Is GW2 as successful as you hoped?
2 million sales in just a month and you’re thinking this game did bad? What drugs are you on? Thats fantastic in the market industry and it’s a brand new MMO, not an expansion for a game people already know about. WoW didn’t become king instantaneously, dude.
I dont care how successful Guild Wars 2 is. If they have 100 servers or 1 server it does not affect me. As long as my server has people on it the game is thriving.
But
Guild Wars 2 is not the game promised. And initial sales mean nothing. Lots of people have been leaving GW2 due to bugs, DR, grinding and many other factors.
So no the question should be. Is Guild wars 2 everything you hoped it would be? The answer.. NO, far from it.
2 million sales in just a month and you’re thinking this game did bad? What drugs are you on? Thats fantastic in the market industry and it’s a brand new MMO, not an expansion for a game people already know about. WoW didn’t become king instantaneously, dude.
Please point me to where I said GW2 did bad? or that 2 million boxes sold was bad?
The point is, more people seem interested in the MMO that GW2 wanted to paint as stale/dying, etc.. and when more people purchase the old way, it should make you question the mission success of the new way (gw2).
To me, I do not see this game catching on, I think most of its sales have been made, and now players head back to their traditional MMOs.
The other unmentioned game already had a huge playerbase garnered over the years to draw from. GW2 has just started. Its not really a good comparison.
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You cannot make a sales comparison between these two games.
One is an expansion pack of a game that has been out for years; this game has been out for only one month (and it is a completely different game from it’s predecessors, so GW1 fans will not necessarily follow into its sequel). 2 million sold in 1 month is incredibly impressive to me, considering that the game is only just beginning.
And that’s exactly my point. Was everyone expecting it to be perfect upon release? Was everyone expecting it to be stock full of a ton of content right away? No. This game is going to have at least 4 more expansion packs (for each dragon). I didn’t come into this knowing that it was finished, and for that, I’m really enjoying it.
There are hordes of players who have been crying for progression. They’ve been told repeatedly by fanboys that this game isn’t about progression. So they went back to where they can find that. MoP has loads of endgame content. Those players will most likely be back to check out content patches, and Anet will have another chance to capture their attention (provide some meaningful progression).
A large percentage of the MMO crowd lives and breathes progression-based play. If it didn’t, WoW would not be the top MMO in the world.
The funny thing is, even some of those who say they hate it end up missing it when its gone.
If they can give me back my 30 stable FPS than YES. But playing with 15 FPS while still having the minimum rquirements NO..
What does the popularity of a game matter to my own enjoyment? I don’t give a kitten if Guild Wars 2 is the #1 MMO in the world or a quiet little hamlet home to underpopulated servers. Although by experience I imagine the game will fall somewhere in the middle.
First of all, let’s just be clear here. It’s not always a good thing to be the most popular, most widely played game in the world. Your priorities begin shifting. You become tethered to your massive, huge population and you have to start designing for a massive, mainstream player base, which leaves you far less capable of experimenting and innovating.
City of Heroes was one of my favorite games ever. It’s lasted a very, very long time and churned out two expansions and tons of major updates. A game like that should never have lasted as long as it did, but I enjoyed it, and the community (Virtue) was just large enough to support itself.
Is GW2 as successful as I hoped? Let’s see: It’s a fun, engaging game that’s kept me busy for hundreds of hours already. My friends and I are having a great time together in it. It doesn’t cost me a dime per month. The developers are talented and communicate frequently. So, yes, so far, it is exactly as successful as I’d hoped. Is it perfect? No. But I’m happy with it.
Ask that question 6 months from now. Polishing isn’t yet finished.
What does the popularity of a game matter to my own enjoyment? I don’t give a kitten if Guild Wars 2 is the #1 MMO in the world or a quiet little hamlet home to underpopulated servers.
It matters a lot actually, or at least it should.
If you enjoy a game, and it is not successful, investors and companies will look to other designs and you will see less of the type of game that you like.
On the flip side, if a game is highly successful, you will see a lot more of it.
The popularity of a game matters for future production of more games like that game. However, a lot of people are far too short sighted or self focused to realize things like this.
The title is a little misleading. I could care less how successful the game is. I just wanted a fun game that could keep my interest. Did it do that? Unfortunately no. I currently stopped playing for now but what I love is the fact it is free so I can just start playing again down the road.
The game itself is successful. Anyone who thought it was going to kill WoW or come close was delusional. No game since WoW has continued to gain months after launch and a couple years in WoW’s case. Since WoW, games seem to peak their first month and then takes a huge drop and levels off.
