Guild Wars 2

NCSoft Q3 quarterly earnings report was just released and GW2 revenues are down 15% from the previous quarter. We now know what was the impetus for the Collaborative Development stuff that appeared in early October. Is that going to make any difference? The numbers show that the Living Story content has not been enough to stop the continuing decline in sales – if anything, the decline has accelerated.

I think at this point the only thing that can turn it all around is a new box expansion. The longer they wait to do this, the more radical the expansion will need to be to get people back.

This is great news, I hope they keep losing money so we can get a proper expansion/campaign already. Just more proof living story is a failure and not even the holy power of gem store microtransactions can save it.

Tasty Pudding.3764:

NCSoft Q3 quarterly earnings report was just released and GW2 revenues are down 15% from the previous quarter. We now know what was the impetus for the Collaborative Development stuff that appeared in early October. Is that going to make any difference? The numbers show that the Living Story content has not been enough to stop the continuing decline in sales – if anything, the decline has accelerated.

I think at this point the only thing that can turn it all around is a new box expansion. The longer they wait to do this, the more radical the expansion will need to be to get people back.

Dont forget that the game was at discount 40% for about a week or so, this means that they had a boost in sales just before the Quarter`s financial report, which means the drop in revenue could be even more…

Why don’t we wait guild wars 2 releases in China before making any hasty conclusion?
i.e making expansions.

Poplolita.2638:

Why don’t we wait guild wars 2 releases in China before making any hasty conclusion?
i.e making expansions.

Tasty here wants to make a point, that ppl are less happy therefore they spend less in gem store than before and that NCsoft is now finally heading to the right direction because of that im not trying to say anything bad about NCsoft or Anet, just the truth…

“Where do we go from here”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwxMGyZ_umA

Pyrasia.9281:

“Where do we go from here”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwxMGyZ_umA

I was hoping this was a link to the end credits from the Buffy episode “Once More, With Feeling” since that’s stuck in my head every time I see this topic.

Living Story is finally gone! Yay! Here’s to a box expansion next year.

Erasmus.1624:

Living Story is finally gone! Yay! Here’s to a box expansion next year.

I would probably shout with happiness if something like that came to pass.

Gamers… yet again the force of stagnation.

Can’t do ANYTHING different, or we’ll whine and pitch a fit. Just give us more of the same.

the report only shows box game sales declining
q1 2013 – 36,382
q2 2013 – 28,899
q3 2013 – 24,481

the report does not say how the gem store sales are doing.

chemiclord.3978:

Gamers… yet again the force of stagnation.

Can’t do ANYTHING different, or we’ll whine and pitch a fit. Just give us more of the same.

If the different part is done right, there won’t be as much whining or fits being thrown. Just saying.

I was actually going to make a massive post about what ANet could do a couple weeks ago but never got around to it.

First of all, the payment model:
GW2 has amazing content and value for money, but B2P is still a major hurdle for primarily F2P players (i.e. carrot is nice, but high barrier of entry) and it is also an insufficient incentive to keep primarily subscription-based players (it seems a paradox, but there is not enough stick to keep the donkey going – psychologically, it makes sense).

Therefore, ANet could change the payment method to F2P/cash shop, which will see a massive increase in playerbase, especially in non-NA/EU and other OECD regions. Of course, this will alienate its current players, but ANet has the option of making F2P servers and regions and give the option of transfers. F2P servers, must of course, have a more expensive cash shop and certain appropriate restrictions. Later, ANet can always merge the payment models but the furor would’ve died down significantly by then.

Second, ANet needs to embrace E-Sports:
This is one of the fastest rising markets out there, and if ANet opens F2P servers, it will be one of the best placed companies to jump in. They need to learn from Riot and Valve and not Blizzard. They need to focus on making the game fun, rather than trying to shove ESPORT and USA!USA!USA! down our throats like Blizzard tried with SC2 and failed. That is, it needs to have enough variety in content to satisfy all demographics. They don’t have the luxury of making a MOBA and just catering to one spectrum of players, they have to attract and engage computer illiterate casuals, young kids, old guys, ESPORTS believers, raiders, explorers, PvPers, guilds and everyone in between.

