Guild Wars 2

(Links are from this Reddit thread)

Third Quarter Earnings

Link to imgur image below

Wildstar is still alive?!

Can someone explain this to me... ?
Also why does GW2 have so low numbers??

Alga.6498:

Can someone explain this to me… ?
Also why does GW2 have so low numbers??

Its in billions of Korean Won. The GW2 figure is around $13.3 million USD I think. The issue is that GW2 had both LS episodes come out in this quarter but had a slight decline in revenue. Revenue per quarter with the HOT effect removed is about 25% less than it was in 2015.

They’re also the overall sales for the game itself as well as gem store items.

Why are the numbers low? People are either not buying the game and expansion, not buying gem store items, or both. Seems both. As to why?

Well . . . that’s another thread.

Alga.6498:

Can someone explain this to me… ?
Also why does GW2 have so low numbers??

Most of NCSOFT’s offerings are (mostly) Korean games and they have a lot more means to generate revenue, so GW2 is always going to be lower. However, after HoT got a bad rap (deserved or not), sales of the expac dropped (although gem shop sales beat expectations), with the result that GW2 was doing a lot worse compared to pre-sales/launch sales (that’s the huge drop last quarter). The fact that it hasn’t dropped significantly for this quarter is a “not bad” sign — GW2 is no longer on a downward slide, but it hasn’t reversed the trend.

Actually looking back on the previous 2Q to 3Q numbers in previous years, the fact this year was nearly flat after adjusting for the average exchange rate that quarter, is actually a positive turn.

In the conference call they indicated that GW2 royalties from China are down and that ANet is working on the next expansion.

looks like their oldest game makes about as much money as all the games released after it together

Alga.6498:

Can someone explain this to me… ?
Also why does GW2 have so low numbers??

Comparatively low.

But if you want reasons for that, content drought + nothing interesting the AH + Q3 slump which is inherent to these cyclic games. Also lack of developer effort as a whole leading to a rather stagnant mood among players.

HoT admittedly sold not as expected in Q 4/15.
Q1/16 saw a sharp drop by 7 million already. My personal conclusion is that raiders raided, ran out of things and left again, and many more people were both fed up with the content drought and the direction of GW2 in general.
Q2/16 dropped significantly compared to the last year Quartal(from 20 to 15 aka 25%). The whole legendary armor/weapons stuff surely did not help here, but ls3 seemd to be able to stabilize the numbers in Q3/16.

I am not paricullarly surprised that hardcore players may spend less money than casual ones and numbers dropped. Why spend real money when you can play the TP and farm instead?

If you’re comparing GW2 to the other games remember you need to look at the actual numbers, not just the height of the bars.

For this quarter GW2 is not far off what Aion brought in, only 5k below Lineage II and way above Wildstar.

Everything is below Lineage I, but that’s not surprising, it’s basically Korea’s World of Warcraft, but I think it came out around the same time as Everquest so it’s had even longer to get established. Never played it myself but I know a lot of people, particularly in Korea, love it and are extremely dedicated players.

Edit: Also note that this is the amount of money the game made for NCSoft not the number of players.

One of the main reasons is that NCsoft is a Korean company and denies GW2 to enter the Korean market. Most of those earnings are made in domestic market. I mean who plays horrible games like Blade & Soul but mostly Asians?

Torolan.5816:

HoT admittedly sold not as expected in Q 4/15.
Q1/16 saw a sharp drop by 7 million already. My personal conclusion is that raiders raided, ran out of things and left again, and many more people were both fed up with the content drought and the direction of GW2 in general.
Q2/16 dropped significantly compared to the last year Quartal(from 20 to 15 aka 25%). The whole legendary armor/weapons stuff surely did not help here, but ls3 seemd to be able to stabilize the numbers in Q3/16.

I am not paricullarly surprised that hardcore players may spend less money than casual ones and numbers dropped. Why spend real money when you can play the TP and farm instead?

While both parts of this analysis make sense they seem contradictory.

You blame a perceived drop in player numbers on the uppermost ‘hardcore’ players finishing the raid and leaving because there is nothing else for them to do, but then say hardcore players are unlikely to spend much money anyway because they can use gold and most sales will come from casual players.

If the people who are spending most of the money are not the ones who quite playing surely people quitting should have a minimal impact?

I also wonder if the fact that NCSoft is “only” the publisher for GW2 affects it. My understanding is that the other games on that list are all developed by NCSoft themselves.

