Guild Wars 2

Gehenna.3625:

The Master.2893:

Vayne.8563:

The Master.2893:

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

“Fine” is an understatement:)

If their reports are even close to accurate then GW2 is bailing out the rest of the company right not. NCSOFT without GW2 would be losing money otherwise.

Which is good for us at least…

Indeed it is so…

I don’t want to overstate things. I think it’s doing well personally, but in reality, sales of the box have slowed. So I say it’s doing fine.

In reality I think that as time progresses, this game is going to pick up a lot of speed. When it releases in China it’ll be doing a lot better than fine. lol

Okay I got the numbers to end this debate (Q2 2013):

Q2 2013 PDF File (use download link) page 4-5

(Numbers in Million Korean Won)

Operating Profit: 62,248
All Game Sales: 192,014
GW2 Sales: 84,791, up from 66,038 last Quarter

Costs of GW2 are not directly provided in this presentation.

…No matter: Which means without GW2 NCSOFT would be going bankrupt right now. Yes this game is here to stay Blizzard!

Indeed it is so…

Reading is a skill. So is knowing the difference between light and dark blue….You actually quoted the numbers for LINEAGE 1 and not GW2….GW2 is barely bigger than Aion at the moment.

The actual numbers for GW2 are 36,382 and then 28,899 so they are going down and nowhere near the Lineage 1 numbers.

I suspected as much.

The question now becomes: How is GW2 going to turn this around? I really hope this series doesn’t stagnate, but frankly I don’t see how they can continue to improve and innovate when they’re losing so many sales.

It’s still pretty unfair to compare L1 and GW2.

For one, L1 is a game that has been around awhile and has been a cash cow for them for many years. It’s insane in Korea.

It’s not good to compare games within a company since more often than not they are not comparable.

Elothar.4382:

Really, in summary, the earnings statement referenced by Vayne and Gehenna are readily available for different time periods. For those interested in such things, check them out.

For more in depth analysis, financial institution associations publish key metrics by industry such as profit margins, earnings per share, etc. These are also helpful in determining how well or poorly a company is doing compared to its competition and the industry at large.

One thing that we are not likely to see on the financial statements are numbers related to actual players. Others more knowledgeable than I in this area likely can comment better on how the game is doing in terms of players.

For the company the key is of course financial. If they had 2 people play who spent 10 million per month on it, it would stay open. Not realistic but the point is that for the company the key element is how much money is coming in compared to the costs involved.

For players the key thing is getting a full experience, which includes other players being there. So indirectly the is affects the income because the more people play, the more income they generate and if servers start feeling empty it might cause more people to quit.

Player numbers are difficult to calculate however. At which point do you count a player as active? If they log in once a week for half an hour? I don’t know. There are no subs to keep track of.

So that’s where concurrency comes in. As long as there are enough people online at the same time, specifically on prime time (evenings mostly) then the game will generally be experienced as a healthy population. So that’s more interesting for me to know than an awkward calculation on how many active players there are. In a game without subs that’s not really the most interesting.

So we got the peak of last year (over 460k) but not a clue what happened since then. It’s not something game devs comment on a lot in general.

But considering the sales figures that are known, the 460k was from a time when sales were 4 times higher than they are now. I don’t think that it means that there are only 115k concurrent players as some of the people who bought the last game are still playing, but it’s not unconceivable that the numbers lay around 200-250k. But really I just don’t know.

As long as it’s enough players for the players themselves and the income is high enough for Anet/NcSoft, the game will continue just fine. If GW2 loses more players in the coming year then it might get tough, but it all depends on what the break even point is for Anet and I certainly don’t claim to know that.

There are threads here of people complaining of empty leveling zones and a lfg tool is in the make I saw. That’s usually an indication that people are having more difficulty finding other players to play with. Of course not the people in bigger guilds as they have their guild but I have this feeling that a lot of people just pug around a lot.

So yeh it’s important to get more new players in as you always lose players. Time will tell if their current approach works for the longer term. I think 2014 can be a telling year for Anet. Will the game do well in China and what happens here in the mean time. We have the 1 year celebration, that usually is a reason for people to log in and have a look. So is the current slow growth just something of the moment or more structural? No idea, it could go both ways quite easily.

Vol.5241:

I’m actually a bit ‘worried’ about China. Just look at the trailer they had and the # of views – they only have 44K in a month. That’s a really, really low number.

But then again, I don’t even know if the Chinese use youtube as their main video site. They don’t even use twitter or google.

Youtube is blocked in China. They use something called youku.

