead of costumes.

So in the end the game started to go downhill after 1.5 years for me, more and
more big breaks between new content updates and the wardrobe was great, but
at the same time they (more or less) canceled new armor sets.

I really thought they maybe spare off all those armorsets to release them with
HoT, so we maybe get 30+ new sets … but no .. beside all the other bad things
there were only what .. 3-4 (imho ugly) new sets that all were buried behind a big grind.

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Not a trend? Watch next quarter

I will. My guess is it will be higher than this quarter. I guess we’ll see.

Edit: Assuming the next quarter encompasses the 2 week half price sale, and the launch of LS 3 which I believe it does.

you are so right, I agree with you) I think everything will be fine, it’s all almost perfect!

Love you man

Mikali.9651:

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Not a trend? Watch next quarter

I will. My guess is it will be higher than this quarter. I guess we’ll see.

Edit: Assuming the next quarter encompasses the 2 week half price sale, and the launch of LS 3 which I believe it does.

you are so right, I agree with you) I think everything will be fine, it’s all almost perfect!

Love you man

The fiddle player on the Titanic received 2 standing ovations, the third guy was busy dog paddling.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Mikali.9651:

Vayne.8563:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Not a trend? Watch next quarter

I will. My guess is it will be higher than this quarter. I guess we’ll see.

Edit: Assuming the next quarter encompasses the 2 week half price sale, and the launch of LS 3 which I believe it does.

you are so right, I agree with you) I think everything will be fine, it’s all almost perfect!

Love you man

The fiddle player on the Titanic received 2 standing ovations, the third guy was busy dog paddling.

I don’t understand at all, at all what you are saying, really, but I think you are happy man and you do speak with great arguments. One day I will learn to use them, I am very young puppy so excuse my bad arguments I use, I mean no harm to anyone!
And I do see people are interesting cuz 3 guys I know from other game’s forum started to play gw2 and they like it!
So it clearly means gw2 is getting new players ^^
will be fun too see sales for 3Q16 ! hehe

In case this is not irony:

He probably is refering to the movie Titanic where a band of three musicians keep on playing until the ship sinks while chaos breaks out around them.
Before the ship goes down, one turns to the two others and says:
“Gentlemen, it was an honor playing with you.”
the two others agree, and then the ship sinks and they are swept overboard.

Anoher pun would have been shoveling coal on the titanic, accelarating the speed of the sinking ship in a futile effort to keep it over the sea.

I do not like HoT and I’m happy that it is not netting a lot of money because:

- it destroyed dungeons
- it took away fractal rewards from everyone without the expansion
- it imbalanced PvP
- removed guild upgrades that guilds already had
- made the guild halls too much of a money and item investment for a small guild to ever be able to have it all
- went back on their promisses with the legenary weapons.

Full rant in my signature.

Solori.6025:

Vayne.8563:

Solori.6025:

Vayne.8563:

Aside from that the expansion launch was botched. Not the expansion itself. The expansion itself isn’t as bad as you’d lead us to believe, in my opinion.

I actually think the expansion wasn’t that great. No one ( in my opinion) likes to grind just to do content.
But that’s just me being bitter about that…still….

Vayne.8563:

Without knowing if sales would have been higher or lower without the expansion you have no argument.

I disagree.
The thing about the business world is that you don’t get second chances.
You dont get a “what if”

The sales before were higher before the expansion. We can all agree the numbers tell that fact. It is. indisputably. a fact.

The sales were at an all time low after the expansion.

Now that was 2015- All time low-
From 2012-2014 the numbers never got that low
But last year 2015
All time low.

You cannot say that it wasn’t because of HoT, not when the game was released in 2012 and the numbers NEVER got that low(according to the report) BEFORE HoT.

The numbers, the report, the sales AND the history pretty much point this on the release of this expansion.

There’s absolutely nothing to disagree with. This is factual.

You can’t know how well something would have done had you not done it. That’s my point..

And I agree, You will never know if something would succeed unless you do it. But if it fails, then it fails.

Vayne.8563:

That is to say without an expansion those numbers could be lower than they are now. There really is no way to know.

