Guild Wars 2

Celtic Lady.3729:

There seemed to be a lot of people that were disappointed that they’d sprung for the pre-purchase and I don’t think a lot of the people that pre-purchased HoT will do so again. I think a good portion of them are going to take a wait and see approach, which means numbers for a second expansion could very possibly be even more dissatisfying than HoT’s numbers.

And it doesn’t surprise me that their idea of F2Pers buying the expansion didn’t play out as well as they thought it would. When you compare core Tyria’s content for free to HoT’s tiny content for money along with the grindy system, yeah, don’t know why they’d buy it. lol

The thing is, comparing HoT to the core is comparing something that’s still “new” to something that has three years of content. So yeah, HoT needed a big “WOW” factor to get people to buy, and all you really had was gliding. After Gliding, I would say its the mastery system (which if meta events weren’t so time gated, would be a lot easier to fill too. Too fast even). If the timers aren’t changed in the next update, I’d suggest adding HoT specific dailies to give XP towards masteries (a mastery xp scroll or just XP since don’t want people saving up when new masteries come out).

But I agree there wasn’t much to HoT than what they say with “setting up systems”. I tried to go at a slow pace with HoT, but even then I started running out of things to do, not to mention when I went for my Legendary backpiece journey, I find out “oh, its not fully released yet.” What? Then why introduce it at all?

Well, I’ll just go raid. Oh, its time gated? Well, ok, as long as its reasonable….
We are now in Feb and still one raid wing and unable to even finish Legendary gear….

I won’t even get into profession balance. That’s a time bomb, but boy did that get messed up.

But count me as one of the people who isn’t going to buy the next expansion right away, not if its $60 for what we got in HoT. And I got some of my friends to play for free. And when they ask me “should I buy?” I just tell them honestly. “No, its not worth it yet. Wait till more content comes out to justify it or to wait for it to get discounted”

Phy.2913:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

Best part of that graph is how bad Wildstar is doing, it makes my day.

Cirran

Wildstar is the poster child for how the market has shifted away from WOW style business and game play.

Meh, personally I think it has a TON more to do with how Wildstar presented it’s self. It is a “hardcore” and “elitist” players paradise. Just shows when you basically call everyone who is not one of those a cupcake and needs to grow a pair, you fail badly. I do feel the game had potential but the focus needed to change when it went free to play, it didn’t it is now reaping what it has sown.

Cirran

Celtic Lady.3729:

There seemed to be a lot of people that were disappointed that they’d sprung for the pre-purchase and I don’t think a lot of the people that pre-purchased HoT will do so again. I think a good portion of them are going to take a wait and see approach, which means numbers for a second expansion could very possibly be even more dissatisfying than HoT’s numbers.

And it doesn’t surprise me that their idea of F2Pers buying the expansion didn’t play out as well as they thought it would. When you compare core Tyria’s content for free to HoT’s tiny content for money along with the grindy system, yeah, don’t know why they’d buy it. lol

I bought expansion for revenant which is full of bugs and many unviable skills.. Everything is a sad joke about this xpac.

4 small grind maps
Pvp “balance”
Wvw map that noone want to play on – thats how awful it is.
Basically no new skins to earn in game -meanwhile since launch gemstore was flooded with many of them
Only 3 legendaries.
Rushes story with no logic whatsoever
Annoying as kitten “adventures” (srsly.. who came up with that one?)
Fail raids that are dps check
A lot of promised stuff was not released to this day (fractal legendary backpiece as example).
Tons.. tons of bugs. They are everywhere.

Yeah, based on that i definitely wont bother with any future “xpac” (read as mini dlc) if they dont fix that mess first. Maybe they finally wake up and fix this kitten. And if not..then goodluck in future.

I was dissapointed in Hot. For me as a wvw roamer. I dont like the revenant, en was dissapointed in the elite specialisation of my favorite class. The New borderlands was a big joke, and pve is not something for me. So what did this Hot expansion bring to me besides some New traits wich I dont like? Exactly, nothing. I was like, niceee then I could have my own arena in guild halls. But wait, you have to grind for it like crazy first. Uhh whut? At this Day I still dont have a guildhall. You need gold, time, and people to farm stuff in order to even get one…. This is the reason why gw2 isnt my main mmorpg anymore. I dont want to waste anymore cash to Arenanet. They screwed themselfs

jheryn.8390:

morrolan.9608:

jheryn.8390:

Ayrilana.1396:

Revenue from pre-sales generally aren’t recorded as revenue until it is realized. It’s usually booked under an account such as deferred revenue since it’s technically a liability.

I agree, but these days ‘generally’ is a big subjective word.

Many companies will realize revenue when they want it to hit rather than when it should. Ethics in this area is very fluid these days. This is true particularly of larger companies.

And accounting regulations are quite strict to avoid exactly that situation and ensure the financial results are understandable to stakeholders.

