Guild Wars 2

Lheimroo.2947:

And he’s also claimed to have kitted out several characters in full ascended. Which was not introduced entirely 2 years ago, you remember, so he hasn’t had 2 years to do that.

I’m not drawing this conclusion from one datum. Vayne plays a lot.

I reserve the right to filter anything he says about the lack of grind in this game and the accessibility of ascended through that conclusion.

Yes, there’s been a couple of old posts (can’t find it through his swarm of posts) where he stated his hours played which averaged around 13 hours per day. Of course, he’d then claim something like he’s doesn’t play all those time, but that should still put things in perspective of his “casual” play.

Copied from my previous post.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-03-its-unlikely-guild-wars-2-will-ever-get-an-expansion-pack

So right now we’re not really looking at expansions as an option.
…
It’s something that’s on the table but it’s not something we’re focused on, because what we want to do is – our idea here is that with Living World, we can do what expansions would have done but do it on a more regular basis.
…
If we do this right, we will probably never do an expansion and everything will be going into this Living World strategy.

In before the “they’re streamlining” defense.

Yes, the living story (or living world, as they wanted to call it) was meant to replace the expansion.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-03-its-unlikely-guild-wars-2-will-ever-get-an-expansion-pack

So right now we’re not really looking at expansions as an option.
…
It’s something that’s on the table but it’s not something we’re focused on, because what we want to do is – our idea here is that with Living World, we can do what expansions would have done but do it on a more regular basis.
…
If we do this right, we will probably never do an expansion and everything will be going into this Living World strategy.

We’ll find out soon whether they did it right or not.

I can see it now. Mike and Colin coming on only with a single piece of paper of note, titled: 101 ways to rephrase “it’s on the table” and “we’re not ready to say anything”.
That can easily fill up 1.5 hours.

Nice! I wonder what’s going to be reset?

Just so everyone is aware, employee does not necessarily mean developer.
It’s highly unlikely they have 300+ developers.
There are many employee roles, such as admin, sales, customer service, human resource, QA etc.

Also, we’ve already seen what they consider big projects (they’ve been folded into the living story/feature packs).
A few new maps and reworked a few maps (Edge of the mist map took nearly a year to make).
Trading post revamp which took nearly two years.
The backend is completely rewritten for the upcoming PvP changes (or is that done already, I dunno).

Zaklex.6308:

3 million copies sold at release in China, we don’t know the number since then or how many are still active…

You mean 1+ million copies, right?

Kami Poi.4659:

and above all things forgotten is the fact that khongzong is doing the development of the china version of the game little input is allowed from arena net due to china law.

Except that Anet are developing the Chinese version (KongZhong is a publisher). Why do you think the VIP system was datamined in our version of the game, or they had a break in the living story leading up to the release of the Chinese version?

Maybe the Chinese publisher influenced this decision because of poor retention in China.

KongZhong transcript

Guild Wars 2 has stabilized to a core and the loyal user base in China but at lower levels than we had originally expected prior to releasing the game.

Link to the transcript:
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/IROL/18/180513/KZ-Transcript-2014-11-25T00_30.pdf

At least now, hopefully people will finally have some perspective on what Anet means when they said they’re working on big projects, since they’ve said some of the big project would be released this year.

Yes, the likelihood of an expansion in the works is low.
I would also like to add, regarding 350+ employee count that people like to hang on to, consider the perspective of this person’s company:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2e0uf6/a_different_perspective/

300-400 people working for the company is NOT that much, period. Our company is hovering around 350 people and we STILL don’t have enough developers, engineers, admins, and architects to take care of the infrastructure.
…
We have significantly more personnel on the non-technical and customer service side of the company that on the technical side as management feels that Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service make the money that keeps the business running, not the technical side that we rely on so heavily.

Also, we’ve seen or are going to see the “big projects”:
The living story which released a few maps and reworked a few maps (Edge of the mist map took nearly a year to make, so extrapolate from that).
Trading post revamp which took nearly two years.
The backend is completely rewritten for the upcoming PvP changes.

Great news. Anet is still working…and? This article makes no difference whether it existed or not. It doesn’t shed new light on anything.

Funnily enough, the article writer got invited to Anet’s HQ, yet couldn’t even get a quote from an employee during his time there, so he had to link the thread “Time to refocus and clarify GW2’s goals?” for evidence of working hard, and link to another of his own opinion article (which again links to forum posts).

Regarding the 20-30 employees working on the living story, I can’t find the link, but I remember Anet said something about folding their big projects into the living story. Which means things like new maps are worked on outside of the 20-30 employees, then the living story team works on the living story with the map the others have made.
Anet said last year that they have been working on big projects that will appear this year. If some people aren’t impressed by those big projects, then they aren’t impressed by Anet’s big projects.

You mislead people with your Reddit “stats”. That’s a big no, no to anybody who’s a real researcher.
I’m just here to make sure people are informed.
You’re welcome, by the way.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

A real researcher would have gotten the real Reddit stats…
Reminds me of a time when a researcher said that Michael Morhaime said WoW was bleeding…lol.

