Guild Wars 2

Algreg.3629:

Wick.1280:

I just feel like Anet has turned into Walmart, I refuse too shop at Walmart.

yeah, and the vast majority of people not preferring discounters shows just how bad a business sales are…

Where did you pull this rabbit out of? Or is this straight up sarcasm?

jokke.6239:

Draknar.5748:

Wick.1280:

Anytime an MMO has a half off sale it’s bad. The die hard players are going “Say, I payed twice as much for this crap?” The people that are thinking of buying must ask themselves “Say, Why are they cutting the price in half, do they need the business?” Either way, it’s a slap in the face of the ones that already paid.

So, when Skyrim was on sale for $30.00 on Steam this summer, everyone should assume the game is garbage then right, and that everyone who paid full price prior should be up in arms about it?

Every MMO ever made has had reduced pricing to try and get another surge of sales years after release. Box sales aren’t GW2’s major source of income anyways, it’s in-game purchases. They just need to get people in the door.

$30.00 ??? Are you from Australia? I got it for 3.6 euro (without expansions)

And to OP .. It’s been 2 years. Ofc a sale happens, doesn’t mean the game is dying. Actually gw2 is doing better than ever. Sold more copies in China than it did on release.

Buying a game for 50% on steam sale just to see it go 90% next day. Now that’s a “slap in the face”

The $30 sale was for Skyrim and ALL the DLCs…pretty good price. Easily 300+ hours of quality RPG gameplay with a fully mod-able environment (potentially much more) for $30 is nothing to sneeze at.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the OP isn’t all that business-minded.

Wick.1280:

I just feel like Anet has turned into Walmart, I refuse too shop at Walmart.

Well, then, don’t buy or play ANY video games, as they ALL go on sale sometime during their life.

I mean, seriously, do you live in a cave?

Im Mudbone.1437:

Algreg.3629:

Wick.1280:

I just feel like Anet has turned into Walmart, I refuse too shop at Walmart.

yeah, and the vast majority of people not preferring discounters shows just how bad a business sales are…

Where did you pull this rabbit out of? Or is this straight up sarcasm?

I would say that is full on sarcasm.

Vayne.8563:

I remember when Rift sold their game for $5, when I’d purchased it for $50. Half off isn’t so bad.

That is a very bad example. We know how THEY are doing.

I only paid $30 for GW2 in Dec 13. I couldn’t really play for the first month because of a family illness, but I got a good 3 and a half months out of it before the massive nerf/gem store patch. And that’s what going to send Gw2 the way of RIFT – not the half off. People like unwrapping shiny stuff. If there is less shiny stuff so people have to buy gems, well, RIFT RIFT RIFT.

There have been a lot of good posts that make sense here. I would only add that price for any particular item or service is very rarely a static, set amount. It will go up and down based on product life cycle, emerging competition, general economic trends, the cost of inputs, and demand. I have come to a point in my life where I make purchase decisions based on my desire have the object and my sense of whether its utility for me justifies its price at that point in time. If I choose to buy at that point, then anything that happens with the price after the fact is irrelevant to me (unless I want additional copies of the thing). If I choose not to buy at that point, then perhaps at some point in the future either an increased sense of utility or decreased price will inform a decision to buy. Otherwise…not much point in worrying about it.

MiloSales.8560:

It’s an older game, half off sales are common for older games. Maybe it means we’re getting an expansion soon?

Less than two years running hardly equates to “an older game”. Ultima Online, EverQuest….hell, even WoW could be considered older gamers.

To the OP: Quit stirring the pot and get back in the game and play, man, play! You’re wasting your hard paid for time!!

I think the real question is: Where does one get this ‘Half-Off for New Players’ fantastic deal????

It’s certainly not through ArenaNet. Maybe it’s at Walmart…………

Eight O Eight.8257:

MiloSales.8560:

It’s an older game, half off sales are common for older games. Maybe it means we’re getting an expansion soon?

Less than two years running hardly equates to “an older game”. Ultima Online, EverQuest….hell, even WoW could be considered older gamers.

To the OP: Quit stirring the pot and get back in the game and play, man, play! You’re wasting your hard paid for time!!

This is absolutely not true. I worked in the industry as a game buyer at one point. After two years most games are in the bargain bin. Most pay to play MMOs go free to play before this, if not completely out of business.

Two years in the terms of entertainment (books, movies and games) is an eternity. Most games sell 90% of the copies they will ever sell in in the first three months.

TheDaiBish.9735:

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the OP isn’t all that business-minded.

More like missing a brain… You don’t really need to be business-minded to understand the meaning and reasoning behind a “sale”.

Vayne.8563:

Most pay to play MMOs go free to play before this, if not completely out of business.

Just playing devil’s advocate, but I feel MMOs going F2P is less about how old they are and more about the instability of the subscription model in general. There can only be so many sub-based MMORPGs at any one time, as (I don’t think) many people are willing to subscribe to more than one game at a time. The market will only bear a few games under this model. It may be incredibly profitable, but it is also incredibly risky and unforgiving.

As for most MMOs going “out of business” in a couple years, I don’t know about that. Do they really? People are quick to declare any game they personally aren’t playing as “dead,” even though the servers are still up, people are still playing, and the game is still updated regularly. People say both GW2 and WoW are “dead,” despite both being updated with new content regularly and each having huge followings. Heck, I’m pretty sure Everquest and Runescape are still up and running. Even if a game is out of the limelight, it is not “out of business.”

