No, hard content is need to get hard core players to keep playing. They may be willing to sacrifice a few of them in the short term as long as the less hard core keep coming in greater numbers than they are losing.
Actually stock price is never a decent indicator of profit. It’s an indicator of confidence in the company and many factors other than profit can affect that.
The purpose of a cash item shop is to extract the maximum amount of free cash from each player. Someone who might have balked at $15 a month may not have a problem buying one or two items a quarter where someone where petty cash isn’t a problem could go hog wild and pimp out their character’s look, inventory space and other conveniences.
The trick however is to get on average a certain amount a month/quarter, steady cash flow is always a plus. And one way to help with that is to make the game easy to get into. That’s the heart of most F2P MMOs, it’s F2P, but they have to earn a bit more to cover the game’s initial development cost. At least with GW2 that is ideally handled by the game’s price (well really you are just paying for an account since you can install the game as much as you want). Nexon for instance says they shoot for $15 a month on average from 10% of the active population. However the B2P status of GW2 would also reduce the total population pool so I don’t know the level of participation they would considered to be the minimum.
What we do know is that in the first three months of the year the game had sales, box and cash shop, of over $33 million US. Now that would be equivalent to income from around 750K monthly subscription with no box sales. I would say that’s doing alright. I think that’s better than EVE which is the only other subscriber only game other than WoW I can think of.
Ah, so that’s my problem. I’ve always blame it on TP traffic congestion.
When I go salvage happy I end up with a lot of different items that I then post to the TP. Now I know I should take my time, maybe jog to the vendor and back to sell the bits that I’ll get less for if I posted those on the TP (silk scraps for instance).
You really don’t look before posting do you? Don’t blame you, the search here is terrible.
They had a problem earlier in the day that declared everyone a trial account and booted everyone off the servers. They did get it fixed and the servers back up and so you shouldn’t be seeing this anymore. If you are then you have to contact support.
Ah, no wonder, you don’t want a “are you sure?” button just an acknowledgement between transactions.
I think the assumption is when you buy or sell gems, you do the transaction once and not multiple times and can’t fail like a TP buy, so an acknowledgement prompt isn’t really needed. But I get where you are coming from.
Except there isn’t. The Okay button is simply allows you to see that the transaction took place. It’s a pause to show you the confirmation, that’s all. You can’t back out of a transaction once you press the buy or sell button.
Obviously that wasn’t directed at you because you are the OP (the switch topics comment from JS that is).
A lot of people are surprised initially since the default screen shows the Gem to Gold rate and when they go to the Gold to Gem screen they find out entering that amount will only by them 77 or so Gems instead of 100. You unfortunately didn’t need to go to the Gold to Gem screen so this is entirely a shock to you. Some have lobbied for a more informative opening screen on that tab along the lines of what you find on GW2Spidy when you look a gems, displaying and charting both rates.
So questioned answered. Two different rates with a fix ratio between them. It’s not a tax or fee since there isn’t an expense deducted from your profit or added to your cost of that transaction. Hard lesson learned, you’ll never do that again, yet another voice on a QoL issue with the TP.
Looks modification costing only modest amounts of in-game currency. I can’t change the hair style or color of my female characters without it costing me gem store currency or around 5g now. 5g isn’t a modest amount of in-game currency for someone just PvEing (that means not speedrunning as a major activity or becoming a TP day trader).
My last MMO was City of Heroes where character customization at any time was considered by many one of it’s best innovative features.
Why in blazes, with all the stories about MMO companies being systematically attacked to get at the player account information you would want any MMO company to remember you CC number? Is a little “hassle” to much for piece of mind?
I know the game, has optimization problems and I would like to ask when these will be fixed
Sincerly, Monti Ráypé
Short answer: never.
The issues run too deep to “fix”. Problems range from rendering to data handling, So big the problem is that it needs rewriting not fixing.
Sadly, Anet lacks the incentive to address the issue because:
1- The cost of hiring qualified programming talent to perform such a task would be too high.
2- the game is selling well as it is.
Rewriting something as fundamental as the rendering engine is simply not a task to be undertaken lightly or to be expected to be accomplished in a relatively short period of time.
This is more about the engine’s limits is X (players on screen, objects, meshes, effects) and the engine is getting pushed to 1.5x X or more and the engine simply can’t scale well at those numbers. It’s the art department overstepping their polygon budget or the effects team introducing a GPU particle intensive effect for what becomes a common power or upping the player limit in areas to reduce overflow instances when they enabled guesting. Combine them all together and the engine is no longer having to deal with towing a camper over rolling hills but up Pike’s Peak, and it doesn’t like it one bit.
Seriously. Where in the hell is the statement or warning or whatever that says you can’t equip two identical items that are ascended? Was I seriously suppose to infer from the keyword “Unique” that I could only equip one?
If you know what any of these terms mean that would be great if you could tell me what they mean, I’m new to level 80 and I’m trying to catch up on the lingo.
Berserker/Zerker/zerk – Do they mean the same thing? (context: "I’m looking for a Zerker Warrior)
Trap – context: a Trap Ranger
Zerg – I know what it means (a large group of players, right?) but why is it called a zerg? Is it a reference to zerg rush in Star Craft?
