Guild Wars 2

KDB Daewoo Securities published their most recent outlook for NCsoft for 2016 and a forecast for the sales in 4Q 15. According to the analysts 4Q 15 shows a slightly disappointing performance partially due to “weaker-than-projected sales of the Guild Wars 2 expansion pack”.

The prediction for Hot is 51 bln Won in 4Q 15 including all sold HoT copies in 2015. The outlook far 2016 shows a solid quarterly sales around 25 bln Won.

The bad feelings of many players about Hot seem to materialise in disappointing sales numbers.

Article: http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/203797.pdf?attachmentId=203797

Maya prophecies all over again.

I think they predicted like 91 last year for q4 2015 but ended at 51.

Because the hype train got massively derailed, no matter what anyone says the lack of WvW and the push for Esports hurt players who play these formats, PvE was 4 maps.

I personally enjoy HoT, but it was not an expansion, it was paid for DLC, but from reading the blog posts from Anet, it seems they are working on a new expansion, so maybe we will see a full expansion this time.

Also what is hurting is really replay ability on the new maps, I made Nevermore at the weekend and honestly I have no incentive to go back to the HoT maps anymore, ive completed them all 100times over, newer players reading these forums or reading in game, who haven’t bought HoT are really seeing no reason too.

Many investors projected Star Wars to surpass Avatar in ticket sales. This is likely not to happen although it came close. Was Star Wars a failure?

Ayrilana.1396:

Many investors projected Star Wars to surpass Avatar in ticket sales. This is likely not to happen although it came close. Was Star Wars a failure?

Yes. From a certain point of view.

Ayrilana.1396:

Many investors projected Star Wars to surpass Avatar in ticket sales. This is likely not to happen although it came close. Was Star Wars a failure?

I assume you mean worldwide since it will blow past Avatar by $200M domestically. It’s guaranteed to overtake Titanic but Avatar’s $2.7 B is a big number to overcome. Not sure why foreign countries liked the giant smurfs so much.

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

Ayrilana.1396:

Many investors projected Star Wars to surpass Avatar in ticket sales. This is likely not to happen although it came close. Was Star Wars a failure?

I assume you mean worldwide since it will blow past Avatar by $200M domestically. It’s guaranteed to overtake Titanic but Avatar’s $2.7 B is a big number to overcome. Not sure why foreign countries liked the giant smurfs so much.

Yeah. I was referring to worldwide.

I think alot of the community negativity surrounding the expansion has put people off. It was defiantly more hyped than what 10 months justified. As a guild leader I can see populations in the recruitment scene has dropped and how many inactive I kick a month has increased since November compared to pre-launch.

While HoT delivered alot of things it also broke alot of things. Also the shift in the sudden shift in the target audience coupled with the slow pace of content delivery has many players of GW2 former casual fan base displaced.

If you are a casual player you have no new content coming to you before March 2016.

If you are a hardcore player. You have probably cleared the raid more than once and are wondering why you keep doing it every week. You know there is a raid wing planned before March 2016, or atleast a release date before then right?

ArenaNet is trying to do to much to target to many audiences and I don’t think anyone is at the point of being impressed and many are unsatisfied.

Mireles Lore.5942:

I think alot of the community negativity surrounding the expansion has put people off. It was defiantly more hyped than what 10 months justified. As a guild leader I can see populations in the recruitment scene has dropped and how many inactive I kick a month has increased since November compared to pre-launch.

While HoT delivered alot of things it also broke alot of things. Also the shift in the sudden shift in the target audience coupled with the slow pace of content delivery has many players of GW2 former casual fan base displaced.

If you are a casual player you have no new content coming to you before March 2016.

If you are a hardcore player. You have probably cleared the raid more than once and are wondering why you keep doing it every week. You know there is a raid wing planned before March 2016, or atleast a release date before then right?

ArenaNet is trying to do to much to target to many audiences and I don’t think anyone is at the point of being impressed and many are unsatisfied.

agreed, it seems when deving hot anet had 2 possible directions
- double down on the core of the game (largely casual friendly)
- fill in the gaps that other games target but gw2 doesn’t really fill (raids, large guilds stuff)

they chose to fill in gaps to capture players that were disinterested in the core, and assume the core will remain content w/ the content of the core game

You are right vayne. My bad.

I think a lot of people regard HoT as being high quality for what’s there. ArenaNet does very high quality stuff across the board and puts a lot of work into their games. I would say there isn’t enough there though. For the price point, it’s really light on breadth.