A second focus should be on giving the community’s streamers and player exposure to the rest of the community and those beyond it. They can incorporate a frozen stream on their loading client for featured streams, their official stream or the no.1 current twitch stream. ANet has already screwed up by giving focus to casters and commentators, but that medium has lone gone – that was the day of youtube. Today is the day of twitch. Players need to build their own brands, and build GW2’s at the same time – casters should only have the same support as players. ANet has to engage the community more and in different mediums. They can run a weekly video show with charismatic hosts, etc, etc.

Third, ANet has to organise things for the community a la Riot’s LCS and World Championships, Valve’s The International and Blizzard’s Blizzcon. ANet has to show that they are a big boy too and that they deserve people’s attention. If they don’t do it within the next calendar year, they will lose their current opportunity – that of the best AAA MMO on the market – to do so. Ditch expansions, and go for an annual huge update DLC that is unveiled in a huge GW2 event held by ANet every year, complete with cosplayers, some form of live entertainment, computer booths and, very importantly, an esport event with decent cash prize.

Riot has already shown us the future of customer service for video game companies, and it’s time to take that and go beyond. As big as Riot’s playerbase is, they cannot actually be making that much money (even with 20m accounts, not players, each spending $5, which I doubt, they will have revenue of $100m, which isn’t that much for a company of their exposure – they just know how to make people think they are bigger than they are and the importance of that – their brand is worth billions easily). Riot believes in their product as a sustainable, long-term product that engages the mainstream and are reinvesting heavily in it. ANet needs to show that confidence, even if the scale is smaller. GW2’s graphics and playing style is both classic and modern and it definitely has staying power. Its constant DLC model alone is groundbreaking. It just needs a better thought out cash shop, some visual upgrades in a couple years, and the above that I have mentioned.

So, this wasn’t a very well organised post – I just did it on the fly, but this is what my entrepreneurial instincts are telling me about ANet’s market position right now.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the report only shows box game sales declining
q1 2013 – 36,382
q2 2013 – 28,899
q3 2013 – 24,481

the report does not say how the gem store sales are doing.

It is all sales for GW2. Note that they say that the Lineage sales numbers are down due to Lineage in-game item sales being carried over to Q4. We don’t know the breakdown of the numbers between GW2 game box sales and gem sales, but either gem sales are also declining or gem sales are so small that they are dwarfed by declining game box sales.

well I still have fun playing

what could they change or add? I’d like some non combat stuff added to the game. While I enjoy the combat here, it is non stop pretty much.

Also with the living story, I’d like to see them start to connect the dots in the story, right now it feels all disjointed with only Scarlet to tie it together (where we have no idea of the motives, she feels like a comic book villain, just doing bad stuff because she can).

All these things about making the current content better will satisfy its current playerbase, which although important, won’t be enough for GW2 to become much more popular than it is already.

Game developers who only focus on the game these days will not have the same success as those who spend resources improving its brand and exposure as well, with a business model that caters to it.

NCSoft

GW2 made 28.9 Billion Won which is about 25.83 Million USD
Box sales weakened as expected
Gem store sales have remained consistent and stable
Overall both gem store and box sales remained strong
Chinese players have an increased interest and high expectation after playing GW2 at ChinaJoy.
Second Chinese closed beta starts in September

Skan.5301:

If the different part is done right, there won’t be any whining or fits being thrown. Just saying.

They haven’t done ANYTHING yet, though. That’s what irks me about the pushback.

This is busy-work. This is just relatively mindless stuff to keep people occupied while larger stuff is prepared in the background. That’s the impression I’ve always had, at least from the statements I have heard.

But there are these masses who have just slapped their hands over their ears, and decided the ONLY way to properly unveil such large scale content is with an expansion… citing the previously described busy work as evidence that it can’t be done. Nope. Not possible. We NEEDS our expansion!

I don’t get the pushback. Why the hell are we complaining that a company is entertaining giving us an expansion’s worth of content for FREE, in the hopes that it’ll entice us to buy from their in-game store? Why the hell aren’t we saying, “Okay! We’ll take free stuff! Give it your best shot!”

It’d be one thing if they tried to release an expansion through the living story, and it turned out to be too large to be reliably sent via download for enough players… or had a ton of mechanical errors… or any other roadblocks that get in the way. I mean then I could understand a cry of, “Ya know… this isn’t working. Just package it up, let us give you $50, and we can go from there.”