Bunker – a Bunker Ranger
Also, some other random questions:
What does it mean when someone says they’re porting in Lion’s Arch?
Is Agony and Agony Resistance only specific to FotM? Or, does it help outside of FotM?
What race do you think has the best racial abilities?
What colors match up to rarity types? (i.e. Ascended – Pink)
Are there any good dungeons to farm besides CoF path 1?
Thanks!
I can answer some.
Yes zerg is a reference to Starcraft. In WvW usually huge mobs of players swarm from target to target resembling a zerg rush.
Lion’s Arch is the main city in the game, there are multiple ways to get there quickly, and free from anywhere (with a stop along the way).
Agony resistance and the like only matters at the moment in FotM.
All the game’s data is in one big honking file. After a patch it can get very fragmented on on conventional non-SSD hard drives which can impact loading all those resources from the drive.
Some versions of Windows will run a defrag while the machine is idling. There are free 3rd party disk defrag software that lets you target specific folders or even files, which is faster that letting the default Windows do the entire drive.
Note, this doesn’t matter for SSDs, they don’t have the same mechanical delays with spinning disks and moving read heads. Don’t defrag SSDs or flash drives.
Not that I know and I also wouldn’t expect DX11 before the first expansion pack.
Um, there won’t be expansion packs. Living story is the expansions, remember? I’m not trolling either. They said they have no plans for an actual “expansion” but rather a full year planned of living story.
They were sold in store separately. I have no idea if the original game was required or not but they were displayed side by side like other PC games with expansions.
If the original game is required to play them, then it’s an expansion.
The only way they could increase ecto price is to alter the salvage chance on high level rares and exotics. I guess they could have created a popular item that requires ectos to boost demand but it’s the shift in supply that tanked the ecto market.
Changes to master/mystic kits would go over like a lead balloon with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Hy.
Im playing on
Acer aspire 5250(mac)
AMD Dual-Core Processor E300
AMD Radeon HD 66310
4 GB DDR3 Memory
Cant play,have permanent 8-9 FPS,anny tips would be a gift from heaven
P.S. Im a total noob when it comes to computers,mac and itsllling things… sigh
That’s because it’s a netbook, well netbook guts. Very low end dual core CPU, even lower end graphics.
I think from a story PoV there’s some explaining that needs to be done.
Hail unfortunate refugee! You may have lost your home, friends and family but fret not, you will be provided for. But fret not for we have arranged a home for you at Southsun Cove. Those reports you have heard about giant horrors of old populating that isle are grossly exaggerated. Now please file onto the awaiting ships … I said please file ONTO the awaiting ships … NOW!
There’s a couple of things you have to understand.
GW1 was controversial at the time because it had no subscription in the west. That was how it was done in 2005. How can you run an MMO without subscriptions, how do you pay for the servers and bandwidth? How do you make a profit on that model? These were investor and industry questions at the time. The answer was a series of relatively quick expansions and a cash shop.
So GW2 comes along and all the investors/analysts expect the same model, initial release followed by a quick series of expansions. And no one is willing to listen that it’s going to be different this time as well. ANet can explain that this time they are relying on their beefed up cash shop to pave the way and an expansion is sometime in the future. The analysts looking attentive will nod in the affirmative and then ask, “so when is the expansion coming out?” And NCSOFT wanting to make sure that the story that goes out isn’t “GW2 expansion delayed, stock downgraded” assures them that an expansion is coming but it’s being timed to boost sales only when it’ll be needed. ANet rolls their eyes and reiterates that their isn’t one coming soon and we wait another 3 months for the dance to begin again.
Don’t forget it’s a laptop @IIithis. Standard desktop fixes like motherboard settings or rearranging video cards isn’t going to help.
@Sadakuno, what brand and model is your laptop? Oops, never mind, Dell :p (I know it’s Alienware Razer M18xR1).
You may want to run a hardware monitoring program and watch the temps, the rig may be throttling due to temps, make sure the fan ports are dust free and possibly look into a cooling pad to provide more air.
Players have all been trained now to crack unwanted “of” armor and weapons to suck out the gooey ectos and rune/sigils from profit. The ratio of buy vs sell at the TP went from 12:1 when it was at 40s to 7:6 now but the total number of buy orders are pretty much unchanged. So supply has increased by roughly 10×.
Now since the amount you can get for the salvage from rares have dropped off, so have the prices which in turn makes crafting those items less desirable.
So who back in Feb suggested farming ectos is the way to make lots of gold in this game? This is a classic example of “tragedy of the commons” in terms of exploiting a niche market.
Don’t worry, they put them into all new chests that you can buy at the TP. But they still can drop during this event, just not in the numbers you want or need.
Have you somehow missed all the discussions about how large events utterly destroy the frame rate of the game? Yours just happens to be one of many so why chime in here when there are larger threads discussing this topic that have been around since launch?
Some of what you are seeing is the result of the 8200, it makes Intel’s HD graphics look fast. It’s a motherboard integrated graphics solution. It has only 8 shaders. It’s in the same performance ballpark as a Geforce 3 TI500.
