Guild Wars 2

An addendum: “The thing that will save the company/make lots of money/be good for everyone is the thing that I personally want!”

Vayne.8563:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vayne.8563:

Zardul.3952:

in 2015 , without any changes for Gw2. the profits will decline further.

you cannot expect people to stay interested when Change is not occurring at a certain level of interest to players time invested in the game.

Anet really need to think about Expansions and Real NEW content that holds up.

MAYBE… Public BETA tests could better help this game improve and thus improve Profits.

They had a public test of EoTM and look where that got them.

The most popular and populated map in the game?

That the WvW people absolutely cant’ stand and rail against. They created it and tested it with WvWer’s and no one saw what it would become.

WvWers will say they’ve got no content since launch. I say, what about an entire map. They all just laugh.

EotM is not really serving the function it was made to serve.

Because it was not properly tested perhaps. If, as you say, it was tested primarily by invited WvWers then the test was flawed from the beginning. Relying on those least inclined to break something, because they are most inclined to use it as intended rather than as could be exploited, means that you are not likely to find the content’s breaking points.

This is a basic concept and is not exclusive to MMO design. I admire Anet for attempting to provide content for various play styles but they made a couple of huge mistakes with EoTM:

1) they neglected to consider the element of, “how can this be exploited by players for personal gain.” This is a particularly egregious lapse of judgement because the breaking point that emerged was one that has existed in game in one form or another since shortly after launch.

2) It would appear, if Vayne is correct, that they selected testers with a bias, one that should have been obvious, that reduced the chance that they would find the map’s breaking point(s). Note that, from what people seem to be saying, it is not serious wvwers who are negatively impacting the map so that it does not serve them as supposedly intended.

Zardul.3952:

i would suggest Anet open up a public test realm. where we can test out new maps and traits and content.

the amount of feedback can give Anet a Plan of attack for bugs and problems before it has rolled out..

which in the long run.. keeps players… which keeps profits.

you really need to think outside the box to retain players

The public test server on UO wasn’t used for testing the game so much as running a faction-based zone control game which was more like high-level PvP/GvG. I believe there was a Test Server for EverQuest but it didn’t stop that game from accumulating pretty nasty bugs on content patches/expansions.

. . . or prevent broken items from making it into the game (cough, cough, Moss Covered Twig…)

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The public test server on UO wasn’t used for testing the game so much as running a faction-based zone control game which was more like high-level PvP/GvG. I believe there was a Test Server for EverQuest but it didn’t stop that game from accumulating pretty nasty bugs on content patches/expansions.

In EQ2 it was more there to find out bugs before release, so the testers could abuse them
after release .. and if they had all they wanted from a specific raid then they reportet it
so that the others had a harder time to progress.

A test server in GW2 would mainly be good for people to know into what to invest
for big money after the release i think.

I’m not surprised if SWTOR if making way more with less people. Their F2P is one of those disgustingly in-your-face designs that reminds you all the time of how better an experience you could be having if you paid money. Which would (unsurprisingly) drive lots of people away, while getting the remaining people to more often pull out their wallets.

GW2 is not exceedingly off-putting in that way and it would be silly of them to try it because their game systems require a large, active playerbase to give the intended experience.

Its a long way short of wow with over 1 billion last year and a new expansion in a few months, but then if the devs focus on the ls which to my mind is rubbish and then nerf all farming and try to push peeps into a gem store, it’s no surprise some peeps just downright refuse to support the game.

I check back every now and then to see if things have improved, gw2 could and should be amazing, give better loot perhaps hard modes to dungeons and more perm content, let the players play the game, give unique skins from pvp and pve that are not in the stores, give us something to play for.

Give something worth while and they may see peeps return and support what could be an amazing game instead of a mediocre cash cow.

Labjax.2465:

I’m not surprised if SWTOR if making way more with less people. Their F2P is one of those disgustingly in-your-face designs that reminds you all the time of how better an experience you could be having if you paid money. Which would (unsurprisingly) drive lots of people away, while getting the remaining people to more often pull out their wallets.

GW2 is not exceedingly off-putting in that way and it would be silly of them to try it because their game systems require a large, active playerbase to give the intended experience.

I call SWTOR a Freemium system because it forces players to buy. To me however GW2 has a similar system in place for new players that may not have endless hours to grind out enough gold to buy things they need to setup 1 much less multiple toons to catchup with friends, it’s cleverly disguised behind a conversion market system on purpose, so that people will think it’s an okay system to use.

