Guild Wars 2

Zeldain.5710:

BioWare was hiring right through the layoffs… it’s all about getting the type of staffing you need, not quantity.

GW2 is a small game… it’s fine, it has it’s niche, it is well-run, well-engineered. But it simply isn’t a great MMO nor is it ever going to have the impact on the genre or players or mainstream than WoW has had.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, unless you’re a player looking to invest the next 5-10 years in a game and would like alot more depth and content than is currently being provided.

Small game? 3.5m copies sold in a year makes it a small MMO? Over $189m profits in the first year of its operation. If what analysis call the fastest selling MMO in history is a small game what is a medium mmo or a large mmo ?

Well GW2 certainly made it’s mark in MMO history, so I wouldn’t call it a small game as such.

Of course, they are the first MMO that has a box price and no sub. That’s something that we can consider new but it’s also something that makes it easier for people to try it out.

They are the fastest selling MMO ever in the west, according to calculations they had done. Well let’s assume those calculations are correct. It would have been really disappointing if they hadn’t done that with this business model.

When GW2 came out last year there weren’t any really good fantasy MMOs out there and th mammoth WoW still made more money than GW2 will ever make. No one can beat that amount of box sales (with expansions), millions of subs for years and a cash shop as well now. Really with the business model they have and their timing it would’ve been extremely poor if they hadn’t sold so many.

But I see signs now that GW2 is just like any other MMO. It appeals to a much smaller group than advertised for and it’s holding steady at a fraction of those box sales. That doesn’t mean GW2 hasn’t been successful but it does mean it hasn’t done any better than other MMOs out there and I am also not convinced that they have a better profit margin. Their costs are probably lower but the revenue is as well. So I think that they are doing fine but there’s nothing revolutionary going on here either.

In essece it could be considered disappointing to see how many people have stopped playing even when there isn’t a sub. I don’t think anyone here can realistically claim that a majority of the 3.5 million box sales are still active players.

And I think that’s the reason why other companies have not chosen the same business model because I think they saw that GW2 doesn’t do better than other MMOs and may not meet profit margins they’d like to see. It works for GW2 but I don’t think it would work if the whole MMO market went B2P.

We have no way of knowing if thats the case or not. We do not know how many of those 3.5 still play and how many left and how many are merely on a temporary break.

But I would say one thing. We know there was the re-release of FXIV and I have been watching some streams of it out of curiosity. Seems like currently there is a sort of leveling short cut… People are farming what they call fates… (public events) because they give out a ton of XP and get you to max level quicker then quests… Obviously they’re very popular. The number of players you see doing them is no where close to the number of players you see doing invasions or world events. Never mind overflows. Same with the capital cities.

this is not definitive proof of anything of course, but we do know that just last week FFXIV reached 200k peak numbers which makes the 460k peak numbers stated by arenanet something thats plausible to be close to recent numbers. If thats the case, I think a lot of people might be underestimating how many people actually still play the game.

Galen Grey.4709:

We have no way of knowing if thats the case or not. We do not know how many of those 3.5 still play and how many left and how many are merely on a temporary break.

I think you are clutching at straws here.

Galen Grey.4709:

But I would say one thing. We know there was the re-release of FXIV and I have been watching some streams of it out of curiosity. Seems like currently there is a sort of leveling short cut… People are farming what they call fates… (public events) because they give out a ton of XP and get you to max level quicker then quests… Obviously they’re very popular. The number of players you see doing them is no where close to the number of players you see doing invasions or world events. Never mind overflows. Same with the capital cities.

A new game with an exploit. Unusual. I wouldn’t use this as a comparison because FF is a very different type of game. People can play non combat classes and things and not everybody will use such events because it may be considered an exploit. You can’t really judge the full population of a new game on what you’ve explained here.

Galen Grey.4709:

this is not definitive proof of anything of course, but we do know that just last week FFXIV reached 200k peak numbers which makes the 460k peak numbers stated by arenanet something thats plausible to be close to recent numbers. If thats the case, I think a lot of people might be underestimating how many people actually still play the game.

The 460k concurrency was in the beginning of the game. Last year and have admitted to there being a big dip in sales as we can see by the financial reports anyways.

It just seems to me that you need GW2 to be on top of the world whether it’s true or not. The game is doing fine as far as MMOs go, from what I can tell. Isn’t that enough for you?

There is no way that they get anywhere near 460k concurrency today and I’ll give you a simple reason why: Anet hasn’t given out any concurrency numbers for this year. They are bragging only with their numbers from last year.