I’m sure they’re doing just fine financially.
Whales and stupids keep buying RNG boxes after all.

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

You can trust what NcSoft reports on how well one of their games is doing right up to the weekly conference call on a Friday when they tell you not to come in on Monday because everyone is fired and the servers will be shut down in three months.

Forbin Project.1759:

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

You can trust what NcSoft reports on how well one of their games is doing right up to the weekly conference call on a Friday when they tell you not to come in on Monday because everyone is fired and the servers will be shut down in three months.

Well actually the report doesn’t show that GW2 is doing fine. They said with the report that GW2 is stabilising but sales were still down as per the report. If you look at the report than you see that from the last quarter of 2012 to the first quarter of 2013 sales dropped by more than 70% and from Q1 to Q2 it dropped again by around 20% between those two quarters.

If indeed it’s stabilising in the mean time that is good news for the fans here, but to say “the game is doing fine as shown in the report”, well that doesn’t sound like a fair conclusion from the numbers in the report I would say.

Reality is that since we don’t know what their break even point is, it remains speculation how bad it really is or if it’s that bad from their point of view at all. I mean all MMOs have a massive dip after the initial sales but what I do read in those numbers is that the financial model of B2P doesn’t seem to fare much better than other MMOs. And for me that is the most interesting conclusion: with all of its bravado and innovation it doesn’t seem to break from the mold from that side of things.

Did they get their investment back? I think so. Are they running a profit today? Again I think so but the margins are down of course. Is this game so innovate or refreshing that it broke the problem all MMOs suffered since WoW (big initial sales, mass exodus, settle with a good enough amount of people to continue as a more humble title).

It appears that GW2 might be around for a while yet but not as the big mold breaker that changed the face of MMOs it perhaps wanted to be. Key for the fans is that the game is profitable enough to stay alive. That should be possible I think. We’ll see if China gives them a big boost or if it’s going to deflate again after a few months.

I really am curious if Chinese players would like a game with no significant endgame. I just really don’t know.

Gehenna.3625:

Forbin Project.1759:

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

You can trust what NcSoft reports on how well one of their games is doing right up to the weekly conference call on a Friday when they tell you not to come in on Monday because everyone is fired and the servers will be shut down in three months.

Well actually the report doesn’t show that GW2 is doing fine. They said with the report that GW2 is stabilising but sales were still down as per the report. If you look at the report than you see that from the last quarter of 2012 to the first quarter of 2013 sales dropped by more than 70% and from Q1 to Q2 it dropped again by around 20% between those two quarters.

If indeed it’s stabilising in the mean time that is good news for the fans here, but to say “the game is doing fine as shown in the report”, well that doesn’t sound like a fair conclusion from the numbers in the report I would say.

Reality is that since we don’t know what their break even point is, it remains speculation how bad it really is or if it’s that bad from their point of view at all. I mean all MMOs have a massive dip after the initial sales but what I do read in those numbers is that the financial model of B2P doesn’t seem to fare much better than other MMOs. And for me that is the most interesting conclusion: with all of its bravado and innovation it doesn’t seem to break from the mold from that side of things.

Did they get their investment back? I think so. Are they running a profit today? Again I think so but the margins are down of course. Is this game so innovate or refreshing that it broke the problem all MMOs suffered since WoW (big initial sales, mass exodus, settle with a good enough amount of people to continue as a more humble title).

It appears that GW2 might be around for a while yet but not as the big mold breaker that changed the face of MMOs it perhaps wanted to be. Key for the fans is that the game is profitable enough to stay alive. That should be possible I think. We’ll see if China gives them a big boost or if it’s going to deflate again after a few months.

I really am curious if Chinese players would like a game with no significant endgame. I just really don’t know.

I think GW2 changed the face of MMOs and i’m glad it did. About the finanial part ANet said they’re doing fine and they don’t need an expansion to continue so i’ll trust them on that.

Chicho Gosho.6507:

I think GW2 changed the face of MMOs and i’m glad it did. About the finanial part ANet said they’re doing fine and they don’t need an expansion to continue so i’ll trust them on that.

And pray, do tell, how did GW2 do that? Because even NcSoft’s own next game Wildstar will have a sub structure in it and FF is doing sub only. I see some games that are coming out with smaller skill bars but hey….that was GW1.

So I really have no clue what you mean when you say it changed the face of MMOs. GW2 is different, but that’s about it. I don’t think it changed much in the general land of MMOs.

bigtime.7410:

….. Im not touching another product thats associated with any of these companies.

Hopefully that means we won’t have to put up with your complaining anymore. However, I suspect you’ll be back.