Some are growing again like LotR since going f2p, but they took a huge drop during its p2p time. GW2 there is no way to know because people won’t need to cancel subs. Only numbers you can go by is view peak time logins from launch to date. To see how the numbers are.
Either way the game itself was successful in sales imo, but successful for me in hopes I would still be playing it like I do WoW and ToR, no. Just couldn’t keep my interest. But that is just me and I know I will be back at some point to try it out again.
Ask that question 6 months from now. Polishing isn’t yet finished.
GW2 is not in beta right? its released, it should already be in a polished state. Arenanets thing was “we wont release it until its ready”. Well, its released, so either its ready… or they lied.
That being said, after 34 days (the omg gw2 is out rush) is already over, I don’t forsee the game taking off much more then it already has, from here its a decline. We will see in 6 months I guess.
Anyone who thought it was going to kill WoW or come close was delusional.
Arenanet themselves said that they would not be happy with GW2 unless they were #1, meaning, dethroned WoW.
They clearly have come no where close to that, but they certainly did think it was going to happen, or at least hoped very strongly enough to make a public announcement about it.
What does the popularity of a game matter to my own enjoyment? I don’t give a kitten if Guild Wars 2 is the #1 MMO in the world or a quiet little hamlet home to underpopulated servers.
It matters a lot actually, or at least it should.
If you enjoy a game, and it is not successful, investors and companies will look to other designs and you will see less of the type of game that you like.
On the flip side, if a game is highly successful, you will see a lot more of it.
The popularity of a game matters for future production of more games like that game. However, a lot of people are far too short sighted or self focused to realize things like this.
Right, but if you want to know whether a company is successfull or not, read their annual/quarterly report. Talking in a game-forum with selfproclaimed game-business-experts and comparing some numbers without looking at the whole picture will lead nowhere.
(edited by Pirlipat.2479)
Anyone who thought it was going to kill WoW or come close was delusional.
Arenanet themselves said that they would not be happy with GW2 unless they were #1, meaning, dethroned WoW.
They clearly have come no where close to that, but they certainly did think it was going to happen, or at least hoped very strongly enough to make a public announcement about it.
They said that? I guess they aren’t happy then because there is/was no way they would even come close to it. No mmo ever will. Heck I don’t even think Titan will. GW2 will likely be in the top 4 and stay for a long time yes, but #1? They were very delusional. Either way though GW2 was successful with 2 mil copies sold.
So hang on. GW2 has been out a month and has already managed 2/3rds of the WoW accounts (presuming of course that the current WoW players would have bought the expansion in the first week anyway- as it is required to keep playing)
I’d say that’s pretty massive. And I somehow doubt that Anet were expecting to topple the giant on day one.
I had a really long post typed out, but I lost it. So I’ll just keep it short:
You’re operating under this weird assumption that unless a game is among the most popular in the world, it’s a failure, because no other game company will ever try to do something similar, and you’ll never see more of the sort of game you like.
Except, historically, this is not true. In fact, I can prove it. Every single MMO released in the last ten years—well, okay, nearly every single MMO—has tried to distinguish itself somehow.
LOTRO, DDO, DCUO, TOR, COH, CO, AOC, EVE, Tera, Aion, Rift. They’ve all done something different. They’ve all tried to be different in small but significant ways. They’ve all tried to innovate. They’ve all tried to change the genre. They’ve all taken risks.
Not all of them succeed, but MMOs are not some stale genre where investors just try to duplicate the #1 game over and over and over. MMOs are a laboratory of game design. Every new game that comes out learns from the mistakes and successes of the past, and then tries to make its own mark and take a few of its own risks. Some succeed. Some don’t.
GW2 is no different. It’s a big game with big ideas and big visions. Some of those ideas are going to stick around for a long, long time. Some of those won’t.
The MMO genre is under constant evolution. Even WoW struggles not to stay stale, and tries to shake things up with every single expansion. Trying to argue that this game needs to be super successful to survive or investors won’t support anything similar to that is…
..well, it’s factually incorrect. History proves otherwise.
Ask that question 6 months from now. Polishing isn’t yet finished.
GW2 is not in beta right? its released, it should already be in a polished state. Arenanets thing was “we wont release it until its ready”. Well, its released, so either its ready… or they lied.
That being said, after 34 days (the omg gw2 is out rush) is already over, I don’t forsee the game taking off much more then it already has, from here its a decline. We will see in 6 months I guess.
