Guild Wars 2

You don’t have to look far

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ArenaNet-Reviews-E255820_P2.htm?filter.employmentStatus=REGULAR&filter.employmentStatus=PART_TIME&filter.employmentStatus=UNKNOWN

Now you know why they aren’t doing so good and are so reluctant to give answers.

Interesting, though a big part of the negative reviews are from middle of the year.

Let’s think back to what was going on back then…

- GW2 f2p no reward fiasko
- HoT pricing

The mood was at an all-time low. The poor management complaint goes futherback though, while the overall mood middle of 2014 was brigther.

Let’s hope Wintersday and new year bring some more order to the chaos.

Chronic understaffing, unreasonably ambitious schedules and product development cycles. Steady increase in number and scope of projects, and in quality expectations, but no increase in staff.

This seems to be the biggest offender, it’s also something that the community has been pointing out for a long time especially since HoT launch.

Reading over many of those it seems like there’s a lot of micromanagement of the creative talent. I think anyone with common sense can see why this is bad management. CEO also seems to be focusing on roles that CEO’s are not supposed to be focused on.(details vs long term strategy)

Interesting………………….

So the culprit is Mike O’Brian? Interesting…

Am sure soon one of the white knights will come in soon and go on about how only disgruntled people post such reviews and all the happy people don’t.

Yes. Me.

That stuff is on The Internet and as such needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. That same site was quoted numerous times in the Neverwinter forums as “evidence” of how rubbish the company was, or had become. You didn’t have to be a genius to spot the bogus entries that were made by players rather than (ex-)employees.

Think about what would motivate someone to post a review of their (ex-)employer on a website and about the category of person who would do so.
I’m not saying it is all sweetness and light at ANet. I am saying that there is no way a review site like that is ever going to give a balanced view of a company.

(Hands up anyone who thinks that this GW forum gives a true representation of player sentiment as a whole…)

What the good doctor before me said. Also, I would like to point out that Rockstar for example have a significantly lower score to Anet. Yet GTA V is kind of awesome. And Irrational have a 3.0!

Point is, yes, it is worrisome satisfaction is going downhill, but people generally go on the internet to complain. Point in case, this forum.

Still, as I said, it is somewhat worrisome. By no means does this spell a bad future for GW2, but it does hint at a potential for a bad future.

DoctorDing.5890:

Yes. Me.

That stuff is on The Internet and as such needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. That same site was quoted numerous times in the Neverwinter forums as “evidence” of how rubbish the company was, or had become. You didn’t have to be a genius to spot the bogus entries that were made by players rather than (ex-)employees.

Think about what would motivate someone to post a review of their (ex-)employer on a website and about the category of person who would do so.
I’m not saying it is all sweetness and light at ANet. I am saying that there is no way a review site like that is ever going to give a balanced view of a company.

(Hands up anyone who thinks that this GW forum gives a true representation of player sentiment as a whole…)

I see a lot of posts from people with valid complaints, I see some happy posts, in game you get the same, and you get the people who don’t care. I’m, for the most part in the do not care camp. I’d like things to be better, and I’ll stay away from the parts of the game I don’t like all that much, (HoT). It’s Anet job to work for my money, so fare they have had £50 ish this year from me. The last few years they had considerably more. Until things make me happy again, Anet will not get my money, no matter how much I might want things in the gem store.

People who are enjoying their employment, or enjoyed and moved on, won’t go onto some random website on the Internet to post about their positive or unbiased experience and review. People however do when they wanna complain. Also the system is probably subject to abuse by bogus people making falsified claims. After all, some people want to watch the world burn.

DoctorDing.5890:

Yes. Me.

That stuff is on The Internet and as such needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. That same site was quoted numerous times in the Neverwinter forums as “evidence” of how rubbish the company was, or had become. You didn’t have to be a genius to spot the bogus entries that were made by players rather than (ex-)employees.

Think about what would motivate someone to post a review of their (ex-)employer on a website and about the category of person who would do so.
I’m not saying it is all sweetness and light at ANet. I am saying that there is no way a review site like that is ever going to give a balanced view of a company.