Gehenna.3625:

Chicho Gosho.6507:

I think GW2 changed the face of MMOs and i’m glad it did. About the finanial part ANet said they’re doing fine and they don’t need an expansion to continue so i’ll trust them on that.

And pray, do tell, how did GW2 do that? Because even NcSoft’s own next game Wildstar will have a sub structure in it and FF is doing sub only. I see some games that are coming out with smaller skill bars but hey….that was GW1.

So I really have no clue what you mean when you say it changed the face of MMOs. GW2 is different, but that’s about it. I don’t think it changed much in the general land of MMOs.

Here is how GW2 changed the face of MMOs. MMOs used to brunettes with brown eyes. Now, thanks to GW2 MMOs are blondes with blue eyes.

darkdomino.9578:

People often hold up GW2’s free2play model as one of the best/fairest in the industry… is the model working?

No, because this isn’t f2p, it’s b2p. So it can’t be working with the model since it wasn’t used.

In f2p’s, generally 95-98% of players never spend a dime. B2P, everyone pays up front, thus it is not “free”. Reminds me of people that used to insist GW1 is/was an mmo.

Daywolf.2630:

darkdomino.9578:

People often hold up GW2’s free2play model as one of the best/fairest in the industry… is the model working?

No, because this isn’t f2p, it’s b2p. So it can’t be working with the model since it wasn’t used.

In f2p’s, generally 95-98% of players never spend a dime. B2P, everyone pays up front, thus it is not “free”. Reminds me of people that used to insist GW1 is/was an mmo.

For someone who’s being very specific about him calling this f2p while he obviously meant b2p, you certainly take a big liberty with freestyling some numbers here.

You have no idea how many players spend money in f2p’s.

And GW1 can be considered an MMO in my view. I don’t really care if it is or not, but the truth is that the only thing it missed by the standard definition of an MMO is a persistent world. Well, since most MMOs have a persistent world for leveling that is pretty much devoid of players after a few months of release and instead everybody is stuck in dungeons or raids or whatever type of instance, I don’t really see that difference as a very significant one.

Hard to tell. ArenaNet will not report actual players.

If they did, we could take the industry average of mtx conversion rate (2.5%) and grab $15 per month per player buying, and come up with a decent estimate.

In any case, it’s much smaller than a subscription game.

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

Hehe, no they aren’t.

Having a good server structure and a small number of employees has served GW2 well. You see some devs or programmers leave Anet(for other projects in their careers and such) and that is not a bad thing. It opens doors to new programmers. I believe Anet wants a finite number of employees to stay in budget.

Zeldain.5710:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

Hehe, no they aren’t.

Oh look, someone who works at Anets financial department. Send over their financial statements so I can have a look see.

darkdomino.9578:

I suspected as much.

The question now becomes: How is GW2 going to turn this around? I really hope this series doesn’t stagnate, but frankly I don’t see how they can continue to improve and innovate when they’re losing so many sales.

In the recent interviews, devs have been saying that things are ‘stabilizing’ from the post launch numbers. The real question is how much does GW2 need to make to remain profitable and healthy? $25 million a quarter is still a good revenue stream for any company.

And they still have the China launch ahead which traditionally brings a boost to revenue.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

I believe Anet wants a finite number of employees to stay in budget.

Every company wants that. There’s always a budget but I do think that because of the business model of GW2 they are more limited in what they can do.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

You can’t possibly be that naive. They may be making decent money, enough to stay profitable, but your last sentence is such a stretch. You’re comparing guaranteed money to possible money. Thinking everyone who plays buys gems alone is a stretch, thinking they do so regularly is an even bigger one.

*Especially with the ability to buy gems with in-game currency.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Zeldain.5710:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

Hehe, no they aren’t.

Oh look, someone who works at Anets financial department. Send over their financial statements so I can have a look see.

It’s pretty easy to do the math… and of course, they don’t release actual player numbers. So, yeah. Let’s just say they’re no Blizzard.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Zeldain.5710:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

Hehe, no they aren’t.

Oh look, someone who works at Anets financial department. Send over their financial statements so I can have a look see.

Perhaps you could clarify where you got your numbers from before pointing the finger at him? What did you say? Ohhhh you made them up…I see.

I’ll believe the other guy, thank you very much.

Free2play, buy2play, whatever the hip kids wanna call it these days… I’m not big on jargon or acronyms.

All I know is that GW2 is not a subscription-based MMO, and that’s the distinction you should take away from my statement.