Anet is a wholly owned subsidiary, but that’s still different to being part of the company.

I don’t think NCSoft is even the publisher, anymore. Didn’t ArenaNet take over that role last year, or so?

Torolan.5816

HoT admittedly sold not as expected in Q 4/15.
Q1/16 saw a sharp drop by 7 million already. My personal conclusion is that raiders raided, ran out of things and left again, and many more people were both fed up with the content drought and the direction of GW2 in general.
………………..
I am not paricullarly surprised that hardcore players may spend less money than casual ones and numbers dropped. Why spend real money when you can play the TP and farm instead?

I think Torolan.5816 made a slight mistake in his analysis: In my opinion the raiders are still inn – the Legendary armor, the promised reward for the effort and dedication is still on the preview stage. Also, the previous report was not very brilliant too. And at that moment the raiders were inn for sure.

But look at the forum topics complaining about HoT weak points, complaining about raids (the difficulty to beat the raids), complaining about the lack of reward experience if you don’t successfully raid, and even at the recent post with the daily AP cap. These are complains from the common / average players. These players told ANet (in various form) during the discussion that they will be more careful with the money spent on GW2. If the result of this report is not brilliant it may be a sign that the common/casual/average players are now indeed more cautious with the money spent in game.

My conclusion: The raiders are ingame for 1-2 days per week. Staying or leaving the game cannot affect the income too much. This is my opinion only.

It seems that ANet considers that the raiders can still impact in a heavy manner the incoming. And that the rest of casual / common / average players have a less financial contribution.

Let’s wait for the next report.

Those numbers aren’t really that surprising when you know a bit about international MMORPG markets. Every other game on that list (besides Wildstar) is hugely popular in Korea and even China.
Those are easily the two most important MMORPG markets for NCSoft by a long shot. Success in Korea and especially China is in a totally different league than success in Europe.

Some games which have been discontinued in the West due to a lack of players actually reach 2x-4x the amount of registered accounts of even WoW. A game that is also quite popular in Asia.
Dungeon Fighter Online, Fantasy Westward Jorney, RuneScape and Dragon Nest just to name a few. Dungeon Fighter Online had a revenue of $1,052M in 2015. WoW “only” reached $814M.
There is also a huge difference between revenue and profit. We do not know how much it costs to keep some of these games running. Some games might require far less technical investments to run (Lineage released in 1998) but they will still need a huge support and customer relations staff.

Looking at the western audiences only, Guild Wars 2 would be in the top 5 at least while it is probably not even in the top 25 world wide.

Danikat.8537:

Torolan.5816:

HoT admittedly sold not as expected in Q 4/15.
Q1/16 saw a sharp drop by 7 million already. My personal conclusion is that raiders raided, ran out of things and left again, and many more people were both fed up with the content drought and the direction of GW2 in general.
Q2/16 dropped significantly compared to the last year Quartal(from 20 to 15 aka 25%). The whole legendary armor/weapons stuff surely did not help here, but ls3 seemd to be able to stabilize the numbers in Q3/16.

I am not paricullarly surprised that hardcore players may spend less money than casual ones and numbers dropped. Why spend real money when you can play the TP and farm instead?

While both parts of this analysis make sense they seem contradictory.

You blame a perceived drop in player numbers on the uppermost ‘hardcore’ players finishing the raid and leaving because there is nothing else for them to do, but then say hardcore players are unlikely to spend much money anyway because they can use gold and most sales will come from casual players.

If the people who are spending most of the money are not the ones who quite playing surely people quitting should have a minimal impact?

Well, you’re right that Raiders returning, staying or leaving likely had only a minimal impact on sales. He did add though that “many more people were both fed up with the content drought and the direction of GW2 in general”. That part was more significant, in my opinion.

So, in short, Raids did not (could not) stop (or likely even slow) the decline in income, that was caused by the content drought and changes in game direction. At worst, they might have accelerated it by making those changes in direction more apparent. LS3 on the other hand did seem to visibly help.

All that points to where the money really comes from, and make the original HoT-and-after direction of the game that devs decided upon rather dubious.

What I want to know is how is Lineage earning so much more than the other games. I know next to nothing about the game.

It also saddens me that the game that CoX was dropped for (Wildstar) had done so badly.

I personally feel…

1- Anet needs to hire more people so they can get more done in every area of the game. This also allows them to pump out those xpacs at a faster rate.

2- Communicate current projects, and what might be in the works, to really jazz up players and improve retention rates.

