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We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
NCSOFT 1Q 2015 Results
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As you know I see the way cosmetics are a grind (mainly because of the cash-shop and the way rewarding works (what I blame on the focus of the cash-shop) as the main problem of GW2 and one of the bigger reasons why those people coming back, did leave in the first. Now thats a discussion for another thread.
1-4% fo the population fo WoD did farming for vanity items , oposed to getiing Powered-up like the previous x-packs that will help them in PvP/Raid .
I post it up ahead …. but you going circles over circles as usual …
Maybe we need a 4th Devata blochhead megathread
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1747902-Reputations-in-WoD-an-absolute-failure
Every x-pakcs peaks the interest of its population , but i wonder why WoW havent released the date for its yearly x-pack …. maybe they are not ready …..
or :
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1773793-Do-you-want-a-1-year-expansion
Pfff you try to aply your fraud elementary logic that the company is loosing money , so they must release more x-packs . But you havent calcalated that : FEW PPL ARE PAYING THE 20 MILLONS (did i quack oracle skills , where true when i said that the company aims for 20 m income , otherwise we would see more gem store items ? :P) , as oposed FORCING EVERY1 TO PAY FOR YEARLY X-PACKS
Did my quack oracle skills , where true that having 3 motnhs updates + yearly x-packs will make ppl unhappy (as you proposed) ?
Just look at WoD forums (-30% population loss)
Did my quack oracle skills , where also true , where if the releases items with small chance to drop in behing content (because that dont count as farming but as a friendndly hunt) , ppl will get angry ? (see tentraquil pet + Beta Portals)
Did my quack oracle skills , where also true ,that you will try to ’’control’’ the old gg , by using all these ’’logics’’ and you will say that ‘’i told you so ’’ ?
You can call me ilithia(stupid) , sister of Pythia from now :P
(got a smoke?)
Efit :
Well too bad , i gave a promish and i cant enjoy ur time together :P
But dont fret , we will see each other in the x-pack , and utemently marry in Holland :P
(edited by Killthehealersffs.8940)
As I see it, there are two things a lot of people here seem to be ignoring. Yes, the uptrend in sales over last quarter is marginal, but last quarter was also the Christmas season which means beating it in the next quarter can be misleading. Most games don’t beat the Christmas quarter at all, because ‘tis the season’.
And let’s not forget, a lot of the sales we’ve seen are at 25% of the price of the game that originally launched 2.5 years ago. In order for a sale today to match a single sale, two-four copies would have had to been sold. So that 3% is pretty kitten ed good.
Without new content it’s even more surprising, since we are in a content drought.
Six million dollars a month is pretty good for a 2.5 year old game, particularly one that’s not had an expansion.
Now, some people in this thread have drawn the conclusion that the expansion path, instead of the cash shop path, is THE way to go, because sales have tapered and the expansion is bringing more cash in…even just the expectation of the expansion.
This is a bad conclusion to draw. No one is saying that the expansion isn’t something you should have in addition to a subscription or cash shop. The expansion is obviously going to bring in more numbers.
However when Guild Wars 1 managed this with just an expansion every year, the entire complexion of the genre was different. Competition was minimal. Guild Wars was the only MMO type game at the time without a sub. There was very little competitive. More to the point, the entire industry has changed back then. Games cost more to make. Shelf space for computer games back then was how they sold. That’s not true anymore. Shelf space for computer games has gotten smaller and smaller over the years. Having that boxed product for a computer game at this point only minimally affects sales.
At the end of the day this game is successful in sea of games that have been less successful. Even Blade and Soul which made more money this quarter, reached that height by releasing the game is a brand new area.
Some people are arguing the game would be MORE successful if it was done differently, but no one knows. And that it’s successful at all in this climate is telling.
the last xmas quarter was a record low, i would hope they could outperform that.
It’s still Christmas, there were still sales. I’m not really sure why anyone things a game that gets older and older with no expansion is going to keep out performing itself.