Truly, if they had over 300k concurrency today that would be a worthy feat and therefore worth mentioning. Apparently current numbers are not worth mentioning.

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.

They have a China youtube apart from the US one — each country does as copyright laws are different every where.

I m not comparing games or saying one is successful or not… I am using events that focus players as means of judging what 460k concurrent players would look like. I did say its not accurate but then again the same inaccuracies can be found in both games. Sure some players might not take the FATE shortcut but then again not everyone will take part in an invasion. Its not like WvW is empty or there are no dungeon groups running because of invasions. Its not like people dont do dynamic events or world boses because of invasions. You can even find people playing mini games while an invasion is running. Yet the difference in players is astounding. I am saying orders of magnitude here.

No the value given last year was 400k not 460k… the 460k was mentioned last week for the first time but we were given no context on when it happened. It could have happened last year or last week… in any case they decided not to mentioned until the collective 1 year of gw2 press release. Saying it happened at the start is no more or less speculation then saying it happened last week. We simply dont know.

No they’re not. 300k concurrent players would be a worth number but not one worthy of mention after you reported a bigger number previously.

Galen Grey.4709:

I m not comparing games or saying one is successful or not… I am using events that focus players as means of judging what 460k concurrent players would look like. I did say its not accurate but then again the same inaccuracies can be found in both games. Sure some players might not take the FATE shortcut but then again not everyone will take part in an invasion. Its not like WvW is empty or there are no dungeon groups running because of invasions. Its not like people dont do dynamic events or world boses because of invasions. You can even find people playing mini games while an invasion is running. Yet the difference in players is astounding. I am saying orders of magnitude here.

No the value given last year was 400k not 460k… the 460k was mentioned last week for the first time but we were given no context on when it happened. It could have happened last year or last week… in any case they decided not to mentioned until the collective 1 year of gw2 press release. Saying it happened at the start is no more or less speculation then saying it happened last week. We simply dont know.

No they’re not. 300k concurrent players would be a worth number but not one worthy of mention after you reported a bigger number previously.

The number given last year was not 400k, but it was over 400k. They now gave a more specific number but it’s still about last year.

It’s common for MMOs to have a spike in the beginning and then it drops. It’s not unusual and also GW2 is not immune to that. 300k would be a worthy number because it’s very high for a game that’s been out for a year.

If that 460k was recent they’d definitely emphasized it but they haven’t. The silly thing is that you have these pink glasses on to look through and it’s not even necessary. The game is doing well enough but not as well as you claim.

When sales drop to a less than 30% than the previous quarter and you know that many people will leave as they do in any game, there is no reasonable basis for your assumptions. You are right, no one has exact numbers but I am telling you, we don’t have any current numbers on concurrency and it’s simply not reasonable in any shape or form to assume that the 460k was not around the start of the game when it was reported to be OVER 400k.

It’s just not realistic to assume the 460k came later as a second peak. Not realistic at all.
Now you doggedly want to believe something, that’s your choice, but you have nothing more than your wish to support that.

Vayne.8563:

Though I agree some things Anet have done weren’t well done, I say to you what I used to say to the management training class I used to teach. As a manager you’re literally going to make hundreds of decisions a day. Ten percent of them will probably be wrong. No one is perfect. The trick of being a good manager is to stand by what you’ve decided and work it through so you minimize long term damage with your mistakes.
.

As a manager for a company, I have to say I love what you said right there. It’s completely true.

Bravo.

Piecekeeper.4361:

Vayne.8563:

Though I agree some things Anet have done weren’t well done, I say to you what I used to say to the management training class I used to teach. As a manager you’re literally going to make hundreds of decisions a day. Ten percent of them will probably be wrong. No one is perfect. The trick of being a good manager is to stand by what you’ve decided and work it through so you minimize long term damage with your mistakes.
.

As a manager for a company, I have to say I love what you said right there. It’s completely true.

Bravo.

Sadly it seems more managers are interested in covering their rear ends and pointing at others to blame instead of taking responsibility for the mistakes that you make.

But in essence I do agree with that statement, just wish there were more good managers by that definition

Galen Grey.4709:

Small game? 3.5m copies sold in a year makes it a small MMO? Over $189m profits in the first year of its operation. If what analysis call the fastest selling MMO in history is a small game what is a medium mmo or a large mmo ?

It’s that old circular argument again….

1) How many PLAYERS, not sales. Those numbers are without question very different, or they would definitely be tooting their horn on how many active players they have. It’s small in terms of the active player base. And not much more than SW:TOR sold in its first year.