And you believe companies adhere to those regulations? You believe they don’t find ways around them or ways to circumvent them? Curious.

I am in no ways saying ANet or NCSoft does that, but many companies do. To think otherwise is naive. Watch the news.

Suggest you read up on public companies and their requirements.

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

Best part of that graph is how bad Wildstar is doing, it makes my day.

Cirran

Wildstar is the poster child for how the market has shifted away from WOW style business and game play.

Meh, personally I think it has a TON more to do with how Wildstar presented it’s self. It is a “hardcore” and “elitist” players paradise. Just shows when you basically call everyone who is not one of those a cupcake and needs to grow a pair, you fail badly. I do feel the game had potential but the focus needed to change when it went free to play, it didn’t it is now reaping what it has sown.

Cirran

Path of Exile says hi

Burtnik.5218:

Celtic Lady.3729:

There seemed to be a lot of people that were disappointed that they’d sprung for the pre-purchase and I don’t think a lot of the people that pre-purchased HoT will do so again. I think a good portion of them are going to take a wait and see approach, which means numbers for a second expansion could very possibly be even more dissatisfying than HoT’s numbers.

And it doesn’t surprise me that their idea of F2Pers buying the expansion didn’t play out as well as they thought it would. When you compare core Tyria’s content for free to HoT’s tiny content for money along with the grindy system, yeah, don’t know why they’d buy it. lol

I bought expansion for revenant which is full of bugs and many unviable skills.. Everything is a sad joke about this xpac.

4 small grind maps
Pvp “balance”
Wvw map that noone want to play on – thats how awful it is.
Basically no new skins to earn in game -meanwhile since launch gemstore was flooded with many of them
Only 3 legendaries.
Rushes story with no logic whatsoever
Annoying as kitten “adventures” (srsly.. who came up with that one?)
Fail raids that are dps check
A lot of promised stuff was not released to this day (fractal legendary backpiece as example).
Tons.. tons of bugs. They are everywhere.

Yeah, based on that i definitely wont bother with any future “xpac” (read as mini dlc) if they dont fix that mess first. Maybe they finally wake up and fix this kitten. And if not..then goodluck in future.

There are skins to earn in game, the problem is, its really not worth going for them. So saying there are basically no new skins is false.

Adventures should be named changed to “mini games”, these are not “adventures”. And some need rebalanced.

Rest I can agree on

Burtnik.5218:

Celtic Lady.3729:

There seemed to be a lot of people that were disappointed that they’d sprung for the pre-purchase and I don’t think a lot of the people that pre-purchased HoT will do so again. I think a good portion of them are going to take a wait and see approach, which means numbers for a second expansion could very possibly be even more dissatisfying than HoT’s numbers.

And it doesn’t surprise me that their idea of F2Pers buying the expansion didn’t play out as well as they thought it would. When you compare core Tyria’s content for free to HoT’s tiny content for money along with the grindy system, yeah, don’t know why they’d buy it. lol

I bought expansion for revenant which is full of bugs and many unviable skills.. Everything is a sad joke about this xpac.

4 small grind maps
Pvp “balance”
Wvw map that noone want to play on – thats how awful it is.
Basically no new skins to earn in game -meanwhile since launch gemstore was flooded with many of them
Only 3 legendaries.
Rushes story with no logic whatsoever
Annoying as kitten “adventures” (srsly.. who came up with that one?)
Fail raids that are dps check
A lot of promised stuff was not released to this day (fractal legendary backpiece as example).
Tons.. tons of bugs. They are everywhere.

Yeah, based on that i definitely wont bother with any future “xpac” (read as mini dlc) if they dont fix that mess first. Maybe they finally wake up and fix this kitten. And if not..then goodluck in future.

specially short story..story was always one of the most strongest aspect of gw universe and in my opinion story of gw2 is above average, but instead of focusing on better story telling which is longer and more detailed they went with mini games and raiding.
steam is full of such mini games and as matter of fact, many of them are better or same and you can buy them for 1$ or max 5$ or ton of them for 25$-30$ during steam sale.
i did not pay 50$ to get bunch of mini games, short story and raiding for game that advertised itself as non traditional and non raiding game.. after i spend over 3k hours into this game for last 3 years now it is changing direction towards bs.
and ncsoft numbers are the best proof that i am not alone.. as every one can see HOT did not sell as well as anet was hoping for.
basically q4 2015 anet made 31million$ with hot and gem sells, meaning around 300 to 400k player bought hot, that is shame and disappointment considering the core game so far according to anet itself sold 5 million copies(during of the pax, google the source yourself) , so less than 10% continued buying the game, such shame.

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

Best part of that graph is how bad Wildstar is doing, it makes my day.

Cirran

Wildstar is the poster child for how the market has shifted away from WOW style business and game play.