3- Start offering a lot of cool stuff and conveniences on the gem store so players want, or are more willing, to spend money.

Arenanet’s communication has always been terrible, and it plays a large role in why the game doesn’t perform better (although the biggest role is probably just the slow pace of new content releases and profession updates).

They do a very poor job of regulating hype on both sides. They stay quiet for long periods of time, then spend periods of time over-hyping or hyping in the wrong way that leads to massive disappointment, followed by more quiet.

Additionally, the Gem Store is not as well utilized as it should be. It tends toward trite “more of the same” offerings, with not nearly enough creative and novel stuff that would appeal to a lot of random players.

All in all, it has always seemed like Arenaet has significant operations/management problems that affect the whole company’s ability to deliver content in a quick and polished way.

Swagger.1459:

I personally feel…

1- Anet needs to hire more people so they can get more done in every area of the game. This also allows them to pump out those xpacs at a faster rate.

2- Communicate current projects, and what might be in the works, to really jazz up players and improve retention rates.

3- Start offering a lot of cool stuff and conveniences on the gem store so players want, or are more willing, to spend money.

It feels like they are limited by the engine and tools tbh. Hiring more people not gonna help if it is true. Agreed with everything else though.

In my opinion it seems obvious that anets latest push to generate revenue is to force you to either buy gold or buy more gold. I bought kittentons of gold to build my private guild hall but this obvious ploy is having me reconsider how much i generously donate to anet. Like, i didn’t mind it when i chose to buy gold but now that they’re rigging the system in certain areas so that you either have to stand in lion’s arch or divinity’s reach all day flipping or buy gold i’m starting to push back. There’s a lot of things they added or removed from the game that have made certain prices unreasonable. First mystic coins, then they added new nodes which were hilariously overpriced and before they even had a chance to go down enough in price for the average casual to buy one they removed all the nodes but ghost pepper nodes for the lulz ahaha anet good one guess we should all just buy gold if we want that shiny node i guess. And I know what you’re thinking it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with 500g but by the time someone comes up with that much its 600g and by the time they come up with that extra 100g its more because theres literally zero supply right now. I know someone who plays for more than a few hours everyday who is wondering how he’s going to come up with 100g for the guild hall exploration when he also needs 100g for icy runestones for his legendary because it takes him that long to earn that much. Some people aren’t grinders. People always write go to silverwastes or auric basin multiloot, it still takes a looong time to earn 500g or more in those places even grinding to death and you realize we do play this game for fun, right? I don’t want to log into a game that’s a job where the pay is fake. So that’s what they’re trying to do to increase their earnings is force casual people to buy gold by driving up prices of nonessential goods. And i’m not having it. I have a full instance and i grind harder than anyone i know in this game. I also spend more on gems than anyone i’ve ever met in this game. Well, I used to.

If you look at the figures since launch, it is clear that every time ANet introduces a way to alienate working (and therefore spending) casual players, their financials suffer. What they are left with are hardcore players who either have enough time (because they don’t work and therefore have no spending power) to grind or buy everything with gold (again not spending real money on anything) made in various forms in the game.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Swagger.1459:

I personally feel…

1- Anet needs to hire more people so they can get more done in every area of the game. This also allows them to pump out those xpacs at a faster rate.

2- Communicate current projects, and what might be in the works, to really jazz up players and improve retention rates.

3- Start offering a lot of cool stuff and conveniences on the gem store so players want, or are more willing, to spend money.

It feels like they are limited by the engine and tools tbh. Hiring more people not gonna help if it is true. Agreed with everything else though.

There was a recent dev post in the wvw section, iirc, that mentioned working on lag, so they may possibly be working on certain engine improvements and such. Idk. But yes, this is a weak point to the game as well.

KyreneZA.8617:

If you look at the figures since launch, it is clear that every time ANet introduces a way to alienate working (and therefore spending) casual players, their financials suffer. What they are left with are hardcore players who either have enough time (because they don’t work and therefore have no spending power) to grind or buy everything with gold (again not spending real money on anything) made in various forms in the game.

It’s been going this way for awhile though, it started with the invisible shoes even, and that hasnt been fixed either despite much outrage. A lot of people just threw up their hands in frustration and bought $3,000g shoes or did without. And then you have this latest doomsday package: don’t think for a second that wasn’t packaged like that intentionally to milk more money out of the people who desperately want the outfit. I’m glad they’re doing all this though because every time they do something like this i get mad and then I get madder and then I have more disposable income available in the future to spend on other things. I’m committed to spend at least a little money in this game until Christmas because its Christmas but if this Christmas update is disappointing and they’re still doing this kind of stuff, I’m not even sure I’ll play anymore much less buy gems.