If they removed for example the requirement to use gold for things like Sigils/Runes or the cost of traits it wouldn’t be as bad as it is but because it directly tied to progression and because so many people have issues with loot dropping the design becomes a serious issue.

tigirius.9014:

I call SWTOR a Freemium system because it forces players to buy. To me however GW2 has a similar system in place for new players that may not have endless hours to grind out enough gold to buy things they need to setup 1 much less multiple toons to catchup with friends, it’s cleverly disguised behind a conversion market system on purpose, so that people will think it’s an okay system to use.

If they removed for example the requirement to use gold for things like Sigils/Runes or the cost of traits it wouldn’t be as bad as it is but because it directly tied to progression and because so many people have issues with loot dropping the design becomes a serious issue.

Perhaps so. It is subtle though. I’m not one to greatly defend all of Anet’s F2P choices, but it seems to me that traits are an already-admitted mess that they would like to fix.

And as for Sigils/Runes, I don’t know what the answer is. One could argue that with Sigils, you can just buy the Major ones until you can afford the Superior version (which is something I’ve done before). But the Runes are not so simple because Superior has 6 slots and Major only has 4.

Maybe they should consider expanding some of the Major rune sets to 6 slot upgrades, only with a weaker set bonus overall. This might alleviate the issue you’re referring to.

Ok.. here is some break down from someone who comes from the financial sector.

A downgrade from 30 to 25 million is not slight downgrade.
It is a little under 5%

For people who don’t care it is not looking too much.
But if we keep in mind that the chinese launch created at least 6 million more accounts
this number is devastating.
I don’t know how many of them are really active but the fact that GW2 accounts almost doubled and create 5 million $ less is a horrible sign for the financial
aspect of the game and raises red flags.

I agree with most poster here who say the Gem Store items are incredible bad
and even if you want to spend money you can’t find something you like.
The game taking the opposite direction to what the fans want isn’t helping either.

mesme.5028:

Its a long way short of wow with over 1 billion last year and a new expansion in a few months, but then if the devs focus on the ls which to my mind is rubbish and then nerf all farming and try to push peeps into a gem store, it’s no surprise some peeps just downright refuse to support the game.

Don’t forget though, wow has its own cashshop now, drawing in money, with player subscriptions at 2008 levels. WoW is relying more and more on its ‘whale’ customers now to keep profits up.

Kurrilino.2706:

I don’t know how many of them are really active but the fact that GW2 accounts almost doubled and create 5 million $ less is a horrible sign for the financial
aspect of the game and raises red flags.

If i remember it correctly, from when that numbers were posted some weeks ago, those
25 millions were just from sales of new game boxes without the cash-shop and without china.

If you then also take into it that the boxes were quite often on sales that says that GW2
after 2 years sold maybe still more boxes than Wildstar, a newly released game. And
normally MMOs sell a lot more boxes at release than later.

Beldin.5498:

Kurrilino.2706:

I don’t know how many of them are really active but the fact that GW2 accounts almost doubled and create 5 million $ less is a horrible sign for the financial
aspect of the game and raises red flags.

If i remember it correctly, from when that numbers were posted some weeks ago, those
25 millions were just from sales of new game boxes without the cash-shop and without china.

If you then also take into it that the boxes were quite often on sales that says that GW2
after 2 years sold maybe still more boxes than Wildstar, a newly released game. And
normally MMOs sell a lot more boxes at release than later.

That is false, sales means box sales and cash shop.

I dont’ know if sales include china, since that might be included under loyalty. But I know for sure gem sales is included in the sales.

Kurrilino.2706:

Ok.. here is some break down from someone who comes from the financial sector.

A downgrade from 30 to 25 million is not slight downgrade.
It is a little under 5%

For people who don’t care it is not looking too much.
But if we keep in mind that the chinese launch created at least 6 million more accounts
this number is devastating.
I don’t know how many of them are really active but the fact that GW2 accounts almost doubled and create 5 million $ less is a horrible sign for the financial
aspect of the game and raises red flags.

I agree with most poster here who say the Gem Store items are incredible bad
and even if you want to spend money you can’t find something you like.
The game taking the opposite direction to what the fans want isn’t helping either.

Its not just the gem store, but other things at anet. I mean, compare anet’s policy on releasing info about upcoming stuff to other MMOs. Its ATROCIOUS. Announcing something last minute so players can’t provide feedback? Horrible. Keeping a tight leash on Dev postings and pulling hard if they give away too much? Terrible. Yes, the devs are talking now and CDIs are coming back, but why did the communication stop in the first place? That policy needs redone.

The two week cycle is drawing too much development time from other aspects, and is the only reason I can think of that we get a “feature pack” every 6 months approx. Even then, little bugs still make it through that are blatantly obvious (popup screen to spend charges for dyes…).