Meh, personally I think it has a TON more to do with how Wildstar presented it’s self. It is a “hardcore” and “elitist” players paradise. Just shows when you basically call everyone who is not one of those a cupcake and needs to grow a pair, you fail badly. I do feel the game had potential but the focus needed to change when it went free to play, it didn’t it is now reaping what it has sown.

Cirran

EvE online has been going for longer than almost any other MMO at this point and has done so well they literally built a monument for the player base in Reykjavik.

Going hardcore isn’t a problem. Going hardcore and doing a poor job of it is.

Serophous.9085:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

Best part of that graph is how bad Wildstar is doing, it makes my day.

Cirran

Wildstar is the poster child for how the market has shifted away from WOW style business and game play.

Meh, personally I think it has a TON more to do with how Wildstar presented it’s self. It is a “hardcore” and “elitist” players paradise. Just shows when you basically call everyone who is not one of those a cupcake and needs to grow a pair, you fail badly. I do feel the game had potential but the focus needed to change when it went free to play, it didn’t it is now reaping what it has sown.

Cirran

Path of Exile says hi

LOL, I play PoE not a bad game, very repetitive but not bad at all. The attitude of it’s customer support and dev staff is NOTHING like Wildstars. Lots of options and directions to take your character again nothing like Wildstar.

Cirran

Substance E.4852:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

Best part of that graph is how bad Wildstar is doing, it makes my day.

Cirran

Wildstar is the poster child for how the market has shifted away from WOW style business and game play.

Meh, personally I think it has a TON more to do with how Wildstar presented it’s self. It is a “hardcore” and “elitist” players paradise. Just shows when you basically call everyone who is not one of those a cupcake and needs to grow a pair, you fail badly. I do feel the game had potential but the focus needed to change when it went free to play, it didn’t it is now reaping what it has sown.

Cirran

EvE online has been going for longer than almost any other MMO at this point and has done so well they literally built a monument for the player base in Reykjavik.

Going hardcore isn’t a problem. Going hardcore and doing a poor job of it is.

Eve is ancient in MMO terms, it also enjoys something WoW has. A very involved and dedicated core player base. 66k different users logged at the same time, is the record for this game. Eve does not have a mammoth population but it is loud, and vocal. As for a monument made in the country that the Dev studio is based in, not really sure how that is supposed to say the game is hardcore.

Cirran

Substance E.4852:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

Best part of that graph is how bad Wildstar is doing, it makes my day.

Cirran

Wildstar is the poster child for how the market has shifted away from WOW style business and game play.

Meh, personally I think it has a TON more to do with how Wildstar presented it’s self. It is a “hardcore” and “elitist” players paradise. Just shows when you basically call everyone who is not one of those a cupcake and needs to grow a pair, you fail badly. I do feel the game had potential but the focus needed to change when it went free to play, it didn’t it is now reaping what it has sown.

Cirran

EvE online has been going for longer than almost any other MMO at this point and has done so well they literally built a monument for the player base in Reykjavik.

Going hardcore isn’t a problem. Going hardcore and doing a poor job of it is.

Well to a point, but I don’t think Eve online ever got many more than half a million subs at one time, and a lot of those were multiple subs because all the serious players have multiple accounts…much like Guild Wars 2.

Both Guild Wars 2 and Eve Online are niche games. ANet’s issue is they want to be mainstream, so they keep kittening off different niches. Eve’s success is that they focused on a single niche and stayed true to it.

Vayne.8563:

Substance E.4852:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

Best part of that graph is how bad Wildstar is doing, it makes my day.

Cirran

Wildstar is the poster child for how the market has shifted away from WOW style business and game play.

Meh, personally I think it has a TON more to do with how Wildstar presented it’s self. It is a “hardcore” and “elitist” players paradise. Just shows when you basically call everyone who is not one of those a cupcake and needs to grow a pair, you fail badly. I do feel the game had potential but the focus needed to change when it went free to play, it didn’t it is now reaping what it has sown.

Cirran

EvE online has been going for longer than almost any other MMO at this point and has done so well they literally built a monument for the player base in Reykjavik.

Going hardcore isn’t a problem. Going hardcore and doing a poor job of it is.

Well to a point, but I don’t think Eve online ever got many more than half a million subs at one time, and a lot of those were multiple subs because all the serious players have multiple accounts…much like Guild Wars 2.

Both Guild Wars 2 and Eve Online are niche games. ANet’s issue is they want to be mainstream, so they keep kittening off different niches. Eve’s success is that they focused on a single niche and stayed true to it.

Well said, I fully agree with you.

Cirran.1429:

Substance E.4852:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Cirran.1429:

Phy.2913:

Poor Wildstar.

…….

Best part of that graph is how bad Wildstar is doing, it makes my day.

Cirran

Wildstar is the poster child for how the market has shifted away from WOW style business and game play.