(Hands up anyone who thinks that this GW forum gives a true representation of player sentiment as a whole…)

For the most part, I agree. It’s worth noting that even the positive reviews had some of the same cons as the mostly negative ones though. The only completely positive reviews seemed to be from people who hadn’t worked there very long.

…I expected something like that. Look… i know that there are sooo many talented devs at a-net that if they are allowed to bring epicness to the table that just gives you that warm feeling…ya know the feeling when you play a game that you love. They do so many amazing things that make you go “kitten yes”….but then all of a sudden you got something extremely questionable in the mix where you ask yourself just “why… would you do this?”. Seeing these reviews made it to me pretty obvios where the worm hides under the bark… lets leave it at this. I as costumer cant change a thing there…but i can let the devs who are reading this by chance know that i personally understand their situation a bit better now and that i personally highly appreciate all the nice things…even if they really went sparse for me personally since 1,5 years now.

Of course ill keep complaining and ranting about what i dont like…but be aware, i appreciate the nice things.

The impression that I am getting is, Anet is dishing out medicine, and it sucks and tastes awful, and some people will want to stick it to the man for making such awful tasting stuff, and the will to hide behind a flame shield is strong. Who would you send out into the furnace to die? Every word you use will be used against you in a forum of public humiliation. Even though these forums are moderated, such moderation can be used against them.

Even I can see that they want to do this and kitten everything else. Nothing will deter them from victory, and maybe later down the road, we may for example, get a slider to turn those effects up. But not after a couple years of misery for the sake of a few. Not unless they win us over to the idea of less being more, with more than a pitiful tiny spark for a fireball, and an aura that is almost invisible and hard to discern.

knew that their old devs left but just don’t know how many remains

not supirisng actually, given that the game itself has shown a lot of hints how bad the overall planning is despite how much potential the game had, just do not know why the planning is this bad and i guess we got some hints as of why now

DoctorDing.5890:

Yes. Me.

That stuff is on The Internet and as such needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. That same site was quoted numerous times in the Neverwinter forums as “evidence” of how rubbish the company was, or had become. You didn’t have to be a genius to spot the bogus entries that were made by players rather than (ex-)employees.

Think about what would motivate someone to post a review of their (ex-)employer on a website and about the category of person who would do so.
I’m not saying it is all sweetness and light at ANet. I am saying that there is no way a review site like that is ever going to give a balanced view of a company.

(Hands up anyone who thinks that this GW forum gives a true representation of player sentiment as a whole…)

I’m sorry to say this but how how the game state is right now and how Anet represents here in the forums is a good idea about those reviews at that website are probably true.

I went through the pages and most of them were positive.
But the ones that were negative seemed to focus on the company’s leadership, it’s future and work/life balance. That last one hits home for me. It makes me think of some of the places I’ve worked at in the past. Bad memories.
That is kind of a big deal.

The disorganization, quarter finished “things” and lack of direction can clearly be seen in patch being implemented…

Look at these things…

An ultra mini raid path with bosses designed take up 200 hours for most to figure out how to beat… The raid is designed as a “keep them busy until we get more made” gate, not a “we want players to have fun” gate.

No dungeon staff now…

A single new wvw map while they play catch up with all the other systems…

Only 3 legendaries… 3. That’s an average of 1 per year so far…

Announced legendary armor with raids but no legendary armor in game. Not even a preview…

You can’t color back pieces and weapons…

A single infusion with an aura…

Meaningful core profession and combat mechanics development are nonexistent, and updates consist of tooltip fixes, below minor number tweeks and nothing else substantial. I’m honestly amazed we got these elite specializations…

Patch notes don’t lie people, and those reviews are much closer to the “truths”. This game needs to be steered on a better course and the devs need to be allowed to create fully finished “products”. They should also hire more contracted staff until certain projects are complete, instead of doing things like pulling teams of engineers to one project while ten other projects gather dust and ultimately never see the light of day…

I’m sad when I read this because I’ve seen another game series I loved fail because of a bad direction, management and leadership. And yes, it was Diablo 3’s Jay Wilson.

DoctorDing.5890:

Yes. Me.

That stuff is on The Internet and as such needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. That same site was quoted numerous times in the Neverwinter forums as “evidence” of how rubbish the company was, or had become. You didn’t have to be a genius to spot the bogus entries that were made by players rather than (ex-)employees.