Agree fully. GW2 already hit its peek. 6 months isn’t going to jump this game to 4 mil+ people. I will be more people have stopped playing then game sales a month after release. 6 months isn’t going to bring everyone back and then some. And no game should take 6 months to polish. That is a horrible excuse.
This game will end up like GW1. Tons of hype in the beginning and then drop. It won’t die but it will fade.
So hang on. GW2 has been out a month and has already managed 2/3rds of the WoW accounts (presuming of course that the current WoW players would have bought the expansion in the first week anyway- as it is required to keep playing)
I’d say that’s pretty massive. And I somehow doubt that Anet were expecting to topple the giant on day one.
No..
2.7 million are first week sales of the expansion, and that does not include china. The actual number of active accounts are over 10 million.
So GW2 is at 1/5 of that, however GW2 has lost a lot of players since release and I highly doubt their active accounts are even half of their 2 million box sales. So in reality its probably 1/10th and declining from there.
I assume you are talking about the kung fu panda expansion. For a game that had over 10 million active players about a year ago, 2.7 milllion isn’t perhaps what you would hope for.
GW2 is a game with a much more humble amount of followers from GW1, a new game in many senses. How many MMOs can sell over 2 million copies nowadays? SWTOR did but destroyed itself shortly after, sales stagnated very quickly and unfortunately it went downhill from there.
One could argue that GW2 is more fun as a game and without a sub has a much better chance. Time will tell but I think all in all GW2 has done well and I do hope it will grow from there.
It’s a game forum. The truth is not to be found here.
So hang on. GW2 has been out a month and has already managed 2/3rds of the WoW accounts (presuming of course that the current WoW players would have bought the expansion in the first week anyway- as it is required to keep playing)
I’d say that’s pretty massive. And I somehow doubt that Anet were expecting to topple the giant on day one.
No..
2.7 million are first week sales of the expansion, and that does not include china. The actual number of active accounts are over 10 million.
So GW2 is at 1/5 of that, however GW2 has lost a lot of players since release and I highly doubt their active accounts are even half of their 2 million box sales. So in reality its probably 1/10th and declining from there.
Well my point was that numbers are generally skewed all over the place. Active accounts are not easily counted if we’re comparing old numbers to new. I’m basing my numbers on the absolutely requirement to continue playing WoW you MUST buy the MoP expansion. So it might be 3-4 million instead of 2.7, but I certainly don’t think it’s close to 10 million.
But I can’t see this thread being anything more than toing-and-froing. But just thought i’d share my opinion on the GW2 success!
edit: For some reason I thought you needed all of the expansions to play WoW. Seems I was wrong. Not to worry!
(edited by Flynch.6034)
Some gamers fixation with stealing that other game’s crown, clouds thinking at times.
The question is never if that other game can be toppled. It is a long standing juggernaut with a highly devoted fan base going back years. The answer for the foreseeable future is clearly “no”, and the landscape is littered with failed clones which stand as evidence.
The real question is: with that other game’s undoubted success, is there enough market share left for games such as GW2 – ones which take a different approach and try to breathe new life into a stale genre – to do well? Two million plus box sales seems to indicate the answer is a unqualified “yes”.
The thinking needs to be more along these lines: if I were to launch a new soda product, my dream may be to overtake Coca-Cola with their 28 billion dollars sold in soda each year. But that is a dream. And a long term one at that. But it would be madness for that to be an immediate goal. My goal would be to have success and survive in a market place which has Coca-Cola by creating an alternative.
The team behind GW2 may state that they want to make a superior, more innovative game, but I doubt you’ll find – in public or private – any financial model built on promises of toppling the other game. Draining some disaffected players? Sure. Maybe.
And none of this takes in account that the two games have drastically different business models. GW2 has a business model which largely insulates itself from what caused many before it to fail – the subscription fee. The choice between GW2 and the other game is an artificial one. They are not competing for the same dollars one for one. GW2 competes for overall gaming dollars in the same way the Mass Effect series does. Box sales. Box sales supplemented by an in game store.
And what about this Gem store? I think we would all be surprised if we were to see the numbers actually going into the Gem Store. With a dedicated credit card converting – by a simple click of the mouse – unseen cash into a make believe currency (Gems) , which in turn can be traded for another make believe in game currency (Gold), goes a long way toward obscuring from some players how much money they are actually pumping into the game.
“I’m always achieving greatness!”
