Does Anet have too much money?
Let me explain. I’ve recently begun looking for a ‘stop gap’ MMORPG while I wait for HoT to be released. I’ve tried a few f2p types and deleted them within a few hours as they were terrible (imo – thanks Anet for setting the bar so high!). I’ve been a loyal member of the GW community for over nine years now with an almost daily log on record so this game is my idea of how it should be.
Something that came as a surprise to me with those other games was the sheer quantity of items on sale in their respective shops. I know GW2 is not f2p as there is an initial purchase fee but I imagine that fee is soon spent on salaries etc leaving Anet in need of income from another source. An easy source of income that wouldn’t affect the game is shop items like skins etc. I’m not suggesting Anet adopts the shameless money grubbing tactics of those other companies, just asking why more items are not available to people who would be happy to spend their money on cosmetic only items.
So back to my question, I don’t understand why Anet sells items on time limits or even worse, refuses to put already created items back on sale? (Didn’t want to mention it but wth bunny ears for example). Also, why they don’t have a small team of people actively creating new items, with rotation for those that sell below a minimum set limit. This seems like economic madness to me so all I can assume is that I must be missing something here.
Does anyone have any theories?
Theory?
They launched GW2 as a hybrid B2P with a F2P model by relying mostly on cosmetic sales to sustain income while releasing smaller LS content. The mentality of limited gem items is to build hype to drive sales.
Though…
The model hasn’t worked well and they are reverting back to a expansion based model while limiting focus on cosmetics and LS. This also might be the reason they recently decided to scrap selling future armor skins and just do outfits.
At least thats my theory.
Thanks BrooksP, I was just reading a different post and someone mentioned a point that struck me as quite possibly true. If items are constantly on sale people could farm gold, exchange into gems and buy. By selling on short time limits Anet increases the chance of people not having enough gold so buying gems with real money. Same with denying items then selling on a one day only basis when demand reaches fever pitch.
A smart yet slightly dirty trick which I’ll take as my answer.
“Limited time only” is a foul marketing ploy. That works. Limited Time Only is a false scarcity that promotes buying because “it’s going away soon, never to return!”
And it’s not just tinfoil-hat theory. It’s from long-tested marketing research. Limited items have prestige, or a 24-hour discount forces people to Buy Now rather than wait, because waiting and patience give a person time to determine whether the item has the value they would invest in it.
It’s tacky, but it works.
Of course, conversely, it’s also a quality of life thing, partially. If every skin were constantly available, searching through them would be a pain, and people wouldn’t look through all the content. Bringing items back gives them attention they were lacking.
I’ll even use myself as an example. I might have 800 gems to spend on an armor set on the BLTP, but I can only afford one. I see several great options, but I can’t pick a favorite. So, instead of buying one (or dropping $60 to get all the ones I want), I don’t buy any, because one doesn’t have clear value over the others. For the moment, I tell myself, I’ll wait until one goes on sale or unless they’re threatened to leave the store in a few days.
Basically the whole game is monetized via gems <—> gold. That’s their real bread basket but people always focus solely on shop items when talking about monetization for some reason.
It’s why the game shipped with gear stats, why “grind” became so prevalent after release, why you have ascended and time gates. If you’re not participating in the economy then you’re not driving profit.
Their original mechanisms proved to be too kind to the player for that to succeed thanks to the narrow + short progression as opposed to GW1’s wide + short progression. They forgot or didn’t realize the intrinsic importance of GW1’s width and they’re still recovering from the fallout.
It’s like teasing a cat with a toy. If you never let them catch it they’ll get frustrated and leave, eventually not even bothering with it when you pull it out. They’re so much happier if you let them enjoy their efforts after a bit of play and offer them different toys to play with so things stay fresh.
Yes, cat toys are better than carrots.
But I digress. In F2P’s you often see that as their player base declines for whatever reasons, they add more and more of those traditional time extending mechanisms to keep the most addicted players. They start pushing cash shop harder to pay the bills and investors with a smaller population, relying more and more on their whales.
Anet, thankfully and at last, fell back on their content and cat toy shipping roots. Hopefully the content will be very strong (read: not the same old you climb long time with little content… content) and it can mean less of the industry standard mechanisms going forward.
Limited time offers drive influxes of buying. The psychological factor is the creation of a sense of urgency. This drives people who might otherwise be inclined to wait to act now (or maybe think better of it and act never if given time to think about it).
In retail, a limited time offer is often on a reduction in the item’s price. This is because of competition. A hardware store, for instance, cannot use scarcity to increase sales on many full-price items because if they don’t have the item, the customer just goes to a different company/store. Thus, a limited-time offer is usually going to be a limited time to save on a desired item. This serves a similar function by encouraging people to buy now rather than wait.
Virtual game stores have no competition. Thus, they can get away with selling limited time items at full price. They also use limited time price reductions, or tactics like weapon skins only taking one ticket to drive spikes in spending. However, limited time offers can include full-price items, whereas this only happens in RL where the item is exclusive to that company. Thus, you can see limited time full-price offers of a brewer’s seasonal beer, or specialty burgers in fast food places, but not on items that many different companies offer.
The ANet store has an additional issue to contend with, the gold for gems exchange. Limited time offers may prompt people who would be inclined to get their gems with gold rather than money to spend cash if they acquire gold too slowly to be able to buy the gewgaw they want before the availability window closes.
Maybe Arenanet just doesn’t want to make as much money as others. They sold a lot of copies at the initial release and have kept on selling steady since. They also sold a good amount of stuff through gem-sales.
Another trick Arenanet is doing is to limit datatraffic from the server to the client making servers less expensive.