Think about what would motivate someone to post a review of their (ex-)employer on a website and about the category of person who would do so.
I’m not saying it is all sweetness and light at ANet. I am saying that there is no way a review site like that is ever going to give a balanced view of a company.

(Hands up anyone who thinks that this GW forum gives a true representation of player sentiment as a whole…)

While it should be taken in perspective, I will say that my experience with Glassdoor reviews and companies in my area, particularly in the tech sector, is that the reviews paint a fairly accurate snapshot of corporate culture, problems in specific departments, benefits, and leadership at a specific point in time.

For each disgruntled person who leaves a scathing review, there’s usually an HR person posting or asking someone in the company to post a positive one. Yes, it happens all the time. A lot of HR departments are VERY aware of their Glassdoor rating. Now, do the scathing reviews or highlighted problems mean that a company is failing at its product or service? Nope. Does it mean that’s how the company is at the current time? Nope. Does it mean it’s a bad company to work for? Not that either.

If you look over enough Glassdoor reviews, you will also notice very similar themes with a majority of companies, particularly if looking in the same industry and location or if looking at a company that has gone through any leadership or ownership changes.

In general though, my experience is that the Glassdoor reviews aren’t a good indicator of current employee productivity & satisfaction, product quality, or company success.

I will also say this…

Tight knit studios like the old guild wars 1 arenanet and paragon studious, who worked on city of heroes, really created some absolutely amazing awesome things… Both the old anet and paragon studious were far from perfect, but you could see much more blood, sweat and tears flowing from the top, and that helped inspire the rest of the soldiers…

True leaders lead from the front, not behind. I think there needs to be a change in mentality from the top to make this happen. If the top would focus more on supporting their development team properly to help produce better stuff for us customers, then they would naturally see bigger green numbers on their monthly and quarters reports… If this were to happen, then everybody wins right?

They need to get rid of this terrible policy. It is gonna hurt them in the long run.

To the management, I highly suggest you to take notes from Obsidian Entertainment, Grinding Gear Games or CD Projekt.

xbutcherx.3861:

So the culprit is Mike O’Brian? Interesting…

Its not that interesting, Its been known for quite some time.

These kinds of reviews have been around pretty much.. since soon after GW2 launched. They’ve all sounded about the same; ‘management management management’.

The game in general started out as the best thing ever and since launch the direction felt like finding creative innovative new ways to make the game worse, with some few blips of success of course, but.. overall.

My own extremely minimal interaction with A.net:
I wont say when/what set, because I dont want to get anyone in trouble or somethin, but I had some new BLC weapons on a character and was showing them to a dev friend that did art from my understanding. They asked how to get them, I explained, their response ‘are you serious? thats awful’. I mean.. that could mean a lot of things, but from what Ive read and heard their art department(s) is prolly the best place to work there.

And meanwhile Steve Fowler is throwing 300k$ (a wild math on the total cost of tournement) per tournement, while they could use that money to hire new (GOOD and non leaving!!!!) people to improve the state of the game, and cohesion.

But nope, lets waste money on e-sports when the gam has been in it’s worst e-sport state ever. If you waste so much on E-sport tournement Steve Fowler you do it at least after a balance patch, and when the new people, devs of the team are confortable in their new position. This is absolutely not the case right now. Epic fail (my opinion).

I’m with the people who say you need to consider the source here – the type of people who are leaving these reviews and when they are leaving them. For the most part it’s people who have left, or are just about to leave, the company.

Maybe I have a different perspective though because I can easily compare it to my own situation, having recently left my first ever permanent full-time job. When I started at that place 4 years ago it was amazing – it was exactly the job I wanted and a brilliant opportunity to progress my career. By the time I left I was honestly glad to be out of there (and many of my co-workers who started at the same time as me are saying they wish they could leave too) and I admit I had some fairly major criticisms to make when they asked for feedback.

Now here’s the crazy part: the job and the organisation had not really changed at all in that time, and the changes they did make were mostly positive.

