Guild Wars 2

Though I’m in no position to ask for such answers, I think I speak on behalf of many players when I ask for some transparency from ANet.

With the number of players falling and falling with hardly any online advertisements seen for GW2 nor any expansions planned, I’m curious as to how ANet plans to sustain itself. As a GW2 player this is certainly a concern as falling players mean falling sales, meaning less and less man power + content.

Thanks!

Facebook likes.

Fernling.1729:

Facebook likes.

Good point. Though I must say… the level of activity by ANet social media team is so low that it reflects badly on the company when people do click on the page

One thing that shocked me was that the team was so confident that the game can sustain itself without any expansions.

The sales dropped by more than half according to this year’s Q1 report. Where is that confidence coming from? As a game whose income solely depends on the box sales and microtransactions, announcement dismissing expansion + the rate of items being introduced into microtransaction + dropping box sales = headed for disaster

They plan on releasing new content bi-weekly, with that I expect that will include new items to buy in the gem store.

CryxTryx.9208:

They plan on releasing new content bi-weekly, with that I expect that will include new items to buy in the gem store.

Great point. I think giving more options for microtransactions for existing players is a great idea.

I’d really love to see new ideas and introduction of features that would help increase the number of NEW players, though. Yes – there’s trial and refer a friend and what not, but it seems that the number of players brought in through those methods are overshadowed by the number of players leaving.

Why do you presume that — lacking any numbers to bolster your position — you can better predict the future of a game than the people running it — who have those numbers?

My personal opinion, so not fact, just how I see it.

I was excited about Guild Wars 2, I was informed about it, I am a gamer, I read gaming magazines and websites regularly…I knew this game was coming and I bought it the day it hit the stores. My guess is that “most” of the people who were ever going to buy this game, and REALLY play it, bought in the first month or so. Casual gamers over the next few months or so. More, but comparitively fewer people maybe bought when the box price dropped a bit and maybe there a few more who will buy in the future due to either further box price reduction (they werent THAT bothered about the game but will give it a go if the price is right) or maybe if there is an expansion driving original game sales.

So in my opinion, most of the players the game is ever going to have or has had, have already played. Some have left (inevitable), some are leaving (inevitable), some play less (inevitable), others are waiting for the next big thing (totally inevitable).

So, in business terms, NCSoft make this a “cash cow” game by introducing desirable factors to the game, selling things in store that people actually want to buy (I have yet to see someone in Aetherblade armor) and adding much needed permanent content and class balance.

OR, everyone accepts that this wasnt Anet / NCSofts “Cash cow” and is in fact a “Star” that is turning into a “Dog”.

The above analogies are from the Boston or “Growth Share” Matrix and pretty much standard low-grade marketing comparisons.

Personally, I dont think this is ANet / NCSofts “Cash Cow”. I believe that was previously Aion, now in decline and will eventually be something else (maybe Wildstar). I believe this was a short-burning “star” designed to yield as much profit as possible over as short a time as possible in order to fuel further projects.

Jae.5138:

One thing that shocked me was that the team was so confident that the game can sustain itself without any expansions.

The sales dropped by more than half according to this year’s Q1 report. Where is that confidence coming from? As a game whose income solely depends on the box sales and microtransactions, announcement dismissing expansion + the rate of items being introduced into microtransaction + dropping box sales = headed for disaster

They are arrogant and living a lie. This isn’t 2005 anymore. They are headed for a huge dose of reality.

Queensdale constantly has an Overflow on NSP.

Most of teh Devs play on NSP.

Observations != Reality

If Im honest I spend 90% of my time in game at the moment in Wayfarer Foothills (because its incredibly easy to do dailies there) or Harathi Highlands (because I consider it the best designed event chain in the game). I go to Orr or Frostgorge and I walk away disgusted with the broken mechanics (12 k damage egg-shooting chicken anyone?) and dreadful loot within ten minutes.

Get new players? Stop annoying the ones they have would be a start.

pricer.5091:

(12 k damage egg-shooting chicken anyone?)

And the eggs do AoE! Stupidest mob ability I’ve ever seen.

Jae.5138:

One thing that shocked me was that the team was so confident that the game can sustain itself without any expansions.

The sales dropped by more than half according to this year’s Q1 report. Where is that confidence coming from? As a game whose income solely depends on the box sales and microtransactions, announcement dismissing expansion + the rate of items being introduced into microtransaction + dropping box sales = headed for disaster

Of course sales drop from Q4 2012, when the game is still new plus the holiday season means a lot of game sales Vs Q1 2013 when new game sales in general fall post holiday and the game’s income moves mainly to Cash shop. Even Q1 sales is about doubled GW1’s best quarter.