(edited by Arsenal.2601)
I assume you are talking about the kung fu panda expansion. For a game that had over 10 million active players about a year ago, 2.7 milllion isn’t perhaps what you would hope for.
Actually thats the way expansions work for any game, not all the original player base purchase the expansion immediately because everyone plays at different pace, which means that some people are still not done with the previous expansions content and are not in any rush to get the new one. 30% of the player base bought MoP and it hasnt even been released in China yet (where millions more will likely purchase it), no, those numbers are just fine.
Well my point was that numbers are generally skewed all over the place. Active accounts are not easily counted if we’re comparing old numbers to new. I’m basing my numbers on the absolutely requirement to continue playing WoW you MUST buy the MoP expansion. So it might be 3-4 million instead of 2.7, but I certainly don’t think it’s close to 10 million.
No, 10 million is active paying and playing accounts. Everyone plays at a different pace and not everyone is ready for the expansion, this is normal for online games. There has not been an MMO ever that has had 10% of the player base purchase the expansion immediately. It will happen over time. There is a load of content in WoW remember, and thus there is no rush for some players to get the expansion until they need it. There is no number skewing, its 10 million active paying playing accounts.
I assume you are talking about the kung fu panda expansion. For a game that had over 10 million active players about a year ago, 2.7 milllion isn’t perhaps what you would hope for.
GW2 is a game with a much more humble amount of followers from GW1, a new game in many senses. How many MMOs can sell over 2 million copies nowadays? SWTOR did but destroyed itself shortly after, sales stagnated very quickly and unfortunately it went downhill from there.
One could argue that GW2 is more fun as a game and without a sub has a much better chance. Time will tell but I think all in all GW2 has done well and I do hope it will grow from there.
I love when people call it kung fu panda yet the pandas in Warcraft 3 came out before the Kung Fu Panda movies. Yeah the pandas were in Warcraft 3 which people seem to now know.
Anyways 2.7 in one week > 2 mil copies over a month for GW2. The 2.7 isn’t even counting China. Of course there won’t be 10 mil sold, but for a game that is 7+ years old and still outselling hyped games like GW2 is amazing. And yes 2.7 in one week is amazing. I will bet the total hits a lot more. Servers still have 45+ min ques.
It sold 2 million in the first 2 weeks. I am sure it’s way passed that now.
Are you seriously comparing a brand new game to an expansion of a game that has a playerbase of over 10 million people?
Seriously?
If anything, the 2.7mil sales figure speaks badly for MoP, because not even half of their current playerbase was exited enough to get it within its first week.
Honestly the comparison is just ridiculous, especially considering the nature of these two games. GW2 is a game without a subscription fee, the developers do not rely on the revenue from players that stick with the game. And the fact of the matter that this game has no subscription fee means that every single person that went back to MoP can come back any time they wish, and there is no subscription fee barrier that will prevent them from reconsidering.
If you want to compare GW2, compare it to other MMOs in recent history, don’t compare it with the freaking biggest game in the world! You might as well try to compare every shooter game to Call of Duty.
Furthermore, I hope that the developers will never try to think the way you do(AKA: if its not the best then it failed) because we see what happens to games when the developers reach that mind set. Most recent example will be Resident Evil 6, and how Capcom decided that there is not a big enough market place for survival horror, so they decided to make the game more action based to cater to that CoD crowd.
So NO, 2 million in sales is NOT bad sign!
WoW will ALWAYS be on top of the charts and there will be NO game that just comes out and kills it and it does not matter how good or revolutionary the game is!
WoW has a HUGE player base, and that player base has a lot of investment in that game, their time and money, so they are not just going to jump ship all the sudden. WoW will die a slow death, when people will slowly move on to something else.
I assume you are talking about the kung fu panda expansion. For a game that had over 10 million active players about a year ago, 2.7 milllion isn’t perhaps what you would hope for.
Actually thats the way expansions work for any game, not all the original player base purchase the expansion immediately because everyone plays at different pace, which means that some people are still not done with the previous expansions content and are not in any rush to get the new one. 30% of the player base bought MoP and it hasnt even been released in China yet (where millions more will likely purchase it), no, those numbers are just fine.
Expansions do sell less than the original but the 10 million I was talking about were the active accounts and not how many copies the original sold. Still, I am sure blizzard will be happy enough and if they sell a couple more millions in asia they won’t mind either. But the number of active accounts has dropped dramatically in the last year or so from what I’ve read so that still stands.