I did a spot check on stats as I’ve done many times. Since this research wasn’t the main thrust of my original post, I didn’t go for that, that’s true. That’s because I was simply responding to a casual post in the middle of a thread. You obviously know nothing about “real researchers”. There’s stuff you research over long periods of time and there’s casual stuff that comes up that you answer quickly. Happens all the time.

But your continued attempts to try to malign me just make you look desperate. Do you think most people don’t see it? I get far more sympathy than hate from these types of posts.

Lol, understandable. It’s easier to be sloppy to spread misinformation like you did rather than to do real research and post facts.

I posted lots of facts you’ve completely ignored. Why ignore them?

If the game is doing so badly, why did NcSoft sack a bunch of people from NCsoft west but leave Anet untouched by the layoffs?

Why does the quarterly report still show a profitable game?

These are things you can ignore all you want, but they won’t go away.

None of these had anything to do with you being wrong about the Reddit “stats”.
You can try to put words in my mouth and character assassination, but the fact remains: You were wrong to include Reddit “stats”. Research 101. No need to be so salty, buddy.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

A real researcher would have gotten the real Reddit stats…
Reminds me of a time when a researcher said that Michael Morhaime said WoW was bleeding…lol.

I did a spot check on stats as I’ve done many times. Since this research wasn’t the main thrust of my original post, I didn’t go for that, that’s true. That’s because I was simply responding to a casual post in the middle of a thread. You obviously know nothing about “real researchers”. There’s stuff you research over long periods of time and there’s casual stuff that comes up that you answer quickly. Happens all the time.

But your continued attempts to try to malign me just make you look desperate. Do you think most people don’t see it? I get far more sympathy than hate from these types of posts.

Lol, understandable. It’s easier to be sloppy to spread misinformation like you did rather than to do real research and post facts.

A real researcher would have gotten the real Reddit stats…
Reminds me of a time when a researcher said that Michael Morhaime said WoW was bleeding…lol.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Looking at the reddit active view numbers now:
GW2: 447
FF 14: 778
Archeage: 640

Interesting enough, there’s lots of GW2 reddit subscribers, yet their traffic is impressively low compared to the traffic to number of subscribers ratio:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/about/traffic/
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/about/traffic/
http://www.reddit.com/r/archeage/about/traffic/

Unique traffic this month (October)
GW2: 410,097
FF14: 513,682
Archeage: 961,378

Yet at any given time, all day long,. 2 years on, Guild Wars 2 hangs with the best of them. It’s like WoW. I can guarantee you more people have stopped playing WoW completely than are now playing WoW, probably several times over. So?

Guild Wars 2 is 2 years old. In 2 years will Archeage have that kind of traffic. Do you want to compare Guild Wars 2 launch month to Archeages? I didn’t think so.

As for FF…it’s usually lower in traffic than Guild Wars 2 and I’ve checked a number of times. However, whether it’s higher or lower was never really my point.

My point is that there are people on these forums, over the course of many threads, who can do nothing but say this game is dead, this game is dying, this game is on life support or whatever phrase they want to try to imply this game isn’t doing well.

And my answer is this game is doing pretty much as well as any MMORPG on the PC, with the exception of WoW. Other than that, if we’re no doing well no MMORPG is.

Too bad you’re wrong about FF having lower traffic, as I pointed out in a later post.
The thing about WoW, well, they had millions more players than GW2 (and probably still does), so really…
It really doesn’t matter how long interest in Archeage lasts in the long run. It’s got more interest right now so saying “Guild Wars 2 has more members online than Archeage” was extremely misleading.

The only thing misleading here is trying to compare a game a month after launch with a two year old game. That’s misleading.

You know Wildestar was doing fine the month it launched. So it does matter. A game that has yet to prove itself (and probably won’t prove itself) doesn’t factor into the conversation at all.

But your disingenuous attempt to change my point doesn’t matter. And everyone can see it for what it is.

Guild Wars 2 is fine. This thread was created (as I’ve said more than once now) in response to the people who say it’s not.

If you have evidence otherwise, go right ahead and present it.

Lol, funny how you were trying to argue GW2 has more interest than Archeage on Reddit right now, despite the real evidence. Which is to say, there is more interest in Archeage than GW2 right now (and more members online on average!). And FF14 consistently has more interest than GW2 on Reddit.
It’s true.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Looking at the reddit active view numbers now:
GW2: 447
FF 14: 778
Archeage: 640

Interesting enough, there’s lots of GW2 reddit subscribers, yet their traffic is impressively low compared to the traffic to number of subscribers ratio:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/about/traffic/
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/about/traffic/
http://www.reddit.com/r/archeage/about/traffic/

Unique traffic this month (October)
GW2: 410,097
FF14: 513,682
Archeage: 961,378

Yet at any given time, all day long,. 2 years on, Guild Wars 2 hangs with the best of them. It’s like WoW. I can guarantee you more people have stopped playing WoW completely than are now playing WoW, probably several times over. So?

Guild Wars 2 is 2 years old. In 2 years will Archeage have that kind of traffic. Do you want to compare Guild Wars 2 launch month to Archeages? I didn’t think so.

As for FF…it’s usually lower in traffic than Guild Wars 2 and I’ve checked a number of times. However, whether it’s higher or lower was never really my point.