Vayne.8563:

Most games sell 90% of the copies they will ever sell in in the first three months.

Maybe, though this is the traditional approach where all games had to be “Triple-A,” big-budget, publicized products that were bought at brick-and-mortar stores like Walmart and Gamestop. This norm is being challenged furiously by indie development and digital distribution. Your statement may still be accurate today, though I’m not sure it will continue to have quite as much traction in the long term.
And then, since we’re on the subject on MMORPGs, do you really think WoW or GW2 sold 90% of their copies in the first three months? Not by a long shot.

Fyrebrand.4859:

Vayne.8563:

Most pay to play MMOs go free to play before this, if not completely out of business.

Just playing devil’s advocate, but I feel MMOs going F2P is less about how old they are and more about the instability of the subscription model in general. There can only be so many sub-based MMORPGs at any one time, as (I don’t think) many people are willing to subscribe to more than one game at a time. The market will only bear a few games under this model. It may be incredibly profitable, but it is also incredibly risky and unforgiving.

As for most MMOs going “out of business” in a couple years, I don’t know about that. Do they really? People are quick to declare any game they personally aren’t playing as “dead,” even though the servers are still up, people are still playing, and the game is still updated regularly. People say both GW2 and WoW are “dead,” despite both being updated with new content regularly and each having huge followings. Heck, I’m pretty sure Everquest and Runescape are still up and running. Even if a game is out of the limelight, it is not “out of business.”

Vayne.8563:

Most games sell 90% of the copies they will ever sell in in the first three months.

Maybe, though this is the traditional approach where all games had to be “Triple-A,” big-budget, publicized products that were bought at brick-and-mortar stores like Walmart and Gamestop. This norm is being challenged furiously by indie development and digital distribution. Your statement may still be accurate today, though I’m not sure it will continue to have quite as much traction in the long term.
And then, since we’re on the subject on MMORPGs, do you really think WoW or GW2 sold 90% of their copies in the first three months? Not by a long shot.

I don’t, but they’re surely the exception to the rule. Logically speaking, people who want to play games, generally buy them when they come out,. so they don’t miss stuff. Tha’ts when hype is the highest. THat’s what promotion is strongest.

We live in an age where new hype pushes out old hype. That’s really it. It’s why expansions are so strong.

And Guild Wars 1 DID make most of it sales 90 days after launch. That’s 90 days after the launch of each of their titles. Because that’s when they were hyped and people were buying them in great numbers.

After that, the next group of people that buy are the people that wait for the price to drop. Believe me when I tell you that’s a much much smaller group.

Eight O Eight.8257:

MiloSales.8560:

It’s an older game, half off sales are common for older games. Maybe it means we’re getting an expansion soon?

Less than two years running hardly equates to “an older game”. Ultima Online, EverQuest….hell, even WoW could be considered older gamers.

To the OP: Quit stirring the pot and get back in the game and play, man, play! You’re wasting your hard paid for time!!

You’re thinking strictly in terms of MMOs, whereas shops will group them in with all the other games and treat them the same way. For a single-player game 2 years is old. For any game it’s old enough that it will have made the majority of it’s sales and shops will only keep one or two copies around because that’s all they’ll sell between deliveries (if that).

You also have to bear in mind that there are a lot of marketing decisions which don’t actually have anything to do with how popular a game is, although maybe that’s not obvious if you haven’t worked in the industry.

I worked for the same store for 2 years and the entire time I was there World of Warcraft was number 6 in the PC chart and was never on sale. Week in, week out it never moved. Funny thing is it was the same boxes on the shelf too. It was very rare that we actually sold a copy. It was in the chart because that particular store had a bull kitten system where publishers paid for a spot in the chart. Blizzard paid for number 6 so World of Warcraft was number 6 regardless of how many copies we did or didn’t sell.

Even weirder things could happen too. For example I got a Collectors Edition of Lord of the Rings online for £1 when normal editions were still selling on a fairly regularly basis. This happened because we’d gotten about 10 copies of the Collectors Edition when the game launched. 9 of them had sold. For reasons unknown to me (and as the person in charge of stock I was pretty annoyed when I found out) one of them got left at the back of the wrong shelf in the stock room. It was still on the computer system however and so still subject to the automated pricing system. The computer had been told that at least 1 copy of every game in stock would be on the shop floor, because that’s company policy. So as far as it knew this game was on display and just not selling even 1 copy for weeks and weeks. So it kept dropping the price to encourage a sale.

By the time I found it the price had dropped to £1. I bought it (then sold it on ebay for £20 because I had crap job and couldn’t afford a subscription) and that triggered the computer to send us 2 more copies, which went on the shop floor, sold fast and we were back to normal.

That’s an extreme example but it’s worth bearing in mind there are a lot of factors that go into the price of the game other than simply whether it’s an “AAA” title and how many people are currently playing it.

There are always exceptions. Niche games that aren’t easily replaced will continue to sell well, like Chess Master or Microsoft Flight Simulator. But even MMOs sell most copies in the 90 days after release of a new expansion.

This obviously doesn’t apply to games that are free to play which follow completely different rules. But a two year old game that you can buy in shops…that’s very old for most games. In fact, most games have a shelf life far shorter than that.

Basically any game six months old that didn’t sell went back to the distributor for credit.

I think this thread adds further credence to my opinion that there are people out there who will complain for the sake of complaining (or to draw attention to themselves).