Meh, personally I think it has a TON more to do with how Wildstar presented it’s self. It is a “hardcore” and “elitist” players paradise. Just shows when you basically call everyone who is not one of those a cupcake and needs to grow a pair, you fail badly. I do feel the game had potential but the focus needed to change when it went free to play, it didn’t it is now reaping what it has sown.

Cirran

EvE online has been going for longer than almost any other MMO at this point and has done so well they literally built a monument for the player base in Reykjavik.

Going hardcore isn’t a problem. Going hardcore and doing a poor job of it is.

Eve is ancient in MMO terms, it also enjoys something WoW has. A very involved and dedicated core player base. 66k different users logged at the same time, is the record for this game. Eve does not have a mammoth population but it is loud, and vocal. As for a monument made in the country that the Dev studio is based in, not really sure how that is supposed to say the game is hardcore.

Cirran

EVE is a subscription based game with a paying population of over 1/2 a million. The big difference is EVE is a sandbox MMO with the majority of content derived by player run corps and not a “story” mode. It’s hard because of it’s massive PvP bent, not anything the devs really designed.

saye.9304:

specially short story..story was always one of the most strongest aspect of gw universe and in my opinion story of gw2 is above average, but instead of focusing on better story telling which is longer and more detailed they went with mini games and raiding.
steam is full of such mini games and as matter of fact, many of them are better or same and you can buy them for 1$ or max 5$ or ton of them for 25$-30$ during steam sale.
i did not pay 50$ to get bunch of mini games, short story and raiding for game that advertised itself as non traditional and non raiding game.. after i spend over 3k hours into this game for last 3 years now it is changing direction towards bs.
and ncsoft numbers are the best proof that i am not alone.. as every one can see HOT did not sell as well as anet was hoping for.
basically q4 2015 anet made 31million$ with hot and gem sells, meaning around 300 to 400k player bought hot, that is shame and disappointment considering the core game so far according to anet itself sold 5 million copies(during of the pax, google the source yourself) , so less than 10% continued buying the game, such shame.

This whole presale strategy was a shame. I have not done it. And apparently many others.

morrolan.9608:

jheryn.8390:

morrolan.9608:

jheryn.8390:

Ayrilana.1396:

Revenue from pre-sales generally aren’t recorded as revenue until it is realized. It’s usually booked under an account such as deferred revenue since it’s technically a liability.

I agree, but these days ‘generally’ is a big subjective word.

Many companies will realize revenue when they want it to hit rather than when it should. Ethics in this area is very fluid these days. This is true particularly of larger companies.

And accounting regulations are quite strict to avoid exactly that situation and ensure the financial results are understandable to stakeholders.

And you believe companies adhere to those regulations? You believe they don’t find ways around them or ways to circumvent them? Curious.

I am in no ways saying ANet or NCSoft does that, but many companies do. To think otherwise is naive. Watch the news.

Suggest you read up on public companies and their requirements.

And I suggest you come to grips on how many of those public companies skirt or circumvent those requirements.

I am an accountant and have worked at two of those publicly traded companies. “Reporting Requirements” are many times up for interpretation and manipulated. I left both companies because of their unethical dealings with “requirements.”

Ayrilana.1396:

jheryn.8390:

morrolan.9608:

jheryn.8390:

morrolan.9608:

jheryn.8390:

Ayrilana.1396:

Revenue from pre-sales generally aren’t recorded as revenue until it is realized. It’s usually booked under an account such as deferred revenue since it’s technically a liability.

I agree, but these days ‘generally’ is a big subjective word.

Many companies will realize revenue when they want it to hit rather than when it should. Ethics in this area is very fluid these days. This is true particularly of larger companies.

And accounting regulations are quite strict to avoid exactly that situation and ensure the financial results are understandable to stakeholders.

And you believe companies adhere to those regulations? You believe they don’t find ways around them or ways to circumvent them? Curious.

I am in no ways saying ANet or NCSoft does that, but many companies do. To think otherwise is naive. Watch the news.

Suggest you read up on public companies and their requirements.

And I suggest you come to grips on how many of those public companies skirt or circumvent those requirements.

I am an accountant and have worked at two of those publicly traded companies. “Reporting Requirements” are many times up for interpretation and manipulated. I left both companies because of their unethical dealings with “requirements.”

So if some people mug other people then we should just assume that everyone will potentially mug each other? Just because some companies allegedly fudge numbers doesn’t mean that everyone else does. Unless you can provide proof that Anet/NCSoft are doing that, I see no point in you bringing up that accusation.

Apparently you didn’t read my quoted earlier post. I stated that I wasn’t saying I believed ANet or NCSoft were like that. I didn’t accuse anyone of anything. Maybe you should read everything involved before making accusations of your own.

jheryn.8390:

Ayrilana.1396:

jheryn.8390:

morrolan.9608:

jheryn.8390:

morrolan.9608:

jheryn.8390:

Ayrilana.1396:

Revenue from pre-sales generally aren’t recorded as revenue until it is realized. It’s usually booked under an account such as deferred revenue since it’s technically a liability.