The shop does need better items. That starter pack was a blatant rip off if people did the math, as well as the silver salvage-o-matic. A balance does need to be kept though where there are cool skins in the shop, but also cool skins in the game.

The thing is a huge percentage of people playing swtor do pay a subscription fee.

If you seen the limitation swtor placed upon free players, you’ll understand. Swtor is actually called a freemium game, in which premium players get advantage for paying monthly(kind of like VIP of GW2 China).

The other 3 games OP listed a subscription games.

Kurrilino.2706:

Ok.. here is some break down from someone who comes from the financial sector.

A downgrade from 30 to 25 million is not slight downgrade.
It is a little under 5%

For people who don’t care it is not looking too much.
But if we keep in mind that the chinese launch created at least 6 million more accounts
this number is devastating.
I don’t know how many of them are really active but the fact that GW2 accounts almost doubled and create 5 million $ less is a horrible sign for the financial
aspect of the game and raises red flags.

I agree with most poster here who say the Gem Store items are incredible bad
and even if you want to spend money you can’t find something you like.
The game taking the opposite direction to what the fans want isn’t helping either.

I dont’ know how many accounts China have. I like to see official source of what you posted though. Many source are inaccurate because they count character created or they include trial account.

And I dont’ think china sales is even included in Q2.

I hope I dont’ offend you in anyway. But try to get the facts right first.

Ah .. that was what i had read already :
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2diwg3/ncsoft_earnings_2q_14/

Only 1+ million keys activated in China.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2erxzu/kongzhong_2q14_earnings_over_1m_cdkeys_activated/

Glory.1493:

ncsoft released its 2014Q2 financial report(http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/earnings.aspx)
gw2 generate about 25million dollars in last 3month,and alittle bit downed compare to Q1(30million)which almost the same to 2013Q4,i dont have early figures about the whole 2013 fiscal year but here i can come up with some financial status about gw2.yes it remain stable.and probably gonna reach 100million dollar at the end of 2014, i know its alittle bit going down YoY2013 .but if u take look at other major mmo on the market(swtor,wildstar,eso,ff14),i have done some reserch on these mmo(each game forum,3rd party figures from mmorpg.com)every figure i got told me gw2 sure has the largest player base among those mmo, but nearly get the lowest revenue(swtor get 150million in2013 which has the smallest player base among those mmo above) .here are some thoughts why it gone this way.one thing must be the b2p model,gw2 is the only b2p game here, this surely wont get as much as p2w and p2p at the start,but whats comes after is the gemstore. as gw2 is not a p2w game, anet cant stats related stuff on gemstore like other mmo. but they sure can sell good looking skins which they didnt. u cant say black lion weapon is awesome nor armor skin from “style” on gemstore, some of them are even ugly.i believe this is the only mmo that i complain compay dont sell enough on their real money in game market.this is weird,if i work as a product manager who devs very little products that wont match the needs of customer, i probably get fired many times already.and from the fiscal report we can see most revenue anet got was from gemstore sells and new player.(china launch is not included in 25million cuz its break down to loyalty revenue) .both of them are actually same thing cuz ppl buy stuff from gemsotre no matter they r new or vets. summarized as this,above all the mmo the mentioned b4 .gw2 has largest player base while make lowest revenue(its still stable after 2years launch which is good).anet u reallly need to reconsider the stuff on gemstore and decide what to do next.do it quickly

“Excuse me stewardess, I read stream of thought.”

As someone who has followed NCSOFT for the past 8+ years, let me point out a few things.

First only income that comes from the parent and subsidiaries are broken down by game. Income from 3rd party companies that are running their game comes in as royalties. So GW2 China income is in Royalties and is not included in the GW2 break out of game income. Same is true with B&S China. That was his point about “loyalty revenue”, is was a simple typing error.

The OP thinks that the projected $100 million in annual sales is rather low for a MMO of our size and ANet needs to increase this by some means such as putting “prettier” armor and weapon skins in the Gem Shop, skins people would want to buy.

As for a point other people brought up, there hasn’t been any announcement about the number of GW2 accounts in China other than the 1/2 million early access copies sold. The 3.8 million number reported was refuted by ANet itself saying that was may just be characters created.

https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/status/487745928137154560

Edit: Correction, KongZwong’s conference call states they’ve sold over 1 million keys since the OBT which I think the original 1/2 million were sold for so that’s 1.5 million keys overall. They are going to do a free trial in September to draw in more players. What was more interesting was their statement about pushing the PvP aspect of the game.

http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/18/180513/KZ-Transcript-2014-08-27T23_30.pdf

zenleto.6179:

Star Wars is Star Wars and has some of the most die hard fans around so I’m not surprised by that figure. As a universe it just craps on nearly anything else.