My point is that there are people on these forums, over the course of many threads, who can do nothing but say this game is dead, this game is dying, this game is on life support or whatever phrase they want to try to imply this game isn’t doing well.

And my answer is this game is doing pretty much as well as any MMORPG on the PC, with the exception of WoW. Other than that, if we’re no doing well no MMORPG is.

Too bad you’re wrong about FF having lower traffic, as I pointed out in a later post.
The thing about WoW, well, they had millions more players than GW2 (and probably still does), so really…
It really doesn’t matter how long interest in Archeage lasts in the long run. It’s got more interest right now so saying “Guild Wars 2 has more members online than Archeage” was extremely misleading.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

BlueZone.4236:

Looking at the reddit active view numbers now:
GW2: 447
FF 14: 778
Archeage: 640

Interesting enough, there’s lots of GW2 reddit subscribers, yet their traffic is impressively low compared to the traffic to number of subscribers ratio:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/about/traffic/
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/about/traffic/
http://www.reddit.com/r/archeage/about/traffic/

Unique traffic this month (October)
GW2: 410,097
FF14: 513,682
Archeage: 961,378

That thing fluctuates a lot though. Try going back few months to the time of living story if you can.

Ok, but you can see it on the page yourself, but I suppose I can post the numbers here.
Archeage skipped, obviously because it wasn’t released.

Unique traffic by month (2014):
GW2:
August 626,576 (Living Story)
July 576,472 (Living Story)
June 529,590
May 619,891
April 586,788
March 580,467 (Living Story)
February 534,457 (Living Story)
January 543,282 (Living Story)

FF14:
August 720,962
July 743,345
June 645,430
May 665,302
April 682,414
March 612,954
February 590,915
January 697,025

So FF14 has more traffic regardless of month this year.

Looking at the reddit active view numbers now:
GW2: 447
FF 14: 778
Archeage: 640

Interesting enough, there’s lots of GW2 reddit subscribers, yet their traffic is impressively low compared to the traffic to number of subscribers ratio:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/about/traffic/
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/about/traffic/
http://www.reddit.com/r/archeage/about/traffic/

Unique traffic this month (October)
GW2: 410,097
FF14: 513,682
Archeage: 961,378

fellyn.5083:

BlueZone.4236:

Personally, I don’t believe this was communication issue.

It’s a brain storming issue.
The question is why no one thought of these simple questions before rolling it out:

Are there any items costing less than 400 gems? Yes http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gem_Store
Are there currently people with odd number of gems? Yes, due to the old system.
Will people with end up with an odd number of gems under the new system? Yes, gem -> gold.
Is having an odd number of gems a bad idea? … … C’mon, son!

The only good idea out of the whole system is that old system was bad because players wanted to know how much gold it costs to purchase X gems, rather than how much gems will X amount of gold will give me, and vice versa.

It was deliberate. The entire thing was to get people to buy more gems than they need/want.

With that simple thought in mind all your questions become moot. They knew what they were doing.

Quite possibly true. No matter which way anyone tries to frames it, the fault lies on ANet.

Personally, I don’t believe this was communication issue.

It’s a brain storming issue.
The question is why no one thought of these simple questions before rolling it out:

Are there any items costing less than 400 gems? Yes http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gem_Store
Are there currently people with odd number of gems? Yes, due to the old system.
Will people with end up with an odd number of gems under the new system? Yes, gem → gold.
Is having an odd number of gems a bad idea? … … C’mon, son!

The only good idea out of the whole system is that old system was bad because players wanted to know how much gold it costs to purchase X gems, rather than how much gems will X amount of gold will give me, and vice versa.

BobbyT.7192:

Like really? how am i suppose to get rid of these gems? i don’t like having leftovers gems after getting what i want from gem store? Either let me sell or buy the amount of gems i want,……. or sell me something worth 8 gems :P

1. Buy 800 gems for 152g 71s 79c
2. Buy 100 g for 726 gems
3. Buy 10 g for 73 gems
4. Buy 1 g for 9 gems

You now have 0 gems. So simple, and you can’t be overwhelmed!
Ignore the net loss, of course.

Yeah, when you consider that FF14 is also on consoles (and is cross-platform), meaning there will be a lot of players not counted under PC measuring tools like Raptr, saying GW2 is close to it is misleading.

But more on topic, Vayne is right regarding raiding. Look at how Anet did commander tags and traits, and you will understand how they will possibly botch the job (eg. by attempting to make a money sink out of it).

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

CrashTestAuto is right and Vayne wrong. Temporary content is temporary no matter how hard you try to spin the definition of the word “temporary”.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-story-journal/

As I mentioned earlier, only festivals will continue to use the gold star UI. They will not be in the story Journal, and they will remain as temporary content that comes in each year for a period of time and then packs up and leaves when the festival has completed.

I bolded the word temporary in the quote.
Thanks for your time, everyone.

In that case, he’s wrong. Because he’s emphasizing that this game has temporary content as if no other MMORPG has temporary content. Since every single MMORPG has temporary content, by listing it as he does in this game, he’s implying this game is the only game that has it.