Danikat.8537:

Torolan.5816:

HoT admittedly sold not as expected in Q 4/15.
Q1/16 saw a sharp drop by 7 million already. My personal conclusion is that raiders raided, ran out of things and left again, and many more people were both fed up with the content drought and the direction of GW2 in general.
Q2/16 dropped significantly compared to the last year Quartal(from 20 to 15 aka 25%). The whole legendary armor/weapons stuff surely did not help here, but ls3 seemd to be able to stabilize the numbers in Q3/16.

I am not paricullarly surprised that hardcore players may spend less money than casual ones and numbers dropped. Why spend real money when you can play the TP and farm instead?

While both parts of this analysis make sense they seem contradictory.

You blame a perceived drop in player numbers on the uppermost ‘hardcore’ players finishing the raid and leaving because there is nothing else for them to do, but then say hardcore players are unlikely to spend much money anyway because they can use gold and most sales will come from casual players.

If the people who are spending most of the money are not the ones who quite playing surely people quitting should have a minimal impact?

Yeah well, it is indeed a bit weird, maybe I can elaborate my opinion a little bit beside what Astralporing already wrote.

My guess is that GW2 began to market HoT with higher danger, no slot, new class, new systems, different form of map making, gliding, the idea of the expansion itself and finally, after years of waiting for some people, raids.
*The first things (higher danger) obviously and for me personally a little bit surprising came back to kick them so hard in the family jewels that they were forced to tame HoT significantly(champs turned into veterans for example) to make it sustainable and playable.
*No slot, new class, new class system and different forms of map making are all on their own by their very nature already potential recipes for disaster and super controversial.
*Raids turned this game upside down, even raiders will agree with me on that one.
I am pretty sure that the message that raids were coming drove many people away already because they had sought refugee from said raids in the game, and some more left when the content drought hit every aspect beside raids and pvp, justified or not. The people that replaced them were supposedly neither as numerous as they were, nor did they in general need to pay real money and were as dedicated gamers probably already be more willin ot hop games and rejoin later when another raid comes in. A raider from another game also probably knows how to farm hard in a given game as efficient farming and raiding go hand in hand in most MMOS.

tl,dr: There are less raiders than casual gamers with open wallets.

A lot less content for casual players, a lot less living stories that is also now expansion gated, more grinds, less festivals, less reason to play, if you’re not going to play no reason to pay. Expansion a year old and not all the legendary weapons or armor have been introduced, wvw continues to die, you can’t keep selling wings to keep you going, too much focus on 10 man content rather than 5 mans, new black lion chest screw ups.

Yeah they’re not treading upward because more than likely less players are playing the game from a year ago, and players are getting tired of content droughts, the old content is now 4 years old and probably needs a facelift.

Liniage 1 and 2 values continue to impress me… dispite old thsoe game have really kewl featuresfor their time…. not even modern mmo’s do it.

Swagger.1459:

I personally feel…

1- Anet needs to hire more people so they can get more done in every area of the game. This also allows them to pump out those xpacs at a faster rate.

2- Communicate current projects, and what might be in the works, to really jazz up players and improve retention rates.

3- Start offering a lot of cool stuff and conveniences on the gem store so players want, or are more willing, to spend money.

They’ve done all of these things and been criticized for them (well, more for how people are allocated than hiring people for point #1).

1. — They already have a huge team, but people complain when team members are allocated to some task because then they’re not working on another task. They also get criticism for assigning too many people to the expac.
2. — They did but were accused of overhyping things.
3. — They did and were accused of doing more for the gem store than for the game.

Well, raids sucks, LS3 episodes every 3 months for 1-2h of gameplay each, PvP and WvW got destroyed and there’s no interesting content in PvE released in a regular basis aside raids, I mean no new dungeons and only one new fractal after 3 years which is made with pieces from others? No wonder why people are leaving/not interested.

Also add the fact that this year and 2017 are full of outstanding games, so good that GW2 is just like a shadow vanishing with all the light around.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Alga.6498:

Can someone explain this to me… ?
Also why does GW2 have so low numbers??