I’m not saying GW2 should go subscription-based, in fact, I’m pretty staunchly against that. It’s one of the reasons why I like GW2 so much. However, I’m curious to know if the model that GW2 is using to take in money is truly taking in money. If it is, I’m curious to know why we haven’t seen any significant content updates almost a year into release.

darkdomino.9578:

Free2play, buy2play, whatever the hip kids wanna call it these days… I’m not big on jargon or acronyms.

All I know is that GW2 is not a subscription-based MMO, and that’s the distinction you should take away from my statement.

I’m not saying GW2 should go subscription-based, in fact, I’m pretty staunchly against that. It’s one of the reasons why I like GW2 so much. However, I’m curious to know if the model that GW2 is using to take in money is truly taking in money. If it is, I’m curious to know why we haven’t seen any significant content updates almost a year into release.

Well, and there you have a clear point. I am sure GW2 is doing well enough to survive and continue in it’s current path but I don’t believe one second that this B2P model made them enough money to do more than just that.

Maybe if they do well in China can they afford bigger things but chances are that even if they make more money they won’t do bigger things unless they have to. They’d rather take the money and tell you it’s all as intended.

GW2 had an extremely good start and there’s no denying that, but by now I think it’s all settled down quite a bit and I think they are doing well enough for their purposes, but not more. I just look at new games that are planned to come out in the next year and I see don’t see any B2P in there so far, even within NcSoft. That tells me enough really.

Think about it. If every big MMO title became B2P from now on, people would have no reason to be loyal to any game anymore and just hop around like crazy. Where would they spend their money? It’d be a battle of the cash shops rather than the games. Not sure if that would be a good development really.

At the moment I think starting with subs and adding f2p options later if needed is a better way to go. People can choose their plan and play as they want.

Gehenna.3625:

Daywolf.2630:

darkdomino.9578:

People often hold up GW2’s free2play model as one of the best/fairest in the industry… is the model working?

No, because this isn’t f2p, it’s b2p. So it can’t be working with the model since it wasn’t used.

In f2p’s, generally 95-98% of players never spend a dime. B2P, everyone pays up front, thus it is not “free”. Reminds me of people that used to insist GW1 is/was an mmo.

For someone who’s being very specific about him calling this f2p while he obviously meant b2p, you certainly take a big liberty with freestyling some numbers here.

You have no idea how many players spend money in f2p’s.

And GW1 can be considered an MMO in my view. I don’t really care if it is or not, but the truth is that the only thing it missed by the standard definition of an MMO is a persistent world. Well, since most MMOs have a persistent world for leveling that is pretty much devoid of players after a few months of release and instead everybody is stuck in dungeons or raids or whatever type of instance, I don’t really see that difference as a very significant one.

Actually I do have an idea of the statistics. Few report, but some have over the years.

No, GW1 is not an mmo. But then they call about everything an mmo these days, better for marketing propaganda. The only thing massively-multi was in essence a 3D lobby.

Gehenna.3625:

Think about it. If every big MMO title became B2P from now on, people would have no reason to be loyal to any game anymore and just hop around like crazy. Where would they spend their money? It’d be a battle of the cash shops rather than the games. Not sure if that would be a good development really.

With a buy-to-play model people might buy the game and then not stick with it. On the other hand, with a subscription model (requiring a £120 per year commitment, and losing all your progress if you stop paying for one month) most of those people would never have played the game at all. So instead of getting £30 from someone who then leaves (and therefore isn’t costing any resources), they get £0.

If the might of the Star Wars marketing machine couldn’t make the subscription MMO work, that’s a pretty sure sign that it’s the last decade’s business model.

Fastest growing is from release until whoever decided to call it. It was 3 million in sales as reported mid January so that was 4-5 months.

In 10ish months the game had 230,135 million KrW in sales or roughly $200+ million dollars. In those 4 quarters NCSOFT had game sales of 786,920 million KrW so GW2 was 29% of their total sales. I have no idea why people think the game isn’t doing “well” in the eyes of NCSOFT. I would be more concern at Team Bloodlust who did Blade & Soul, it only made 90,222 million KrW in those four quarters and it was touted more. Lineage 1 almost made that much last quarter. Since the game is only released in the NA and Europe markets, looking at those region’s sales GW2 represents 94% of sales in those two regions for the last 4 quarters (244,016 million KrW).

NCSOFT investors are nervous because none of their MMO titles rely solely on Cash Shop sales to keep them running. Lineage 1+2, Aion and Blade and Soul are all subscription games in Asia which may also have a Cash Shop. The first Guild Wars had additional box sets during it’s first 2-3 years. The stockholders are frightened by this new strange way to fund an MMO, B2P + Cash Shop.