So I’m pretty sure that Arenanet is making money and looking at the quarterly reports of ncsoft (Arenanets owner) it is actually one of thier bigger money makers. Keep in mind that GuildWars2 sales where a lot higher then GuildWars1. I think for Arenanet that came as a pleassant surprise too and that they aimed much more to a number closer to that of GW1 when they developped it.
Theory?
They launched GW2 as a hybrid B2P with a F2P model by relying mostly on cosmetic sales to sustain income while releasing smaller LS content. The mentality of limited gem items is to build hype to drive sales.
Though…
The model hasn’t worked well and they are reverting back to a expansion based model while limiting focus on cosmetics and LS. This also might be the reason they recently decided to scrap selling future armor skins and just do outfits.
At least thats my theory.
They always said they would release expansions. They have also been clean on the fact that they wanted to investigate to release it as releases simular to the living world releases. They have been experimenting a lot with the living world. And with limited success. Not financially dissasterious, but cause it just didn’t work as well. Season one was too temporary. Season 2 was too small and locked into separate parts.
The reason why they stopped releasing armor skins is obvious. An armor skin design is much more complicated then a skin AND they have to have a good amount of new skins for HoT.
Maybe Arenanet just doesn’t want to make as much money as others. They sold a lot of copies at the initial release and have kept on selling steady since. They also sold a good amount of stuff through gem-sales.
Another trick Arenanet is doing is to limit datatraffic from the server to the client making servers less expensive.
So I’m pretty sure that Arenanet is making money and looking at the quarterly reports of ncsoft (Arenanets owner) it is actually one of thier bigger money makers. Keep in mind that GuildWars2 sales where a lot higher then GuildWars1. I think for Arenanet that came as a pleassant surprise too and that they aimed much more to a number closer to that of GW1 when they developped it.
Theory?
They launched GW2 as a hybrid B2P with a F2P model by relying mostly on cosmetic sales to sustain income while releasing smaller LS content. The mentality of limited gem items is to build hype to drive sales.
Though…
The model hasn’t worked well and they are reverting back to a expansion based model while limiting focus on cosmetics and LS. This also might be the reason they recently decided to scrap selling future armor skins and just do outfits.
At least thats my theory.
They always said they would release expansions. They have also been clean on the fact that they wanted to investigate to release it as releases simular to the living world releases. They have been experimenting a lot with the living world. And with limited success. Not financially dissasterious, but cause it just didn’t work as well. Season one was too temporary. Season 2 was too small and locked into separate parts.
The reason why they stopped releasing armor skins is obvious. An armor skin design is much more complicated then a skin AND they have to have a good amount of new skins for HoT.
They did not always say they would release expansions.
Theory?
They launched GW2 as a hybrid B2P with a F2P model by relying mostly on cosmetic sales to sustain income while releasing smaller LS content. The mentality of limited gem items is to build hype to drive sales.
Though…
The model hasn’t worked well and they are reverting back to a expansion based model while limiting focus on cosmetics and LS. This also might be the reason they recently decided to scrap selling future armor skins and just do outfits.
At least thats my theory.
Have they stated this or are you just speculating?
Releasing more cash shop items can increase sales, but it also runs the risk of disillusioning players and driving them away. People already complain that the gem store gets too much of Anet’s time and effort compared to other areas of the game.
Free-to-play games can get away with that because they’re usually designed with the expectation that they’ll make most of their profit shortly after launch and will only last a few years at most. It’s in their interest to squeeze as much profit as possible from players while they’re there.
Maintaining a game long-term is more of a balancing act. And it’s very much in Anet’s interest to get that right because unlike a lot of studios they don’t have any other games or products to fall back on. (Yes there’s GW1 but I think even if they started releasing new updates for it again they’d really struggle to get the kind of numbers they have with GW2, especially if GW2 had just shut down because they screwed it up.)
Maybe Arenanet just doesn’t want to make as much money as others. They sold a lot of copies at the initial release and have kept on selling steady since. They also sold a good amount of stuff through gem-sales.
Another trick Arenanet is doing is to limit datatraffic from the server to the client making servers less expensive.
So I’m pretty sure that Arenanet is making money and looking at the quarterly reports of ncsoft (Arenanets owner) it is actually one of thier bigger money makers. Keep in mind that GuildWars2 sales where a lot higher then GuildWars1. I think for Arenanet that came as a pleassant surprise too and that they aimed much more to a number closer to that of GW1 when they developped it.
Theory?
They launched GW2 as a hybrid B2P with a F2P model by relying mostly on cosmetic sales to sustain income while releasing smaller LS content. The mentality of limited gem items is to build hype to drive sales.
Though…
The model hasn’t worked well and they are reverting back to a expansion based model while limiting focus on cosmetics and LS. This also might be the reason they recently decided to scrap selling future armor skins and just do outfits.
At least thats my theory.
They always said they would release expansions. They have also been clean on the fact that they wanted to investigate to release it as releases simular to the living world releases. They have been experimenting a lot with the living world. And with limited success. Not financially dissasterious, but cause it just didn’t work as well. Season one was too temporary. Season 2 was too small and locked into separate parts.
The reason why they stopped releasing armor skins is obvious. An armor skin design is much more complicated then a skin AND they have to have a good amount of new skins for HoT.
They did not always say they would release expansions.
They said so in 2007 (or actually expansions or campaigns, difference being that a campaigns can be played stand alone and has levelling area’s).
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-best-things-in-life-are-free-interview?page=2
So they did say it then. Have repeated it multiple times afterwards and now are releasing an expansion.
Just the fact that they didn’t repeat it every week, doesn’t mean it wasn’t always the plan!
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