Die hard fans didn’t stop SWTOR from completely tanking before giving up and going Free To Play. What enables SWTOR to generate so much money from a smaller player base is their cash shop model, which is far more intrusive than what we have.

There’s a lot of QOL stuff that’s locked behind a paywall. Action bars, the amount of money you can store in your bank, the ability to run; these and many others require you to pay for them to unlock, or just pay the subscription. Honestly, it’s a bloody brilliant way of getting players to sub; DDO followed much the same model (although they put a lot of content behind paywalls) and they completely turned their game around.

Plus, SWTOR’s cash shop has a lot of pretty awesome stuff in it that the Black Lion Company doesn’t really come close to. When a player can run through GW2 from start to finish and not even know the cash shop is there, it’s not really surprising that revenue streams are low.

If Gw2 have the largest playerbase I really wish to see who have the lowest)

Galen.9042:

zenleto.6179:

Star Wars is Star Wars and has some of the most die hard fans around so I’m not surprised by that figure. As a universe it just craps on nearly anything else.

Die hard fans didn’t stop SWTOR from completely tanking before giving up and going Free To Play. What enables SWTOR to generate so much money from a smaller player base is their cash shop model, which is far more intrusive than what we have.

There’s a lot of QOL stuff that’s locked behind a paywall. Action bars, the amount of money you can store in your bank, the ability to run; these and many others require you to pay for them to unlock, or just pay the subscription. Honestly, it’s a bloody brilliant way of getting players to sub; DDO followed much the same model (although they put a lot of content behind paywalls) and they completely turned their game around.

Plus, SWTOR’s cash shop has a lot of pretty awesome stuff in it that the Black Lion Company doesn’t really come close to. When a player can run through GW2 from start to finish and not even know the cash shop is there, it’s not really surprising that revenue streams are low.

Yeah, that was one of the reasons why I stopped playing SWTOR. That and lag, quest hubs, etc.

I subbed with DDO before it went free and kept it up after. Their shop was fine to start with but then they introduced crafting materials. I stopped playing not long after that but for lag and other non-game related reasons so I don’t know what else is in there now. It really did turn the game around. It blew my mind to see the amount of people running around after it went free. It really is something people like.

XyAltAcc.2096:

NCsoft released their 2014 Q2 financial report.
(http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/earnings.aspx)

GW2 generated about 25 million dollars in the last 3 months, a little bit less compared to Q1(30 million $), which is almost the same as 2013 Q4. I don’t have early figures about the whole 2013 fiscal year, but here I can come up with some financial status about GW2. Yes it remains stable, and is probably going to reach 100 million dollars at the end of 2014. I know YoY2013 is a little bit decreasing, but if u take a look at other major MMOs on the market (swtor, wildstar, eso, ff14). I have done some research on these MMOs (each game forum, 3rd party figures from mmorpg.com), every figure I saw told me GW2 surely has the largest player base among those MMOs, but nearly gets the lowest revenue(swtor get 150million in 2013, which has the smallest player base among those MMOs above).

[snip for brevity]

Summary: Of all the mmos that was mentioned before, GW2 has largest player base, while making the lowest revenue (it’s still stable 2 years after launch which is good). Anet you really need to reconsider the stuff on gemstore and decide what to do next. Do it quickly.

—
English isn’t my native language but I gave it a try.

Good editing!

I think we can draw several conclusions from this data:

1. No hard data on other MMOs, just handwaving.

2. GW2 pricing model does not align ArenaNet’s interests with the interests of players who stay with the game. ArenaNet is incented to bring in new players (which is where most of their money comes in) but does not have the revenue stream to support continued development of content of the quality and depth of that which was in the game at release.

3. If we don’t see Wildstar revenue up next quarter, then Wildstar will have peaked at far fewer players than GW2 (even ignoring the China launch, which probably dwarfs the U.S. in player count already). However, if the average revenue per player per month of Wildstar dwarfs that of GW2, Wildstar will be able to provide at least some level of ongoing quality content in the way the GW2 business model cannot. It will be interesting to see whether GW2 or Wildstar has the higher revenue a year from now, after the initial box purchase effects of GW2-China and Wildstar release have passed.

4. I’d much rather have paid a sub for GW2 at release, and kept the people who originally developed the game in charge, doing expansions in the expected style of MMOs. In that sense the B2P financial model choice for GW2 has been a failure, not just for ArenaNet, but for its customers.

I’d like to see the source saying GW2 have the highest player population though. I’m not sure if it is even true if you exclude China.

and you shouldn’t even bring eso or wildstar in to the equation. Need to wait a few month/year to see if those games can even keep up.