But it hasn’t even been TRIED yet, and we’ve got gamers here already declaring it a a failure.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the report only shows box game sales declining
q1 2013 – 36,382
q2 2013 – 28,899
q3 2013 – 24,481

the report does not say how the gem store sales are doing.

This exactly.

Even if they sold ZERO copies of the game, it would not mean that ANET are in trouble and that the world was ending…..

chemiclord.3978:

Skan.5301:

If the different part is done right, there won’t be any whining or fits being thrown. Just saying.

They haven’t done ANYTHING yet, though. That’s what irks me about the pushback.

This is busy-work. This is just relatively mindless stuff to keep people occupied while larger stuff is prepared in the background. That’s the impression I’ve always had, at least from the statements I have heard.

But there are these masses who have just slapped their hands over their ears, and decided the ONLY way to properly unveil such large scale content is with an expansion… citing the previously described busy work as evidence that it can’t be done. Nope. Not possible. We NEEDS our expansion!

I don’t get the pushback. Why the hell are we complaining that a company is entertaining giving us an expansion’s worth of content for FREE, in the hopes that it’ll entice us to buy from their in-game store? Why the hell aren’t we saying, “Okay! We’ll take free stuff! Give it your best shot!”

It’d be one thing if they tried to release an expansion through the living story, and it turned out to be too large to be reliably sent via download for enough players… or had a ton of mechanical errors… or any other roadblocks that get in the way. I mean then I could understand a cry of, “Ya know… this isn’t working. Just package it up, let us give you $50, and we can go from there.”

But it hasn’t even been TRIED yet, and we’ve got gamers here already declaring it a a failure. I just don’t get it. Actually… no, I do get it. Gamers hate change, and they always have. They resisted Steam. They resisted DLC. They pushed back against ANY change to the way they had become comfortable with.

Gamers like to think they’re hip and progressive. They’re not. And they never really have been outside of their own minds.

Stands to reason that if they are, in fact, working on bigger things behind the scenes and the LS bullkitten is just there to keep the masses busy, they would tell us, no?

Something along the lines of "In case it wasn’t known, GW2 was released prematurely. As such, we have made what we call the “Living Story/World”, which will continue it’s path while we, ANet, work on something larger <expansion or not> for you guys."

But, I don’t think that’s the case. I think the LS is what they’re banking on. And it isn’t working. So, we need a new plan of action.

They HAVE told us this though.

The very reason that the LS is a side story is because they DON’T want it connected to the bigger stuff they have planned. They have four Living Story teams, and OTHER teams working on other content. THEY HAVE SAID THIS.

It’s RIGHT HERE: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-unlikely-to-get-expansions-Interview/page/2#post2343665

I mean… nevermind. I give up. If you don’t want to get it, I can’t make you.

chemiclord.3978:

They HAVE told us this though.

The very reason that the LS is a side story is because they DON’T want it connected to the bigger stuff they have planned. They have four Living Story teams, and OTHER teams working on other content. THEY HAVE SAID THIS.

It’s RIGHT HERE: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-unlikely-to-get-expansions-Interview/page/2#post2343665

I mean… nevermind. I give up. If you don’t want to get it, I can’t make you.

Calm down. It’s not healthy to get that passionate over something virtual. Seriously. Deep breath in, slowly let it out. Repeat a few times. You’ll be much happier.

They’ve said that in the post. I was part of that thread about 4 or 5 months ago. But, seeing as how ANet is great at saying things that don’t come to see light, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I personally believe the LS is just an excuse to provide more time – gated material and to boost gem shop sales every 2 weeks or so by having “limited time sales”. But that might just be me.

The way I see it, 4 or 5 months is not NEARLY enough time to be seeing too many fruits of that score. I know that Factions came out in a year after the initial release of GW1, but that is content of a significantly smaller scale than what a GW2 version of Cantha and Elona would have to be (again, remember that GW2 had more “content” in terms of pure size than Prophecies and Factions combined; the demand that a “Factions” version of GW2 would carry equal scale and scope is nigh guaranteed).