The fact you are seeing what you are seeing is amazing. Just about any modern discrete card would be a huge improvement, even something a lowly as a GT 630/640 or an HD 6570/6670. Then you can look at if your CPU is holding you back.
Wow sales down by 31% after Christmas that to me is not a good sign.
Also the EB staff told me they aren’t getting anymore GW2 copies in due to the lack of interest they’ve been seeing in their store for the game..
WoW came out what 9 years ago? They are still raking in huge profits I would like to see any other game do this
Actually WoW came out 9 years ago, but Mists of Pandaria came out a month after Guild Wars 2 did. WoW is not a game…it’s a franchise. Mists of Pandaria is a product. That’s what’s still selling.
No WoW is a service with a subscription fee like cable. 8 million x $15 × 12 is $1.4 billion a year in sales. Different payment plans in Asia plus bulk subscription discounts would take that down to what, an even billion? Good thing they aren’t paid in cash, they would go broke storing all that money.
I dont’ even know what people are talking about bills/holiday/tax return. I just think it as Anet stop making money from box sales and most people that want to buy GW2 already bought GW2.
Because new game sales peak at release and their first holiday season (given as gifts). NCSOFT is aware of this and braced the stock analysts but telling them to expect 1Q numbers for GW2 to be sharply down. Nobody should read into the sales decline that GW2 is in trouble.
Heck it was their 2nd leading game in sales, even beating out Breast & Skin (Blade & Soul).
WoW came out what 9 years ago? They are still raking in huge profits I would like to see any other game do this
According to this report Lineage 1 does that easily and is almost twice as old as WoW (15 years) in 2 1/2 D perspective and is increasing rapidly in profits quarterly making more profits per quarter then major game and MMO Launches.
Those are sales numbers not profits. NCSOFT doesn’t break down profits by game, just sales.
If taxes are ever implemented in the BLT to buy gems, my purchase of gems ends permanently, unless they increase the number of gems received to account for this.
It’s not ANet’s fault if they are forced to collect taxes.
I don’t understand why they even need to limit them at all, this is something that I could see people spending money on all year around. I would get more mining picks myself if I had more time to get them.
They knew with a B2P plus cash shop that the box sales would drop off after launch and holliday season and transition into primarily cash shop. Coincidentally that’s about the time when all the various sales and Gem store bait started coming out every 2 weeks.
So Lineage I and this Baseball team mentioned in the report.
I don’t know anything about Lineage I except it came out in the late 90s and no one really cares about it yet per quarter it somehow generates more money then GW2 did in it’s launch quarter.
Instead of making wow clones all developers should make Lineage I clones and make ridiculous cash on dinosaur game no one cares about far into the future with profits fiercely rising.
The baseball team seems to be the big issue and signing up new players. I’m surprised it takes so much money to sign up new players to a baseball team.
Lineage was South Korea’s WoW, the first really big MMO. After 15 or so years they’ve retained a very devoted player base who have invested a lot of time into their characters and bloodclans. The introduction of a cash item shop boosted sales by nearly 50% back at the end of 2009. Nearly 96% of Lineage sales come from South Korea.
As for their professional baseball team. I think this is what the main company thinks is good advertising. Overseas, companies don’t slap names on stadiums, they slap them on teams.
Last minute pickaxe and dye buying? However I expect another major spike when the new infinite gather tools come at 8z UTC and a larger one when Oceania players wake up.
I’m expecting it to hit 4g per 100 Gems within a day.
I’m talking major not superior runes and their prices have been stuck between 4.5 to 5.5s for a while now. Yes there are spikes up above 6s but that happens only when the plethora of under six ones are finally exhausted for the short time it’ll take before someone finds one while cracking rares and posts it in the 5s range.
I like Arenanet’s quick patches. Coming from Nexon games myself, Nexon would always put out a notice for a 1-5 hour maintenence and close down their game. Then after 5 hours, the game still wouldn’t start. 10 minutes after the maintenence was supposed to end, Nexon would put up a new announcement saying the maintenence has been extended for 1 hour. Then an hour later, they would extend it for another hour, and another, and another, and another. The longest time they’ve ever stringed us along like that was 48 hours. They had posted some 30 announcements saying “1 more hour.” It was terrible. I’ll take Anet any day over Nexon.
Well in all fairness nexon is one of the worst game companies that exist
Edited with NCsoft 1Q 2013 earning reports (sales, etc)
I’m surprised Lineage is still doing so good in there while the western servers were closed like a year ago.
Well Lineage is their UO. Came out in the late 90s. It looks like Diablo/UO meaning 2 1/2D sprite based. It doesn’t need a decent modern rig to run it on. And after 15 years, I think, players are rather attached to their characters and guilds.
It seems more like they are watching how the sales are doing and could even cancel the expansion if this does not improve. It’s not the cashcow they wanted it to be.
The game had sales in the 1st quarter that was only eclipsed by their old mainstay Lineage. It beat their other “new” MMO Blade & Soul soundly.
they add up to a 15% tax, 5% of which you have to pay to put it on the tp and another 10 if it sells.