Most of NCSOFT’s offerings are (mostly) Korean games and they have a lot more means to generate revenue, so GW2 is always going to be lower. However, after HoT got a bad rap (deserved or not), sales of the expac dropped (although gem shop sales beat expectations), with the result that GW2 was doing a lot worse compared to pre-sales/launch sales (that’s the huge drop last quarter). The fact that it hasn’t dropped significantly for this quarter is a “not bad” sign — GW2 is no longer on a downward slide, but it hasn’t reversed the trend.

Maybe they shoulda been more transparent and mentioned that the LS would eventually add new zones to the game. Part of it’s bad rep was how small (and unfinished) it was compared to the main game despite being the same price as it. Although that may of been something they decided after HoT release, idk. One of my issues with Anet is they keep everything secret instead of sharing what they’re working on~ like other games have been doing on Twitch when they do developer streams and Q&A.

I reckon the abysmally slow updates, the terrible balance to the game every 3 months, and the overall lack of polish in everything they do is hurting the game.

ITT: Proof of why when you make a game with good combat systems that’s genuinely fun to play on the mechanical level that encourages multiplayer and PvP, it will age well even without content updates.

Also see: Old school RS’s sales figures versus RS3. Quality gameplay mechanics > all other features and updates.

The others are destroying this game because its fundamental systems are not terribly supported in favor of new content gimmicks.

Swagger.1459:

I personally feel…

1- Anet needs to hire more people so they can get more done in every area of the game. This also allows them to pump out those xpacs at a faster rate.

2- Communicate current projects, and what might be in the works, to really jazz up players and improve retention rates.

3- Start offering a lot of cool stuff and conveniences on the gem store so players want, or are more willing, to spend money.

• Can’t hire more people without taking another developer advance from NCSOFT. I believe the distancing themselves from NCSOFT around the time of HoT was them trying to support themselves and reduce opertunities for NCSOFT to take a cut off the top before it ends up in ANet’s coffers.
• They tried that with HoT. Didn’t work out well.
• Like what exactly?

Lexander.4579:

looks like their oldest game makes about as much money as all the games released after it together

Lineage breaks all the rules. It’s been called the WoW of Korea. It failed in the West but it’s so popular in Korea that it just keeps making money, much like WoW keeps making money. People have invested so much money into it over the years, they’re not likely to stop playing without kitten ed good reason.

Vayne.8563:

Lexander.4579:

looks like their oldest game makes about as much money as all the games released after it together

Lineage breaks all the rules. It’s been called the WoW of Korea. It failed in the West but it’s so popular in Korea that it just keeps making money, much like WoW keeps making money. People have invested so much money into it over the years, they’re not likely to stop playing without kitten ed good reason.

I want to say it’s more along the lines of it was released here too early and managed poorly for the Western market. Open-PvP usually doesn’t work as well here, and takes a lot of tight managing to do well. A big blunder can kill a game like that if mismanaged a bit (See: R.OH.A.N.: Blood Feud).

DeceiverX.8361:

Vayne.8563:

Lexander.4579:

looks like their oldest game makes about as much money as all the games released after it together

Lineage breaks all the rules. It’s been called the WoW of Korea. It failed in the West but it’s so popular in Korea that it just keeps making money, much like WoW keeps making money. People have invested so much money into it over the years, they’re not likely to stop playing without kitten ed good reason.

I want to say it’s more along the lines of it was released here too early and managed poorly for the Western market. Open-PvP usually doesn’t work as well here, and takes a lot of tight managing to do well. A big blunder can kill a game like that if mismanaged a bit (See: R.OH.A.N.: Blood Feud).

You could be right. I simply said it failed, I didn’t specific why it failed. I don’t think, however, it would have done well in the western market anyway. That’s just my opinion though and I have nothing to back it up.

GW2 would be doing better if it had a better, or fresher, gemstore offering.

We need more armour sets (ideally) and/or outfits in the gemstore and they need to be less prudishly designed, on the bottom half.

On the one hand, there are many chars (including my own) running around in the Profane armour set and other armour sets that leave little to the imagination and then, on the other, the newest offerings all seem to have skirts, or wraps, thickly covering the char’s behind.

It’s one extreme, or the other, in other words.

We need more in between the two.

The Bandit Sniper’s Outfit, for example, would have been a brilliant addition (and not overly revealing, or concealing), had it not been for that bulky butt wrap thing, that makes my char’s hips look both enormous and a very unnatural shape, on one side.