It doesn’t work with almost anything. Books, movies, games on the whole, the vast vast majority of them, make less money as time goes on. That’s normal.
So yeah, a quarter on, out performing the previous quarter is a good thing.
Maybe it’s because I was in the publishing industry for so long that it seems very natural for books, games, or any type of entertainment to go down in revenue as the months and years ago on. It’s accounted for in business plans. The only thing that matters is whether the expectations of the business plan is met, not what a bunch of people on forum’s think.
From what we’ve seen from investor reports, Guild Wars 2 has always met or exceeded expectations, which means saying any quarter was the slowest is almost irrelevant even if it is true. What’s relevant is that according to the business plan put forward before launch, the game is meeting or exceed expectations.
If it weren’t, we’d have seen layoffs.
Fact that there are less games on the shelves does not mean GW2’s expansion can’t be? Besides, you really think shelves are the only place where people see new games? Shelves are generally not the place where people learn about new games.
Point being missed.
GW’s model sold as well as it did because there was a version of the game on shelves for years. The first three were each a stand alone game and not a true expansion. That means someone could buy the third one and like it enough to go back and buy the other two. Stores had the space to keep a game that came out 6 months ago on the shelf. With the current tiny amount of space stores currently devote to PC games that aren’t Sims or Blizzard means older games don’t get restocked after they sell out for as long as they use to.
So today if GW came out the first campaign wouldn’t still be on the shelf when the 2nd came out, or the 2nd when the 3rd came out. You don’t get the advantage of someone seeing the series. Some may not want to buy the 3rd if they can’t buy the 1st. Sort of like a book series, who wants to start at book 3. Or some may wrongly assume the later campaigns were expansions and you needed the original which isn’t on the shelf. You lose those sales.
Selling games is a lot like movies. You make the bulk of your sales during the first month or two and then you have a long tail in terms of sales income. So the fact GW2 is making more income every quarter than GW with the single sale and gem shop than spike/tail every six to twelve months works. And that’s important because ANet would not have been able to do what they did with GW for GW2 in getting enough content for a paid expansion before they ran into a cash flow crunch.
So do you think they were just stupid or something? Don’t you think they crunched the numbers at what they did with GW and abandoned it on a whim? No they couldn’t see a way that method would lead to as much money as a cash shop would over time. And so far they’ve been right. If they thought they could pull in another $100-200 million every 12-18 months don’t you think that would be their plan from the start?
I’m not saying anybody was stupid, but I do say numbers indicate they were wrong if they did think this would make them more money, especially overtime.
When you crunch the numbers (and that’s all we have to go on) you conclude that the expansion model would have made them more money, and the fact that even an announcement of an expansion increases income only backs that up.
I think the ‘shelve’ space you base your ideas on is false. There is not so much limited space of shelves, there are simply less PC games being sold because more people buy it online, but the games being sold are on the selves (You can still find GW2 in many game-shops).
Don’t think that just because there is some big company behind the current model is does mean it’s the best numbers. As that is basically what you say in your last paragraph.. They crunch the numbers, came to the current model so that must be the best. There is a big company behind the model ESO used and that model failed, just as with Wildstar and many, many other games that did fail or where the model failed.
This cash-shop model is mainly a safe model, so that might be the reason they did go for it but it does not help the game from a game-play perspective because it takes items out of the game and behind a grind (what is bad for the game-play) and it does not mean it’s the most profitable model.
@Devata
When you crunch the numbers? How? With what? Which numbers are you talking about.
The tiny bit of info we get from quarterly reports are just that. Tiny bits of info. We don’t have enough info to crunch the numbers and, more importantly, we have zero info on what would actually have happened if this had been done differently.
You’re so vested in your specific point of view, this anti-cash shop agenda, you don’t have the ability to admit it’s not possible to know that it would have been better your way. There’s no way anyone can know.
