Guild Wars 2

zMajc.4659:

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.

This means demand is at an all time high in terms of converting in game gold to gems. Or, conversely that demand for gems & gold in real money terms is relatively low.

Tasty Pudding.3764:

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.

The list of earnings shows that box sales are more or less a straw fire in the release quarter of an game. After this there is a strong decrease. On the other side gem sales give a steady income as stated by NCSoft. Also keep in mind the drastic reduction of 40% for box sales and many special offers in the last quarter. The income only sunk by 15%. This indicates that GW2 won more players than the quarter before or the portion of box sales is very low compared to gem sales. Gem sales are the litmus test for NCSoft indicating the long-term attractiveness of the game.

Arenanet also stated there is a slow increase of the playerbase over the month. This indicates only a small income via box sales. The LW keeps this number high and prevented even a decrease in the playerbase over summer.

I would assume the playerbase is still high and very supportive via gem sales. The game is now driven via gem store and much less via box sales.

MAD CAT.9321:

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

Game’s not dying, but it has stagnated pretty fast.

The, frankly, botched delivery thus far of the Living Story has squandered most of the excitement and momentum the game had at release. At least from a PvE content perspective.

I honestly want an expansion just so I have something to get excited about in GW2 again.

@wookiee

Less jumping to conclusions, more wishful thinking I believe. I wish I shared your high expectations for LS next year… but frankly if you’d bundled all the updates since F&F and told me to pay $30, $40 for it, I dont think I’d bite. It’s not been expansion worthy to me and shows no signs of becoming that way (not yet anyway)

27 million to 23 million in sales.

Lets assume gem store sales stayed steady. 4 million drop in sales equates to ~100,000 less box sales than last quarter

Now lets look at what that equates to in gem sales. On average a gamer spends ~20/month on gems. Or $60/quarter. It was in an article discussing F2P games, I don’t remember the source, look it up if you don’t believe me. And no I don’t care that you know a guy who met a guy who’s dog knows a guy who spends $40000000 a month on gems, I don’t care, this is an average.

$60 per player would equate to ~67,000 players who stopped buying gems on average. This doesn’t mean they stopped playing, they may still play but don’t feel it is worth spending money.

So either 100,000 players less than last quarter bought the game, 67,000 players thought it was no longer worth spending money on the game, or some combination of the two…. Either way it means less players.