This is an argument you’re not going to win. When people referred to temporary content they were talking about content that was made to be temporary. Every single MMORPG I’ve ever played had stuff removed at one point or another. By that definition all MMORPGs have temporary content and therefore pointing out that this game has it it misdirection.

Dunno what you’re on about. He said seasonal content is justifiably temporary but you said it wasn’t.
Anyway, festival content is still considered temporary content. Any intelligent body won’t disagree with that.

Also:
http://dulfy.net/2014/06/06/gw2-story-journal-developer-livestream-notes/
They said there still will be temporary open world content, so long as it makes sense to the current state of the living story.

No need to keep spinning.

CrashTestAuto is right and Vayne wrong. Temporary content is temporary no matter how hard you try to spin the definition of the word “temporary”.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-story-journal/

As I mentioned earlier, only festivals will continue to use the gold star UI. They will not be in the story Journal, and they will remain as temporary content that comes in each year for a period of time and then packs up and leaves when the festival has completed.

I bolded the word temporary in the quote.
Thanks for your time, everyone.

Ayrilana.1396:

Or

Guild Wars is a competitive online role playing game that rewards players for their skill more than for the number of hours that they can play. It offers an involving story set in a beautiful world, and allows each player to discover the depth of the story through multiplayer cooperative, multiplayer competitive, and single-player missions. It’s about always having fun, rather than preparing to have fun, and avoids such traditional drawbacks as endless travel, spawn camping, item looting, and excessive death penalties.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/guild-wars/561040p1.html

Published before the game was released.

Yes, I already pointed out the competitive nature of the game, but thanks for another link.

Since many of the original team were ex-Blizzard employees, Guild Wars is also a reference to Starcraft.

On another note:

http://www.guildwars.com/products/guildwars/features/default.php

Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game). Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to create the best possible competitive role-playing experience. Success in Guild Wars is always the result of player skill, not time spent playing or the size of one’s guild. As characters progress, they acquire a diverse set of skills and items, enabling them to use new strategies in combat. Players can do battle in open arenas or compete in guild-vs-guild warfare or the international tournament. Engaging in combat is always the player’s choice, however; there is no player-killing in cooperative areas of the world.

Competitive!

Teleports can be used to get to places faster because most of the time you just don’t care about fighting. In open world, you can use teleports (by targeting far away foes) to avoid getting into combat whenever you aggro nearby foes (getting into combat = slower movement which you want to avoid).
Also, many of the skills you listed breaks stun.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know of that’s true. I’m not sure Guild Wars 2 could have built on Guild Wars 1’s success. Guild Wars 1 was always going to be a niche game. Nothing that wasn’t Guild Wars 1 would have likely appealed to Guild Wars 1 players.

It’s so easy to say things are being done wrong. The problem is no one really knows if they were done differently if it would have worked out better.

I mean build on its own success, like WoW built on its own success. WoW took Warcraft’s history then stood on its own and grew. GW2 took GW1’s history then accepted the normal MMO trend.

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

Beldin.5498:

BlueZone.4236:

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

WoW was successful because it was an amazing product at the time. Blizzard understood polish and maximize their games’ potentials. That’s why their 3 franchises (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft) are (were?) amazing. Of course, Blizzard today is not the same as Blizzard back in the old days.
ANet never figured out how to truly tap into GW2’s potential. That’s why it’s following the normal trend.

There’s simply no evidence available that if WoW didn’t have major competition and major funding for advertising that it would have done much worse.

We only know what happened. Attributing their success to any one thing and not an entire combination of factors is just theory.

The evidence is in their game, but thanks for derailing this topic because it’s not heading your way.

Actually its not in their game. Because every wow clone (which are actually better games in many aspects) would be as popular as wow.

So….no.

You call them WoW clones, so why bother playing them while knowing they are clones? Just play the original.
Where “WoW clones” may be better in a few aspect, WoW does better as a whole package. That’s why it remained popular in the first place.

So, yes!

You see, and thats why your claim is pretty much….not very applicable.

WoW was right product at the right place at the right time, not better or worse than the lot, nothing more noting less. Its not first product of that type and its not last. Stars align from time to time to allow that.

It’s ok if you don’t like WoW.
It did better than the competition because it was overall a better game than games before it and games after it

Personally for me EQ2 was by far the better game .. however WoWs main advantages
were that their engine ran on crappy hardware, and that they had all those Blizzard
Fans from Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo .. and i bet without them it had also been
just another MMO.

In ANet’s case, we could also say GW1’s reputation helped GW2’s success.
The difference is that ANet didn’t know how to keep building on its success like what Blizzard did with WoW.

Dude, history is full of examples (exceptions) like WoW.

Youre making a case claiming you know how to win a lottery (or how some dude did it…truth is he just crossed the numbers and stars aligned)

Well, good luck with that.

Yep. History shows hard work pays off. Hat’s off to Blizzard.

Beldin.5498:

BlueZone.4236:

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

WoW was successful because it was an amazing product at the time. Blizzard understood polish and maximize their games’ potentials. That’s why their 3 franchises (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft) are (were?) amazing. Of course, Blizzard today is not the same as Blizzard back in the old days.
ANet never figured out how to truly tap into GW2’s potential. That’s why it’s following the normal trend.