What changed was mostly me. A lot can happen in 4 years, especially when it’s your first 4 years with a permanent, full-time job. What was an amazing opportunity for someone just starting out in their career became a stifling environment where I was constantly frustrated by a lack of opportunity to really use and develop my skills. And having been with the organisation long-term I could see where things weren’t really working much more clearly than when I first started and it was more frustrating when I couldn’t change it.

I don’t regret working there at all, I’m genuinely proud of the work they did and that I did with them, and I’m confident they’re going to go on to do great things in future. It just doesn’t mesh with the things I want to do in the future any more.

But if I’d left one of these reviews when I left it would be very, very different to one from when I started, or even just before I decided I should leave. And I imagine the same will be true when I come to leave my current job.

Daharahj.1325:

Chronic understaffing, unreasonably ambitious schedules and product development cycles. Steady increase in number and scope of projects, and in quality expectations, but no increase in staff.

This seems to be the biggest offender, it’s also something that the community has been pointing out for a long time especially since HoT launch.

My interpretation of the communities complaints has been the complete opposite.

The most common complaints I’ve seen recently are that they should not have stopped the Living Story while developing HoT, there wasn’t enough content in HoT, they should make more armor and weapon skins to be available in-game, alongside the ones in the gem store, they should do balance patches much more frequently, they should fix all the bugs immediately (or at least before everything else), and they shouldn’t expect any more money (or any money at all) in return.

That sounds like expecting the staff to do a lot more work, in a shorter time frame, without funding for more staff.

Another thing to bear in mind is that people leaving is not in itself a sign of anything wrong with the company. Some industries have very high staff turn-over, even when companies are doing brilliantly, and it’s actually good for both the staff and the companies because it allows ideas and ways of working to move around with the people.

I was thinking when I wrote my post above that some people would think I was just unable to stick with anything – leaving a perfectly good job after just 4 years and already talking about leaving my new one. But in my industry that’s completely normal. If anything it’s unusual to stay in one role that long.

From the little I know of the games industry it’s the same, if not even more extreme. I have a few friends who work on games and it sometimes seems like every time I see them they’re working on something different. Especially the ones who are concept artists or what most people would think of as actual developers, because they’ll often be hired for 1 project and when it ends they move on to the next one, if the same company happens to have another project for them to do then that’s great, if not they’ll go somewhere else and no one thinks anything of it.

Danikat.8537:

…That sounds like expecting the staff to do a lot more work, in a shorter time frame, without funding for more staff.

Thats a fair statement. However I think the issue isnt as much on the common workers, but on mismanagement of them. Some of those reviews indicate massive waste of work due to lack of communication from departments and such.

Frik, I’d pay a gem paywall or something for legit content vs costumes and BLC skins. Feels like they only push that stuff so they can just barely pay off their employees who apparently are paid on the low end of the industry. If it was managed better and they focus’d more on a quality product, I dont think it’d be as necessary.

I think some of the telling things in there are:

Negatives:

Too much involvement (read; stranglehold) from upper management on things that they don’t need to care about – the CEO of a company with nearly 300 people does NOT need to be involved in the minutiae of the goings-on and should rely on their management team to be hands on/report to them if there is an issue.

Disconnect between core group and game/players. This is blatantly obvious with some of the Anet people we see on the forums and in game. While there are some people like Gaile (who I’ve run into in game several times and she’s always on top of everything), I once saw an Anet employee ask if it was possible to change the sigils in an exotic armor drop. Yes, they may have been new and still getting ahold of the game, but that is by no means the only example of a lack of understanding of basic game functions.

Communication. This is clear in the forums by itself. I’m going to bring up Gaile again as a near-model of communication with forum-goers because she is the Anet employee I see most frequently engaging with the community (I know she’s not the only one but hear me out). We all understand and, I think, could be much more forgiving of the fact that Anet employees are busy, and I think we need to work to be more appreciative of when they do come on the forums to show them that this is a welcome place and we LIKE hearing from them even if its bad news. At the same time, it’s clear from the reviews of actual employees that communication is not incentivized between members of the company let alone employees → players. This is an endemic problem that requires effort and willingness on the part of the decision makers (because a lack of communication in the corporation is solely a management issue). A company sinks or swims by its ability to get things done, and a company like Anet that’s product is an MMO quite literally requires communication with the customers to implement changes and upgrades that people want and that’s very hard to do without talking and engaging with us and each other. And I don’t mean like the tongue-in-cheek (borderline rude and callous) comments like Colin posts that are basically telling players that negative feedback is desiring GW2 to fail (don’t give us that kitten, none of us want GW2 to fail).