I mean, it took WoW 3 YEARS to bring Burning Crusade to the table. Even with the reasonable assumption that the process of expanding MMOs has been streamlined over the progress of the genre, a half year or even one year is still an awfully small turnaround to expect anything of huge significance.

Now, that’s not to say I don’t have my reservations about expansion via Living World. If they dump it on us all at once, it might as well be an expansion that I can’t imagine NCSoft would accept being handed out for free. Episode gradual releases of Crystal Desert every month with a new zone… I dunno. I can see players getting very frustrated very quickly with it.

But ya know what… I’m not going to actively discourage the attempt. It irritates me to think that Arena.net would give up before even giving it a shot because their player base decided that it was going to be a failure before the concept even launched.

But that’s what I suspect will happen.

chemiclord.3978:

They HAVE told us this though.

The very reason that the LS is a side story is because they DON’T want it connected to the bigger stuff they have planned. They have four Living Story teams, and OTHER teams working on other content. THEY HAVE SAID THIS.

It’s RIGHT HERE: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-unlikely-to-get-expansions-Interview/page/2#post2343665

I mean… nevermind. I give up. If you don’t want to get it, I can’t make you.

Long term projects = “making the core Gw2 experience as strong and compelling as possible”, things like gear grind, precursor hunt, “fixing” old content, code optimizations, epsort, release in other countries, etc.
When you read some of Anet’s posts, there’s quite a few of them saying how undermanned/under-resourced they are.
It is highly unlikely the have any staff working on long term project that is content related.

BlueZone.4236:

When you read some of Anet’s posts, there’s quite a few of them saying how undermanned/under-resourced they are.

could be

look at the number of employees they have, around 300, compared to someone like Blizzard who has 4,700.

Poplolita.2638:

Why don’t we wait guild wars 2 releases in China before making any hasty conclusion?
i.e making expansions.

The China release has been delayed in favor of Blade and Soul….no mention of a future date, but they said it was not going to be happening in Q4 as originally planned. My guess is that it’s going to end up not happening.

Rooks Zaer.5846:

Poplolita.2638:

Why don’t we wait guild wars 2 releases in China before making any hasty conclusion?
i.e making expansions.

The China release has been delayed in favor of Blade and Soul….no mention of a future date, but they said it was not going to be happening in Q4 as originally planned. My guess is that it’s going to end up not happening.

I believe it will happen eventually. However, I don’t see anything good coming out of it because, historically, many Asian gamers prefer grindy content. As such I believe wholeheartedly that the direction GW2 took and is currently taking was and is to favour that Eastern market before the initial debut there.

Dr Ritter.1327:

This is great news, I hope they keep losing money so we can get a proper expansion/campaign already. Just more proof living story is a failure and not even the holy power of gem store microtransactions can save it.

Amen, praise Quaggan!

But seriously we all know an expansion is inevitable, ArenaNet HAVE to make one, they dont have a choice.

Living Story is filler content, that’s all it is and that is all it will ever be no matter how hard the devs try.

I was watching woodenpotatoes video and he said GW1 already had an expansion released by this time and that was back when ArenaNet had fewer staff!

What makes things worse is they refuse to merge Living Story with Personal Story, meaning for over a year now the TRUE story of Guild Wars 2 has NOT progressed AT ALL!

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yAP5ClSbgQ

At this point, I’d rather just buy another game instead of buying an expansion. Of course I’ve always been at that point, and it has nothing to do with GW2.

Once a year expansions still blow my mind, but I’ve been told that’s the norm.

It doesn’t matter what they do at this point.

New games are coming out, and seeing as how we just get the same stuff over and over again(with the exception of SAB, Queen’s Jubilee and the Tower of Nightmares) people will go to new games to get a fresh experience.

The biggest counter towards this is the fact that the games that are coming out either have a subscription model, or that they may not have all the “basic” features GWII has like level/reward scaling, everyone having the same stats in PvP, not having mob-tagging and proper rewards for world exploration.

I personally am interested in Wildstar. It may not have all the things I like about GWII, but it will be a fresh experience nontheless.
And even if I end up not playing it for that long, it will still have been a more fresh experience than what ArenaNet seems to have in mind for this game.

New races, professions, maps, quests etc. seem to be off the table, and it is these things I desire.
Releasing the Tengu as well as their starting zones would do wonders.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

It doesn’t matter what they do at this point.