There is a possibility what you’ve been saying is correct but it’s just that. A possibility. But when you start throwing around sentences like: “When you crunch the numbers (and that’s all we have to go on) you conclude that the expansion model would have made them more money, and the fact that even an announcement of an expansion increases income only backs that up”…
I have to question everything else you say because it should be obvious we don’t have the numbers TO crunch. You’re making a whole bunch of assumptions starting with a specific prejudice. It’s like when politicians make a budget and overestimate income so they can spend more.
There’s simply no way to know. I wish you’d stop trying to make it sound like you have some mathematical proof of something when such proof is an impossibility.
~
the last xmas quarter was a record low, i would hope they could outperform that.
It’s still Christmas, there were still sales. I’m not really sure why anyone things a game that gets older and older with no expansion is going to keep out performing itself.
It doesn’t work with almost anything. Books, movies, games on the whole, the vast vast majority of them, make less money as time goes on. That’s normal.
So yeah, a quarter on, out performing the previous quarter is a good thing.
Maybe it’s because I was in the publishing industry for so long that it seems very natural for books, games, or any type of entertainment to go down in revenue as the months and years ago on. It’s accounted for in business plans. The only thing that matters is whether the expectations of the business plan is met, not what a bunch of people on forum’s think.
From what we’ve seen from investor reports, Guild Wars 2 has always met or exceeded expectations, which means saying any quarter was the slowest is almost irrelevant even if it is true. What’s relevant is that according to the business plan put forward before launch, the game is meeting or exceed expectations.
If it weren’t, we’d have seen layoffs.
That does not mean it could still be better, with also a better game for it and stay better in the longer run.
I agree that for the biggest part GW2 is meeting its expectations, especially from the investors perspective. A little less from what Anet envisioned as they talked about how they would use the LS to keep the game going and so would not need expansion. That part they had to come back on seeing the numbers fall, but overall the game is successful and likely meeting expectation.
However, now put investors’ expectations next to gamers expectations. Investors made their money, sure they would love to keep making money but did their expectations and so their plants go as far as seeing GW2 as an investment that would keep making them money for 10 years into the future? Do they also care for the game itself?
Nope, just for the money and it’s not likely they did look 10 years into the future.
So simply because it’s meeting business expectations does not mean it can’t still be better from a gamers perspective and from a business perspective.
If HoT can create one more big spike of income and the games slowly starts do decline after that the investors are probably fine with that, they made their money, possibly more than their expected. But the most gamers want a MMORPG to stay interesting for years to come. I am trying to look at it from both perspectives, not only from the perspective where both parties can be happy.
There is one big positive, while investors are not likely not looking that far into the future, Anet is, they have a company they want to keep running and successful for many years. So let’s hope they also see the numbers, they see the strength and the weaknesses of the game and do something with that information.
How do you come to that conclusion? What numbers did you “crunch” to get that conclusion? I have 12 years of NCSOFT financial data and there is no numbers there that indicate that this was a wrong decision. GW sold OK.
The shelf space question is a chicken or egg problem. I saw the loss of shelf space to due to the expansion of the Cell Phone area at my Best Buys and console games at Walmart and Target well before Steam really took off. At my last informal survey of two Walmarts, two Targets and two Best Buys, the game is no longer on the shelf. Gem Cards at Target and Best Buy yes but neither at Walmart. The game was in stock as recently as a month ago.
No I said they crunched the numbers, based on their experience with the GW model and concluded it would not work so we got what we got. They decided they couldn’t do quick expansions with how GW2 is structured as a game so that left a cash shop to compensate for decreased game sales income until they could get an expansion out.
ESO and WildStar had the hubris to believe that a subscription MMO would still be possible. The last foolish attempt was The Secret World. All three, if rumors are true, are now or will be within the year a B2P with subscription like VIP program and cash shop. That business model only still works with very old MMOs with a large player base. It doesn’t work with new MMOs. ArenaNet wanted B2P work and it was just a matter of keeping the cash flow going long enough to get an expansion out. That was only going to happen with a cash shop.