So Guild Wars 2 is the grand experiment. Already we see with WildStar’s announcement of a standard MMO subscription model and virtually no Cash Shop other than PLEX CREDD, NCSOFT isn’t willing to bet on GW2’s income model. And (T)ESO also following along with a traditional subscription model means at least WildStar/NCSOFT isn’t alone in not embracing a Hybrid/F2P model out of the gate.

Now when GW2 goes into China I don’t expect to see GW2 sales numbers go up because in China you go though a 3rd party and that income is reported in NCSOFT’s income sheet as Royalties and they haven’t yet break royalties down on a per game basis, only direct sales.

So is the game doing well financially, I think we can say yes. Do those who are disappointed that the game isn’t what they expected wish it wasn’t, I think we can say yes to that as well. Only problem with B2P/F2P as oppose to subscription is you can’t protest with your wallet, only support.

Carzor Stelatis.9435:

If the might of the Star Wars marketing machine couldn’t make the subscription MMO work, that’s a pretty sure sign that it’s the last decade’s business model.

What, SWG? Really? Maybe you never saw what they did with the game using CU and NGE? 5 years in that game, ended in a patch. 90% of our guild (PA) left due to it. The game literally emptied out over night, busy zones turned into like Orr at launch day of the living story here. Try EVE Online as an example? Or even drop mention of WoW, but overly dropped mentioned of a game I just didn’t have a taste for. It’s not the marketing model that sells a game to the masses, but the quality. Sadly, f2p’s are mostly about the model and how to lure people to spend in the RMT shop. Revolving everything around that makes for bad game design in most cases.

Math is not my strong suite, but someone correct me if I’m wrong here:

You’ve got 400,000 active users and you’ve sold 3,000,000 copies….

According to my fancy Android calculator, that’s like 13%…. 13% of everyone who bought a copy of GW2 is actually still playing the game.

That’s…. pretty terrible. I’m not sure how A-net can feel good about numbers like that. I feel like they need to recover a LOT of lost ground to get back to where they were.

darkdomino.9578:

Free2play, buy2play, whatever the hip kids wanna call it these days… I’m not big on jargon or acronyms.

Is it really “jargon” to say that a game that costs $60 to play is not “free”?

I actually thought it was the standard English-language definition of the word.

darkdomino.9578:

Math is not my strong suite, but someone correct me if I’m wrong here:

You’ve got 400,000 active users and you’ve sold 3,000,000 copies….

According to my fancy Android calculator, that’s like 13%…. 13% of everyone who bought a copy of GW2 is actually still playing the game.

That was 400,000 concurrent users at peak. Meaning, at peak, 1 in 8 of the people who had bought the same were online at the same time. To sustain that all day long, you’d need everyone who bought the game to play 3 hours per day each.

darkdomino.9578:

Math is not my strong suite, but someone correct me if I’m wrong here:

You’ve got 400,000 active users and you’ve sold 3,000,000 copies….

According to my fancy Android calculator, that’s like 13%…. 13% of everyone who bought a copy of GW2 is actually still playing the game.

That’s…. pretty terrible. I’m not sure how A-net can feel good about numbers like that. I feel like they need to recover a LOT of lost ground to get back to where they were.

Interesting. I mostly stick around lvl80 content, and yes for months pop has been dwindling there. When I’m not doing that, I’m leveling characters, working on my 8th-80 for all classes. I see more people around those lower levels (I’m on a popular server) but more so looking like lvl 80’s banging out their dailies real quick. Mid levels mostly silent now. Not much going on with dungeons any longer. Mostly I just see people doing farming zergs with invasions. A little bit of that is ok… but going off to do other things I mostly find empty places. Usually this time in the evening I’m doing a temple or something, but I was just at a loss of what to do other than zerg and I’ve had way too much of that already (having not done much really). But forums are populated Hope things pick back up again some.

darkdomino.9578:

Math is not my strong suite, but someone correct me if I’m wrong here:

You’ve got 400,000 active users and you’ve sold 3,000,000 copies….

According to my fancy Android calculator, that’s like 13%…. 13% of everyone who bought a copy of GW2 is actually still playing the game.

That’s…. pretty terrible. I’m not sure how A-net can feel good about numbers like that. I feel like they need to recover a LOT of lost ground to get back to where they were.

You don’t need a calculator, because it’s not your math that’s wrong. It’s your interpretation.

400,000 is not the number of active users of the game. For one thing, people in different time zones log in at different times of day. The odds are if you have 400,000 people on at one time, you’d be losing out most of the people in the rest of the world.