I think wow had the unique situation where they brought out something that was new to the general public and appealed. They were not the first MMO but definitely the one with the right timing. No one else can claim that advantage. Let’s be honest, no one else has the advantage of not really having a real competitor in the genre. That time is over and since that time not a single MMO has been able to reproduce what wow did.
Since then MMOs that were released either didn’t sell many copies to begin with or didn’t deliver what they promised and saw their populations cut in half within months of release. Some were salvaged by adding f2p but even there the numbers are not that high.
SWTOR was the last big one to try and they got over 2 million sales but then forget to fix the game and add more variety in content. They went from 200 servers to a handful in 9 months.
So yeh I am encouraged that GW2 sold over 2 million copies and hope that they are still selling copies because SWTOR sales plummeted within a month of release. I don’t know of any game next to wow, here in the west, that actually has had a stable base of a lot of players for a long time and we will see soon enough if GW2 can break that trend. Forget being a ‘wow-killer’ , let’s start with attracting a lot of players and maintaining a good player base. That would be an achievement by itself.
Oh, in case you wonder what I call a good player base it would be at least 500k, preferably ove 1 million active players. I think that’s what you need to be able to grow afterwards.
It’s a game forum. The truth is not to be found here.
(edited by Gehenna.3625)
I never thought it was going to be the slayer of the other MMO. In many ways (particularly DEs and the attempts to make the game co-op friendly) the game is moving the genre forward. I think personal story was a massive miss (brining single player RPG elements into an MMO was a good idea, the execution was bad largely due to story quality and division of plot points amongst multiple paths leading to lots of confusion) and ironically GW1 did a better job of telling stories better than GW2.
I also think WoW does a better job with many dungeon and having the dungeon lore and story have ripples and relevance to the world outside. So much of the story mode felt like a dry mechanical introduction to the dungeon (here’s the dungeon, you found it, these are the kinds of mobs you will deal with, cya) rather than a a self contained and well written dungeon which reflected the plots and conflicts you had been dealing with in the map outside that place. I felt more connected to my time in the Deadmines because I had been fighting bandit faction inside there while levelling in the zone around that and I was dealing with quests which directly involved the human king and high politics, which made it feel that much more significant, like I was doing something important. I never felt like there was much work put into the story elements of dungeons or personal story and I wish the rich lore that does exist in the game was connected better to these instances and the zones around them. WoW does a much better job of casually telling a story throughout their entire game – using all the pieces, something GW2 didn’t pull off so well even with just the Personal Story.
WoW has seven years of habit and addiction fueling it. People are invested. It’s polished, it may be using old systems but those systems run better than the new ones. That doesn’t mean the new ones aren’t worth having, or one day won’t be better, just for now WoW offers a reliable experience people know they like and advancement in something they’ve put so many years into already, that was something GW2 was never going to beat at launch.
Having said that, I think GW2 has done very well, there is a load of potential and other games will build on systems and features that GW2 took a chance with changing, just like GW2 built on games before it. The game still has a lot of growing to do, in terms of copies sold and in terms of what the developers can do when they continue to work on and improve it. Bugs will be fixed, systems will be polished, some things will be scraped as is and others will be tried differently. Some things worked very well. Once ArenaNet stops punishing their own players and moves on from all this silly DR garbage, the game will likely grow into a much stronger product.
Anyone who thought GW2 (or any other game) was going to kill WoW, was living in a dream world. The only thing that will kill WoW is when Blizz turns off the servers.
For me the game has been a success. There are some things Anet is doing that I don’t agree with and there is still a lot of work that needs to be done, but I’m still having fun.
And if Anet is making money, then it was a success for them. Whether they beat another game or not is totally unimportant.
Ask that question 6 months from now. Polishing isn’t yet finished.
GW2 is not in beta right? its released, it should already be in a polished state. Arenanets thing was “we wont release it until its ready”. Well, its released, so either its ready… or they lied.
That being said, after 34 days (the omg gw2 is out rush) is already over, I don’t forsee the game taking off much more then it already has, from here its a decline. We will see in 6 months I guess.
Agree fully. GW2 already hit its peek. 6 months isn’t going to jump this game to 4 mil+ people. I will be more people have stopped playing then game sales a month after release. 6 months isn’t going to bring everyone back and then some. And no game should take 6 months to polish. That is a horrible excuse.
This game will end up like GW1. Tons of hype in the beginning and then drop. It won’t die but it will fade.