The GW model only works if you can get an expansion out before your income from sales drops below your costs for creating an expansion. Sure early sale may build up a nest egg, after you pay off your advance from NCSOFT for the game’s initial development but you rather use that to smooth out seasonal variation in income and not because you are currently operating in the red regardless of season.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
@Devata
When you crunch the numbers? How? With what? Which numbers are you talking about.
~
You’re so vested in your specific point of view, this anti-cash shop agenda, you don’t have the ability to admit it’s not possible to know that it would have been better your way. There’s no way anyone can know.
~
No, we don’t know what would have happened if we would life in the alternative reality where GW2 was a true B2P that released an expansions +- every year keeping more true to the GW1 model.
We would not know if using that model would indeed have resulted in them using a reward model where more items are behind content instead of behind a currency grind and so we don’t know if the game would have been more successful (game-wise and business-wise).
It’s your basic argument for almost every suggestion made on this forum and your right.. There are things you cannot know for sure. You can’t factually know if any suggestion made on this forum will work as planned. Easy way to ignore everything, but also a useless addition to any topic. just as you always seem to ignore common sense with the same argument.
We also do not have all the numbers, again true. But heey, with those arguments why have a forum. Anything anybody suggest can work out different then they think so it’s useless right? Well it isn’t, but it is when following your logic on the matter.
Still we do have numbers here and we use them.
We see how the expansion-model did work for GW1 where every expansion (campaign) resulted in a spike of about 100% of initial sale of that game.
We have the quarterly numbers of GW2 and see how income did only decrease after initial sale.
We can compare those income after the initial spike over a year and compare that with a ‘fictional’ expansion, based on GW1’s numbers and see that if those expansions where able to also create a spike of +-100% just as those of GW1 did the total income for GW2 by now would have been higher.
We also see results for Q1 of 2015 was finally an increase again while the only real big thing to happen in the land of GW2 was the announcement of HoT. Common sense tells you it’s very likely that announcement is then to ‘blame’ for the higher results.
So that is the number crunching. But you are right.. you can simply dismiss all that by saying ‘we do not have all numbers, we are not all knowing, things could have gone different’. You right, but then why talk about anything anymore. Decisions are always made based on these sorts of numbers but without knowing for a fact that it would also work as the numbers predict. In fact, those tiny bits of information (the quarterly reports) are there for the investors to make their future decisions based on that.
But you are welcome not to look at them because ‘Past Performance is No Guarantee of Future Results’.
" you don’t have the ability to admit it’s not possible to know that it would have been better your way." Uhhm only that in about every discussion we have about this you come with this same story and I agree that indeed you can’t know anything for sure as long as you don’t life in that alternative reality. So far for not admitting that.. I do admit that, I simply do not work with that as doing so would mean you could not make any suggestions as you could never know how anything would work out. So I admit you are right. I admit things could work out different, just as I did those previous times. However I still base what I am saying on the numbers I have, even knowing it could still work out differently.
“There’s simply no way to know. I wish you’d stop trying to make it sound like you have some mathematical proof of something when such proof is an impossibility.” Again, I never put it as some factual truth. I say (as you quoted) ‘if you crunch the numbers.. this is what you get’. Because that is what it is. Yes I make also assumptions like ‘increase of Q1 must be because of the HoT announcement’ that is an assumption, do we know that for sure? No, is there really any other good explanation for it? no.
Or like Sherlock Homes would say “‘If you’ve eliminated all other possibilities whatever remains must be the truth” and I am then only saying ’it’s likely the truth’. That is the common sense I know you also never want me to mentions.. because common sense is also not something you ca know for sure.
@Devata
You almost got it now. You say, if we crunch numbers we’d get this as if it were some sort of fact. You’re the one claiming to know something definitively.
