Guild Wars 2

So…. I was watching TV these past few days and I saw a lot of advertisements on the upcoming Mist Of Pandaria for WoW and started wondering….How come GW2 didn’t have any kind of marketing ????

I know GW2 had a real hype about it before launch, mainly through word of mouth and sites such as mmorpg.com but that was about it.
Yes, they don’t need to advertise and their fine right now, blah blah blah.
But advertising the game more would definitely boost the number of new comers for sure, so why aren’t they doing it?

I mean, I walk into my local game shop here in Australia and all I see on the hot sellers are stacks of WoW, COD4 and other games, then way at the bottom I see one small cover of GW2 that is hardly noticeable at all… Now thats just not right…

They should at least get it more noticeable in stores or on the online websites way more than it is at the current state…

This is just very poor marketing for the game.

Seriously?

GW2 marketing department is the SOLE reason for the games success. They are actually the only ones who have done their job in my honest opinion.

I actually think they have a done a quite good marketing job aswell, like Gabi says.

But that said, Anet simply can’t trow the amount of money after marketing as Blizzard ect. It’s quite expensive to make that extreme amount of marketing to everyone. (Also, it ain’t necessary to make so broad and global marketing as Blizzard does for a game after my opinion. Most gamer’s will find out about the games they want, they don’t need to see the game in TV)

NCSoft is notoriously bad at advertising. A lot of the failure of Aion was attributed to a lack of advertising. I remember reading an article once where they did a survey after a major patch in Aion that addressed a lot of the complaints that American players had with the game. The survey found that the overwhelming majority (I don’t remember figures or the link for the survey, but bear with me) of players that had played Aion and left or considered themselves likely to play Aion had no idea that the patch had taken place and didn’t take a second look at the game as a result. This lack of customer enthusiasm was attributed to a lack of advertising on the part of NCSoft. They will take their defeat silently. Bet on it.

I think some shiny ads, for peopole who don’t follow forums and games sites, would be good for Guild Wars 2.

Gabi.5264:

Seriously?

GW2 marketing department is the SOLE reason for the games success. They are actually the only ones who have done their job in my honest opinion.

While they did do quite a good job. It wasn’t spectacular like RIFT or WoW or SWTOR. They all 3 ran awesome amazing mind blowing come play our game commercials. GW2 lacks in that.

I agree with OP. My local GameStop in the states where I live is about everything but GW2. I’d like to see them features it rather then it collecting dust. And face it most servers pve zones are clearing out as people get higher and are farming constantly or just getting bored and going else where.

Get some awesome commercials running global please =)

Amadeus.5687:

I actually think they have a done a quite good marketing job aswell, like Gabi says.

But that said, Anet simply can’t trow the amount of money after marketing as Blizzard ect. It’s quite expensive to make that extreme amount of marketing to everyone. (Also, it ain’t necessary to make so broad and global marketing as Blizzard does for a game after my opinion. Most gamer’s will find out about the games they want, they don’t need to see the game in TV)

What amount of money? TRION Worlds was brand new. Rift being their first game ever. But they had a million or more air’ings on TV’s globaly with their 3-4 spiffy commercials. Why can’t ANET do that for GW2 especially with NCsoft backing their every move.

It’s a different kind of strategy. Of course, more shiny TV and magazine ads would create greater awareness – but then, don’t we have enough people jumping into the game without first reading up on what it is about, then open thread after thread after thread with same complaints, which could easily have been avoided had they just accessed the existing information before spending money?
(No, I’m not annoyed at all, it just seems that way…I want a “USE THE KITTEN SEARCH FUNCTION BEFORE OPENING A NEW TOPIC” hammer. Now.)

…also, using mostly word of mouth generates much more suitable customers who are likely to generate more profit (and more positive word of mouth) in the long run – while saving advertising costs. Brilliant, don’t you think?
Also, it’s not as if GW2 hadn’t already sold 2 Mio. copies

As for the placement of GW2 copies in stores, this is not merely dependent on advertising, but often has something to do with the bargaining power of the game’s publisher (or whatever) over the store.