2) Remember, it’s the fastest* selling MMO… emphasis on the asterisk.

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

NCsoft financial reports, as they do not break out profitability by game, only sales revenue.

Do we think GW2 cost just $40m to make or something? Including all development costs, infrastructure capital (and ongoing), support and marketing?

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

NCsoft financial reports, as they do not break out profitability by game, only sales revenue.

Do we think GW2 cost just $40m to make or something? Including all development costs, infrastructure capital (and ongoing), support and marketing?

Do we think GW2 has to make all the money spent in first 3 quarters? Nope. Look at 2-5 years span on ROI.

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

NCsoft financial reports, as they do not break out profitability by game, only sales revenue.

Do we think GW2 cost just $40m to make or something? Including all development costs, infrastructure capital (and ongoing), support and marketing?

No. Where did you pull that 40 million? The sales for GW2 from launch are around 200 million USD (230B korean), which after taking out the post-launch salaries, box making costs (considering at least 50% would be digital copies), infrastructure (dirt cheap today, btw) and marketing should leave a lot more than 40m under the black line.

In fact, the only indicator we have is that they seem to have about 35% profit margin after everything, which would indicate GW2 has made them around 80B korean so far IF we would ignore the fact they have development costs for games that are not bringing any profit yet. So the real net profit from GW2 is probably more than 80B so far.

Now if that’s enough to cover the development costs or not, we will probably never know.

MikaHR.1978:

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

NCsoft financial reports, as they do not break out profitability by game, only sales revenue.

Do we think GW2 cost just $40m to make or something? Including all development costs, infrastructure capital (and ongoing), support and marketing?

Do we think GW2 has to make all the money spent in first 3 quarters? Nope. Look at 2-5 years span on ROI.

I’m not denying that, but some others don’t seem to understand what shouting “profitable” really means. I was correcting the

If you take what they made in the last 3 months, figure out on the average how many boxes they have sold per month since January minus 3 months worth of that from the last 3 months, and then divide the remaining number by 3 months, and then divide that by $15, and you see that GW2 has been making sales that is equivalent to 508,000 subscribers paying $15 a month. According to some reports by Free to Play MMO developers over the years, a small portion of the active players spend money, and of the players that do spend money a very small portion of them spends more then $15 a month. Now at 460,000 concurrent players on at once, would mean that 1.84 Million were active (about 20% of the active players play during the peak times, the busiest times of the day, which is a 4 hour period, and the other 80% play at random times some where in the other 20 hours of the day).

Even then lets say there are only 300,000 peak concurrent, that would mean 1.5 Million active players, and that would mean ~ one third of them are spending about $15 a month.

Gehenna.3625:

The number given last year was not 400k, but it was over 400k. They now gave a more specific number but it’s still about last year.

It’s common for MMOs to have a spike in the beginning and then it drops. It’s not unusual and also GW2 is not immune to that. 300k would be a worthy number because it’s very high for a game that’s been out for a year.

If that 460k was recent they’d definitely emphasized it but they haven’t. The silly thing is that you have these pink glasses on to look through and it’s not even necessary. The game is doing well enough but not as well as you claim.

When sales drop to a less than 30% than the previous quarter and you know that many people will leave as they do in any game, there is no reasonable basis for your assumptions. You are right, no one has exact numbers but I am telling you, we don’t have any current numbers on concurrency and it’s simply not reasonable in any shape or form to assume that the 460k was not around the start of the game when it was reported to be OVER 400k.

It’s just not realistic to assume the 460k came later as a second peak. Not realistic at all.
Now you doggedly want to believe something, that’s your choice, but you have nothing more than your wish to support that.

and yet today we got this post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/JonPeters-and-other-Devs/first#post2758406

Which I quote

“We’ve had some great successes this year, the total PvP population has gone up tremendously as the year has progressed and is much larger than Gw1’s PvP ever was at it’s height, which is nice to see since the game hasn’t launched in half the world yet.”

How many people you find in the forum claiming the PvP scene in Gw2 is dead? That it doesnt hold a candle to what Gw1 had? turns out its actually bigger.

At first I was sure Colin included WvW in that statement but it turns out its not the case either!

“People tend to play in different places in Gw2, hot join, solo and team queue and custom arenas combined account for a much larger population than GvG/Team/Random/HA arena ever had most of the time. This doesn’t include WvW, which population wise blows the roof off on top of this.”