We’ll never get any definitive info on ESO as Zenimax is a private company. Wildstar however will have published income figures to track.

Behellagh.1468:

We’ll never get any definitive info on ESO as Zenimax is a private company. Wildstar however will have published income figures to track.

Right, we dont’ even know how much players GW2 have. And wildstar probably wont’ release their subscriber number also, we can only backtrack from their financial report.

No one knows exactly how many players GW2 have. My estimate is between 200,000 to 1,200,000 unique logons monthly. Other people make similar joke about it too, because no one knows.

Behellagh.1468:

The OP thinks that the projected $100 million in annual sales is rather low for a MMO of our size and ANet needs to increase this by some means such as putting “prettier” armor and weapon skins in the Gem Shop, skins people would want to buy.

I personally think that infinite quaggan tonics can have a heavy impacts in profits lol.
Thank you for the China links.

The problem with the first post is that in each “paragraph,” the author combines sparse facts, extrapolations (without context), speculations, and opinion.

This makes the thread a perfect Rorschach test to see people’s views of the state of the game. People who want traditional expansions will find quotes suggesting ANet is in trouble. People who think that GW2 is beating ANet’s own expectations can find quotes that support that, too.

I’m not ready to conclude anything based on what’s posted here. I’m sure there’s a lot of interesting data we could discuss from the NCSOFT financial report. But I don’t see that happening in this thread.

If you are gonig to comment on this thread then I suggest you actually take a look at the financial report. Look at the 5 page pdf summary that’s all you really need.

Highlights:
1. The figures include china’s launch, it is stated on the first slide.
2. Revenue is down from last quarter even with the launch included <—- VERY bad sign
3. Wildstar did not sell a lot of boxes, it has a much much smaller player base
4. China only sold 1 million boxes (see reddit link above), far less than the 3.5 million in the US/EU

There isn’t much to discuss, the game is in trouble, I suspect we will see something similar to SWTOR happening soon. A period of odd quiet followed by the leak of major restructuring at Anet, followed by an announcement that the game is taking a “new direction” (P2W mode activated, or expansion announced). This will take 3-4 months and will probably be announced around the next feature patch after S2 ends.

“Skrit! I’m hit!”

1) Don’t know what slide you are looking at. Obviously the total reported income for NCSOFT includes China’s income. But it’s included in royalties, chart that lists individual game incomes (note the excluding royalties note above the chart).

2) Grant you that. Down 23% in terms of KrW. Haven’t bothered converting those numbers to USD using the exchange rate for those periods. Actually that’s rather easy. 2nd quarter 2013 would be between $24.93 – $26.93 million and 3rd quarter 2014 would be between $20.96 – $22.21. So 15.9% if you take the highest exchange rate in those periods to 17.5% if you use the lowest. Not as bad in dollars as KrW but still down.

3. Would you buy a game for $60 that stops after 30 days in this day and age? That to continue playing you need to pony up another $15? I thought it was a silly model when I beta tested UO and that was 17 years ago and only $10 a month. Who knew there were so many suckers.

4. Well it’s unclear if the 1 million number includes the 1/2 million they sold during the OBT. The quote from the conference call transcript was “we sold or activated over 1 million CD-Keys since the OBT” which sounds like after the OBT so a million more than the 1/2 million sold for the OBT.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

If you are gonig to comment on this thread then I suggest you actually take a look at the financial report. Look at the 5 page pdf summary that’s all you really need.

Highlights:
1. The figures include china’s launch, it is stated on the first slide.
2. Revenue is down from last quarter even with the launch included <—- VERY bad sign
3. Wildstar did not sell a lot of boxes, it has a much much smaller player base
4. China only sold 1 million boxes (see reddit link above), far less than the 3.5 million in the US/EU

There isn’t much to discuss, the game is in trouble, I suspect we will see something similar to SWTOR happening soon. A period of odd quiet followed by the leak of major restructuring at Anet, followed by an announcement that the game is taking a “new direction” (P2W mode activated, or expansion announced). This will take 3-4 months and will probably be announced around the next feature patch after S2 ends.

Are you sure what you said is correct?

Only thing I read from the first page is “Revenues and profits increased thanks to new launches such as Wildstar in US/EU and Guild Wars 2 in China.”

On the sales page it says “Sales by Games (excluding royalty)”.

I’m confused by that myself, I thought the sales number dont’ include China. Since it is probably listed under royalty. That being said I’m not sure, but you seemed to be sure.

But he’s a negative Nelly laokoko.