Positives:

While I do think it’s very important to have an old crew that know and believe in the roots of the game, it is very important to not become stagnant. These new people Anet have coming in have great ideas and want to contribute. Let them! This circles back to communication and the involvement issue I mentioned earlier. Let the individual teams discuss ideas and then let them do something with them. This kind of thing is where the Super Adventure Box came in, and the lack of it has been what has prevented SAB from coming back and the stubborn insistence of No Dungeons (seriously, we don’t really care about the monetary rewards, in fact I trust Anet when they say that it was bad for the in-game economy. But for the love of Rytlock, players love dungeons and a moratorium on all dungeon content is a TERRIBLE decision that shows exactly how much whoever made that decision understands what the players enjoy).

Diversity. It is always heartening to see a diverse crowd. Diverse backgrounds, mentalities, these lead to diverse ideas and a hotbed of creativity and dialogue. BUT YOU HAVE TO LET IT HAPPEN. It is pointless to have all this creative talent and not utilize it! GW2 was always willing to try new stuff and nearly all of it was something that we loved! The SAB, Fractals, WvW, Living Story, Activities, Elite Specializations, Adventures, etc. These all were experiments that Anet decided to give a chance and the majority of players love these things! We don’t want a cookie cutter MMO, we want the quirky, creative, and unique game that GW2 has been and can continue to be. Raids are great, and I love that they’ve been added in, but don’t focus on them to the exclusion of other potential content!

Closing notes: We want GW2 to succeed, Anet wants GW2 to succeed. We may differ on how we think success comes, but don’t for one second think that any of us want to see Anet or GW2 fail. It’s quite frankly insulting when an Anet employee #cough cough Colin cough cough# accuses us of something like that.

DoctorDing.5890:

(Hands up anyone who thinks that this GW forum gives a true representation of player sentiment as a whole…)

Well given we went from 5m sold to 1.5m monthly actives, then I’d say the last few disgruntled players who wish the game wasn’t going this way are a fair representation as 3.5m buyers left.

We’ve seen the numbers doubled thanks to F2P, maybe those people are Anet’s next target audience.

Seems to be their founder and CEO Mike O’Brien is the problem.

Sicarius.4639:

DoctorDing.5890:

(Hands up anyone who thinks that this GW forum gives a true representation of player sentiment as a whole…)

Well given we went from 5m sold to 1.5m monthly actives, then I’d say the last few disgruntled players who wish the game wasn’t going this way are a fair representation as 3.5m buyers left.

We’ve seen the numbers doubled thanks to F2P, maybe those people are Anet’s next target audience.

Where are you getting those numbers?

UnbentMars.9126:

Sicarius.4639:

DoctorDing.5890:

(Hands up anyone who thinks that this GW forum gives a true representation of player sentiment as a whole…)

Well given we went from 5m sold to 1.5m monthly actives, then I’d say the last few disgruntled players who wish the game wasn’t going this way are a fair representation as 3.5m buyers left.

We’ve seen the numbers doubled thanks to F2P, maybe those people are Anet’s next target audience.

Where are you getting those numbers?

Here: http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE

“Guild Wars 2 has proven pretty resilient historically, with about 1.5 million monthly actives,” SuperData Research CEO Joost van Dreunen says. “Since it switched to free-to-play in late August, Guild Wars 2’s monthly active user base has doubled to 3.1 million (October 2015)."

Cbomb.4310:

Danikat.8537:

…That sounds like expecting the staff to do a lot more work, in a shorter time frame, without funding for more staff.

Thats a fair statement. However I think the issue isnt as much on the common workers, but on mismanagement of them. Some of those reviews indicate massive waste of work due to lack of communication from departments and such.

Frik, I’d pay a gem paywall or something for legit content vs costumes and BLC skins. Feels like they only push that stuff so they can just barely pay off their employees who apparently are paid on the low end of the industry. If it was managed better and they focus’d more on a quality product, I dont think it’d be as necessary.