Aion was in allot of internet adverts, that’s how i found out about the game. Aion sold very well at the beginning so i find it hard to say they failed. What they did fail at was continuing their web presence, i don’t think I’ve seen much advertising anywhere after they went live.

Anyways, you dont need those TV adverts with famous people in them to become a success. WoW didn’t had those adverts when they originally launched… The best advertisement is mouth to mouth something GW2 was very good at stimulating.

My opinion: Most gamers don’t watch television.
;/

If more people demand the game from advertisements they see. The Shops will start stocking more of the game on their walls. Get where im going? K good. Now. If you buy the game it comes with a neat little instruction manual that I can tell you I know half of the purchasers will read because its more user friendly then any other manual out there. Isnt the point of getting a new game to figure it out and have fun playing it?

Word of mouth only goes so far. And I think people are missing that.

RaZaC.1963:

Aion was in allot of internet adverts, that’s how i found out about the game. Aion sold very well at the beginning so i find it hard to say they failed. What they did fail at was continuing their web presence, i don’t think I’ve seen much advertising anywhere after they went live.

Anyways, you dont need those TV adverts with famous people in them to become a success. WoW didn’t had those adverts when they originally launched… The best advertisement is mouth to mouth something GW2 was very good at stimulating.

Why have famous people? Only WoW did that. And we all know they did that for more money as where RIFT and TOR did actual game play commercials 90% of the time. This actually made me wanna go out and buy the game and play for a good long amount of time.

GW2 could do the same to pull in the other 50% of people on this earth. See where Im going with this?

@ Gabi:

I COMPLETELY agree. The hype (the lies) that surrounded GW2 is the only reason for it’s success. Well, whether people in charge consider GW2 succeeded or not I don’t know, but it might be more accurate if I said that people wouldn’t be remotely as interested if there weren’t such bold promises which went unfulfilled.

What GW2 needs is overhauling and making the promises they made come true.

I think in terms of general public awareness there may be a lack of knowledge relating to GW2 at all… people dont know it and I still haev to relate it to WoW for non gamers but! and this is the but, the marketing department have in all fairness hit it out the park where it matters.

lets step back and say what we know.

Just a quick google tells us that gw2 has sold over 2 mil copies. Now assuming this to be true and at 50 quid a pop the marketting dept can already say they’ve dropped a win on that one. ncsoft are already in profit.

now the gem shop. As for the gem shop on a purely personal note Im dropping more than I would pay for a subscription on the gem store easy.

In fairness i’d stick my neck out and saying that as a focused effort they’re doing pretty well at selling it on that alone

ANET I’m very good at marketing…hire me! I’ll work for gems.

be nice if they ran something soon. The game is pretty stable, nicely balanced (as far as mmo’s go)… I would like them to put in some kind of decent grouping mechanism before they start advertising heavily.

WoW set the standard pretty high as far as ease of use for a game. GW2 even though it is an awesome game is “clunky” and missing many of the nice things WoW has to offer on a UI level so they need to make GW2 a little more streamlined on the UI, finding groups, creating raid parties in pvp etc. so the people who do try it do not walk away quickly out of frustration.

NoizeMaker.8367:

If more people demand the game from advertisements they see. The Shops will start stocking more of the game on their walls. Get where im going? K good. Now. If you buy the game it comes with a neat little instruction manual that I can tell you I know half of the purchasers will read because its more user friendly then any other manual out there. Isnt the point of getting a new game to figure it out and have fun playing it?

Word of mouth only goes so far. And I think people are missing that.

You are thinking short term – I’m not If you go at this strategically, there are hell of a lot more factors to take into account. Also, these classic marketing channels you ask for are extremely expensive; what with the propensity of uninformed customers to complain and leave (heck, maybe even demand a refund because their expectations were not met), you’d have to seriously look at the cost-benefit ratio and the customer lifetime value of the players thus gained.

Btw: I agree that a short manual with a few nice pictures included in the game box would be neat. However, I don’t have any statistics on the cost-benefit ratio on that either, what with the availability of this manual in .pdf form.