Get this stuff right and you will make more sales.

some people spend money to buy gems to convert them into gold for legendary weapons, so they can get them faster, before hot that was also part of anet revenue.
end game was always legendary items or weapons before hot, going for legendary items makes you continue play the game and do stuff over and over again because you are working towards your goal of getting legendary weapon, this was the case before hot , here is the problem:
legendary armor is only available to raiders and no one else, effectively killing end game for many players who do not raid, do not forget most veteran players already have legendary weapons, so next step is legendary armor as end game for them, some might go for second set of legendary weapons, but majority wanted armor but anet destroyed their end game by making it available to raiders only.
i am not saying all the revenue is coming from legendary items but part of it comes from it.

Vayne.8563:

Lexander.4579:

looks like their oldest game makes about as much money as all the games released after it together

Lineage breaks all the rules. It’s been called the WoW of Korea. It failed in the West but it’s so popular in Korea that it just keeps making money, much like WoW keeps making money. People have invested so much money into it over the years, they’re not likely to stop playing without kitten ed good reason.

yeah apparently getting a good start for online game will eventually enable that game to sustain itself, very profitable

Tigaseye.2047:

GW2 would be doing better if it had a better, or fresher, gemstore offering.

That’s really the thing, what about another Outfit is going to entice me?

When there were 5 or 6 outfits, getting another one as an option was interesting. Now, there are so many outfits and so many minis and so many gliders, and they come out so quickly, nothing individually registers any more.

I usually don’t even check dulfy’s posts about the new stuff any more >.<

Vayne.8563:

Lexander.4579:

looks like their oldest game makes about as much money as all the games released after it together

Lineage breaks all the rules. It’s been called the WoW of Korea. It failed in the West but it’s so popular in Korea that it just keeps making money, much like WoW keeps making money. People have invested so much money into it over the years, they’re not likely to stop playing without kitten ed good reason.

My experience of Lineage II back in 2005 [when Chronicle 3 was released] on Gustin server…

The leveling is horrible slow, like needing to grind lots of monsters to advance to the next level and finally reach level 20 where your first class change quest starts.

The open world PvP means that while you’re in the fields killing mobs anyone can appear and kill you for “fun”. When you are killed you are granted “death penalty”, which means you lose a percentage of your leveling progress, which in turn costs you time, which also costs you money because Lineage II is a game with a monthly subcription.

Drops from fights or rewards are horrible compared to the game economy. Clans play a vital role in the game in the sense they help their members with gear. Normal players can’t simply play the game solo, like GW2, because they will need years of grinding to craft or buy their class specific weapons and armour – when you earn a few adenas per day buying a weapon that costs millions of adena is not an option.

At this point it is worth mentioning that crafting doesn’t guarantee a finished product. You might have all the mats needed to craft a Soul bow, for example, but there are two messages you will get: either “X crafted Soul bow” or “X failed to craft Soul bow.”

The game is infested with Chinese farmers, a.k.a gold sellers. They are small companies who own hundred of accounts and use bots to farm mats and adena. Some areas in the game are more profitable than others, and they will kill players who go near their bot “working place”.

There is a lot of trash talk on the map chat blaming big clans for corruption, a.k.a. protecting the above mentioned farmers’ bots for their benefit – which, by the way, is true at some point or another. Any thread mentioning bots on the official forum, and how NCSoft NA didn’t do anything about it, meant instant lock.

At the time I am refering to, there is no official shop, like our gem store, in-game: all the market is in the hands of individual players and farmers.

Three years later I realised that no investement of money and time were capable of keeping me playing this appalling game. I quit and never looked back. [Most of my clan-mates also left around that time for the very same reasons.]

I know things have changed a lot since then, and the system has greatly improved in some areas; but if Korean servers are anything like Western servers used to be, I wonder how this mess of a game managed to survive over the years.

Of course, Lineage II was never meant for the casual player, but rather for the hard-core PvPers who didn’t need an excuse to go outside of town and kill whatever moved.

In my view, ANet’s Guild Wars 2 is like a paradise on earth in comparison, and I’m grateful for that [and also grateful to a friend who convinced me to try it]. I hope GW2 continues to improve and do better in the future, because it deserves it.

One problem with using these reports to gauge the health of Anet and GW2 is that it’s one step removed. It doesn’t actually tell us that, it only says how much they paid to NCSoft.

I understand why we do it, it’s all we have to go on. People on the ESO forum would love to have even that much info. That game is made by a subsidiary of a privately owned company so no info on their finances is publicly available at all.