I feel like it didn’t ship as a complete package either. From what I gather, the end seems really rushed. For the price tag, it feels like it falls woefully short in the quantity department. I think if it had been a kickstarter and was tagged as a work in progress, it would be more understandable. When they did the announcement they oversold what they were selling and then with each subsequent announcement it felt to me like they were taking stuff away from the game, not adding on to what they had initially announced.

People like me who love the base game got screwed. Dungeons got nerfed 2 weeks prior to release and I don’t get as many rewards for doing fractals as my friends who own HoT. Fractals are base game content, and they hid stuff in it behind HoT’s paywall without adding any new actual content to the Fractals to justify putting base game content behind a paywall. It’s deplorable.

Normally I’d argue that investment companies routinely have unrealistic expectations about software and related sales, but then I just keep thinking back to that anemic three day sale they had for Christmas/New Years.

The only question I have is:
What does KDB Daewoo Securities have to do with ANet, GW, GW2 or NcSoft?
All that the company does is make predictions. They don’t have any other information then what their opinion. Wait till NcSoft themselves comes out with their q4 information before thinking that an opinion company knows anything. Seen too many of these opinion places giving a very wrong opinion about the state of anything to put much faith in what they say.

o_O this is expecting Wildstar to shutdown by the end of 2016?

Probably cuz of the whole pricing controversy which really wasn’t a great idea. Then as the game sunk in and found many were generally disappointed in it overall those holding off would just continue to.

Khisanth.2948:

o_O this is expecting Wildstar to shutdown by the end of 2016?

If they do, hopefully they redesign the entire game to be a world-wide sandbox since that’s the only amazing aspect of the game.

The biggest disappointment for me is that I have to wait to have fun in HoT

• Came back after work? Oh can’t do meta because the timer is not on.
• Craft Legendary? Wait 7h for an event.
• PvP? Wait 20m+ in one place, can’t do anything else
• Dungeon? Wait for a long time before people join
• Raid? Wait again, since there is no good LFG and people has to leave/join to post LFM.

It’s those tiny things that add up and make me sleepy, and then I went to bed instead. I haven’t recommended anyone to by HoT recently.

The bad feelings of many players about Hot seem to materialise in disappointing sales numbers.

Mostly this.

I find myself logging in just to get the daily reward and maybe, just maybe, do a daily or 2 before i log off and play fallout4. I can’t get myself to spend any(more) cash on or in the game, leaving me with just the basic things to do.

Although it is a fun ride playing GW2, i feel like the whole HoT hype and all the changes they implement, most of which are not desired by the players themselves, are preventing me from having fun like it was in the core game before.

A lot of players have either left the game or are restricting their purchases to the bare minimum (or nothing at all) because they don’t like the way the dev’s are guiding GW2.

Instead of adressing the basic things most players ingame (not forums) find annoying or even gamebreaking, the dev’s come up with the things they themselves see as ‘needed’. I think it’s obvious that the developers have a different vision of what the gamers want or need.

And that will definately reflect in sales. Once a players leaves a game behind, chances are quite low that they will return for the duration.

looking at that report, sales for HOT were slightly disappointing , however its showing that GW2 remains at a stable £6 million or so revenue a month and will continue to do so. That’s people continuing to invest in the game month on month, that means GW2 including HOT is not a failure.

yaaay another doom and gloom post! We almost went a full day without one but you saved us. GW2 has failed, everyone abandon ship!

vesica tempestas.1563:

looking at that report, sales for HOT were slightly disappointing , however its showing that GW2 remains at a stable £6 million or so revenue a month and will continue to do so. That’s people continuing to invest in the game month on month, that means GW2 including HOT is not a failure.

It’s not a report. It’s a prediction from an unrelated company. NCSoft has not released their Q4 Earnings Report yet. Don’t let other companies skew the numbers.

We’ll find out what really happened the second week of next month.

I don’t know why I even bothered to read this.
Why would anyone reading reports like this apart from interest in the materia? Like: “uhhu, okay. Whatever”. Do you guys really, REALLY Google for this bulls…? What you are going to do? Worrying and smacktalking the game, the expansion, this, that, the weather because of the copies sold? The forums are really a terrible place :S

It’s like when I was buying the GTX970 and all the nerds were freaking out because of the memory issue – meanwhile, I play(ed) my games just fine without benchmarkings and expecting nVidia to get bankrupt. You guys should just play, too. Or quit and leave us alone with your negativity. Jesus Christ.