New games are coming out, and seeing as how we just get the same stuff over and over again(with the exception of SAB, Queen’s Jubilee and the Tower of Nightmares) people will go to new games to get a fresh experience.

The biggest counter towards this is the fact that the games that are coming out either have a subscription model, or that they may not have all the “basic” features GWII has like level/reward scaling, everyone having the same stats in PvP, and proper rewards for world exploration.

I personally am interested in Wildstar. It may not have all the things I like about GWII, but it will be a fresh experience nontheless.
And even if I end up not playing it for that long, it will still have been a more fresh experience than what ArenaNet seems to have in mind for this game.

New races, professions, maps, quests etc. seem to be off the table, and it is these things I desire.
Releasing the Tengu as well as their starting zones would do wonders.

New games can work two ways. Yes, there’s always going to be a drop off of players when a new game comes out…but because new games are often buggy (sometimes buggy enough to be unplayable) and they don’t have all the features at launch, people go, try them out and come back.

I know a number of people who tried the FF beta, and came back, because that game was "nothing special.

Where do we go from here? I think that Guild Wars 2 won’t try too hard to compete with Wildstar (they’re both NCsoft games), and they have time to shore up stuff before the next big game comes out after that.

I’m pretty sure the grass isn’t always greener on the other side but people will still cross the street to see.

Hey look another “this game is dying” thread… ugh

MAD CAT.9321:

Hey look another “this game is dying” thread… ugh

I don’t see this thread as a game dying, more of a games wrong direction? and now we see the results?

Personally don’t hold too much hope with Wildstar either their whole payment plan killed that for a lot of players, i mean come on Free to Play then 180 to Pay to play heh..

Personally think Everquest Next and Elder Scrolls Online are the big worries for Guildwars 2…maybe the new WoW expansions too.

Sorry but truth..

Dante.1508:

MAD CAT.9321:

Hey look another “this game is dying” thread… ugh

I don’t see this thread as a game dying, more of a games wrong direction? and now we see the results?

Personally don’t hold too much hope with Wildstar either their whole payment plan killed that for a lot of players, i mean come on Free to Play then 180 to Pay to play heh..

Personally think Everquest Next and Elder Scrolls Online are the big worries for Guildwars 2…maybe the new WoW expansions too.

Sorry but truth..

What truth are you speaking of?

How about you look at the boxed sales of just about every MMO over the same period of time? Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

When a game comes out, logically, those most interested in it, buy it right away. Then there’s a wave of people who find out about it when it’s new and different from people who have bought it and are playing it.

Those who don’t like the game, slowly leave, others come on board, but more slowly. This is what happens in pretty much every MMO that comes along. There are exceptions but they are VERY few and far between.

The truth is this game hasn’t launched in China yet and it’s still doing well. That’s the only truth anyone can get from the quarterly report.

Let’s hope it’s not the beginning of the end, because I planned to stay with this game for at least 10 years. There’s quite a few things I’m not very happy about, but overall, I still think Anet does a decent job and/or can salvage what they have.

The current gemstore items aren’t my thing, but if the right thing comes up I have no reservations buying it.

As for a hint, one thing I’d really go for is say, a HoM-style house for my personal home instance. I’d pay 2000 gems for that.

Tasty Pudding.3764:

NCSoft Q3 quarterly earnings report was just released and GW2 revenues are down 15% from the previous quarter. We now know what was the impetus for the Collaborative Development stuff that appeared in early October. Is that going to make any difference? The numbers show that the Living Story content has not been enough to stop the continuing decline in sales – if anything, the decline has accelerated.

I think at this point the only thing that can turn it all around is a new box expansion. The longer they wait to do this, the more radical the expansion will need to be to get people back.

I see a lot of speculations that are not proved. GW2 has a stable income via gem store. This could indicate a stable paying player base. Box sales are decreasing but still there. This could indicate an increasing overall player base. I get the impression that box sales are not planned to be the main income for GW2.

As long as the paying player base is stable the game can go on without paid expansion. At the moment this base seems to be very stable.

I do expect something to change for real in upcoming months for a simple reason: there will finally be competitors.