But there’s a lot of info missing. For one thing it’s not a one-way system. At various points NCSoft must be giving money to Anet to allow them to develop new things (because that is what a publisher does), for a start when GW2 was first developed and presumably they did it for HoT and the rumored 2nd expansion too.

Is that reflected in the reports? Is it recorded separately or simply shown as a reduction in profit? Is there any text accompanying the report to explain it (and if so is it available in English since the only thing I can read in Korean is “I do not know”)?

More generally do we know what percentage of their profits Anet give to NCSoft? And is that gross or net? (Aka is it worked out before or after they pay all their costs like staff salaries, rent/mortgage on the office, electricity bill etc.) Is any part of it ear-marked for future development or does that come out of what they give NCSoft?

(Urgh, this is so much simpler in the charity sector where there’s no such thing as shareholders or profits. You earn money, then spend it on your work or bank it for future projects. End of discussion. Or you get yelled at by a lot of important people.)

@Neurion.4086 […Three years later I realised that no investement of money and time were capable of keeping me playing this appalling game…Of course, Lineage II was never meant for the casual player, but rather for the hard-core PvPers…]

It all actually depends, though I will agree that what you mention is the first impression someone has.
When I had started playing lineage II it had felt extremely hard for a new player to actually progress.
Slowly though, as someone understood the market, they could make insane amounts of gold simply by placing their character in a town where others would sell goods, like Giran, afk there for a couple of hours selling, and see a huge profit the moment they’d be back. Lineage 2 never had TP fees and allowed players to sell items at whatever price they felt like, without losing a thing.
Despite the fact that items in general were rather hard to acquire, once someone farmed for some days, they could easily make more and more gold as time went by.
Then they could join some guilds and end up doing Legendary events like Zaken, Scarlet van Halisha or even fight the most epic world bosses (back then) Valakas and Antharas , known to be camped by hard core guilds almost all the time. Those people would kill any inexperienced player trying to approach the dragons and keep their already rare rewards to themselves.

When I started guild wars, and later guild wars 2 they both appeared as a player’s Shangri-La . Everything was relatively easy to acquire simply by farming/playing even abit for a few hours weekly , and that was even more true for Guild wars 2 than guild wars 1 (which had some very rare items like the mini Kanaxai).

Then Guild wars 2 started changing direction, being unsure of where to stand, trying to please and appeal to every type of player. The amount of hours needed to grind for items kept increasing, there were more and more timers for various events, time gates and finally tournaments and raids.
One could no longer play at their own pace and never miss out on anything, as was possible during the first 2 and a half years of guild wars 2. Players had to slowly accept they would miss out on a lot of things, no matter their choice.

> Penultimately, Lineage 2 at first glance offered players the illusion of never being able to achieve some goals, yet with abit of research and some slight effort at first, one would be able to manage anything.

> Guild wars 1 was always friendly towards the player and its economy system made it so that one, simply by being patient and playing at their own pace would be able to get any item they wanted, even the rarest of stuff.

> Guild wars 2 however set the bar low, attracted people due to that philosophy, then made a U-turn on its mentality and started placing the bar higher and higher and higher. It claimed to be casual, yet they added timers on items, timers on dailies, timers on quests, timers on bosses, raids,tournaments (that have skins tied to them) and as a result, the game is neither “here” nor “there”. Casuals call it hard, Hardcores claim its too easy and that’s it.

To sum up, I believe it is better to give players the feeling they can’t achieve something from the start (and end up proving them wrong as they play), rather than making them believe they could easily obtain anything, and ending up breaking their expectations.

I’m not sure players would all agree with ‘One could no longer play at their own pace and never miss out on anything, as was possible during the first 2 and a half years of guild wars 2.’ There was (and often still is) much lamenting over the 2-week time restraints that accompanied Living World Season One releases.

nanael the angel.2659:

@Neurion.4086 […Three years later I realised that no investement of money and time were capable of keeping me playing this appalling game…Of course, Lineage II was never meant for the casual player, but rather for the hard-core PvPers…]

It all actually depends, though I will agree that what you mention is the first impression someone has.
When I had started playing lineage II it had felt extremely hard for a new player to actually progress.
Slowly though, as someone understood the market, they could make insane amounts of gold simply by placing their character in a town where others would sell goods, like Giran, afk there for a couple of hours selling, and see a huge profit the moment they’d be back. Lineage 2 never had TP fees and allowed players to sell items at whatever price they felt like, without losing a thing.
Despite the fact that items in general were rather hard to acquire, once someone farmed for some days, they could easily make more and more gold as time went by.
Then they could join some guilds and end up doing Legendary events like Zaken, Scarlet van Halisha or even fight the most epic world bosses (back then) Valakas and Antharas , known to be camped by hard core guilds almost all the time. Those people would kill any inexperienced player trying to approach the dragons and keep their already rare rewards to themselves.