Yes, my answers are on the forums are we generally don’t. It’s opinion. It’s guessing. And I wouldn’t mind (and don’t mind) when you express those opinions as opinions. But when you make some sort of claim that if you crunched the numbers, you’d get this, that’s just fantasy. Saying so doesn’t make it so.
Who’s more reasonable? The person who says something as a fact that’s absolutely unprovable, or the person who calls them on it?
Guild Wars 2 is one of the more successful MMORPGs on the market right now. It’s more successful than just about every other western MMO. In fact, I can’t think of a Western MMO in the last five years that is as successful.
You’re saying they’re be more successful, with no real evidence, fueled by this cash shop vendetta you’ve got going. Almost every thread you enter eventually turns into a cash shop attack, or a condemnation of a successful business model. Anet has now produced back to back successful games, probably two more games than you’ve produced.
Sure I call people when they make definitive statements that are simply opinions. That is, as you’ve said, my right.
This game is successful. There’s no way to tell it would be more successful, but in my opinion, if the system had been working as well as you think, Anet would have stuck with it. They didn’t.
Perhaps you can think of a compelling reason why Anet would abandon it if it were actually working?
I don’t think the idea behind expansions+LS+gemstore is that terrible of an idea, at least from a business standpoint. However it doesn’t seem like Anet was prepared or set in a way to time it properly. It seems like their original model wasn’t working so they are rushing out HoT which seems to be too little too late. From what they’ve released so far a HoT style expansion should have came out a year or two ago. Now granted I haven’t really followed GW2 development or business strategy so unsure if intended or not, nor do I know how good/large their dev team is.
However doing expansions longterm, with LS as midterm, and gem store to fill the gaps isn’t a bad business model if they can keep it up. The only problem is the cost for the expansions/LS and the rate of development.
Releasing $30-$40 expansions each year will drive more players away then retain, it would have to be every 2-3 years. Depending on scale of the expansion. Living Story would have to be rolled into later expansions to avoid massive “catch up” costs for new players, and their cosmetic system needs to be more encouraging to use.
Though this is all speculation, hindsight, and personal opinion.
I don’t think the idea behind expansions+LS+gemstore is that terrible of an idea, at least from a business standpoint. However it doesn’t seem like Anet was prepared or set in a way to time it properly. It seems like their original model wasn’t working so they are rushing out HoT which seems to be too little too late. From what they’ve released so far a HoT style expansion should have came out a year or two ago. Now granted I haven’t really followed GW2 development or business strategy so unsure if intended or not, nor do I know how good/large their dev team is.
However doing expansions longterm, with LS as midterm, and gem store to fill the gaps isn’t a bad business model if they can keep it up. The only problem is the cost for the expansions/LS and the rate of development.
Releasing $30-$40 expansions each year will drive more players away then retain, it would have to be every 2-3 years. Depending on scale of the expansion. Living Story would have to be rolled into later expansions to avoid massive “catch up” costs for new players, and their cosmetic system needs to be more encouraging to use.
Though this is all speculation, hindsight, and personal opinion.
Anet was experimenting with different business models. It seemed they wanted to try something quite different, which was the first season of the Living World. Though a small percentage of players like it (I was among those), it had several flaws, at least one of them “fatal”. You couldn’t replay the content. This is why so little content seems to have been added to the game. One entire season of the Living Story has been and gone.
That left Anet with a dilemma. It’s my opinion that that was when the expansion became a necessity…not before that. I’m guessing that’s when work began in Earnest.
They were always working on stuff in the background anyway, some of which would have been released with an expansion, if they had decided to go that route. Obviously, once the decision was made, much of that stuff would have to be held back.
I’m pretty sure if Season 1 had worked, Anet wouldn’t be here now. Again, just an opinion.
It is nice to see that the HoT did manage to get numbers up again. It shows how people are more interested in expansions as in the Living Story approach as no LS was able to do that, while only the announcement of an expansion does. Of course also the sales will have helped a lot to attract new peoples and from existing players who did buy a second account.