Gliding in Core might generate some more HoT sales

Sandpit.3467:

Gliding in Core might generate some more HoT sales

I think this was big reason they do this. Core player/ free player see HoT player glide on map big advertisement all over core map for HoT.

This is a forecast ie a prediction. Do we really care what they think??? This is not the actual numbers. Secondly is their any mmo outside of FFXIV ( which hit rock bottom before turning it aroun) that is posting better than expected numbers? Even WoW is dropping. The MMO as a genre is not doing well. I think softer sales is the industry norm now.

Belenwyn.8674:

KDB Daewoo Securities published their most recent outlook for NCsoft for 2016 and a forecast for the sales in 4Q 15. According to the analysts 4Q 15 shows a slightly disappointing performance partially due to “weaker-than-projected sales of the Guild Wars 2 expansion pack”.

The prediction for Hot is 51 bln Won in 4Q 15 including all sold HoT copies in 2015. The outlook far 2016 shows a solid quarterly sales around 25 bln Won.

The bad feelings of many players about Hot seem to materialise in disappointing sales numbers.

Article: http://www.kdbdw.com/bbs/download/203797.pdf?attachmentId=203797

I very much doubt the predictions for the rest of 2016 are correct. IMHO the quarterly earnings will fall to at least 2015 levels exc. 4th quarter if not lower.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Because the hype train got massively derailed, no matter what anyone says the lack of WvW and the push for Esports hurt players who play these formats, PvE was 4 maps.

I personally enjoy HoT, but it was not an expansion, it was paid for DLC, but from reading the blog posts from Anet, it seems they are working on a new expansion, so maybe we will see a full expansion this time.

Also what is hurting is really replay ability on the new maps, I made Nevermore at the weekend and honestly I have no incentive to go back to the HoT maps anymore, ive completed them all 100times over, newer players reading these forums or reading in game, who haven’t bought HoT are really seeing no reason too.

If the last expansion was not full then what will this full expansion cost?

psyt.9415:

This is a forecast ie a prediction. Do we really care what they think??? This is not the actual numbers. Secondly is their any mmo outside of FFXIV ( which hit rock bottom before turning it aroun) that is posting better than expected numbers? Even WoW is dropping. The MMO as a genre is not doing well. I think softer sales is the industry norm now.

91 bln won pretty much mean GW2 is selling as much as WoW. I’m not sure if they are high or they have that much faith in Anet.

And 51 bln won is really high. I can’t think of any mmorpg made in the US that sold that many expansion as a 3rd year game.

Maybe that’s why even wow is stopping releasing player number. People actually thought those numbers are bad.

morrolan.9608:

Thaddeus.4891:

Guys Ncsoft have nothing to do with GW2 anymore and for like a long time now.

Except you know owning Arenanet.

Anet has been self publishing since roughly September. Short of owning the IP, NCsoft likely has little influence in Anet as a company.

Whether this is because NCsoft thinks Anet doesn’t need their money and can put it toward other projects or have just abandoned GW2 is up to interpretation since neither will comment on it I’m sure.

http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/01/pax-prime-2015-president-mike-obrien-addresses-rumors-about-business-model-and-the-arenanet-base-on-the-moon/?utm_content=bufferaa249&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Noone should care about company profits. The thing is: are u having fun in there? If not it’s a fail for you.
Hint: Aion is still generating profit and there is hardly an active community in there.

I love Arenanet, but sometimes I feel like they are kinda like DC game developers… They suck at marketing.
Anyone remember the game “Infinite Crisis”?

Substance E.4852:

morrolan.9608:

Thaddeus.4891:

Guys Ncsoft have nothing to do with GW2 anymore and for like a long time now.

Except you know owning Arenanet.

Anet has been self publishing since roughly September. Short of owning the IP, NCsoft likely has little influence in Anet as a company.

Whether this is because NCsoft thinks Anet doesn’t need their money and can put it toward other projects or have just abandoned GW2 is up to interpretation since neither will comment on it I’m sure.

http://massivelyop.com/2015/09/01/pax-prime-2015-president-mike-obrien-addresses-rumors-about-business-model-and-the-arenanet-base-on-the-moon/?utm_content=bufferaa249&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Anet is owned by NCSoft. Whatever NCSoft wants Anet does. If revenue isn’t to the liking of the parent company they can at their discretion, fire everyone and re-staff, including the chairman unless protection against termination is claused into his agreement (something I had included in a contact once). Anet hasn’t controlled it’s own destiny since before launch of GW1.