When I started guild wars, and later guild wars 2 they both appeared as a player’s Shangri-La . Everything was relatively easy to acquire simply by farming/playing even abit for a few hours weekly , and that was even more true for Guild wars 2 than guild wars 1 (which had some very rare items like the mini Kanaxai).

Then Guild wars 2 started changing direction, being unsure of where to stand, trying to please and appeal to every type of player. The amount of hours needed to grind for items kept increasing, there were more and more timers for various events, time gates and finally tournaments and raids.
One could no longer play at their own pace and never miss out on anything, as was possible during the first 2 and a half years of guild wars 2. Players had to slowly accept they would miss out on a lot of things, no matter their choice.

> Penultimately, Lineage 2 at first glance offered players the illusion of never being able to achieve some goals, yet with abit of research and some slight effort at first, one would be able to manage anything.

> Guild wars 1 was always friendly towards the player and its economy system made it so that one, simply by being patient and playing at their own pace would be able to get any item they wanted, even the rarest of stuff.

> Guild wars 2 however set the bar low, attracted people due to that philosophy, then made a U-turn on its mentality and started placing the bar higher and higher and higher. It claimed to be casual, yet they added timers on items, timers on dailies, timers on quests, timers on bosses, raids,tournaments (that have skins tied to them) and as a result, the game is neither “here” nor “there”. Casuals call it hard, Hardcores claim its too easy and that’s it.

To sum up, I believe it is better to give players the feeling they can’t achieve something from the start (and end up proving them wrong as they play), rather than making them believe they could easily obtain anything, and ending up breaking their expectations.

Not sure that I agree about access to the rarest items in GW1 by playing at one’s own pace. Minipets that could cost more plat than most players would ever see, and weapons not much cheaper existed.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m not sure players would all agree with ‘One could no longer play at their own pace and never miss out on anything, as was possible during the first 2 and a half years of guild wars 2.’ There was (and often still is) much lamenting over the 2-week time restraints that accompanied Living World Season One releases.

I agree. To me it’s completely the other way around – during the first two and a half years we had to play according to the schedule Anet set and if you missed it too bad, it was gone. Now it’s up to the player when they do things.

For example I haven’t gotten the Luminescent armour yet, because I haven’t done the Season 2 achievements required to get the ascended trinkets for the collections. But I can go and do them any time I choose, and I can do it at my own pace. I could do 1 achievement a week for however many weeks until I’ve done them all, or I could spend a day doing all of them in one go, or whatever.

(In practice it’s more like every 4 – 6 weeks I remember I want to do them, do 1 or 2 and then get distracted and forget about it again.)

But everything from Season 1 is completely out of reach. I never got all the way through the Candidate Trials during Cutthroat Politics and I can’t finish it at my own pace because it’s been removed from the game.

Ashen.2907:

Not sure that I agree about access to the rarest items in GW1 by playing at one’s own pace. Minipets that could cost more plat than most players would ever see, and weapons not much cheaper existed.

Like the Mini Polar Bear where (on the rare occasions it was sold at all) the price was given in stacks of Armbraces of Truth – the most expensive of the items used to get around the 100,000 gold per trade limit.

Carighan.6758

That’s really the thing, what about another Outfit is going to entice me?

When there were 5 or 6 outfits, getting another one as an option was interesting. Now, there are so many outfits and so many minis and so many gliders, and they come out so quickly, nothing individually registers any more.

That’s kinda where I am. I already have a number of outfits and gliders. I don’t really care about minis. I have 3000+ gems sitting, been there for quite a while actually, hoping for some QoL, convenience, or something truly enticing to be offered. I haven’t bought gems for quite a while (and I always use cash) since there’s nothing I’ve wanted to spend them on since they last offered character slots.

Offer another node for my home (I don’t really care what it is), another bank tab, another shared slot (or three), maybe a new armor set, or something else that actually gives me a +1 to my account and I’ll gladly spend the gems sitting in my wallet and replenish them.

But I really don’t need or want another shiny (outfit, glider, mini) since I have too many already.