There’s simply no evidence available that if WoW didn’t have major competition and major funding for advertising that it would have done much worse.

We only know what happened. Attributing their success to any one thing and not an entire combination of factors is just theory.

The evidence is in their game, but thanks for derailing this topic because it’s not heading your way.

Actually its not in their game. Because every wow clone (which are actually better games in many aspects) would be as popular as wow.

So….no.

You call them WoW clones, so why bother playing them while knowing they are clones? Just play the original.
Where “WoW clones” may be better in a few aspect, WoW does better as a whole package. That’s why it remained popular in the first place.

So, yes!

You see, and thats why your claim is pretty much….not very applicable.

WoW was right product at the right place at the right time, not better or worse than the lot, nothing more noting less. Its not first product of that type and its not last. Stars align from time to time to allow that.

It’s ok if you don’t like WoW.
It did better than the competition because it was overall a better game than games before it and games after it

Personally for me EQ2 was by far the better game .. however WoWs main advantages
were that their engine ran on crappy hardware, and that they had all those Blizzard
Fans from Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo .. and i bet without them it had also been
just another MMO.

In ANet’s case, we could also say GW1’s reputation helped GW2’s success.
The difference is that ANet didn’t know how to keep building on its success like what Blizzard did with WoW.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

WoW was successful because it was an amazing product at the time. Blizzard understood polish and maximize their games’ potentials. That’s why their 3 franchises (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft) are (were?) amazing. Of course, Blizzard today is not the same as Blizzard back in the old days.
ANet never figured out how to truly tap into GW2’s potential. That’s why it’s following the normal trend.

There’s simply no evidence available that if WoW didn’t have major competition and major funding for advertising that it would have done much worse.

We only know what happened. Attributing their success to any one thing and not an entire combination of factors is just theory.

The evidence is in their game, but thanks for derailing this topic because it’s not heading your way.

Actually its not in their game. Because every wow clone (which are actually better games in many aspects) would be as popular as wow.

So….no.

You call them WoW clones, so why bother playing them while knowing they are clones? Just play the original.
Where “WoW clones” may be better in a few aspect, WoW does better as a whole package. That’s why it remained popular in the first place.

So, yes!

You see, and thats why your claim is pretty much….not very applicable.

WoW was right product at the right place at the right time, not better or worse than the lot, nothing more noting less. Its not first product of that type and its not last. Stars align from time to time to allow that.

It’s ok if you don’t like WoW.
It did better than the competition because it was overall a better game than games before it and games after it (though obviously the game has now hit past its maturity). That’s how you make maintain a successful game.

In any case, I hope pdemo was enlightened by how some of us guessed the concurrency.

It did better than the other three or four big name MMOs out, but that doesn’t make it better. Back in the day, VHS recorders were inferior to beta recorders in almost every way…but VHS was used in more homes and eventually replaced beta. Popularity is no guarantee of quality. I’m sure more people eat at McDonalds than the fine steak house next door to it. Doesn’t mean anything.

If WoW launched at a time when there was 2 or 3 other MMOs, none of which were free to play, and it had an advertising budget (which most games really didn’t), that’s enough to explain its success. Now it might really have been better. That’s a possibility. But I don’t think anything is proved by its success except that it had good timing and good marketing. That’s enough to pretty much get anything to sell.

Word of mouth also affects a game’s success. WoW had a good reputation because players found it fun and overall a good quality game, because it was (still is?).
It’s ok if you don’t find it fun. Other players did, hence its success.

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

WoW was successful because it was an amazing product at the time. Blizzard understood polish and maximize their games’ potentials. That’s why their 3 franchises (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft) are (were?) amazing. Of course, Blizzard today is not the same as Blizzard back in the old days.
ANet never figured out how to truly tap into GW2’s potential. That’s why it’s following the normal trend.

There’s simply no evidence available that if WoW didn’t have major competition and major funding for advertising that it would have done much worse.

We only know what happened. Attributing their success to any one thing and not an entire combination of factors is just theory.

The evidence is in their game, but thanks for derailing this topic because it’s not heading your way.

Actually its not in their game. Because every wow clone (which are actually better games in many aspects) would be as popular as wow.

So….no.

You call them WoW clones, so why bother playing them while knowing they are clones? Just play the original.
Where “WoW clones” may be better in a few aspect, WoW does better as a whole package. That’s why it remained popular in the first place.

So, yes!

You see, and thats why your claim is pretty much….not very applicable.

WoW was right product at the right place at the right time, not better or worse than the lot, nothing more noting less. Its not first product of that type and its not last. Stars align from time to time to allow that.

It’s ok if you don’t like WoW.
It did better than the competition because it was overall a better game than games before it and games after it (though obviously the game has now hit past its maturity). That’s how you make maintain a successful game.

In any case, I hope pdemo was enlightened by how some of us guessed the concurrency.