One of the major luck and, at same time, disgrace of Gw2 (and how it grown) has been the launch time.
They hit the perfcet timing. For one year or so, nothing was in direct competition with Gw2.
Sure, a month after launch WoW deployed MoP: but it’s for a already different target audience, so doesn’t really count.
F2P/B2P wise, the only one has been Neverwinter (which is rubbish) and few other converted F2P which can’t be considered as real competitors.

What did this mean for Gw2? Aside that it has been launched earlier in order to get full benefit of this window (in spite of all the “When it’s ready” mantra), it means that for a year or so, Anet has been able to slack HARD yet retaing most players – there was nothing really worth where moving to and leaving GW2, unless you’re going to pay a sub or dropping MMOs altoghether for a while.
You can see it by looking down at last year developmen.
Living Story nothingness, temporary crap, bugs still rampant, little or no changes to flaws in endgame core features like DGs/WvW/PvP, and so on.

Now that
-new consoles are launching. And Gw2 cater to a lot of casual/firstMMO crowd, which is likely to drop it for new consoles and the usual Xmas flood of new games.
-Anet has really crossed the line in terms of slacking and more and more ppl are leaving even with nothing on the market
-new MMOs on the horizon are shaping out as a real treat, see EQN or AA (F2P), ESO or Wildstar (P2P)

They’re literally *****ing in their pants.

It’s probably too little and too late imo.
Pvers looking for hardcore/challenging stuff: disappointed.
Pvers causuals: Living Story/Temporary Content/Cash Shop updates are finally getting old even to them.
WvWers: disappointed. A LOT.
PvPers: there are still some?

But who knows.

Skan.5301:

chemiclord.3978:

Gamers… yet again the force of stagnation.

Can’t do ANYTHING different, or we’ll whine and pitch a fit. Just give us more of the same.

If the different part is done right, there won’t be as much whining or fits being thrown. Just saying.

You’re right, there wouldn’t be as much…………………..at least for a few days, until people blow thru anything new and different as quickly as humanly possible, usually using some site guide. Then the whining and pitching a fit over being bored commences.

Check prices for gems for gold and you’ll see that demand for grem store is at an all ime high. Doeasn’t look like a decline to me.

Tasty Pudding.3764:

NCSoft Q3 quarterly earnings report was just released and GW2 revenues are down 15% from the previous quarter. We now know what was the impetus for the Collaborative Development stuff that appeared in early October. Is that going to make any difference? The numbers show that the Living Story content has not been enough to stop the continuing decline in sales – if anything, the decline has accelerated.

I think at this point the only thing that can turn it all around is a new box expansion. The longer they wait to do this, the more radical the expansion will need to be to get people back.

I think Living Story IS the reason why people are playing less, myself included. Living Story is just an achievement grind, and follow the zerg. Nothing more. They need to give us real stuff, traditional content patches. The CDI was good to have, and we talked about some really good stuff. I hope some of it is implemented. Two things that would make me play GW2 more these days is if the cadence was adjusted and if they removed achievements from Living Story to maybe one or two achievements, not 10. Achievements are driving these patches. Any time you have achievements driving your content, it becomes a grind, a “not fun grind”. I.E. People doing the same repetitive tasks over and over and over for..what?

Eventually they’ll be forced to make an expansion, if one isn’t allready in works. But i really like the LS content. Nothing more boring that waiting for MONTHS upon MONTHS in a static never changing world other MMO’s have have.

For example, SWTOR might have a cool story and all .. but their content patches are so far and between that takes couple of months before you see small content additions in the size of one GW2 LS. It drove me nuts personally. Even the expansion released didn’t help … most finished it it like a week or so.

I also think that the CDI was necessary. It is one thing to launch small events like the Toxic Alliance via LW. It is much more challenging to present a whole new zone with a dungeon and 50 or more different DEs via LW. Therefore it was good to ask what players are missing in the LW-concept and how to make the presentation better. Arenanet collected a lot of good ideas to make the possible launch of larger projects via LW much more enjoyable.

Keep in mind that the accumulated sales for GW2 does not tell anything about how many persons really bought a box or how many player using the shop on more or less regular base. We also do not know what the distribution between box sales and shop sales is. Could be 2.9 M Box and 20 M shop or the opposite relation or somewhere between.

Even if the expansion comes it won’t get me back. Unless they change major things like skills and traits system which is in my oppinion totally broken right now. There’s practically no build diversity.