Beldin.5498:

tigirius.9014:

Actually that too is false, plenty of games out there with the F2P models have 3-4 month schedules for content releases, have PTA systems of testing to emphasize quality rather than quantity, AND still maintain a very large international playerbase without having restricted every single aspect of the new patches coming out. I suggest that you take a look at those systems so that you too can see since you claim that you have a grasp of logic, why these systems have not only been successful but been repeated over and over again throughout the lives of these games and game systems.

The only F2P i know that has a PTS is Champions Online, however i would not play
that without a subscription, since the best part of the game, freeform characters,,
are not available without that.

And the main point, they never really cared about bugs found on PTS and always
realeased stuff that was bugged 100 times. So in the end the PTS is mostly just a
way to test build without having to pay actual ingame currency for respecs.

actually a couple years ago i took part in their ptr, and they actually fixed a lot of bugs from the ptr, reworked skills/abilities based on suggestions, and altered level design. Now, once it shipped, very little was changed(from what i read they had bugs still there from release), but you also must recognize champions online had a super skeleton crew at that point, they realisttically could not have done much more than they did. Focus was on new content and reworking powers, new features because honestly i believe that is way more important than fixing old bugs.

was a fun game for me though, i give the dev team props for doing so much with so little, and such a small audience. In many ways it was a precursor to GW2 imo

the info i was looking for is how ncsoft specifically defines their quarters, different companies use different dates, and foreign companies also use different dates sometimes.
Any body knows?

Xillllix.3485:

One thing is certain, the numbers aren’t going up.
They would have to release an expansion for that.

Vayne.8563:

EotM is not really serving the function it was made to serve.

That is obvious, EotM is a disaster in comparison of what it was meant to be; but what is worrying is: why doesn’t Anet fix it? All the content is there, they just have to make defending and battles meaningful.

Because its super popular and they don’t want to change something super popular without a good plan.

What boggles my mind is that Guild Wars 2 still doesn’t have a free demo. Those F2P MMOs have a huge advantage in entry price over Guild Wars 2. In SW:TOR for example, yes the cash shop is intrusive, but once you spend $5 in the cash shop, your account gets upgraded to a premium account and get a very decent game experience until the level cap.

Just like SW:TOR (but for different reasons) leveling is the best part of Guild Wars 2. Allow demo players to play until level 15 and I bet it would help sell the game.

Kurrilino.2706:

Ok.. here is some break down from someone who comes from the financial sector.

A downgrade from 30 to 25 million is not slight downgrade.
It is a little under 5%

For people who don’t care it is not looking too much.
But if we keep in mind that the chinese launch created at least 6 million more accounts
this number is devastating.
I don’t know how many of them are really active but the fact that GW2 accounts almost doubled and create 5 million $ less is a horrible sign for the financial
aspect of the game and raises red flags.

I agree with most poster here who say the Gem Store items are incredible bad
and even if you want to spend money you can’t find something you like.
The game taking the opposite direction to what the fans want isn’t helping either.

if u check the report again u will find the chinese launch does not account in the 25million of Q2, its account for loyalty fee which is prepaid to ncsoft maybe in 2013.and report did say thanks to Wildstar in EU/NA and gw2 launch in china blah blah blah.there is a growth in whole of gw2 for ncsoft but not in the 25million cuz it doesnt make sense if they put china release into 25million and said thanks to it we get 25million from gw2 and it help us increase revenue but its not as much as it sold in Q1

ZudetGambeous.9573:

If you are gonig to comment on this thread then I suggest you actually take a look at the financial report. Look at the 5 page pdf summary that’s all you really need.

Highlights:
1. The figures include china’s launch, it is stated on the first slide.
2. Revenue is down from last quarter even with the launch included <—- VERY bad sign
3. Wildstar did not sell a lot of boxes, it has a much much smaller player base
4. China only sold 1 million boxes (see reddit link above), far less than the 3.5 million in the US/EU

There isn’t much to discuss, the game is in trouble, I suspect we will see something similar to SWTOR happening soon. A period of odd quiet followed by the leak of major restructuring at Anet, followed by an announcement that the game is taking a “new direction” (P2W mode activated, or expansion announced). This will take 3-4 months and will probably be announced around the next feature patch after S2 ends.

try learn something about accounting

phys.7689:

the info i was looking for is how ncsoft specifically defines their quarters, different companies use different dates, and foreign companies also use different dates sometimes.
Any body knows?

Standard calendar quarters. Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, Jul-Sep, Oct-Dec.

Zardul.3952:

in 2015 , without any changes for Gw2. the profits will decline further.

you cannot expect people to stay interested when Change is not occurring at a certain level of interest to players time invested in the game.

Anet really need to think about Expansions and Real NEW content that holds up.