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

Just so people aren’t misled. GW2 being ‘neck and neck’ FF14 is misleading.
It’s ‘neck and neck’ with the PC version of FF14, however FF14 is on PS3/PS4, which obviously do not register on Xfire/Raptr.
Then there’s Wildstar, where people estimated it only sold under 500k at launch, based on NCSoft’s 2Q 2014 financials.
And here’s the Raptr ranking for Wildstar’s launch compared to GW2 (rank 6 vs rank 18, with a relative difference of ~3 times for hours played).
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-june-2014-wildstar-on-the-rise-steam-summer-sale-aftermath/

FFXIV is “neck to neck” with GW2 only on raptr, on xfire its no.20 with roughly 1/3 of GW2 numbers. Oh and FFXIV had crapton on discounts on Steam, you could buy it for 10$ at relaunch on Steam.
———————————-
And if you follow THAT line of thought, WoW only has 1 million subs (6,13% vs. 2,86%)

Why dont people THINK it trhough beore they post. Why dont you compare WS now against GW2?

My, my, someone’s so antsy today. Well, that’s ok. I thought you didn’t believe in these stats anyway.
Also, FF14 is on PS3/PS4.

WoW doesn’t have 1 million subs. As the Raptr blog says “The new MMO [WildStar] impacted the playtime of The Elder Scrolls Online, WoW, Dark Souls II, and Final Fantasy XIV Online, and was definitely a factor that led to those games slipping in the ranks.”
WildStar did target the WoW audience so it made sense it took some hours away from them.

Of course there’s no point in comparing GW2 to WildStar now. WS tried to capture a small target base, hardcore WoW players, and after the hype died down, players dropped out as you expect after hype dies down. With only 500k players, it’s expected to drop off the chart when players drop out.

Ye, but vast majority of players are on PC. You see, we can play this game all day long

Of course WoW doesnt have 1 million players, its dumb to compare WS launch month to WoW same as its dumb to compare WS launch month to GW2. And you did, for whatever purpose you had at the time.

Why is there no point to compare, its comapring 2 MMOs, 1 launched 2 years ago and one 3 months ago (which, as far as comaprsions go, YOU compared, so its only fair you comapre those NOW also, to get clearer picture) But as you say, it doesnt really suit you so theres no point comapring….to YOU ;D

Not sure what you’re trying to get at with WildStar now compared to GW2, that’s why I said no point. WildStar died down in popularity after the hype. And?

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

WoW was successful because it was an amazing product at the time. Blizzard understood polish and maximize their games’ potentials. That’s why their 3 franchises (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft) are (were?) amazing. Of course, Blizzard today is not the same as Blizzard back in the old days.
ANet never figured out how to truly tap into GW2’s potential. That’s why it’s following the normal trend.

There’s simply no evidence available that if WoW didn’t have major competition and major funding for advertising that it would have done much worse.

We only know what happened. Attributing their success to any one thing and not an entire combination of factors is just theory.

The evidence is in their game, but thanks for derailing this topic because it’s not heading your way.

Actually its not in their game. Because every wow clone (which are actually better games in many aspects) would be as popular as wow.

So….no.

You call them WoW clones, so why bother playing them while knowing they are clones? Just play the original.
Where “WoW clones” may be better in a few aspect, WoW does better as a whole package. That’s why it remained popular in the first place.

So, yes!

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

Just so people aren’t misled. GW2 being ‘neck and neck’ FF14 is misleading.
It’s ‘neck and neck’ with the PC version of FF14, however FF14 is on PS3/PS4, which obviously do not register on Xfire/Raptr.
Then there’s Wildstar, where people estimated it only sold under 500k at launch, based on NCSoft’s 2Q 2014 financials.
And here’s the Raptr ranking for Wildstar’s launch compared to GW2 (rank 6 vs rank 18, with a relative difference of ~3 times for hours played).
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-june-2014-wildstar-on-the-rise-steam-summer-sale-aftermath/

FFXIV is “neck to neck” with GW2 only on raptr, on xfire its no.20 with roughly 1/3 of GW2 numbers. Oh and FFXIV had crapton on discounts on Steam, you could buy it for 10$ at relaunch on Steam.
———————————-
And if you follow THAT line of thought, WoW only has 1 million subs (6,13% vs. 2,86%)

Why dont people THINK it trhough beore they post. Why dont you compare WS now against GW2?

My, my, someone’s so antsy today. Well, that’s ok. I thought you didn’t believe in these stats anyway.
Also, FF14 is on PS3/PS4.

WoW doesn’t have 1 million subs. As the Raptr blog says “The new MMO [WildStar] impacted the playtime of The Elder Scrolls Online, WoW, Dark Souls II, and Final Fantasy XIV Online, and was definitely a factor that led to those games slipping in the ranks.”
WildStar did target the WoW audience so it made sense it took some hours away from them.

Of course there’s no point in comparing GW2 to WildStar now. WS tried to capture a small target base, hardcore WoW players, and after the hype died down, players dropped out as you expect after hype dies down. With only 500k players, it’s expected to drop off the chart when players drop out.