On top of that the game has still not been released in Asia where GW1 did very well for a western game. NCSOFT is hoping for a China release in the fourth quarter for GW2.

And again if the Q1 2013 sales were from a standard $15 a month subscription MMO, we’re would be looking at an MMO with over 1/2 million players. There are very few that have reached those numbers. EVE just recently did.

Edit: Following chart is NCSOFT sales numbers for their games as reported in their quarterly reports. Vertical axis is in million South Korean Won (roughly 1100 to 1 USD). Sorry if I didn’t make that clear.

I think a lot of people don’t realize that GW2 hasn’t been released in many regions yet. China will be one of those and it’s possible they can increase the player base substantially. There are also other parts of Asia and South America that have yet to see Guild Wars 2.

Behellagh.1468:

Jae.5138:

One thing that shocked me was that the team was so confident that the game can sustain itself without any expansions.

The sales dropped by more than half according to this year’s Q1 report. Where is that confidence coming from? As a game whose income solely depends on the box sales and microtransactions, announcement dismissing expansion + the rate of items being introduced into microtransaction + dropping box sales = headed for disaster

Of course sales drop from Q4 2012, when the game is still new plus the holiday season means a lot of game sales Vs Q1 2013 when new game sales in general fall post holiday and the game’s income moves mainly to Cash shop. Even Q1 sales is about doubled GW1’s best quarter.

On top of that the game has still not been released in Asia where GW1 did very well for a western game. NCSOFT is hoping for a China release in the fourth quarter for GW2.

And again if the Q1 2013 sales were from a standard $15 a month subscription MMO, we’re would be looking at an MMO with over 1/2 million players. There are very few that have reached those numbers. EVE just recently did.

Granted, the sales number was expected to drop. Obviously a game cannot continue its success since the first day and maintain or increase its sales, but it can do better than half the number.

I’m not quite sure why you’d be comparing the sales of GW2 to GW1. NCSoft would be pressuring ANet to start closing down the servers and wrap this disaster up if their sequel couldn’t even live up to the first game in terms of sales. I guess I see where you’re coming from in that yes, at least the game didn’t hit rock bottom, but that’s hardly the bright side, is it?

The expansion into Asia is definitely something to look forward to. But as an NCSoft stockholder and a player of this game, it’s actually not something that’s as exciting as you think. Yes, the initial hype and the sales are always great. But the retention of playerbase should always be the concern. You say that GW1’s done well for a western MMO, but you’re forgetting that there are other genres occupying the field that ANet would have to penetrate into, like LoL.

ilr.9675:

Queensdale constantly has an Overflow on NSP.

Most of teh Devs play on NSP.

Observations != Reality

I’ll keep it nice and short.

You contradicted yourself. Just because you see many players in Queensdale, in your specific server, it doesn’t mean that the game player base is growing and that the game is doing well. Observation != reality, as they say.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Why do you presume that — lacking any numbers to bolster your position — you can better predict the future of a game than the people running it — who have those numbers?

Actually there’s many numbers out there if you care enough to search for them. I never even commented on ANet’s internal prediction for the future of the game. What I’m concerned about is ANet’s promise for bright future despite having failed with many promises that were given to us. Though I love the game, that much you can’t deny. For one, I don’t see the game even close to being a e-sport, and class balance is a mess.

Speaking of numbers, that would be one of the things ANet would share with us, if:

1. They were transparent

&

2. The player base is growing.

Video game companies releasing stats for growing player base is old news. The fact that they’re not transparent with it and all hush-hush with forum posts just indicates that they’re not doing as well as the face they’re putting on.

Behellagh.1468:

And again if the Q1 2013 sales were from a standard $15 a month subscription MMO, we’re would be looking at an MMO with over 1/2 million players. There are very few that have reached those numbers. EVE just recently did.

That’s not a proper chart you attached. Lineage games had sevral Million players each.
GW2 sold 3 million copies its first year here.

Not sure where you got it but you should have just linked to http://mmodata.blogspot.com/ instead…

Daily Logins & peak daily pops are about as useful as Steam Data :p

Jae.5138:

You contradicted yourself.

It’s called sarcasm (b/c the devs are involved) …and you obviously missed it.

Jae.5138:

I’ll keep it nice and short.

You contradicted yourself. Just because you see many players in Queensdale, in your specific server, it doesn’t mean that the game player base is growing and that the game is doing well. Observation != reality, as they say.