To add to that there is this too
“Extra fun fact: the population of WvW who plays any given week regularly is larger than the entire population of all of Gw1 the game any given week for a large chunk of the games lifespan. Just want to put things in perspective, Gw1 was amazing, but there is a reason we made Gw2.”

Of course none of this means Gw2 has millions of players but I who am optimistic about the game would have thought gw1 had a more active PvP scene. (excluding WvW) turns out that wasnt the case. While it doesnt prove anything defentively I think it at least proves the game population isnt really that small !

Zeldain.5710:

Galen Grey.4709:

Small game? 3.5m copies sold in a year makes it a small MMO? Over $189m profits in the first year of its operation. If what analysis call the fastest selling MMO in history is a small game what is a medium mmo or a large mmo ?

It’s that old circular argument again….

1) How many PLAYERS, not sales. Those numbers are without question very different, or they would definitely be tooting their horn on how many active players they have. It’s small in terms of the active player base. And not much more than SW:TOR sold in its first year.

2) Remember, it’s the fastest* selling MMO… emphasis on the asterisk.

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Its true 3.5 million players alone doesnt mean anything if most of them left. But did they? Today we’re told PvP scene in Gw2 right now is larger then it ever was in Gw1 … that has a to be a good sign I guess. They got a lot of critisim PvP in Gw2 is much worst then it ever was in Gw1 yet before today they never tooted their horn that hey its larger here then it was there and hey its increasing more and more!

Thing is loose if you do and loose if you dont. If they dont advertise their success then its taken as a clear sign that the game isnt doing good. Yet for their 1 year anniversary they released some numbers and they get accused of bragging.

Sorry I dont get the emphases on the * … can you rephrase that?

by all accounts being which accounts? how do you know?

Zeldain.5710:

MikaHR.1978:

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

NCsoft financial reports, as they do not break out profitability by game, only sales revenue.

Do we think GW2 cost just $40m to make or something? Including all development costs, infrastructure capital (and ongoing), support and marketing?

Do we think GW2 has to make all the money spent in first 3 quarters? Nope. Look at 2-5 years span on ROI.

I’m not denying that, but some others don’t seem to understand what shouting “profitable” really means. I was correcting the

If you remember a time where it was rumored that swtor cost $300m to make and EA rebutting that and analysis estimating the cost was around $80m I think its probably quite likely Gw2 already made its development costs back.

I have no clue what they are, its total speculation on my part but people seriously.. $189m is a lot of money!

eisberg.2379:

If you take what they made in the last 3 months, figure out on the average how many boxes they have sold per month since January minus 3 months worth of that from the last 3 months, and then divide the remaining number by 3 months, and then divide that by $15, and you see that GW2 has been making sales that is equivalent to 508,000 subscribers paying $15 a month. According to some reports by Free to Play MMO developers over the years, a small portion of the active players spend money, and of the players that do spend money a very small portion of them spends more then $15 a month. Now at 460,000 concurrent players on at once, would mean that 1.84 Million were active (about 20% of the active players play during the peak times, the busiest times of the day, which is a 4 hour period, and the other 80% play at random times some where in the other 20 hours of the day).

Even then lets say there are only 300,000 peak concurrent, that would mean 1.5 Million active players, and that would mean ~ one third of them are spending about $15 a month.

Hehe… no, there are not 1.8 million players active in this game. Not even close.

People are REALLY not understanding what that concurrency number means.

That was PEAK. It was the HIGHEST. It happened ONE TIME to measure.

They need to either report: active players (logging in once per month) or average concurrency monthly.

Only then will we know how many players are actually playing this game.

Galen Grey.4709:

Zeldain.5710:

MikaHR.1978:

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

NCsoft financial reports, as they do not break out profitability by game, only sales revenue.

Do we think GW2 cost just $40m to make or something? Including all development costs, infrastructure capital (and ongoing), support and marketing?

Do we think GW2 has to make all the money spent in first 3 quarters? Nope. Look at 2-5 years span on ROI.

I’m not denying that, but some others don’t seem to understand what shouting “profitable” really means. I was correcting the

If you remember a time where it was rumored that swtor cost $300m to make and EA rebutting that and analysis estimating the cost was around $80m I think its probably quite likely Gw2 already made its development costs back.

I have no clue what they are, its total speculation on my part but people seriously.. $189m is a lot of money!

Exactly my point… even if SW:TOR cost $300m, they didn’t have to make it back in the first 3 months! They were on track toward ROI within a year or two though… so when the EA CEO talked about breaking even at 500k subscribers, you have to take that into consideration for similar numbers for GW2.