Just so people aren’t misled. GW2 being ‘neck and neck’ FF14 is misleading.
It’s ‘neck and neck’ with the PC version of FF14, however FF14 is on PS3/PS4, which obviously do not register on Xfire/Raptr.
Then there’s Wildstar, where people estimated it only sold under 500k at launch, based on NCSoft’s 2Q 2014 financials.
And here’s the Raptr ranking for Wildstar’s launch compared to GW2 (rank 6 vs rank 18, with a relative difference of ~3 times for hours played).
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-june-2014-wildstar-on-the-rise-steam-summer-sale-aftermath/

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

WoW was successful because it was an amazing product at the time. Blizzard understood polish and maximize their games’ potentials. That’s why their 3 franchises (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft) are (were?) amazing. Of course, Blizzard today is not the same as Blizzard back in the old days.
ANet never figured out how to truly tap into GW2’s potential. That’s why it’s following the normal trend.

There’s simply no evidence available that if WoW didn’t have major competition and major funding for advertising that it would have done much worse.

We only know what happened. Attributing their success to any one thing and not an entire combination of factors is just theory.

The evidence is in their game, but thanks for derailing this topic because it’s not heading your way.

WoW was successful because it was an amazing product at the time. Blizzard understood polish and maximize their games’ potentials. That’s why their 3 franchises (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft) are (were?) amazing. Of course, Blizzard today is not the same as Blizzard back in the old days.
ANet never figured out how to truly tap into GW2’s potential. That’s why it’s following the normal trend.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Yep, very interesting that GW2 back 2 years ago had 89,310 hours logged at ranked 2 and now it’s ranked 11 at 1,473 hours. What a massive drop.
Knowing the first year ANet touted the 460k peak concurrency, and knowing that there was a big drop (normal) in players after the hype, I think it’s understandable where the ballpark of concurrency lies.

What’s so massive about a game having higher concurrency on launch than two years later. That’s business as usual dude.

Exactly right. So we know the number be well below the 460k peak, because it’s just business as usual. It’s been 2 years already, so the 50-60k peak sounds a bit reasonable.

I’m not sure why anyone would think peak concurrency around launch time isn’t the highest concurrency a game ever has. I’ve never made specific comment on how many people I think are playing. I’ve never refuted anyone else’s numbers until they were stupidly low…like when people say 2.

I’m only saying that the game is healthy and doing well. Certainly compared to other MMORPGs at this time. There’s no one source I can find in tracking games that doesn’t put it at the second or third most popular MMO. It’s more played than all free to play MMOs as far as I can tell from the data I’ve seen.

The game is doing fine. That’s all. Beyond that, I don’t much care what people say.

It’s the people who try to say that it’s doing bad, simply because they personally don’t like it that I take issue with. I have no opinion on concurrency numbers specifically.

Whew, thankfully no one said that it’s bad then.

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Yep, very interesting that GW2 back 2 years ago had 89,310 hours logged at ranked 2 and now it’s ranked 11 at 1,473 hours. What a massive drop.
Knowing the first year ANet touted the 460k peak concurrency, and knowing that there was a big drop (normal) in players after the hype, I think it’s understandable where the ballpark of concurrency lies.

What’s so massive about a game having higher concurrency on launch than two years later. That’s business as usual dude.

Exactly right. So we know the number be well below the 460k peak, because it’s just business as usual. It’s been 2 years already, so the 50-60k peak sounds a bit reasonable.

Yep, very interesting that GW2 back 2 years ago had 89,310 hours logged at ranked 2 and now it’s ranked 11 at 1,473 hours. What a massive drop.
Knowing the first year ANet touted the 460k peak concurrency, and knowing that there was a big drop (normal) in players after the hype, I think it’s understandable where the ballpark of concurrency lies.

MikaHR.1978:

BlueZone.4236:

Ohoni.6057:

Raptr and Steam’s rankings for LoL, WoW & Dota2 prove what the game developers says about their games.
If you want to refuse to believe those as well, then be my guest.

My point is that while Raptr and Steam’s rankings might be concurrent for those specific games, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they would also be concurrent with other games. What is so difficult to understand about that?

What leads you to believe GW2 differs wildly from the norm?
For a game that’s sold 3.5-4 million and is 2 years old, this concurrency seems reasonable even if you think the margin of error is large.

Since raptr tracks what it tracks (hours NOT players in charts) you would have to know what is average play time/player/day.

Also, some games have more “need” for such programs and in such more players will be inclined to use it.

Also there have been numerous promotions for certain games which drove higher usage of raptr in such games (example is Rift and free expansion if you used raptr)

So you would end up with whole slew of coefficients that would vary between games and would barely be in ballpark area (game A might have coefficent of 2,3 game B migth have 0,75)

Well, if you mention Rift, then it sounds like it has perhaps been (is?) skewed towards MMO players a little?
According to some old surveys, MMO players average 21-22 hours per week.
Hmm…maybe you’re right then, maybe it’s a bit lower than the Steam concurrency numbers.

Ohoni.6057:

Raptr and Steam’s rankings for LoL, WoW & Dota2 prove what the game developers says about their games.
If you want to refuse to believe those as well, then be my guest.

My point is that while Raptr and Steam’s rankings might be concurrent for those specific games, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they would also be concurrent with other games. What is so difficult to understand about that?

What leads you to believe GW2 differs wildly from the norm?
For a game that’s sold 3.5-4 million and is 2 years old, this concurrency seems reasonable even if you think the margin of error is large.

Ohoni.6057:

Well, as I explained, the relative ranking (and proportions) in the Raptr stats agrees fairly well with the Steam concurrency, so I don’t think the numbers are going to be wildly off.