These projections will affect share price of NCSoft which will put heat on Anet, to think or say otherwise exibits a lack understanding how corporations operate.

Aidenwolf.5964:

If revenue isn’t to the liking of the parent company they can at their discretion, fire everyone and re-staff, including the chairman unless protection against termination is claused into his agreement (something I had included in a contact once). Anet hasn’t controlled it’s own destiny since before launch of GW1.

Have you seen the contract/s that was signed when Anet went self publishing? Do you know this for a fact?

All we know is that Anet is self publishing aka responsible for effectively the entirely of their operations as a company and that NCsoft retains the rights to the ArenaNet and Guild Wars brands.

All the precise details between the companies is likely somewhere in some SEC style documentation over in Korea, in Korean, if it exists at all for the public.

While bad GW2 performance would look bad on NCsoft, we have no idea to what extent they can affect change on ArenaNet to offset it.

Substance E.4852:

Aidenwolf.5964:

If revenue isn’t to the liking of the parent company they can at their discretion, fire everyone and re-staff, including the chairman unless protection against termination is claused into his agreement (something I had included in a contact once). Anet hasn’t controlled it’s own destiny since before launch of GW1.

Have you seen the contract/s that was signed when Anet went self publishing? Do you know this for a fact?

All we know is that Anet is self publishing aka responsible for effectively the entirely of their operations as a company and that NCsoft retains the rights to the ArenaNet and Guild Wars brands.

All the precise details between the companies is likely somewhere in some SEC style documentation over in Korea, in Korean, if it exists at all for the public.

While bad GW2 performance would look bad on NCsoft, we have no idea to what extent they can affect change on ArenaNet to offset it.

The change in publishing was likely to protect NCSoft from potential legal issues related to Free To Play. Changing the game model did open up NCSoft to legal challenge though none arose. The game being delivered digitally also removed the need for boxed distribution which was previously done by NCSoft.

As Anet are still owned by NCSoft the change of publisher name is irrelevant. It simply means if you have issues with the game you contact Anet instead of NCSoft.

$72 million a year revenue sounds pretty good going for a company with one game!!!

Hot is garbage.

The gliding is very cool, that’s about it.

Personally I think the destruction of WvW is the true problem. WvW players like myself did every part of the game but our focus was always on WvW, even if our playtime “metrics” didn’t show it. Then HoT came out and obliterated WvW and our reason for playing. So the WvW community as a whole flipped ANET the bird and left.

ANET deserves their misery. Apologize and grovel to all the WvW players you took for granted and stepped upon. And take your guild system and shove it.

The OP is talking about 4th quarter 2016 estimates, which is 11+ months from now. So they predict that the sales will go back to mainly cash shop sales. No surprise here.

Also the other factors for NCSOFT missing KDB’s guess that the OP left out,

We expect NCSOFT to report slightly disappointing earnings for 4Q15, due to 1) weaker-than-projected sales of the Guild Wars 2 expansion pack, 2) a lower-than expected increase in revenue from Lineage I microtransaction events, and 3) higher
expenses related to marketing (G-Star trade show) and the company’s pro baseball
team …

KDB-Daewoo have been walking back their absurd prediction for months now. As you can see they were winging it as usual. They were the ones who suggested that 30 million would buy the expansion at $50 before we heard anything about a release date or a price. Once they heard that the core game was going P4F and the expansion wouldn’t need new players to buy two SKUs they freaked.

Here are the 4th quarter estimates in billions of Korean Won for GW2 over their last 8 reports.

4/15 – 74
5/15 – 95
7/15 – 120
8/15 – 122
10/15 – 76
11/15a – 66
11/15b – 57
1/16 – 51

Sorry, if stock analysts get within 20% of their predictions, they are doing great. These were the same people who thought NCSOFT stock was going to hit 600,000 KrW a share in 2012.

Next the company’s biggest money maker, a game that came out in 1998, wouldn’t be meet their growth predictions; then the big annual game trade show in South Korea; and lastly their baseball team.

At the end of the day, KDB’s only lowered the annual profit from 193 to 186 billion KrW and total sales from 843 to 837 billion KrW for 2015. They aren’t going out of business assuming these numbers are close to actual ones. Comparison, 2014 had net profits of 228 billion KrW on sales of 839 billion KrW.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Is HoT going on sale soon then? Might pick it up for the hell of it if it does. I wouldn’t touch the pve stuff in it though I don’t think…just get my elite specs and loot for legendaries and that’s it.