Even if it’s half of that thanks to ArenaNet’s magical ability to produce things with half of the staff and no infrastructure costs, 250k players doesn’t sound all that far off from what GW2 probably has right now – and that would mean 100% of them would have to be spending money every month in the cash shop.

Vayne.8563:

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

Your comments about an expansion don’t make much sense from a business perspective.

Right now, Anet is giving away content every 2 weeks. They’d sell an expansion. MMOs often come out with expansions when there’s less interest in their game to bring people back to the game and to get some more money to fund future development. The fact that Anet isn’t doing an expansion is evidence of the fact that they’re doing okay.

I suspect a good percentage of their profits are from the cash shop.

Expansions take time develop. If they wait until there is less interest in their game to start on it, it’ll be woefully late. It would be smart to start that work at the height of their popularity instead of working on it later while they are falling into obscurity.

darkdomino.9578:

Seems like everyone has an opinion on this subject, and I’m curious to know if anyone has any solid factual evidence either which way…

Some people say that GW2 is losing money, that 400,000 active players at any given time is considered “low” for the industry… and that GW2 doesn’t have the cashflow to produce the kind of expansion-pack level content that people are asking for. (and by expansion-pack grade content, I mean new zones, new classes/races, new storylines – not just mini-events)

Other people seem to think that A-net is doing just fine, and has plenty of money coming in from the gemstore and box sales. I read an interview by one of the big buys at A-net and he basically said that the “market was healthy” and that they had no cashflow problems. He also said something to the effect that the Black Lion Trading Post was profitable and that “players were doing their duty” as far as microtransactions go.

Anyway – I’m curious to know what people think about this…. The disconnect for me is that if A-net has the money to produce large-scale content for GW2 and isn’t … why? If they don’t have the money, or willingness to re-invest in GW2 in a meaningful way… what’s the future of GW2?

People often hold up GW2’s free2play model as one of the best/fairest in the industry… is the model working? If so, when can we expect actual meaningful content, such as Guild Halls, new gameplay mechanics, new classes/races?

I am not a expert but from reading the NCSoft’s financials, this is how much revenue they gained from GW2:

2012 – $165M
1st Q 2013 – $36M
2nd Q 2013 – $29M

Total so far is $230M

Zeldain.5710:

eisberg.2379:

If you take what they made in the last 3 months, figure out on the average how many boxes they have sold per month since January minus 3 months worth of that from the last 3 months, and then divide the remaining number by 3 months, and then divide that by $15, and you see that GW2 has been making sales that is equivalent to 508,000 subscribers paying $15 a month. According to some reports by Free to Play MMO developers over the years, a small portion of the active players spend money, and of the players that do spend money a very small portion of them spends more then $15 a month. Now at 460,000 concurrent players on at once, would mean that 1.84 Million were active (about 20% of the active players play during the peak times, the busiest times of the day, which is a 4 hour period, and the other 80% play at random times some where in the other 20 hours of the day).

Even then lets say there are only 300,000 peak concurrent, that would mean 1.5 Million active players, and that would mean ~ one third of them are spending about $15 a month.

Hehe… no, there are not 1.8 million players active in this game. Not even close.

People are REALLY not understanding what that concurrency number means.

That was PEAK. It was the HIGHEST. It happened ONE TIME to measure.

They need to either report: active players (logging in once per month) or average concurrency monthly.

Only then will we know how many players are actually playing this game.

You’re concurrency numbers alone cant tell you the amount of active players especially if we dont even know what time period they’re of.

However mind explaining to me how those co-currency numbers prove that the game has no where close to 1.8m players? Cause its interesting how easy you are to refute evidence used to positive statements but have no trouble using that evidence to support negative statements.

Zeldain.5710:

Galen Grey.4709:

Zeldain.5710:

MikaHR.1978:

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

NCsoft financial reports, as they do not break out profitability by game, only sales revenue.

Do we think GW2 cost just $40m to make or something? Including all development costs, infrastructure capital (and ongoing), support and marketing?

Do we think GW2 has to make all the money spent in first 3 quarters? Nope. Look at 2-5 years span on ROI.

I’m not denying that, but some others don’t seem to understand what shouting “profitable” really means. I was correcting the

If you remember a time where it was rumored that swtor cost $300m to make and EA rebutting that and analysis estimating the cost was around $80m I think its probably quite likely Gw2 already made its development costs back.