At the same time I notice in game that many of the people who came back during the announcement already left again, coming back when HoT really gets released. So if HoT gets released in Q3 and there will be no special events until then I expect again lower income in Q2.
Big question is how HoT will be sold (I expect good, while not as good as it could have been because of some of the damage done) and how it performs the half a year after release (so basically Q4 or more Q1). That will be very important for the long-longevity for GW2. If with HoT they manage to get rid of the never ending grind, and get a fun game gain where collecting becomes fun game-play then this game might have a long life-spawn, if not, I expect it will scale down after that.
I’m a returning player (been afk 14 months until this week); the living story was a good concept, but the way it is interfaced is non-intuitive to returning players and to put it rather bluntly, I really don’t enjoy the way the personal story quests are implemented in GW2 compared to the standard MMO quest logs.
I love the way open world pve works in GW2, I love the renown tasks and the dynamic events, but I really don’t like the storyboard style of GW2 or the way it creates personal instances for you. I never really liked the NPC’s in the personal story either, it always seemed shallow to me, like a bad cartoon that makes you cringe every time someone speaks.
HoT expansion probably did grab my attention and pique my interest to come back for a look, but if the questing is going to be another story board style deal I probably wont buy it.
It is nice to see that the HoT did manage to get numbers up again. It shows how people are more interested in expansions as in the Living Story approach as no LS was able to do that, while only the announcement of an expansion does. Of course also the sales will have helped a lot to attract new peoples and from existing players who did buy a second account.
At the same time I notice in game that many of the people who came back during the announcement already left again, coming back when HoT really gets released. So if HoT gets released in Q3 and there will be no special events until then I expect again lower income in Q2.
Big question is how HoT will be sold (I expect good, while not as good as it could have been because of some of the damage done) and how it performs the half a year after release (so basically Q4 or more Q1). That will be very important for the long-longevity for GW2. If with HoT they manage to get rid of the never ending grind, and get a fun game gain where collecting becomes fun game-play then this game might have a long life-spawn, if not, I expect it will scale down after that.
I’m a returning player (been afk 14 months until this week); the living story was a good concept, but the way it is interfaced is non-intuitive to returning players and to put it rather bluntly, I really don’t enjoy the way the personal story quests are implemented in GW2 compared to the standard MMO quest logs.
I love the way open world pve works in GW2, I love the renown tasks and the dynamic events, but I really don’t like the storyboard style of GW2 or the way it creates personal instances for you. I never really liked the NPC’s in the personal story either, it always seemed shallow to me, like a bad cartoon that makes you cringe every time someone speaks.
HoT expansion probably did grab my attention and pique my interest to come back for a look, but if the questing is going to be another story board style deal I probably wont buy it.
If you’re talking about two figures talking to each other against a backdrop, that ended with the personal story. Cut scenes now are quite different.
@Devata
You almost got it now. You say, if we crunch numbers we’d get this as if it were some sort of fact. You’re the one claiming to know something definitively.
Where exactly do I say that is definitively?
“But when you make some sort of claim that if you crunched the numbers, you’d get this, that’s just fantasy. Saying so doesn’t make it so.”
Well I make that claim because I did, in fact I did it in the forums for everybody to see it and being able to comment about it. I think in your mind, by saying I crunch the numbers I automatically say that this is a factually outcome. Of course, I did not say that, that’s something you made up. It is however the outcome of the number crunching. And that is al that I am saying it is.
Sure I do believe the numbers would hold truth in reality but I never claimed that it would be a fact that it would work this way. I mentioned multiple time that we obviously never will know what would happen in the alternative reality.
(edited by Devata.6589)
@Devata
You almost got it now. You say, if we crunch numbers we’d get this as if it were some sort of fact. You’re the one claiming to know something definitively.
Where exactly do I say that is definitively?
This is your unedited paragraph:
“When you crunch the numbers (and that’s all we have to go on) you conclude that the expansion model would have made them more money, and the fact that even an announcement of an expansion increases income only backs that up.”