I agree, but these days ‘generally’ is a big subjective word.

Many companies will realize revenue when they want it to hit rather than when it should. Ethics in this area is very fluid these days. This is true particularly of larger companies.

And accounting regulations are quite strict to avoid exactly that situation and ensure the financial results are understandable to stakeholders.

And you believe companies adhere to those regulations? You believe they don’t find ways around them or ways to circumvent them? Curious.

I am in no ways saying ANet or NCSoft does that, but many companies do. To think otherwise is naive. Watch the news.

Suggest you read up on public companies and their requirements.

And I suggest you come to grips on how many of those public companies skirt or circumvent those requirements.

I am an accountant and have worked at two of those publicly traded companies. “Reporting Requirements” are many times up for interpretation and manipulated. I left both companies because of their unethical dealings with “requirements.”

So if some people mug other people then we should just assume that everyone will potentially mug each other? Just because some companies allegedly fudge numbers doesn’t mean that everyone else does. Unless you can provide proof that Anet/NCSoft are doing that, I see no point in you bringing up that accusation.

Apparently you didn’t read my quoted earlier post. I stated that I wasn’t saying I believed ANet or NCSoft were like that. I didn’t accuse anyone of anything. Maybe you should read everything involved before making accusations of your own.

Saw it after the post. Deleted my post as I didn’t want to get back into this argument.

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

Thanks to the poster in the pvp thread that supplied the link to this.

(all units in KRW MN)

Figures show that GW2 total revenue for Q4 was 37,000.

When compared to the (average) 20,000 a quarter in gem sales the game has consistently been generating , we can logically assume that HOT (a $50 expansion pack) generated a mere 17,000 in additional revenue.

Now lets compare those figures to a Q3 and Q4 estimate published last year:

http://mmofallout.com/reminder-daewoo-is-not-an-official-source/

Now although ‘not an official source’ (NC doesn’t publish forecasts) – you can clearly see that the forecast revenues for Q3 (the assumed release date for HOT) was 94,000 – Significantly higher than the paltry 17,000 HOT actually generated.

Others may come to a different conclusion, but my interpretation of these figures is that HOT has been a massive financial flop – generating LESS in its first quarter than GW2 generates vie gems store sales

Frankly, I’m not too surprised, The marketing was a complete debacle, The product was overpriced and it would appear that many like me, were not fooled into thinking that HOT was anything other than a quickly cobbled together means of boosting sales made up (mostly) of the already developed content that was ready to go for LS3.

Not this again. Nothing has been shown to prove that HoT was a failure.

Is that 17 thousand or 17 million in U.S. dollars?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Is that 17 thousand or 17 million in U.S. dollars?

17 thousand Quaggans. Anet trade in Quaggans now.

It’s 17 million dollars. All numbers shown are in thousands.

quentingabriel.8279:

It’s 17 million dollars. All numbers shown are in thousands.

Since I’m not a business person, is 17 million that bad for a mmo nowadays with all the competition there is for entertainment dollars?

Nobody cares…

If you like the game play it. If you do not, then go do something else.

Ayrilana.1396:

Not this again. Nothing has been shown to prove that HoT was a failure.

Or to prove in anyway it was a success for that matter.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Is that 17 thousand or 17 million in U.S. dollars?

As stated int the post ((all units in KRW MN)

For those not used to reading financial reports that’s South Korean Won – Millions

So HOT generated 17,000Million KRW which is around $14Million US

Compare that to the 20,000Million KRW or |$16 Million US that is generated each quarter by gem store sales alone and I think the figures speak for themselves.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the game went FTP during Q4, so with an influx of new players, one would expect a quite significant increase in Gem store sales.
If we conservatively estimate this increase at 4-5 Million $US, the figures for HOT are looking truly abysmal.

Why do so many people seem excited at the prospect of GW2/HoT failing? You do understand that if GW2 starts to fail in short time there will be no GW2 to play. If you are here posting then I would think you would not like a product you paid for to be shut down completely, see CoH.

Perhaps you are hoping that failure means some dramatic change in the game that caters to your preference. The corporate world does not always work like that. They often do not hang on to products that under perform over time even if sales a marginal. They might do some house cleaning of staff first (not saying that is what happened to Colin) in hope of some change in performance but I’ve seen that fail many times as well. In many cases as far is investing that is a huge red flag.

What you should be hoping for instead is some acknowledgment from Anet that they are working to improve the current product as well as expand into future products. Wait.. Mike O’Brien pretty much said that during the AMA on reddit.

this is old news, what is actually very interesting is Q1 2016 ncsoft report, can not wait to see that one.

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

Not this again. Nothing has been shown to prove that HoT was a failure.