I have no clue what they are, its total speculation on my part but people seriously.. $189m is a lot of money!

Exactly my point… even if SW:TOR cost $300m, they didn’t have to make it back in the first 3 months! They were on track toward ROI within a year or two though… so when the EA CEO talked about breaking even at 500k subscribers, you have to take that into consideration for similar numbers for GW2.

Even if it’s half of that thanks to ArenaNet’s magical ability to produce things with half of the staff and no infrastructure costs, 250k players doesn’t sound all that far off from what GW2 probably has right now – and that would mean 100% of them would have to be spending money every month in the cash shop.

Ehh I think you didnt read my post. I said it didnt cost $300m, thats what players came up which was wrong officially stated wrong. Analysist estimate the cost at $80m Pretty sure Swtor was way more exensive then Gw2 to make so if analysists are correct Gw2 would have made its development cost back out of the pre-orders alone.

250k players is what you think gw2 has right now? So each and every player playing the game in your opinion is spending $100 per quarter? dont you think thats slightly high? In free to play games 5% – 10% of the people spend money. This being buy to play will have a higher percentage no doubt since clearly every players is willing to pay something but still 100% ? Dont believe it. I dont spend money on the game every single month. And the amount I do pay is much less then $100 per quarter. Do you spend $100 per quarter? Do you know anyone? I think you’re underestimating quite a bit the number of players that still play this game.

Zeldain.5710:

eisberg.2379:

If you take what they made in the last 3 months, figure out on the average how many boxes they have sold per month since January minus 3 months worth of that from the last 3 months, and then divide the remaining number by 3 months, and then divide that by $15, and you see that GW2 has been making sales that is equivalent to 508,000 subscribers paying $15 a month. According to some reports by Free to Play MMO developers over the years, a small portion of the active players spend money, and of the players that do spend money a very small portion of them spends more then $15 a month. Now at 460,000 concurrent players on at once, would mean that 1.84 Million were active (about 20% of the active players play during the peak times, the busiest times of the day, which is a 4 hour period, and the other 80% play at random times some where in the other 20 hours of the day).

Even then lets say there are only 300,000 peak concurrent, that would mean 1.5 Million active players, and that would mean ~ one third of them are spending about $15 a month.

Hehe… no, there are not 1.8 million players active in this game. Not even close.

People are REALLY not understanding what that concurrency number means.

That was PEAK. It was the HIGHEST. It happened ONE TIME to measure.

They need to either report: active players (logging in once per month) or average concurrency monthly.

Only then will we know how many players are actually playing this game.

Fine, that 460,000 people that were logged on at one time, was about 20% of the people that played throughout that whole day.

Galen Grey.4709:

Small game? 3.5m copies sold in a year makes it a small MMO? Over $189m profits in the first year of its operation. If what analysis call the fastest selling MMO in history is a small game what is a medium mmo or a large mmo ?

Not profits, sales. And a tad over $200 million USD in sales (230,135 million KrW). Hate it when people exchange sales with profits. There is no data on profits. Not even on the subsidiaries anymore.

@Gehenna – The 70% drop is sales was from 4Q to 1Q, or from post launch and holiday game sales to an increasing amount of Gem sales. We know they had 3 million game sales in early January and at the one year mark it’s now only 3.5 million, that shows the drop off of game sale income quite clearly.

darkdomino.9578:

Seems like everyone has an opinion on this subject, and I’m curious to know if anyone has any solid factual evidence either which way…

Some people say that GW2 is losing money, that 400,000 active players at any given time is considered “low” for the industry… and that GW2 doesn’t have the cashflow to produce the kind of expansion-pack level content that people are asking for. (and by expansion-pack grade content, I mean new zones, new classes/races, new storylines – not just mini-events)

Other people seem to think that A-net is doing just fine, and has plenty of money coming in from the gemstore and box sales. I read an interview by one of the big buys at A-net and he basically said that the “market was healthy” and that they had no cashflow problems. He also said something to the effect that the Black Lion Trading Post was profitable and that “players were doing their duty” as far as microtransactions go.

Anyway – I’m curious to know what people think about this…. The disconnect for me is that if A-net has the money to produce large-scale content for GW2 and isn’t … why? If they don’t have the money, or willingness to re-invest in GW2 in a meaningful way… what’s the future of GW2?

People often hold up GW2’s free2play model as one of the best/fairest in the industry… is the model working? If so, when can we expect actual meaningful content, such as Guild Halls, new gameplay mechanics, new classes/races?

How are guild halls meaningful?