That’s very poor science. All that proves is a link between “players who use Raptor” and “Players who use Steam.” There could be a third wing of “players who use neither” that behaves entirely differently. Raptr and Steam are both self-selecting groups, and may share similar audiences that are not well represented in the total audience.

Raptr and Steam’s rankings for LoL, WoW & Dota2 prove what the game developers says about their games.
If you want to refuse to believe those as well, then be my guest.

Wow, I wonder how many subs FF14 has?
If we figure that out, and knowing that Raptr only tracks PC games and the majority of FF14 players would most likely be on consoles, we’d probably get the upper bound of players in GW2.

Ohoni.6057:

While it’s not a hard and fast this game is doing better than this, it is however an indication that lots of people are still playing Guild Wars 2 for lots of hours. In fact, Guild Wars 2 has never been out of the top 20, where as ESO and Wildstar have already fallen out of the top 20.

Well, I suppose it provides a decent “minimum,” but I don’t see it being great at tracking maximum users, since many people have never heard of it. Within certain communities, it may track accurately, but within other gaming communities it might not track well at all because those communities are less tied into it.

Well, as I explained, the relative ranking (and proportions) in the Raptr stats agrees fairly well with the Steam concurrency, so I don’t think the numbers are going to be wildly off.
However, Vayne does make a point that the concurrency would be higher during patch days. Since games like Civ4, Skyrim, Garry’s Mod doesn’t have patches, in order for Guild Wars 2 to meet the same relative position, GW2 must have lower concurrency on non-patch days in order to offset the higher concurrency brought on by the patch day interests.

Fernling.1729:

BlueZone.4236:

Copied and modified from a previous post I made back a month ago:

From the latest Raptr stats:
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-july-2014-summers-winners-and-losers/
GW2 is in the top 20 list!

People say only a small number of people use these 3rd party apps and wrong, etc, however look at the relative percentages to the other games within the stats, then compare with the Steam stats:
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Beware not all the games in the Raptr list is in the Steam list because those games aren’t released on Steam.

(At the time of last month) You’ll notice eg. DOTA2 ~2-3 times the numbers of Counter Strike, CS ~4 times higher than Civ 4, etc, so the Raptr stats do seem to provide a reasonable estimate in terms of relative positions.
Now looking at where GW2 lies in the Raptr ranking, it’s about the same as Garry’s Mod, Civ4, Skyrim, so looking at those games concurrency, you get peak of ~50k-60k and normal of ~20-30k, so GW2 is probably around those number, so it’s fairly small.

TLDR: GW2 concurrency is probably around the same as in Garry’s Mod, Civ4, Skyrim on Steam.

There’s an updated Raptr.

http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-august-2014-league-of-legends-world-of-tanks-get-an-esports-boost/

I’m in the boat that doesn’t believe 3rd party applications are a good way to measure players. If anything I would base popularity off of twitch.tv, that’s even the site that Arenanet directs its players to.

Thanks for the updated link.
Personally, I think viewership on Twitch a little worse in terms of measurements, since depending on the game, if you’re watching, you’re probably not playing.
However, I agree the popularity of GW2 on Twitch does mean the level of interest of the game isn’t very high (especially in the e-sport area).

Copied and modified from a previous post I made back a month ago:

From the latest Raptr stats:
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-july-2014-summers-winners-and-losers/
GW2 is in the top 20 list!

People say only a small number of people use these 3rd party apps and wrong, etc, however look at the relative percentages to the other games within the stats, then compare with the Steam stats:
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Beware not all the games in the Raptr list is in the Steam list because those games aren’t released on Steam.

(At the time of last month) You’ll notice eg. DOTA2 ~2-3 times the numbers of Counter Strike, CS ~4 times higher than Civ 4, etc, so the Raptr stats do seem to provide a reasonable estimate in terms of relative positions.
Now looking at where GW2 lies in the Raptr ranking, it’s about the same as Garry’s Mod, Civ4, Skyrim, so looking at those games concurrency, you get peak of ~50k-60k and normal of ~20-30k, so GW2 is probably around those number, so it’s fairly small.

TLDR: GW2 concurrency is probably around the same as in Garry’s Mod, Civ4, Skyrim on Steam.

Lucius.2140:

BlueZone.4236:

What’s funny is that it’ll take a lot of resources and manpower to get them back in a format that’s replayable and doesn’t contradict the current living story.

You mean the LS1 right?, because SAB only means adding a ingame mail, same Queen Gauntlet. They also can just put the LS dungeons there and give us ascended mats for tokens. Theres a lot of simple forms to do so, and considering the quality of the last patch shipment, doing it that way would be up to the standar.

Yeah, I meant LS1. There was a lot of open world stuff that affected the map, Lion’s Arch is the obvious example.

As much as I’d like to think switching on SAB is simple, they’ve got a lot excuses to not turn it on.
With China now, I think ANet is trying to maintain parity, and it’s unlikely they’ve translated any of the temporary content, anyway.

What’s funny is that it’ll take a lot of resources and manpower to get them back in a format that’s replayable and doesn’t contradict the current living story.