Underworld is full of players as well. We have ques for WvW that are tad on the too long side.
We have information that the game is STILL selling. That alone suggests that we should be seeing active servers. And some of us do.
It’s silly to claim that the game is digging its own grave when it’s doing quite fine at this point.
And what would expansions do? Expansions don’t increase the sales of the main game, but instead are bought by a percentage of the current population. 3 years from now if anyone will want to buy GW2 all they will have to do is buy more game. Not GW2, Expansion 1, expansion 2, expansion 3, etc. It’s sort of an advantage when it comes to MMOs in my opinion.

I even forgot about this game, I had the forum on my bookmarks and came here to see whats was going on.

This game, I’m afraid it has run it’s course, I expect the store to be flooded with RNG boxes and the dummies shall continue to purchase to get an item to show to their 5 friends.

I have stopped playing this game on it’s 2nd or 3rd month after it came out.

All my friends GW1 avid players, we all had over 10k hours of GW1, have quitted too, I don’t even hear about this game anywhere I go, neither I see it on any shelves in any store.

GW2 was a failed experiment, mostly because of the hype the created around the game, and the fail to delivery what was expected.

The game was stale when I left it, and by the looks I get from reading the forum, it’s still the same.

Just because your server has an overflow, doesn’t mean that the game is full of players, I truly believe the number of players had really declined massively.

But I could be wrong, or right, I don’t even care.

There’s no meter, but I am truly a GW lore fan, loved it, consumed it, lost myself in it, just waiting for the last book to come out, and then I’ll probably pull the plug on it, forever.

Truly sad, my most fun years in gaming that I’ve ever had was playing Guild Wars, but they let me and many many more down.

HERO.2057:

I even forgot about this game, I had the forum on my bookmarks and came here to see whats was going on.

This game, I’m afraid it has run it’s course, I expect the store to be flooded with RNG boxes and the dummies shall continue to purchase to get an item to show to their 5 friends.

I have stopped playing this game on it’s 2nd or 3rd month after it came out.

All my friends GW1 avid players, we all had over 10k hours of GW1, have quitted too, I don’t even hear about this game anywhere I go, neither I see it on any shelves in any store.

GW2 was a failed experiment, mostly because of the hype the created around the game, and the fail to delivery what was expected.

The game was stale when I left it, and by the looks I get from reading the forum, it’s still the same.

Just because your server has an overflow, doesn’t mean that the game is full of players, I truly believe the number of players had really declined massively.

But I could be wrong, or right, I don’t even care.

There’s no meter, but I am truly a GW lore fan, loved it, consumed it, lost myself in it, just waiting for the last book to come out, and then I’ll probably pull the plug on it, forever.

Truly sad, my most fun years in gaming that I’ve ever had was playing Guild Wars, but they let me and many many more down.

Sad but true.

So this is a problem every thing has once you hit a point that every one has what you want them to buy then its very hard to keep growing. Its out right foolish to think something will grow forever so what most business do is put in add ons. Its a more effect to sell to the ppl who already bought your product.
So what is Anet doing they are adding in major new content every 2 weeks. This is how GW2 will grow and keep growing. Yes more ppl will buy the game in time but its never going to be as high as when the game first came out. Its the flow of this communally to do new content (in there time) and then take some time off. It was a monthly thing now its going to be something that happens 2 times a month. As for more box sell you will see expansion come out in time but for the over all money this game will bring in will be though the living story.
So what dose this mean for the players? It means that we as player will get a lot of free new content we will get a larges chose if to buy something from one story to another story and it will let GW2 stay competitive with new mmorpgs are time goes on.

People are skeptical about the cash shop model? Yeah go tell that to Valve.

ilr.9675:

Behellagh.1468:

And again if the Q1 2013 sales were from a standard $15 a month subscription MMO, we’re would be looking at an MMO with over 1/2 million players. There are very few that have reached those numbers. EVE just recently did.

That’s not a proper chart you attached. Lineage games had sevral Million players each.
GW2 sold 3 million copies its first year here.

Not sure where you got it but you should have just linked to http://mmodata.blogspot.com/ instead…

Daily Logins & peak daily pops are about as useful as Steam Data :p

Sorry Jai, my bad, that chart represents NCSOFT game sales as reported by their quarterly report, now noted that in my post. My 1/2 a million number wasn’t saying that’s how many is playing, it was to say if this was a subscription based game then it would take 1/2 million paying monthly for sales to be $30 million for a quarter. This is very, very good for an MMO.

Jae.5138:

Granted, the sales number was expected to drop. Obviously a game cannot continue its success since the first day and maintain or increase its sales, but it can do better than half the number.