That’s a “what if”
The fact is, they released the expansion.
The numbers are in fact lower.
The expansion did not do well for the company.
That’s a fact.

Vayne.8563:

You can say the expansion launched and numbers went down. What you can’t prove is how much they would have gone down if the expansion hadn’t launched. It’s simply not provable.

I agree, but that isn’t the reality.
That is also not pertinent to the discussion at hand.
The expansion launched, the numbers went down.
Years before that, No expansion, the numbers stayed up.
That’s a fact. That can be proven with quarterly reports.
This expansion was not successful.
This is proven in this report.

Vayne.8563:

Edit: A baseball manager brings in a pinch hitter. He drives in 1 run. They lose the game anyway. That doesn’t mean if they hadn’t brought in that pinch hitter, they wouldnt’ have 1 more run than they ended up with. There really is no way to know.

Better analogy.
A baseball team has had a seasoned pitcher for 2 years
They havent lost a game.
The baseball manager decides he wants a new pitcher.
The lose the next game considerably.

Now. History has shown that the Veteran has had a higher success rate that the noobs.
Had the baseball manager kept the veteran in. There is a higher chance they would have won. History shows and validates that record.
But he didn’t. He chose the noob.
They lost because of his choice.

The noob pitcher pitched one of the best games of the team ‘s history allowing only a single run. But the team’s all-star hitters were down with the flu and the team didnt score a single run of their own. The noob pitcher outpitched the veteran’s record against the opposing team but still they lost because you cant win a baseball game without scoring and a pitcher doesnt do that. How was the loss caused by the manager’s decision to put in the noob?

Correlation does not mean causation.

Personally I dont doubt that the expansion influenced the revenue drop, but that is speculation, not fact.

Ashen.2907:

Solori.6025:

Vayne.8563:

Solori.6025:

Vayne.8563:

Aside from that the expansion launch was botched. Not the expansion itself. The expansion itself isn’t as bad as you’d lead us to believe, in my opinion.

I actually think the expansion wasn’t that great. No one ( in my opinion) likes to grind just to do content.
But that’s just me being bitter about that…still….

Vayne.8563:

Without knowing if sales would have been higher or lower without the expansion you have no argument.

I disagree.
The thing about the business world is that you don’t get second chances.
You dont get a “what if”

The sales before were higher before the expansion. We can all agree the numbers tell that fact. It is. indisputably. a fact.

The sales were at an all time low after the expansion.

Now that was 2015- All time low-
From 2012-2014 the numbers never got that low
But last year 2015
All time low.

You cannot say that it wasn’t because of HoT, not when the game was released in 2012 and the numbers NEVER got that low(according to the report) BEFORE HoT.

The numbers, the report, the sales AND the history pretty much point this on the release of this expansion.

There’s absolutely nothing to disagree with. This is factual.

You can’t know how well something would have done had you not done it. That’s my point..

And I agree, You will never know if something would succeed unless you do it. But if it fails, then it fails.

Vayne.8563:

That is to say without an expansion those numbers could be lower than they are now. There really is no way to know.

That’s a “what if”
The fact is, they released the expansion.
The numbers are in fact lower.
The expansion did not do well for the company.
That’s a fact.

Vayne.8563:

You can say the expansion launched and numbers went down. What you can’t prove is how much they would have gone down if the expansion hadn’t launched. It’s simply not provable.

I agree, but that isn’t the reality.
That is also not pertinent to the discussion at hand.
The expansion launched, the numbers went down.
Years before that, No expansion, the numbers stayed up.
That’s a fact. That can be proven with quarterly reports.
This expansion was not successful.
This is proven in this report.

Vayne.8563:

Edit: A baseball manager brings in a pinch hitter. He drives in 1 run. They lose the game anyway. That doesn’t mean if they hadn’t brought in that pinch hitter, they wouldnt’ have 1 more run than they ended up with. There really is no way to know.

Better analogy.
A baseball team has had a seasoned pitcher for 2 years
They havent lost a game.
The baseball manager decides he wants a new pitcher.
The lose the next game considerably.