MAYBE… Public BETA tests could better help this game improve and thus improve Profits.

I agree completely that serious changes are needed within the game.

Same major problems that have been here since beta are still here, many of were hanging on for a long, long time in vein hopes of the issues being adressed, but nothing comes out of it, some things that come to my mind just off the top of my head:

- crappy ultra-bad AI even by cheap game standards leading to poor quality PvE encounters
- stale PvE meta (zerker)
- stale WvW meta (GWEN)
- very low quality content via LS
- mediocre at best, if not poor, pvp, due to lack of different match types
- lack of in-game tools for guilds which are widely available in other games
- lack of “guild wars” in a game named “guild wars 2”
- rediculously easy to obtain legendary gear which requires nothing more then gold to acquire (since it can be bought)

And most of all, to me, A-Nets biggest failure by far in this game is with WvW. They literally had no competition with RvR style PvP when the game launched and completely failed to capitalize on it.

- stale maps
- stale matches
- stale and really bad glicko system
- stale meta (as mentioned above)
- unfixed / ignored bugs and exploits that have been here since game started and have been reported thousands of times by now.

In order for players to come back they would need to do something about all those things and much more that I haven’t even mentioned here, instead, they keep pumping out more LS.

Well, give it another year or so and maybe they will decide to cut their losses and concentrate on GW3 rather then continue beating this horse here.

The big surprise of this report is how badly Wildstar did on startup, seemingly only 500K players bought the game (compared to GW2s 3m and swtors 2m), and it has had significant population decline since then. GW2 has held up probably due its free to play status and the disappointments of WS and ESO. For all that swtor is doing better than it financially.

Is it safe to say, that GW2’s gem sales went to fund Wildstar? If so, is it also safe to say that it totally sucks because Wildstar is failing hard, and we GW2 players got shafted because of it?

morrolan.9608:

The big surprise of this report is how badly Wildstar did on startup, seemingly only 500K players bought the game (compared to GW2s 3m and swtors 2m), and it has had significant population decline since then. GW2 has held up probably due its free to play status and the disappointments of WS and ESO. For all that swtor is doing better than it financially.

Sure because SWToR is basically a subscription game. You can’t do most of the game without actually subscribing. The “optional” subscription is pretty much a necessary subscription for anyone who doesn’t play it as a single player game. If you’re going to continue on with it, you’re subscribing.

Comparing a game with even an optional subscription to a game that has none is really not that good, which is why the meta data people always put SWToR and Guild Wars 2 on separate lists.

However if you factor in GW 2’s profit from that report into the sub game, we’re roughly the #5 MMO in profit at this time.

morrolan.9608:

The big surprise of this report is how badly Wildstar did on startup, seemingly only 500K players bought the game (compared to GW2s 3m and swtors 2m), and it has had significant population decline since then. GW2 has held up probably due its free to play status and the disappointments of WS and ESO. For all that swtor is doing better than it financially.

honestly gw2, and swtor were way higher than what is generally expected from MMOs in general.

if wildstars earnings are only showing for part of june, it may not have done too bad earning wise. Future earning reports will give a better picture.

phys.7689:

morrolan.9608:

The big surprise of this report is how badly Wildstar did on startup, seemingly only 500K players bought the game (compared to GW2s 3m and swtors 2m), and it has had significant population decline since then. GW2 has held up probably due its free to play status and the disappointments of WS and ESO. For all that swtor is doing better than it financially.

honestly gw2, and swtor were way higher than what is generally expected from MMOs in general.

if wildstars earnings are only showing for part of june, it may not have done too bad earning wise. Future earning reports will give a better picture.

I don’t think so. They’ve opened up free transfers until they can create a mega server.

Wildstar play hours are significantly down in July compared to June according to Raptr.

nexxe.7081:

Is it safe to say, that GW2’s gem sales went to fund Wildstar? If so, is it also safe to say that it totally sucks because Wildstar is failing hard, and we GW2 players got shafted because of it?

Hmm…I wonder if that’s what the previous NCSoft game-players say about Guild Wars 2?

nexxe.7081:

Is it safe to say, that GW2’s gem sales went to fund Wildstar? If so, is it also safe to say that it totally sucks because Wildstar is failing hard, and we GW2 players got shafted because of it?

not really, arena net only gets a peice of their profits, they are basically work for hire. You could say that gw2 gem sales paid for wildstar, but only in the same way you could say lineage and aion paid for gw2 development over 5 years.

Really anets budget, is anets budget, how much money they make does not necessarily justify an increase in budget on that basis.
If you think of it like the black lion trading post, do you pay more for an item just because it sells for more, if no one else can supply that item?
probably not, you just pay the same price and increase your profits that way, whether you reinvest in that specific item, depends on whether you think reinvesting will increase earnings.