I like the game a lot but there’s a bunch of accumulated annoyances that need to be worked out. There’s still a lot they can improve upon and there’s a lot of potential to tap in. I don’t think any MMO got to be #1 after one month or got perfectly patched/polished in that amount of time. WoW had its amount of issues too when it was released.
Patching and perfecting an MMO is, unfortunately, a slow process. But because patience has its limits, I’d be disappointed if in 6 months the game hadn’t reached a robust peak in performance and in attracting players.
I assume you are talking about the kung fu panda expansion. For a game that had over 10 million active players about a year ago, 2.7 milllion isn’t perhaps what you would hope for.
GW2 is a game with a much more humble amount of followers from GW1, a new game in many senses. How many MMOs can sell over 2 million copies nowadays? SWTOR did but destroyed itself shortly after, sales stagnated very quickly and unfortunately it went downhill from there.
One could argue that GW2 is more fun as a game and without a sub has a much better chance. Time will tell but I think all in all GW2 has done well and I do hope it will grow from there.
I love when people call it kung fu panda yet the pandas in Warcraft 3 came out before the Kung Fu Panda movies. Yeah the pandas were in Warcraft 3 which people seem to now know.
Anyways 2.7 in one week > 2 mil copies over a month for GW2. The 2.7 isn’t even counting China. Of course there won’t be 10 mil sold, but for a game that is 7+ years old and still outselling hyped games like GW2 is amazing. And yes 2.7 in one week is amazing. I will bet the total hits a lot more. Servers still have 45+ min ques.
The game is NOT 7 years old!
Seriously you people are making a GIANT mistake when you carectorize things this way.
Yes, the entire WoW franchise is 7 years old, but they are not reselling the Vanilla WoW here. They are selling a new expansion pack to game that has been revisioned many, many times over the course of these years.
There is a REASON why the Cataclysm expansion pack focused on remaking the old world. The reason is quite simple, and that is because the old world, AKA: The ACTUAL 7-year old wold, is stale, boring, and is just a pain to play through and it scares away the new players.
So like I said in my previous post, there will NEVER be a game that just kills WoW. WoW is not just a game to people that they can put down any time they wish, WoW is an investment! People have invested sooo many hours and soo much money on this game over the course of these 7 years, and such an incredible investment is not easy to just put down, even if the experience is no longer enjoyable. Thats how humans work. That is the reason why people still play games like Counter Strike 1.6, even though there is CS Source and CS GO.
I will say this, the demographic for WoW and GW2 might not be as overlaping as one would think.
GW2 has plenty of things that a lot of players have been asking for, for a long time but that doesn’t mean everyone wanted them. My guess is that GW2 will much like GW1 just be doing it’s own thing and be successful at it no matter what the impact to the overall genre will be.
Oh, in case you wonder what I call a good player base it would be at least 500k, preferably ove 1 million active players. I think that’s what you need to be able to grow afterwards.
What are you basing these numbers on? Are you just making them up, or is there some evidence behind it?
EVE online had about 357,000 active subscribers by 2010, and it’s still going relatively strong despite being as old as WoW. Meanwhile, Warhammer Online peaked at 800,000 and dropped to an average of 150,000 within the space of a year. Age of Conan peaked at 700,000 and dropped to under 100,000. Rift peaked at 600,000 and within a year, lost half that.
Meanwhile, City of Heroes began with less than 50,000 subscibers and lasted from 2004 to 2012 on an average of a mere 150,000 subscribers. CoH alone helped spur a spike of comic book themed MMOs, including Champions Online (still going) and DCUO (not as lucky).
WoW, on the other hand, peaked at 12M subscibers between 2009 and late 2010, and has been in steady decline, hitting just over 10M in Q1 2012. That’s a loss of subscribers that more than doubles the peak of other, smaller MMOs that have lasted years on a smaller subscriber base.
The other big hitters? Lineage and Lineage 2 and 2-3 million, Runescape at 4 million in 2009, and ToR which peaked at just under 2 million.
Oh, and the MMOs with the highest peak concurrent users? Fantasy Westward East, Zheng Tu Online, Yulgang, Wen Dao, Shaiya, World of Legend…and World of Warcraft. All of those have peak concurrent users between 400k and 2.5 million.
TLDR: Your “500k users or above for a successful game” makes absolutely no sense. Very few games actually peak at and maintain 500k+ users and succeed. Plenty of games peak higher than 500k and crash. Plenty other games never get above 500k, but last for years and years, and influence lots of games around them.