Or to prove in anyway it was a success for that matter.

So it’s all pointless speculation? I agree.

Pifil.5193:

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

Not this again. Nothing has been shown to prove that HoT was a failure.

Or to prove in anyway it was a success for that matter.

So it’s all pointless speculation? I agree.

No speculation, you just need to be bothered to look at the numbers and then posses some capacity to interpret them.

Daroon.1736:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Is that 17 thousand or 17 million in U.S. dollars?

As stated int the post ((all units in KRW MN)

For those not used to reading financial reports that’s South Korean Won – Millions

So HOT generated 17,000Million KRW which is around $14Million US

Compare that to the 20,000Million KRW or |$16 Million US that is generated each quarter by gem store sales alone and I think the figures speak for themselves.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the game went FTP during Q4, so with an influx of new players, one would expect a quite significant increase in Gem store sales.
If we conservatively estimate this increase at 4-5 Million $US, the figures for HOT are looking truly abysmal.

Actually they don’t because pre order sales that occured in Q3 aren’t released for Q4. Pre-orders have their own category. If you want to see true numbers, you need to get a report of the sales of HoT, both pre orders + active sales. Then you’ll see if it’s a failure or not. Also, getting a refund report of HoT.

Actually, if you really wanted to say HoT release was a failure, getting the sales to refund percentage is the best way. Then you’ll know how many bought, and how many returned. That usually speaks volumes on failure.

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

Not this again. Nothing has been shown to prove that HoT was a failure.

Or to prove in anyway it was a success for that matter.

Pretty much.

Ellieanna.5027:

Daroon.1736:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Is that 17 thousand or 17 million in U.S. dollars?

As stated int the post ((all units in KRW MN)

For those not used to reading financial reports that’s South Korean Won – Millions

So HOT generated 17,000Million KRW which is around $14Million US

Compare that to the 20,000Million KRW or |$16 Million US that is generated each quarter by gem store sales alone and I think the figures speak for themselves.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the game went FTP during Q4, so with an influx of new players, one would expect a quite significant increase in Gem store sales.
If we conservatively estimate this increase at 4-5 Million $US, the figures for HOT are looking truly abysmal.

Actually they don’t because pre order sales that occured in Q3 aren’t released for Q4. Pre-orders have their own category. If you want to see true numbers, you need to get a report of the sales of HoT, both pre orders + active sales. Then you’ll see if it’s a failure or not. Also, getting a refund report of HoT.

Actually, if you really wanted to say HoT release was a failure, getting the sales to refund percentage is the best way. Then you’ll know how many bought, and how many returned. That usually speaks volumes on failure.

Q3 figures were in the report and stable at the gem store sales level of 20,000, so safe to assume that pre-release orders were not taken into account for that period.

The Q4 figures in financial reports are total revenue, so they already include ALL revenue.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Nobody cares…

If you like the game play it. If you do not, then go do something else.

I care. I don’t want to spend money on a game that is dying. I’d like it to have a horizon of at last 18 months.

I think their results were not catastrophic but were weaker than desired. Thus the AMA and staff changes. Reading between the lines: the CEO has been ordered to fix the problem. As everything he said is something I’d like to see fixed, I’m all for it. I have hopes they will sort this out soon enough.

qbalrog.8017:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Nobody cares…

If you like the game play it. If you do not, then go do something else.

I care. I don’t want to spend money on a game that is dying. I’d like it to have a horizon of at last 18 months.

The game is not dying. People have been claiming that it is since launch. About 3.5 years later and it’s still here.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Why do so many people seem excited at the prospect of GW2/HoT failing? You do understand that if GW2 starts to fail in short time there will be no GW2 to play. If you are here posting then I would think you would not like a product you paid for to be shut down completely, see CoH.

Perhaps you are hoping that failure means some dramatic change in the game that caters to your preference. The corporate world does not always work like that. They often do not hang on to products that under perform over time even if sales a marginal. They might do some house cleaning of staff first (not saying that is what happened to Colin) in hope of some change in performance but I’ve seen that fail many times as well. In many cases as far is investing that is a huge red flag.

What you should be hoping for instead is some acknowledgment from Anet that they are working to improve the current product as well as expand into future products. Wait.. Mike O’Brien pretty much said that during the AMA on reddit.

People like acknowledgement that they were correct. GW2 not doing well is exactly that, acknowledgement that ArenaNet has consistently made the wrong decisions. Do you understand how many people feel slighted or wronged by ArenaNet at this point? Did you forget when ArenaNet flip-flopped their ideals and added ascended? Then lied and said it was always planned? How about when necromancers were told they just didn’t know how to play their class? Or Rangers being told pets won’t be fixed? CDI’s? Small guilds being told to just join bigger guilds to do guild missions? Dungeons being abandoned? Grind being added at every turn? WvW being put on the back burner? Class balance taking forever and when it does come it’s like they through darts at a board? The whole pre-order fiasco? The removing vanilla content and gating it behind the expansion?