This is stated as a fact. The implication of crunching numbers allows you to “conclude”…there’s nothing TO conclude from the numbers posted. Crunching numbers is never about opinion. Crunching numbers is about doing something mathematical that leads to a conclusion.
You can’t crunch numbers and get any kind of conclusion from the numbers we have. It’s not possible.
More to the point, you keep bringing up Guild Wars 1 as an example of this working, without acknowledging that came out ten years ago, in a completely different market place.
It’s fine to have an opinion. Really, it’s great that you feel strongly. And your opinion might resonate more strongly if this game wasn’t actually successful. But saying it would be more successful your way is asking people to take a whole lot on faith.
@Devata
You almost got it now. You say, if we crunch numbers we’d get this as if it were some sort of fact. You’re the one claiming to know something definitively.
Where exactly do I say that is definitively?
This is your unedited paragraph:
“When you crunch the numbers (and that’s all we have to go on) you conclude that the expansion model would have made them more money, and the fact that even an announcement of an expansion increases income only backs that up.”
This is stated as a fact. The implication of crunching numbers allows you to “conclude”…there’s nothing TO conclude from the numbers posted. Crunching numbers is never about opinion. Crunching numbers is about doing something mathematical that leads to a conclusion.
You can’t crunch numbers and get any kind of conclusion from the numbers we have. It’s not possible.
More to the point, you keep bringing up Guild Wars 1 as an example of this working, without acknowledging that came out ten years ago, in a completely different market place.
It’s fine to have an opinion. Really, it’s great that you feel strongly. And your opinion might resonate more strongly if this game wasn’t actually successful. But saying it would be more successful your way is asking people to take a whole lot on faith.
It’s the conclusion of the numbers.. it’s the outcome of the numbers. Is that really so hard to get?
“Crunching numbers is about doing something mathematical that leads to a conclusion.” Yes that is what we do right. We do some ‘math’ and get a outcome based on that, a conclusion based on those number. That however does indeed not mean for a fact that the outcome will be the same. It might make it more likely, and when that’s all you have to go on it’s useful to look at it, but gain your right it’s not a fact things will go that way.
If we calculate the probability or heads and for tails it’s 50%, that is the conclusion. But it does not factually mean that if you throw the coin twice you will defiantly get heads one time and get tails one time.
“More to the point, you keep bringing up Guild Wars 1 as an example of this working, without acknowledging that came out ten years ago, in a completely different market place.”
I did bring that up. But is that so relevant? Q1 seems to show that expansions still work, also is this new market. And is it really that different? Back then P2P was the main way to go, B2P was the alternative, these days F2P is the way to go, B2P still is the alternative.
I don’t think the idea behind expansions+LS+gemstore is that terrible of an idea, at least from a business standpoint. However it doesn’t seem like Anet was prepared or set in a way to time it properly. It seems like their original model wasn’t working so they are rushing out HoT which seems to be too little too late. From what they’ve released so far a HoT style expansion should have came out a year or two ago. Now granted I haven’t really followed GW2 development or business strategy so unsure if intended or not, nor do I know how good/large their dev team is.
However doing expansions longterm, with LS as midterm, and gem store to fill the gaps isn’t a bad business model if they can keep it up. The only problem is the cost for the expansions/LS and the rate of development.
Releasing $30-$40 expansions each year will drive more players away then retain, it would have to be every 2-3 years. Depending on scale of the expansion. Living Story would have to be rolled into later expansions to avoid massive “catch up” costs for new players, and their cosmetic system needs to be more encouraging to use.
Though this is all speculation, hindsight, and personal opinion.
Anet was experimenting with different business models. It seemed they wanted to try something quite different, which was the first season of the Living World. Though a small percentage of players like it (I was among those), it had several flaws, at least one of them “fatal”. You couldn’t replay the content. This is why so little content seems to have been added to the game. One entire season of the Living Story has been and gone.