(edited by Moderator)
GW2 wanted to take the #1 spot for MMO games. It wanted to paint competition as stagnant, stale, dying, while at the same time showing everyone that it was the revolution in MMOs and would change the genre moving forward.
34 days later, Guild Wars 2 is roughly at 2 million boxes sold.
Sales figures for another certain unnamed games expansion pack alone after 7 days (not including china sales) are already at 2.7 million, nearly 50% above GW2.
Guild Wars 2 did break the 2 Million mark in mid September and it’s still
Number 1 in some sales-chats, I could find, while WoW is on number 2. So if you want to compare, please compare right and don’t spread some numbers just because it fits your ideas.
You all do realize that WoW didn’t start off with millions of players right?…..They started off with under a mil and then it grew over time. With the “dumbed down” gameplay and the pop culture/trendy marketing, it brought in people who would have never otherwise even known about the genre.
And let us not forget the horrible release. Crashing, so much down time, people spent more time waiting for the game to come back online then they actually spent playing the game during the first few weeks. Take away all the expansion and look just at the base game and see that it wasn’t this endless amount of content. so please take off these rose colored glasses that WoW was born on top and with loads of content and players.
Even EQ still has a playerbase and it is 13 years old and doesn’t sport millions of players. It is standing the test of time and people still enjoy it, to me that says success.
I’m still loving the game and imagine that I will for a long time to come. Will I go back to WoW and play MoP? Maybe. But not in the near future at least. GW2 will still have players and servers will still be heavily populated regardless of people going back to Wow. Mainly because WoW is the king of weekly downtime. Tuesday night = GW2 party.
Anyone who thought it was going to kill WoW or come close was delusional.
Arenanet themselves said that they would not be happy with GW2 unless they were #1, meaning, dethroned WoW.
They clearly have come no where close to that, but they certainly did think it was going to happen, or at least hoped very strongly enough to make a public announcement about it.
You seem to have misunderstood what he was trying to say. It has nothing to do with dethroning “WoW”. It was his way of telling us how dedicated to the game they are. That it isn’t something they would be putting out, then turning their back on. It was his way of telling us that A-net will be in this for the long-haul
What are you basing these numbers on? Are you just making them up, or is there some evidence behind it?
EVE online had about 357,000 active subscribers by 2010, and it’s still going relatively strong despite being as old as WoW. Meanwhile, Warhammer Online peaked at 800,000 and dropped to an average of 150,000 within the space of a year. Age of Conan peaked at 700,000 and dropped to under 100,000. Rift peaked at 600,000 and within a year, lost half that.
Meanwhile, City of Heroes began with less than 50,000 subscibers and lasted from 2004 to 2012 on an average of a mere 150,000 subscribers. CoH alone helped spur a spike of comic book themed MMOs, including Champions Online (still going) and DCUO (not as lucky).
WoW, on the other hand, peaked at 12M subscibers between 2009 and late 2010, and has been in steady decline, hitting just over 10M in Q1 2012. That’s a loss of subscribers that more than doubles the peak of other, smaller MMOs that have lasted years on a smaller subscriber base.
The other big hitters? Lineage and Lineage 2 and 2-3 million, Runescape at 4 million in 2009, and ToR which peaked at just under 2 million.
Oh, and the MMOs with the highest peak concurrent users? Fantasy Westward East, Zheng Tu Online, Yulgang, Wen Dao, Shaiya, World of Legend…and World of Warcraft. All of those have peak concurrent users between 400k and 2.5 million.
TLDR: Your “500k users or above for a successful game” makes absolutely no sense. Very few games actually peak at and maintain 500k+ users and succeed. Plenty of games peak higher than 500k and crash. Plenty other games never get above 500k, but last for years and years, and influence lots of games around them.
Fantastic post, it’s nice to see someone actually has their numbers straight for once. The headaches I’ve had debating the LOL@FAILMMOS posts over the years because they didn’t instantly soar to 10 million subscribers…
Notably, those numbers for WoW are pretty questionable as well. Roughly 2/3rds of WoW’s player base is in Asia, and the way those “subscriptions” are counted is a little different. WoW’s western audience would’ve peaked at around 4 million subs, and is probably closer to 2 million subs these days, if that (and lord only knows, a good number of those are probably lapsed or inactive) . TOR, as one example, was not released in Asia at all. Neither was WAR, if I remember correctly. GW2 won’t be released there for a year. Aion and Lineage both pulled in the vast majority of their subs through Asia as well, if I remember correctly. To do a realistic 1:1 comparison you really do need to put regional audiences up against one another, not one game’s global subs against one game’s NA/EUR subs.