ArenaNet has angered A LOT of people. You don’t think those people want to watch ArenaNet suffer like they have? It might seem like a waste of time to you, but to them it’s probably equally as entertaining as farming gold for hours on end.

The problems with ArenaNet have been known for a while: Poor management and bad compensation. They have a lot of employee turnover and lose the experienced devs. This leaves them hiring new devs that take time to get settled in. Don’t trust my opinion though! Go read all the reviews on glassdoor.

Daroon.1736:

Pifil.5193:

Blude.6812:

Ayrilana.1396:

Not this again. Nothing has been shown to prove that HoT was a failure.

Or to prove in anyway it was a success for that matter.

So it’s all pointless speculation? I agree.

No speculation, you just need to be bothered to look at the numbers and then posses some capacity to interpret them.

No one has enough information to use their ‘capacity’ to interpret those numbers as a HoT failure. There are many factors that contribute to the financials.

qbalrog.8017:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Nobody cares…

If you like the game play it. If you do not, then go do something else.

I care. I don’t want to spend money on a game that is dying. I’d like it to have a horizon of at last 18 months.

I think their results were not catastrophic but were weaker than desired. Thus the AMA and staff changes. Reading between the lines: the CEO has been ordered to fix the problem. As everything he said is something I’d like to see fixed, I’m all for it. I have hopes they will sort this out soon enough.

Good think GW2 costs you nothing to play it then. We might have a crisis if that weren’t the case. People who do their armchair analysis forget this has a significant impact on how everything is done in GW2. Applying typical logic from sub-based games to a purchase-based game simply doesn’t work.

Isn’t Daewoo the same company that claimed Anet was going to release an expansion within 6 months of the game coming out, which would add all the “essential features” players wanted to turn it into a WoW clone, and massively over-estimated predicted profits every single quarter since then?

Danikat.8537:

Isn’t Daewoo the same company that claimed Anet was going to release an expansion within 6 months of the game coming out, which would add all the “essential features” players wanted to turn it into a WoW clone, and massively over-estimated predicted profits every single quarter since then?

Pretty much. They also thought BnS was going to be HUGE in 2012, like AION huge when that game came out. They thought the stock would shoot to 600,000 KrW a share then (stock currently at 247,000). They also thought the expansion would sell 2 million copies and come out 3rd quarter.

Wait a second. So we’re going off of a

“Here’s what you should know about the forecast: Daewoo is not an official source for any of NCSoft’s products. They are a third party investment firm that makes predictions based off of speculation and assumptions”

And because GW2 didn’t get sell based on this 3rd party’s predictions, it means it’s a failure?

Pretty sure that only a company can say “These are our sales goals”.

I used to do accounting for a Hallmark store (we were a franchise, and I did the accounting for 1 of the stores that we owned) and each store had it’s own sales targets. We didn’t have some other company come in and tell us what our targets were. That should be the same for Anet. No other company should be able to come in and say if an expansion was a success or failure because what they guessed was wrong.

Daroon.1736:

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

Thanks to the poster in the pvp thread that supplied the link to this.

(all units in KRW MN)

Figures show that GW2 total revenue for Q4 was 37,000.

When compared to the (average) 20,000 a quarter in gem sales the game has consistently been generating , we can logically assume that HOT (a $50 expansion pack) generated a mere 17,000 in additional revenue.

Now lets compare those figures to a Q3 and Q4 estimate published last year:

http://mmofallout.com/reminder-daewoo-is-not-an-official-source/

Now although ‘not an official source’ (NC doesn’t publish forecasts) – you can clearly see that the forecast revenues for Q3 (the assumed release date for HOT) was 94,000 – Significantly higher than the paltry 17,000 HOT actually generated.

Others may come to a different conclusion, but my interpretation of these figures is that HOT has been a massive financial flop – generating LESS in its first quarter than GW2 generates vie gems store sales

Frankly, I’m not too surprised, The marketing was a complete debacle, The product was overpriced and it would appear that many like me, were not fooled into thinking that HOT was anything other than a quickly cobbled together means of boosting sales made up (mostly) of the already developed content that was ready to go for LS3.

First of all the reported quarters align with the standard year so 3rd quarter is July to September and 4th quarter is October to December and the reports on each quarter comes out roughly 6 weeks later. Also all the pre-purchase income is booked in the quarter the game is shipped. So 3rd quarter is mostly cash shop income.

The figures reported for GW2 are NA/EU gross sales income and not China. China’s numbers are reported under Royalty along with all of NCSOFT’s properties being run by 3rd party companies, which includes AION and Lineage II in the EU.

Now the roughly $17 million US year over year income change in the 4th quarter is around 300,000+ copies, in theory. I would can that a reasonable number compared to estimates of the active player base based on gem shop sales.