Well said, Behellagh. Analyst predictions are rarely worth the pixels they are displayed with, except to those interested in investing.

I wish I could give back my HoT

Sthenith.5196:

The bad feelings of many players about Hot seem to materialise in disappointing sales numbers.

Mostly this.

I find myself logging in just to get the daily reward and maybe, just maybe, do a daily or 2 before i log off and play fallout4. I can’t get myself to spend any(more) cash on or in the game, leaving me with just the basic things to do.

Although it is a fun ride playing GW2, i feel like the whole HoT hype and all the changes they implement, most of which are not desired by the players themselves, are preventing me from having fun like it was in the core game before.

A lot of players have either left the game or are restricting their purchases to the bare minimum (or nothing at all) because they don’t like the way the dev’s are guiding GW2.

Instead of adressing the basic things most players ingame (not forums) find annoying or even gamebreaking, the dev’s come up with the things they themselves see as ‘needed’. I think it’s obvious that the developers have a different vision of what the gamers want or need.

And that will definately reflect in sales. Once a players leaves a game behind, chances are quite low that they will return for the duration.

Took the words right out of my mouth. Log in, get dailies, maybe do a boss and go back to Fallout 4. Don’t use real money in game anymore due to direction the devs have taken it. Won’t buy HoT. It was a great game.

Is this based on real quarterly sales? No.
This is a prediction by a third rate analist firm who have never in all those years predicted something right.
The only effect this sort of posts have is atracting trolls, who go all doom and gloom, like they Always do.

Bolbo Baggins.8594:

Is this based on real quarterly sales? No.
This is a prediction by a third rate analist firm who have never in all those years predicted something right.
The only effect this sort of posts have is atracting trolls, who go all doom and gloom, like they Always do.

Well they did predict the expansion. It only took them claiming it with nearly every report since the game launched until they were eventually correct.

It’s due to the poor matchmaker still trying to force a 50% win/loss ratio combining with leagues in addition to bad balance and a bunker meta.

Cerby.1069:

Is HoT going on sale soon then? Might pick it up for the hell of it if it does. I wouldn’t touch the pve stuff in it though I don’t think…just get my elite specs and loot for legendaries and that’s it.

A little honest advice: knowing the skewed level of negativity on the forums, I would at least give the PVE content in HoT a try – a lot of people really enjoy it – unfortunately the people who do spend less time posting postive comments.

polarbear.2497:

Cerby.1069:

Is HoT going on sale soon then? Might pick it up for the hell of it if it does. I wouldn’t touch the pve stuff in it though I don’t think…just get my elite specs and loot for legendaries and that’s it.

A little honest advice: knowing the skewed level of negativity on the forums, I would at least give the PVE content in HoT a try – a lot of people really enjoy it – unfortunately the people who do spend less time posting postive comments.

It was fun, it really was. I enjoyed the HoT PvE. Unfortunately that wore off in like 2 weeks. Ran out of new content and it was the same thing over and over. Do the same 4 meta events on the same exact 2 hour timers. Everything is so specifically laid out and timed out. It is boring and repetitive. I’m having more fun doing world completion on my alts than I have in HoT these days. The replayability falls short and the 2 hour guaranteed timer makes it really hard to just jump into a map and get the events moving, you have to play on anets schedule. I think that is why DS is so popular compared to the other maps. You can push the meta event early.

I could give a quaggan’s tit about the opinions of a bunch of glorified bean-counters. Pretty much everyone here has bought the expansion anyway, whether it does well or poorly Anet has clearly invested enough in GW2 to keep it going for a few more years, at least.

Gotta agree with some comments here, Anet really kittened me off when they killed off sections of the core game. It seemed like a really callous way to treat their loyal player base in order to force them to play the new content. Also taking away guild stuff and hiding it behind massive gold sinks was extremely annoying along with the shameless and manipulative cash grabbing tactics.

These antics didn’t force me to play the new content for very long or hand over cash to buy stuff, they forced me to look around for an alternative game. In the end we reap what we sow.

Azure Prower.8701:

Ayrilana.1396:

Many investors projected Star Wars to surpass Avatar in ticket sales. This is likely not to happen although it came close. Was Star Wars a failure?

Yes. From a certain point of view.

Omg I almost spat out my coffee. Best answer award!