So while WoW was most definitely an anomalous breakaway hit and a genre-defining game, that ludicrous 10-12 million subscribers figure has always been pure fantasy, and a lot of “failed” MMOs with “small” subscriber bases of <500,000 have actually been fairly robust hits.
a.) they sold 2 million IN THE FIRST TWO WEEKS, with digital sales taken down. It’s unbelievable that you’d assume they haven’t sold any since (either that or are you just severely misinformed)
b.) GW2 is a brand new game, MOP is an expansion to a game many people know and love. Of course tons of people are going to buy it
It falls short on certain areas.
Dances for example. only 1 dance per race, no male or female :|
Medium armour for male is serverly lacking in style, its always either a Trench Coat or an Asymmetrical piece, or a combination of both, aside from the Ascalonian Catacombs medium armour.
Diminishing rewards aka the anti bot code is more like an anti human code.
Various ingame bugs.
Too tired to think of more.
Im happy with it but not fully happy with it.
As successful as I hoped? I do not really understand the question, I had no personal stake and so no “hopes”. As long as there are enough players for 3 servers for WvWvW (the only reason I am here), Im good. In fact, things would probably have been better (from my PoV) if there were only 3 servers.
2 million sales in just a month and you’re thinking this game did bad? What drugs are you on? Thats fantastic in the market industry and it’s a brand new MMO, not an expansion for a game people already know about. WoW didn’t become king instantaneously, dude.
Swtor sold 2 million copies the first month as well then it flopped and went from 100 servers to 11… If the mass DR’s, Farm DR’s stay this game will flop just as fast.
Swtor sold 2 million copies the first month as well then it flopped and went from 100 servers to 11… If the mass DR’s, Farm DR’s stay this game will flop just as fast.
MMO FORUM POST MAD LIBS!
“If ___________ doesn’t change _____________ ASAP then it will flop, just like ______________ me and my _______________ all agree on this issue, and I bet that ______________ players share our sentiments.”
Ooh, I want to play!
If Logan Thackeray doesn’t change his pants ASAP, then it will flop, just like Queensdale Map Chat. Me and my juice box all agree on this issue, and I bet that communist players share our sentiments.
Wow, this is fun.
MMO FORUM POST MAD LIBS!
“If ___________ doesn’t change _____________ ASAP then it will flop, just like ______________ me and my _______________ all agree on this issue, and I bet that ______________ players share our sentiments.”
It was exactly like this in SWToR aswell. Most people that didnt have blindfolds on realizes quite quickittenhe faults of the game, while the fanboys posted stuff like you did to redicule the worried ones.
It didnt go to well for that game.
My guild has gone from 80 players to 16 logging in each day since launch. Most of them give the reason to the game beeing boring an repetative to levelup in, and there not beeing any endgame.
MMO FORUM POST MAD LIBS!
“If ___________ doesn’t change _____________ ASAP then it will flop, just like ______________ me and my _______________ all agree on this issue, and I bet that ______________ players share our sentiments.”
My guild has gone from 80 players to 16 logging in each day since launch. Most of them give the reason to the game beeing boring an repetative to levelup in, and there not beeing any endgame.
Not being any endgame? WTH are you talking about? You DO understand what WvWvW is, right?
SeloIt was exactly like this in SWToR aswell. Most people that didnt have blindfolds on realizes quite quickittenhe faults of the game, while the fanboys posted stuff like you did to redicule the worried ones.
It didnt go to well for that game.
My guild has gone from 80 players to 16 logging in each day since launch. Most of them give the reason to the game beeing boring an repetative to levelup in, and there not beeing any endgame.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_correlation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
Technically I’m just ridiculing terrible posts by people who aren’t thinking things through and are launching into panicked hyperbole. There’s really not that fine a distinction between “I think this post is stupid” and “I think the game is 100% awesome and completely free of defects”. It’s possible I can detect that distinction because I’m not a binary thinker. Assuming you are a human being, and not…say…a self-aware on-off switch, you really shouldn’t be slumping into binary thinking either.
It’s pretty lazy.
It is funny how OP can distort some simple facts.
GW2 sold over 2M within 2 weeks after release, despite the fact that their digital sale was halted just 1 week after release.
MOP sold 2.7 M 1 week after release. It is sold in many highly populated regions that GW2 is not, including Taiwan, south korea, etc.
Oh, and Activision Blizzard’s stock price just made a new 52 week low point today, 10.98$. Congratulations.