That left Anet with a dilemma. It’s my opinion that that was when the expansion became a necessity…not before that. I’m guessing that’s when work began in Earnest.
They were always working on stuff in the background anyway, some of which would have been released with an expansion, if they had decided to go that route. Obviously, once the decision was made, much of that stuff would have to be held back.
I’m pretty sure if Season 1 had worked, Anet wouldn’t be here now. Again, just an opinion.
That’s a valid point. Even talk radio, TV shows, restaurants—and everyone has to eat—recycle content. To put resources into developing that much playable output for it to disappear forever just seems insane on the surface. I don’t think too many, looking at it from the outside, would say, “Let’s develop 20 hours of new playable content every month, then throw it away,” and think that’s a sound strategy. Certainly if everyone is on board with this, including your customer base, it works well, but that wasn’t the case. I don’t think any who first saw the videos of the devs discussing new content every two weeks were ever under the impression that they would be obligated to play all of it every two weeks or miss out on it forever.
I can understand having certain rewards perhaps be tied to the original release of each part of the content. Some smaller, unique items would have been interesting incentive. Making it so that the reward was the content itself, and that exclusive to those on during those two weeks was a horrible decision, both business-wise and for longevity of the game, simply in terms of providing maximum entertainment to players new and old. Even those who were here for the original play through can’t experience it again. For all intents and purposes, Living Story: Season 2 means that Guild Wars 2’s current content level is still about that of most major MMOs not long after launch. In terms of playable hours of story and event content it’s just not there.
Buy to Play titles can only go so far when there’s nothing to keep players coming back. Worse still, this game’s players are begging for repeatable content like SAB, Queen’s Pavilion, etc, to return and getting zero response. Is there anyone on the inside or outside looking at the situation who could possibly see that as a positive thing?
If you’re talking about two figures talking to each other against a backdrop, that ended with the personal story. Cut scenes now are quite different.
I wouldn’t know, I haven’t really been able to find where the living world content is; which was the main point I was trying to make before I got side-tracked. I’ve been back for a few days now and saw some of the new map, then just gravitated to WvW. I haven’t actually noticed anything drawing my attention to living world. I might have gotten a pop up at some stage but gw2 has so many popups that I may have just dismissed it as a pest.
Guild Wars 2 needs to address its primary concerns more directly (instead of just releasing more skins) to get the attention the brand deserves:
(1) Living Story:
Although it recently ‘got better’ because of ‘sylvari being dragon minions’ but let’s be honest, it’s not even original. Prior to the S2 this was no more than a joking fan fiction. The writers currently in charge relied on community generated contents indirectly. Dialogues and sub plots between major characters are still meh. Lore related to the original Guild Wars remain mostly unrelated or utilized poorly. The choices made by players still have next to no impact on their own experience.
(2) Player vs. Player:
Balance patches need to come out way more frequent than its current rate if GW2 is ever to be taken seriously. Also still no template!? Seriously how hard it really is. We’ll be having TDM, Conquest, and Stronghold all in one queue without templates more player rages are imminent
(3) Twitch TV a.k.a. Ready Up & Point of Interest:
There exists an unnecessary separation between these two. PvP people only watch the former and other people only the later. Why not just merge them all into one to cut the cost of producing two lines and also boosting the viewer population? Also, less jokes and banters between the staffs and more serious stuffs when they’re on screen please…most of the jokes I just don’t get cos I am not an inner circle of their frands right? For me it’s more like a ‘showoff of the dev’s social skills’ than a serious show to communicate with us what’s next in store. I end up closing most Ready Up’s before finishing watching, feeling disappointed and slightly offended by how casually the devs are taking the community concerns
Casual player of all races, classes and genders
Champion Slayer | sPvP Rank 90
Dragonbrand
Champion Slayer | sPvP Rank 90
Dragonbrand
(edited by Ferik.3127)
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