Now. History has shown that the Veteran has had a higher success rate that the noobs.
Had the baseball manager kept the veteran in. There is a higher chance they would have won. History shows and validates that record.
But he didn’t. He chose the noob.
They lost because of his choice.

The noob pitcher pitched one of the best games of the team ‘s history allowing only a single run. But the team’s all-star hitters were down with the flu and the team didnt score a single run of their own. The noob pitcher outpitched the veteran’s record against the opposing team but still they lost because you cant win a baseball game without scoring and a pitcher doesnt do that. How was the loss caused by the manager’s decision to put in the noob?

Correlation does not mean causation.

Personally I dont doubt that the expansion influenced the revenue drop, but that is speculation, not fact.

It’s very rare for anything to ever have a single cause. Western thought tends to propel us into a fictitious idea of causation, but causation is almost always more complicated than most people like to think.

I think you’re right. The expansion probably had something to do with lower numbers. But was was one factor among many. There are probably a few major causes and dozens if not hundreds of minor causes, because game sales are a complex system.

Saying the expansion caused the problem is almost definitely wrong. So is saying the expansion didn’t cause the problem.

WhiteKnight.6759:

Mirta.5029:

I do not like HoT and I’m happy that it is not netting a lot of money because:

- it destroyed dungeons
- it took away fractal rewards from everyone without the expansion
- it imbalanced PvP
- removed guild upgrades that guilds already had
- made the guild halls too much of a money and item investment for a small guild to ever be able to have it all
- went back on their promisses with the legenary weapons.

Full rant in my signature.

There’s a lot of truth here. The only thing I disagree with is the dungeon comment. I don’t think HoT destroyed dungeons.

But its not untrue that HoT destroyed dungeons, they only recently made dungeons rewarding again (and really not that rewarding still) and they still haven’t recovered fully from the damage that was done when anet neutered them into total wastes of time.

Dinks.2478:

WhiteKnight.6759:

Mirta.5029:

I do not like HoT and I’m happy that it is not netting a lot of money because:

- it destroyed dungeons
- it took away fractal rewards from everyone without the expansion
- it imbalanced PvP
- removed guild upgrades that guilds already had
- made the guild halls too much of a money and item investment for a small guild to ever be able to have it all
- went back on their promisses with the legenary weapons.

Full rant in my signature.

There’s a lot of truth here. The only thing I disagree with is the dungeon comment. I don’t think HoT destroyed dungeons.

But its not untrue that HoT destroyed dungeons, they only recently made dungeons rewarding again (and really not that rewarding still) and they still haven’t recovered fully from the damage that was done when anet neutered them into total wastes of time.

What HoT destroyed were people making a quick buck with a couple of dungeon paths. Because Anet abandoned dungeons 2 years ago, when they disbanded their dungeon team. They said back then Fractals were the 5-man content moving forward.

I do more dungeons now than I did pre-hot. I get to do different paths, because you need 8 different dungeons to get your five gold.

I never seem to have trouble finding people to run the dungeons I run.

What is true is that by making Fractals more profitable than dungeons, Anet has shifted the people running dungeons for gold to a different place. Dungeons are still there. Dungeons can still be done. Dungeons are still profitable.

Fractals, however are more profitable, and most people will go where the profit lies. Which isn’t to say that HoT kill dungeons.

The decision to kill off dungeons was made long ago, in a galaxy far away…well in Seattle, anyway.

I just want to say one thing to Vayne: Fanboyism don’t help this game, but it only can make the situation worse if Arena.net don’t want pull their heads out of the sand. And also it’s funny they didn’t fix this issue after kittening off many people https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Visual-nerfs-Merged/page/22#post6285657

Necrum Davengers.3519:

I just want to say one thing to Vayne: Fanboyism don’t help this game, but it only can make the situation worse if Arena.net don’t want pull their heads out of the sand.

Neither does negativity.

Constructive criticism and attempts at objectivity does. As does an understanding of compromise and an acceptance that we as the players will never have all the information we want due to our roll as players. We all play this game together, including ANet employees, and a them vs. us mentality (or an ‘I know better than you’ mentality) from the players is counterproductive.