Sure you would. So would I (although I have to admit I like buying gem store items too.)

Meanwhile in another thread I was just reading a comment from someone who was complaining that Season 2 should never have been “locked behind a paywall” and it’s completely out of order to expect us to pay yet another fee for content when they obviously could fund the entire game through selling novelty items in the gem store.

It’s one of those situations where they’re never going to please everyone. Some people feel very strongly that they’d much rather developers focus solely on worthwhile content and they’re happy to wait and/or pay for it, while others feel equally strongly that if they can give away content for free that’s absolutely the best way to do it (I’ve even seen, on other games forums, people saying it’s an obligation to players to do so). Which one is right?

Sicarius.4639:

UnbentMars.9126:

Sicarius.4639:

DoctorDing.5890:

(Hands up anyone who thinks that this GW forum gives a true representation of player sentiment as a whole…)

Well given we went from 5m sold to 1.5m monthly actives, then I’d say the last few disgruntled players who wish the game wasn’t going this way are a fair representation as 3.5m buyers left.

We’ve seen the numbers doubled thanks to F2P, maybe those people are Anet’s next target audience.

Where are you getting those numbers?

Here: http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE

“Guild Wars 2 has proven pretty resilient historically, with about 1.5 million monthly actives,” SuperData Research CEO Joost van Dreunen says. “Since it switched to free-to-play in late August, Guild Wars 2’s monthly active user base has doubled to 3.1 million (October 2015)."

Thanks for the link! It’s always nice to see official announcements, and I’m actually pleased to see that the number is that high (it can seem a lot lower)

What’s the definition of 1.5 mil monthly actives? Logging in for 2 minutes once a month?

Shen Slayer.3058:

What’s the definition of 1.5 mil monthly actives? Logging in for 2 minutes once a month?

Yes.

Shen Slayer.3058:

What’s the definition of 1.5 mil monthly actives? Logging in for 2 minutes once a month?

Let’s do the math: 1.5m active players, let’s say 100k spend $20 on the gem store, that’s 2 millions a month, by the looks of how the game lack of everything I think is a lot less than that.
Conclusion: I do not think that not even 100k players are active, all lies!!
And I’m not including HoT pre and after sales.

xbutcherx.3861:

Shen Slayer.3058:

What’s the definition of 1.5 mil monthly actives? Logging in for 2 minutes once a month?

Let’s do the math: 1.5m active players, let’s say 100k spend $20 on the gem store, that’s 2 millions a month, by the looks of how the game lack of everything I think is a lot less than that.
Conclusion: I do not think that not even 100k players are active, all lies!!
And I’m not including HoT pre and after sales.

Let’s see. Baseless conjecture not grounded in anything except your personal assumptions. Must be accurate, since you clearly have access to better data than the owners of the actual game.

UnbentMars.9126:

xbutcherx.3861:

Shen Slayer.3058:

What’s the definition of 1.5 mil monthly actives? Logging in for 2 minutes once a month?

Let’s do the math: 1.5m active players, let’s say 100k spend $20 on the gem store, that’s 2 millions a month, by the looks of how the game lack of everything I think is a lot less than that.
Conclusion: I do not think that not even 100k players are active, all lies!!
And I’m not including HoT pre and after sales.

Let’s see. Baseless conjecture not grounded in anything except your personal assumptions. Must be accurate, since you clearly have access to better data than the owners of the actual game.

Play the game and that is your best personal assumptions, when the taxes become public then you can see it at NCsoft website since they are the ones paying the taxes.

Do you want numbers? I’ll show you http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/earnings.aspx?BID=&BC=2015

Download the PDF so you can see the numbers of 2015 Q3 earnings

xbutcherx.3861:

UnbentMars.9126:

xbutcherx.3861:

Shen Slayer.3058:

What’s the definition of 1.5 mil monthly actives? Logging in for 2 minutes once a month?

Let’s do the math: 1.5m active players, let’s say 100k spend $20 on the gem store, that’s 2 millions a month, by the looks of how the game lack of everything I think is a lot less than that.
Conclusion: I do not think that not even 100k players are active, all lies!!
And I’m not including HoT pre and after sales.