I’m not quite sure why you’d be comparing the sales of GW2 to GW1. NCSoft would be pressuring ANet to start closing down the servers and wrap this disaster up if their sequel couldn’t even live up to the first game in terms of sales. I guess I see where you’re coming from in that yes, at least the game didn’t hit rock bottom, but that’s hardly the bright side, is it?

The expansion into Asia is definitely something to look forward to. But as an NCSoft stockholder and a player of this game, it’s actually not something that’s as exciting as you think. Yes, the initial hype and the sales are always great. But the retention of playerbase should always be the concern. You say that GW1’s done well for a western MMO, but you’re forgetting that there are other genres occupying the field that ANet would have to penetrate into, like LoL.

The game was out for four months before the first quarter started. Essentially any pent up demand and peer pressure from friends to buy a copy to play is pretty much tapped out. Sure someone bored with their current MMO may pick up a copy since it’s subscription free but the majority of new game sales, even at the lower $50 price is over. So that $30+ million or so the game made first quarter is mostly from the Cash shop, which is pretty darn good IMO.

Guild Wars 2 has sales through the 1st quarter, 7 months, that is greater than Guild Wars sales including all their campaigns and expansion in 86 months. The game is a financial success. The comparison to Guild Wars was to illustrate that even this “lousy” quarter in Guild Wars 2 is nearly twice as good as Guild Wars’s best. So it’s still clobbering the original. Also this “lousy” quarter still makes GW2 1st quarter NCSOFT’s 2nd highest game in sales for that quarter.

While I don’t expect a huge surge of income from the Asia market, the original Guild Wars does have traction in Asia. Sure the whole MMO scene in Asia as changed a lot since 2007 but I can still see GW2 holding it’s own, maybe not as a top 5 or even a top 10 MMO but enough sales to warrant continued presence in the region.

Jae.5138:

The expansion into Asia is definitely something to look forward to. But as an NCSoft stockholder and a player of this game, it’s actually not something that’s as exciting as you think. Yes, the initial hype and the sales are always great. But the retention of playerbase should always be the concern. You say that GW1’s done well for a western MMO, but you’re forgetting that there are other genres occupying the field that ANet would have to penetrate into, like LoL.

Retaining players and selling boxes are not Anet’s main concern. MMOs have a shelf life just like any other game, in the US/Europe/Australia markets they’ve pretty much sold to everyone who is going to buy the game by now. They don’t need to retain players because there’s no sub, so X players playing for Y months = Z dollars calculations count for a lot less than with a sub-based game like WoW.

Practically everyone who bought the box (except those banned for exploiting, botting etc.) are lifetime members. They will come back any time they have a reason to. The game is in a transition mode to relying on cash shop sales, which is why there have been so many lottery boxes and why the armor sets and such they’ve been developing for the last 6-9 months will be showing up there.

When cash shop sales start dropping and they need a reason to get players back into the game and/or sell more boxes, they’ll release the expansion they’ve been developing. What, do you think it takes dozens of devs working all day, every day, to come up with 30 minutes worth of content every two weeks? While a handful of devs are working on LS material the rest have been creating the expansion that was in the works before the ink was dry on the first box off the printing press.

I can think of very very few MMOs that actively gain player base over time. WoW has lost 1.7 million people in the last quarter. Rift saw a spike when they went free to play but that will taper off as well. To expect any MMO to have continual growth is just not reasonable. Why? Because there are more MMOs than ever before, but not more MMO players than ever before. There are probably as many people leaving MMO space as there are playing MMOs.

Guild Wars 2 seems to be doing fine. If they weren’t doing fine, they wouldn’t come out with content every two weeks without making an expansion, since game companies seem to make expansions to bring people back to the game. It also brings in more money by selling more boxes.

Anet said they don’t have to do this, therefore the game is doing fine and perhaps better than fine.

There’ll be a big influx of cash once the game launches in China too but we won’t see those players on our server, because you can bet Anet will have their own server park in China.

But I log in on patch day and the game is swamped with people on my server. A whole lot of people.

I don’t think millions of people are playing this game, but I don’t think millions of people are playing any MMO but WoW. And since WoW has the biggest advertising budget of any game, that’s not surprising. You put commercials on TV with Chuck Norris, William Shatner etc and you’ll get the rabble joining in. But WoW is still bleeding subscriptions. They’ve lost almost as many subs in the last year or two as Guild Wars 2 has sold copies.

No, it’s unreasonable to assume a steadily growing player base for any MMO these days. The only one I can think of that has accomplished this is Eve and Eve still only has half a million players all up.