WoW might be the only MMO that got figures higher than that for concurrency, ever.

Zeldain.5710:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

Hehe, no they aren’t.

They have been making the sales that is equivalent of 570,000+ subscribers paying $15 a month. There are like 3 games P2P games that have that many or more: Lineage, WoW, and Eve online. Eve Online just barely hit over 500,000 though. But all 3 of those games are in the asian countries, the biggest MMO player base in the world, where as Guild Wars 2 is only in EU and NA.

So yeah, it does look like GW2 has more sales than the majority of the P2P MMOs out there.

darkdomino.9578:

Math is not my strong suite, but someone correct me if I’m wrong here:

You’ve got 400,000 active users and you’ve sold 3,000,000 copies….

According to my fancy Android calculator, that’s like 13%…. 13% of everyone who bought a copy of GW2 is actually still playing the game.

That’s…. pretty terrible. I’m not sure how A-net can feel good about numbers like that. I feel like they need to recover a LOT of lost ground to get back to where they were.

460,000 concurrent players at once, meaning at one point in time (lets say at 7Pm on a on a Tuesday) there were 460,000 people online at once. Now some years ago a P2P mmo developer talked about how there is about 20% of the playerbase that plays at peak time ( the busiest times of the day) which is about a 4 hour period, and the other 80% play during random times on the other hours and random days. So 460,000 at peak times, would mean about 2.3 Million active players that play at random times and random days all together.

eisberg.2379:

darkdomino.9578:

Math is not my strong suite, but someone correct me if I’m wrong here:

You’ve got 400,000 active users and you’ve sold 3,000,000 copies….

According to my fancy Android calculator, that’s like 13%…. 13% of everyone who bought a copy of GW2 is actually still playing the game.

That’s…. pretty terrible. I’m not sure how A-net can feel good about numbers like that. I feel like they need to recover a LOT of lost ground to get back to where they were.

460,000 concurrent players at once, meaning at one point in time (lets say at 7Pm on a on a Tuesday) there were 460,000 people online at once. Now some years ago a P2P mmo developer talked about how there is about 20% of the playerbase that plays at peak time ( the busiest times of the day) which is about a 4 hour period, and the other 80% play during random times on the other hours and random days. So 460,000 at peak times, would mean about 2.3 Million active players that play at random times and random days all together.

True, but I wonder what it is now, you know? EVE Online tracks that stuff in real-time, you can follow the charts over time, publicly accessible. It’s been a few months (inactive atm), but I’ve seen it peak at 50k on log-in, and that counts all time-zones apart from China now. That game is not just a year old, you know? One of the few, if only, that has constantly picked up active accounts over the course of it’s life, not blossomed at the beginning and then fell off to low numbers as most do.

The point is, active numbers change. Peaks are kind of funny over the course of months or years. One month they may be up, the next month down. Then it all repeats again maybe with a light variation over time increasing or decreasing overall. I have no doubt 400k at a peak for GW2 at some point, but I wonder how those numbers read over the past 12 months. I remember EQ1 used to do that at the beginning, at least log-in population numbers per server. I don’t think marketing finds that favorable though, there is a lot of marketing exposure and putting out more data on such things may not be as favorable as just mentioning overall post-launch highlights.

I think simply looking at the store will tell you. Considering that they are being pretty selective of throwing new items in and not going bonkers, it seems to be payin the bills as is. I would love to see more skins in it personally.

Vayne.8563:

darkdomino.9578:

Well, it’s been a year and the game is pretty much the same game it was a year ago… I’m curious to know why that is, if not for financial reasons.

It’s been a year and I still sometimes see my character chop down trees with his pickaxe. Hell, there are bugs in this game that are still there from the beta.

If GW2 is making money, when are they going to start investing in this game? Temporary events every 2 weeks is great and all, and I’ve enjoyed all of them – but that’s not content.

Let’s put it this way: I’d trade 5 living story events or festivals for 1 new class. I’d trade 10 living story events for 1 new playable race.

The game is still the same as it was a year ago? Really?

Aside from the myriad bug fixes (there have been pages and pages of them, many not even documented), there were quality of life upgrades (the account wallet, aoe looting, the end of culling, previewing in the market place), the addition of the Fractals, WxP in WvW, a revamp of AC, new jumping puzzles, new dynamic events, new minigames.

Maybe you’re just not paying attention.

You’re forgetting daily laurels and guild missions. The game has definitively grown.

We now have a full world of relevant content, and a stable, relatively bug free game.

marnick.4305:

1/ there’s only 10 MMOs in the west with more than 100,000 subscribers let alone online users, including the mastodont. 400,000 at any time would be extremely good.