Essentially, whether anet gets a higher budget from ncsoft has more to do with whether ncsoft believes that throwing more money at anet will make more money than throwing more money elsewhere, than how much money anet brings in.

nexxe.7081:

Is it safe to say, that GW2’s gem sales went to fund Wildstar? If so, is it also safe to say that it totally sucks because Wildstar is failing hard, and we GW2 players got shafted because of it?

No it’s not for a number of reasons.

First ArenaNet is a wholly own subsidiary. That means it is essentially it’s own company with all income and profits held by them. It’s just that NCSOFT can include that income and costs in it’s own. That said I assume that NCSOFT fronted them the money during development and that money needed to be paid back. Handled similarly to a royalty advance or even a bank loan. It’s likely that ANet still “pays” NCSOFT for hosting the game as well as some consideration for being their money guys.

Second is that Carbine Studios was purchased outright by NCSOFT in 2007. A full 5 years before GW2 made any money at all. Pretty sure they ramped up manpower well before GW2 went live.

Glory.1493:

Kurrilino.2706:

Ok.. here is some break down from someone who comes from the financial sector.

A downgrade from 30 to 25 million is not slight downgrade.
It is a little under 5%

For people who don’t care it is not looking too much.
But if we keep in mind that the chinese launch created at least 6 million more accounts
this number is devastating.
I don’t know how many of them are really active but the fact that GW2 accounts almost doubled and create 5 million $ less is a horrible sign for the financial
aspect of the game and raises red flags.

I agree with most poster here who say the Gem Store items are incredible bad
and even if you want to spend money you can’t find something you like.
The game taking the opposite direction to what the fans want isn’t helping either.

if u check the report again u will find the chinese launch does not account in the 25million of Q2, its account for loyalty fee which is prepaid to ncsoft maybe in 2013.and report did say thanks to Wildstar in EU/NA and gw2 launch in china blah blah blah.there is a growth in whole of gw2 for ncsoft but not in the 25million cuz it doesnt make sense if they put china release into 25million and said thanks to it we get 25million from gw2 and it help us increase revenue but its not as much as it sold in Q1

Wait a minute… maybe i haven’t been clear.

This report DOESN’T include Chinas box sales.
But it includes all transactions made at the Gem Store.
And that also includes chinese accounts buying there.

So it’s not ajust a slight drop in gem store sales, it’s also dropping wiht having more active accounts.
That is what i tried to point out.
And if the number who are rumored are correct and NC-Soft just sold 1 million
accounts in china we are in trouble.
I expected at least around 6 millions

Kurrilino.2706:

Glory.1493:

Kurrilino.2706:

Ok.. here is some break down from someone who comes from the financial sector.

A downgrade from 30 to 25 million is not slight downgrade.
It is a little under 5%

For people who don’t care it is not looking too much.
But if we keep in mind that the chinese launch created at least 6 million more accounts
this number is devastating.
I don’t know how many of them are really active but the fact that GW2 accounts almost doubled and create 5 million $ less is a horrible sign for the financial
aspect of the game and raises red flags.

I agree with most poster here who say the Gem Store items are incredible bad
and even if you want to spend money you can’t find something you like.
The game taking the opposite direction to what the fans want isn’t helping either.

if u check the report again u will find the chinese launch does not account in the 25million of Q2, its account for loyalty fee which is prepaid to ncsoft maybe in 2013.and report did say thanks to Wildstar in EU/NA and gw2 launch in china blah blah blah.there is a growth in whole of gw2 for ncsoft but not in the 25million cuz it doesnt make sense if they put china release into 25million and said thanks to it we get 25million from gw2 and it help us increase revenue but its not as much as it sold in Q1

Wait a minute… maybe i haven’t been clear.

This report DOESN’T include Chinas box sales.
But it includes all transactions made at the Gem Store.
And that also includes chinese accounts buying there.

So it’s not ajust a slight drop in gem store sales, it’s also dropping wiht having more active accounts.
That is what i tried to point out.
And if the number who are rumored are correct and NC-Soft just sold 1 million
accounts in china we are in trouble.
I expected at least around 6 millions

We are NOT in trouble. We’re not even close to being in trouble. Considering we’re at this point probably the second most profitable product in NCsoft’s stable, there’s no problem.

There’s a huge difference between being a runaway success and being in trouble.

It’s like saying we don’t have 7 million subscribers like WoW, so we’re in trouble.

We’re hit expectations, and that’s what matters in business. And if this really just laying the foundation for an expansion as I suspect it is, then there’s no problem at all.