Let’s see. Baseless conjecture not grounded in anything except your personal assumptions. Must be accurate, since you clearly have access to better data than the owners of the actual game.

Play the game and that is your best personal assumptions, when the taxes become public then you can see it at NCsoft website since they are the ones paying the taxes.

I just looked at the Q3 reports, and they appear to be doing just fine, well over 2 million dollars in sales/month.

http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

You were saying?

EDIT: Oh, and also, not every consistent player buys something every month. So your “math” is quite literally just out of your kitten

This is why games bring in dailies, or a daily log in chest. So they can say ‘look at how many actives we have’.

Be a much more interesting statistic to see the average daily time per active logged in to the game- then eliminate the obvious bots (on 24/7) and see what the true user figure is.

Forgot to say, ‘active users’ is also a bit iffy- 5 of my accounts only log in to open a chest and grab the daily log in reward..do i count as 6 actives?

Well I was right and wrong at the same time, I will admit it.
This is a quote from GW2GURU
The new Quarterly earnings report for NCSoft has been released. You can go here to find it if you’re interested:

http://www.ncsoft.ne...r/earnings.aspx

In it, the tidings for GW2 could be described as “bleak”. Pre-royalty sales for the 3rd quarter were around $23 million, only slightly higher than that of Aion. Furthermore, the trend of declining sales of GW2 continues, and does so at a faster rate than the rates of change of NCSoft’s other big sellers (Aion, Linear 1, Lineage 2 and Blade and Soul all have relatively consistent sales).

More than that, the quarterly sales by Arenanet are now lower than that of any other division of NCSoft except NCSoft Taiwan, for the first time since GW2 was released.

Now, 3rd quarter sales figures are often on the weaker side, and GW2 is still making a profit, so there’s that. However, the sales figures support that, on average, Arenanet was bringing in slightly under $3.1 million per month in the last 3 months, BEFORE taxes and expenses, with a trend of decline.

In light of this, it would seem that the microtransaction model of GW2 is not proving to be an overwhelming success in the long term (though of course, this quarter could be an anomaly). Things will likely pick up in the 4th quarter, but how much it does will say quite a bit about the viability of Arenanet’s current practices.

Now you can understand why Anet is moving in this direction and why dungeon were abandoned?

Notsoperky.2348:

This is why games bring in dailies, or a daily log in chest. So they can say ‘look at how many actives we have’.

Wow, I didn’t see that until you mention it, it makes so much sense now. Anet is being pretty sneaky.

Expect this to get deleted, since it’s talking about an Anet employee by name in a not-positive fashion. (I don’t mean that in a tin foil hat way… it’s just how things go.)

As for the credibility of the source… use your own mind and decide for yourself. That’s the best advice I can give.

Every company has many that complain about whatever. How is what is on that website any different than what you’d find elsewhere? So based on the OP, any company that has bad reviews on there must be doing poorly?

That wasn’t just bad review, that was insiders talking, people that worked there.

Shen Slayer.3058:

That wasn’t just bad review, that was insiders talking, people that worked there.

Doesn’t matter. You think the reviews from all of the other companies don’t have people commenting who used to work there?

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

That wasn’t just bad review, that was insiders talking, people that worked there.

Doesn’t matter. You think the reviews from all of the other companies don’t have people commenting who used to work there?

Of course it matters and we are not talking about other companies. We are finally seeing where the disconnect internally and the end product of the expansion. Think about it…the disconnect between Anet employees is carried over with disconnect from players and expansion. Disgruntled employees and customers!

Shen Slayer.3058:

Ayrilana.1396:

Shen Slayer.3058:

That wasn’t just bad review, that was insiders talking, people that worked there.

Doesn’t matter. You think the reviews from all of the other companies don’t have people commenting who used to work there?

Of course it matters and we are not talking about other companies. We are finally seeing where the disconnect internally and the end product of the expansion. Think about it…the disconnect between Anet employees is carried over with disconnect from players and expansion. Disgruntled employees and customers!

From a few people and yes it does matter. People are treating those reviews as if it’s an indication that the company is performing poorly when practically every company is the same.

It’s not the presence of negative reviews that can mean something. It’s the details in those reviews that can potentially mean something.