~EW

Vayne.8563:

AB fails due to lack of organization. You only need 10 people per side to beat AB. If it’s well organized and people explain stuff it never fails. I’ve done it a lot.

Edit: Out of curiosity do you look for it in LFG for the organized maps?

Well, I’ve been there and there just aren’t 10 people per side is what I’ve noticed. I am not familiar with this LFG group tool you mention. I’ve seen of course that it exists but haven’t really looked into it. Is this a cross server tool then?

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

AB fails due to lack of organization. You only need 10 people per side to beat AB. If it’s well organized and people explain stuff it never fails. I’ve done it a lot.

Edit: Out of curiosity do you look for it in LFG for the organized maps?

Well, I’ve been there and there just aren’t 10 people per side is what I’ve noticed. I am not familiar with this LFG group tool you mention. I’ve seen of course that it exists but haven’t really looked into it. Is this a cross server tool then?

AFAIK there aren’t servers anymore, at least not fixed servers.

The LFG tool is broken into categories. Open world content has a tab for each HoT zone, just open it up, click on the tab, and click on squad. You’ll find open squads for different things. Maybe a hero point run or maybe Tarir.

Join a squad. Go to the zone if you’re not already there. Then right click on any player in the squad that isn’t green (green squad members are already on your server) and choose join in Auric Basin.

This will take you to the map (server) that the event is happening on.

With AB it can be a bit confusing, because there are some squads that do multi-server, so there are six maps doing it at one time.

If you’re just randomly waltzing around maps, you may get a map that’s doing the event, but you may not as well.

You can do this for all the metas in HoT.

In practice there never ever were fixed servers. Every map instance runs in it’s own virtual machine it’s just originally server was a criteria for spawning an instance. Servers were always a construct in this game for WvW since we don’t have PvP or RP exclusive servers.

Personally, HoT was very lackluster for me and the price is too high. Never bothered with it. I was gonna give it a shot if they had made a sale for $25 but that never happened.

They also killed dungeons. So, the game effectively died for me in late 2015.

choon.6308:

Personally, HoT was very lackluster for me and the price is too high. Never bothered with it. I was gonna give it a shot if they had made a sale for $25 but that never happened.

They also killed dungeons. So, the game effectively died for me in late 2015.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-is-50-off/

choon.6308:

Personally, HoT was very lackluster for me and the price is too high. Never bothered with it. I was gonna give it a shot if they had made a sale for $25 but that never happened.

They also killed dungeons. So, the game effectively died for me in late 2015.

Never happened? I guess you missed the official ArenaNet sale, not to mention discounts from official retailers.

Oh, well. Maybe next time.

Crovax.7854:

DGraves.3720:

Real question: How is Wildstar doing so well? Or Why?

Steam release.
It helps that the leveling experience is actually really fun and enganing and the game mechanics solid. Overall an incredibly polished game. Tried it out a few weeks ago and have to say it would be in a much better situation, had they not botched the launch by catering to hardcores like they did.

I’m going to try it. I think.

Aidenwolf.5964:

IndigoSundown.5419:

It can also lead to erroneous statements, such as, "HoT … did not in any way increase revenue for Anet or their parent company NCSoft."

Did NCSoft make more money from the GW IP in Q2 2016 than they did in Q2 2015? No.

- snip -

That statement does not make the more general statement you led with correct. You could accurately state, “HoT did not lead to more revenue in Q2 16 than the game received in Q2 15.” That’s not the same thing as, “…did not lead to increased revenue.” which is demonstrably false.

As for the rest of your post, you’ve made no secret in the past of your dislike of both PFF and HoT. Fwiw, I think ANet does need to take the complaints from yourself and people like you into consideration. I expect the next XPac is likely to offer more variety of and more volume of content that HoT did. I wouldn’t hold my breath on them revoking PFF in core, though.

MMO focusing only on raids works only if the MMO in question is WoW.

Hopefully it now with Season 3 finally starts to get better and people return to the game.