2/ all reports point towards the apparent fact that Guild Wars 2 and Arena.net are doing extremely well financially. They’re still growing as a company and there’s a lot of job opportunities on their website.

3/ Several hints about behind the scenes projects, and that the living world is actually one of the smaller teams. Something big is going to happen eventually, but no one knows when or what.

4/ the current b2p model and cash shop without p2win seems to be a very solid financial strategy.

Read through massively’s GW2 section to find a lot of good sources.

Regarding Number 2 the reason they have alot of job openings is because they are not great to work for. Alot of the people that made GW2 what it is are leaving. Hence the job openings.

But Ill agree with the rest of what you said because its true.

400k users on at one time is amazing for an mmo.

WoW’s concurrent users for a launch was around 1 million sure. But after launch it fizzles down to the 250k range.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

You dont have to guess or multiply anything, you just look at NCSfor quarterly reports lol.

Revenue is down 20% since last quarter.

Anet has said their numbers are rising (i read that comment few weeks back) and that their shop is giving them more than enough money to do what they want.

So i am not worried, i think GW2 is doing much better than any MMO released after wow :P

eisberg.2379:

They have been making the sales that is equivalent of 570,000+ subscribers paying $15 a month. There are like 3 games P2P games that have that many or more: Lineage, WoW, and Eve online. Eve Online just barely hit over 500,000 though. But all 3 of those games are in the asian countries, the biggest MMO player base in the world, where as Guild Wars 2 is only in EU and NA.

So yeah, it does look like GW2 has more sales than the majority of the P2P MMOs out there.

So Iceland (EVE Online) is an Asian country now, didn’t know that. Did China buy them out when I wasn’t looking. :p

Gehenna.3625:

The financial reports shows that Last year GW2 made a lot of money and in the first two quarters of 2013 sales are down dramatically, like 70% down…Also the second quarter was down from the first quarter again. So the financial reports actually show that the game is going down financially in the first half of this year. In that sense GW2 has followed the same trend as other MMOs.

Anet/NcSoft have also said that by now the game is stabilising and slowly growing again. So the game is not dying but financially I don’t think they’re exactly sitting on roses either.

So my assessment is that it’s doing ok. Not great, not horrible, but ok.

First quarter it made a ton of money cause it sold a ton of boxes. it did what 2 million in 1 month? at $60 not counting deluxe and collecters thats $120m right there. No game can keep selling 2 – 3 million boxes per quarter. At lauch you have all the people who have been waiting for it buying it. Then its people who come across it, or who change their minds etc.. the later will always be a lot smaller.

They choose micro transactions as the revenue driver and that has increased quarter over quarter according to the financial reports . That means its actually doing great for them.

MikaHR.1978:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

You dont have to guess or multiply anything, you just look at NCSfor quarterly reports lol.

Revenue is down 20% since last quarter.

I agree, it’s gone down from launch. How many MMOs have rising revenues? How far down is WoW" revenue this quarter? Have you checked.

Being down 20% means very very little. Either they’re doing well enough to support their business model or they’re not.

It’ll be interesting to see the next quarterly report…as well as how they do in China.

Vayne.8563:

MikaHR.1978:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

You dont have to guess or multiply anything, you just look at NCSfor quarterly reports lol.

Revenue is down 20% since last quarter.

I agree, it’s gone down from launch. How many MMOs have rising revenues? How far down is WoW" revenue this quarter? Have you checked.

Being down 20% means very very little. Either they’re doing well enough to support their business model or they’re not.

It’ll be interesting to see the next quarterly report…as well as how they do in China.

Heard their next expansion is titled “The Dark Below”, There’s no doubt I’ll be returning for that expansion, sounds exciting to me and I love everything that is evil. Hell, the Siege of Orgrimmar is already tempting* me to return. Anyway, this game seems great and all but the living story is taking it’s toll and it’s only been three or four or so fast updates.

eisberg.2379:

Zeldain.5710:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

Hehe, no they aren’t.

They have been making the sales that is equivalent of 570,000+ subscribers paying $15 a month. There are like 3 games P2P games that have that many or more: Lineage, WoW, and Eve online. Eve Online just barely hit over 500,000 though. But all 3 of those games are in the asian countries, the biggest MMO player base in the world, where as Guild Wars 2 is only in EU and NA.