There was one analyst during the conference call asked about what he saw as disappointing sales of the expansion and was told by NCSOFT that was due to a lower upgrade rate from P4F accounts, not existing ones. Other than that they praised GW2 both in NA/EU and China.

Also, the forums already had this conversation weeks ago when the numbers first came out.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ncsoft-s-earnings-4Q-2015

Hmm, 300k copies of the game sounds really, really low. Are we sure pre-sales weren’t reported in their respective quarters? Remember that pre-purchase started late in Q1 2015, so it’s not so easy to compare Q4 to Q3 and say “they didn’t sell much”.

“Disclaimer

The financial results for 4! 2015 have been prepared on an unaudited basis, and may be subject to change during independent auditing process."

-pg. 2

The report isn’t even worth reading if not actually audited. Is there an audited version?

Ellieanna.5027:

No other company should be able to come in and say if an expansion was a success or failure because what they guessed was wrong.

Well Hallmark is privately owned so there wouldn’t be anyone publicly guessing on how sales would be. But it’s pretty much SOP for publicly traded companies.

I don’t think Daewoo has ever taken NCSOFT off a Buy recommendation so naturally to get their clients to buy NCSOFT the outlook is always spun as cotton candy and unicorns if not this upcoming quarter then the quarter after which makes the current downturn in stock price a buying opportunity.

Totally ignoring the Daewoo forecasts: To clarify and re-iterate my original point:

Gem shop sales per quarter are steady at 20,000 KRW MLN
For the quarter when HOT is released total revenue increases to 37,000 KRW MLN

37,000 KRW MLN
minus 20,000 KRW MLN
=HOT revenue 17,000 KRW MLN
This means that HOT generated LESS than Gem store sales for that quarter.

How, by any measure can that be seen as a successful expansion?

I predict that Q1 2016 revenue will be around 26,000 KRW MLN (due to FTP Players upgrading after Christmas)
and Q2 will see GW2 revenue fall to its lowest point since launch at around 15,000 KRW MLN

Bookmark and come back in six months to call me an idiot if I’m wrong

DGraves.3720:

“Disclaimer

The financial results for 4! 2015 have been prepared on an unaudited basis, and may be subject to change during independent auditing process."

-pg. 2

The report isn’t even worth reading if not actually audited. Is there an audited version?

The last one in English was in 2013. The Korean site has 2014. The last time ArenaNet was broken out on it’s own was 2012, after that their income is folded into the NC West Holding numbers. NC West includes Carbine and NC Interactive as well as ArenaNet.

I’ve been following NCSOFT since 2004 and I’ve only seen the numbers change once from their initial values but not in terms of game sales, just expenses. So yes, it could change, but that damages the company’s stock value if they have to reissue so for the most part they are on point.

As for when the 2015 audited numbers come out, it appears late March is when it’s normally released. But like I said, they no longer break out ArenaNet from NC West Holdings numbers. But who knows, the NC West run ncsoft.com no longer lists Guild Wars 2 in their games pull down but GW2 is still listed at the bottom of the page menu.

JustTrogdor.7892:

They might do some house cleaning of staff first (not saying that is what happened to Colin) in hope of some change in performance but I’ve seen that fail many times as well. In many cases as far is investing that is a huge red flag.

What you should be hoping for instead is some acknowledgment from Anet that they are working to improve the current product as well as expand into future products. Wait.. Mike O’Brien pretty much said that during the AMA on reddit.

Honestly, I really think Colin leaving was just Amazon promising him more money to be on their team, as they’re extremely rich. Also, of course Mo would say that, isn’t he expected to? He wouldn’t say, “Oh, and we’re not working on the game anymore. #sorrynotsorry.” That just wouldn’t make sense.

But I agree, I don’t foresee investors putting a lot of money into the game because it’s not producing a lot more than what’s going into it. The game is literally hemorrhaging veteran players, while not creating vets out of these new players as their lag in content production is massive. When the rose colored goggles fall off of these new players eyes, they’ll be more apt to just jump ship like Colin did and move onto LoL or something else that holds people’s interest longer than a month at a time.

I’ve loved this game since beta, but I just recently uninstalled it because of so many issues. I’m hopeful that things maybe, hopefully, could be, might, changed for the better, but knowing this company’s (ncsoft) track record with games cough Aion/W*/CoH cough I’m not really hopeful. They have a history of dropping games completely and moving on. They don’t care about games as much as the players.

Just as you said, in the biz world, if a product stops bringing revenue, just move on and make a new shiny for people to get hyped about.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Why do so many people seem excited at the prospect of GW2/HoT failing?

It gives them a feeling of vindication. Maybe a little schadenfreude.

Ayrilana.1396:

Not this again. Nothing has been shown to prove that HoT was a failure.

HoT did