Otherwise…

Peace out! drops mic on the floor

cesmode.4257:

Tasty Pudding.3764:

NCSoft Q3 quarterly earnings report was just released and GW2 revenues are down 15% from the previous quarter. We now know what was the impetus for the Collaborative Development stuff that appeared in early October. Is that going to make any difference? The numbers show that the Living Story content has not been enough to stop the continuing decline in sales – if anything, the decline has accelerated.

I think at this point the only thing that can turn it all around is a new box expansion. The longer they wait to do this, the more radical the expansion will need to be to get people back.

I think Living Story IS the reason why people are playing less, myself included. Living Story is just an achievement grind, and follow the zerg. Nothing more. They need to give us real stuff, traditional content patches. The CDI was good to have, and we talked about some really good stuff. I hope some of it is implemented. Two things that would make me play GW2 more these days is if the cadence was adjusted and if they removed achievements from Living Story to maybe one or two achievements, not 10. Achievements are driving these patches. Any time you have achievements driving your content, it becomes a grind, a “not fun grind”. I.E. People doing the same repetitive tasks over and over and over for..what?

The problem here is that you think people are playing less, but Anet knows if people are playing less or not, and I’m thinking they’re not thinking that’s the case. I think people are playing more actually.

The season achievements for WvW, for example, have people in my guild who didn’t used to WvW doing it. And some people seem to like the tower.

It’s not supposed to be content you can play for years, but then, in two weeks it’ll be different content. And I get it’s not your cup of tea. That’s fine.

But you shouldn’t assume that because you don’t like it most people don’t. Just like I don’t assume that because I don’t like other MMOs most people don’t.

matjazmuhic.1649:

Even if the expansion comes it won’t get me back. Unless they change major things – snip

This is my top reason to think that we won’t see an expansion anytime soon.

There no point in developing one when your playerbase is so…disheartened? about the game as whole and the direction you’re driving it to.

Manly because, if we assume to launch a expansion right NOW, “just” with content…it would be a total failure. It’s not more content the biggest thing to fix in hte upcoming months. Core design and structure of the game do.

Its normal that game sale will decline. Just like its normal that the game sale will be highest in the release date.

A 15% drop in revenue when the game is basically uncontested right now just seems like a bad thing to me. What will happen 3-4 months from now when an onslaught of new MMOs hit the market?

GW2 sales trends (boxes and gems):

2012 Q3 = 45,841
2012 Q4 = 119,013 (+160%)
2013 Q1 = 36,382 (-69%)
2013 Q2 = 28,899 (-20%)
2013 Q3 = 24,481 (-15%)

It is not one bad quarter. It is a trend. Gem sales are small enough that overall sales results are still being driven largely by declining box sales. B2P works by giving people something to buy at regular intervals. That is how GW1 was a success. The overwhelming majority of GW2’s revenues to date have come from box sales. From a business perspective, why are they not making another box?

The Living Story is nothing new or innovative. It was done in GW1 to try to keep people around while GW2 was always “just around the corner” for years. However, the War in Kryta, Hearts of the North, Winds of Change, etc. content did not bring a bunch of new players to GW1; it was just an attempt to hold on to the ones that were still there waiting for GW2. It seems like this is the current strategy being taken in GW2 – not trying to make something spectacular that will bring in new growth, but rather an effort to just hold on to what they’ve already got. Even that only worked in GW1 because people were waiting expectantly for the GW2 release, but that is not the case now.

wookiee.4631:

So sales are down for only one quarter and everyone is jumping on the LW is failing, we demand an expansion, etc. wagon? Maybe instead of getting rid of a unique concept that hasn’t yet reached it’s potential, Anet will just advertise the game more or something? Maybe one quarter of decline doesn’t matter very much.

I personally demand an expansion because
a) there’s no new unique zones that my character could travel and explore
b) for the last 2 or 3 months it was focusing on a sylvari antagonist. I just can’t connect with that. If there was an expansion maybe we would see a new race, or maybe all of our characters could get something unique and personal to them?
c) living story doesn’t really get you involved. Unlike the personal story your character does not make decisions, it’s kind of just there. I want to go back to a long story line with decision making

Demand an expansion?