So yeah, it does look like GW2 has more sales than the majority of the P2P MMOs out there.

oh they did much more then that…

So far in total they made $160m ish thats not counting the last quarter which they have to yet report on. That alone makes it the equivalent of 1m subs

Vayne.8563:

MikaHR.1978:

Lunar Sunset.8742:

I think they are doing really well, there are many people who have bought well over just the standard box price in gems. Multiply that by a thousands and you got $$$$. Good way to do business, making more money than those p2p games.

You dont have to guess or multiply anything, you just look at NCSfor quarterly reports lol.

Revenue is down 20% since last quarter.

I agree, it’s gone down from launch. How many MMOs have rising revenues? How far down is WoW" revenue this quarter? Have you checked.

Being down 20% means very very little. Either they’re doing well enough to support their business model or they’re not.

It’ll be interesting to see the next quarterly report…as well as how they do in China.

WoW raised their revenue for few years, same as EvE, same as few other games.

Looking at just part of the picture that fits what you want to say is disregarding the big picture.

Revenue is down quite a lot since launch, 70% in 2nd quarter GW2 was out and another 20% in third quarter.

Noone can deny GW2 is doing fine, but fact is revenue keeps dropping.

Galen Grey.4709:

Gehenna.3625:

The financial reports shows that Last year GW2 made a lot of money and in the first two quarters of 2013 sales are down dramatically, like 70% down…Also the second quarter was down from the first quarter again. So the financial reports actually show that the game is going down financially in the first half of this year. In that sense GW2 has followed the same trend as other MMOs.

Anet/NcSoft have also said that by now the game is stabilising and slowly growing again. So the game is not dying but financially I don’t think they’re exactly sitting on roses either.

So my assessment is that it’s doing ok. Not great, not horrible, but ok.

First quarter it made a ton of money cause it sold a ton of boxes. it did what 2 million in 1 month? at $60 not counting deluxe and collecters thats $120m right there. No game can keep selling 2 – 3 million boxes per quarter. At lauch you have all the people who have been waiting for it buying it. Then its people who come across it, or who change their minds etc.. the later will always be a lot smaller.

They choose micro transactions as the revenue driver and that has increased quarter over quarter according to the financial reports . That means its actually doing great for them.

Well, not really. Let’s do a basic calculation.

Anet is said to have +300 employees long before release, today there might be a lot more. To be conservative with this assumption I’m going for 300 employees.

The average annual salary in the US in the games industry is around 75-80k, but I’m going for 70k like the first time.
300*70k=21 mio $
So we have at LEAST 21 Mio $ of costs to be covered, not counting in additional employees (well, you could try to count them from the recent ANET image we got) or lots of other expenses.

According to the NCsoft earnings release 2013 Q2 they achieved gem shop sales of 7,7 mio. 7,7*4=30,8 mio; that’s not a lot compared to my very conservative assumption of expenses.
I don’t see how they could cover studio costs while maintaining a decent revenue share just with gem shop sales.

The biggest income factor is still boxed sales with 20 mio in 2013 Q2. So yes, including boxed sales Anet is doing really good, but boxed sales WILL go down rapidly as time goes on (-4mio compared to last quarter).

To be honest that makes me really happy, because it’s basically predicting that they HAVE to deliver an expansion at some point (apart from the fact that the LS is pretty much bs in my opinion).

Behellagh.1468:

eisberg.2379:

They have been making the sales that is equivalent of 570,000+ subscribers paying $15 a month. There are like 3 games P2P games that have that many or more: Lineage, WoW, and Eve online. Eve Online just barely hit over 500,000 though. But all 3 of those games are in the asian countries, the biggest MMO player base in the world, where as Guild Wars 2 is only in EU and NA.

So yeah, it does look like GW2 has more sales than the majority of the P2P MMOs out there.

So Iceland (EVE Online) is an Asian country now, didn’t know that. Did China buy them out when I wasn’t looking. :p

he didnt say developed in china, he said released in china… Eve online was released to the eastern market in 2006

MikaHR.1978:

WoW raised their revenue for few years, same as EvE, same as few other games.

Looking at just part of the picture that fits what you want to say is disregarding the big picture.

Revenue is down quite a lot since launch, 70% in 2nd quarter GW2 was out and another 20% in third quarter.

Noone can deny GW2 is doing fine, but fact is revenue keeps dropping.

New game, lots of positive press, holiday season, box/game sales. That’s what contributed to such a huge 4Q. They sold around 3 million games in the 4Q and the month before it. And only 1/2 million in the 7-8 months since. It’s also the transition from box/game sales to cash shop. 2Q sales still beat the best quarter of GW by 50% and was still higher than Aion which is still a subscription based game in Asia (Korea is 2/3rds of Aion’s sales).