Guild Wars 2

2/2

For all we know, had Anet priced the expansion differently, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

You mean because more of the F2P players would have purchased the game? I don’t think it would have make a big difference. You see, as we already did see many of the active players did buy the game. The likely reason we see the numbers drop so much, is because GW2 is not able to retain players.

That problem would still be there even if the F2P people did buy the game. A drop of players can not be blamed on the fact that people had to pay to much. Or how do you see that? People did by the expansion, but then half a year later got mad because they payed to much and left because of that? Really, The drop is the problem and that can not be blamed on the price as we know most active players did buy it.

Vayne.8563:

It’s a fact that there’s not enough information out there to draw the conclusions you’ve drawn. You could be right, you could be wrong. Either way, the evidence isn’t there.s

I agree. I work with what I have. Can’t do more then that can I?

Vayne.8563:

The difference between what I’m saying and what you’re saying is that I didn’t come to the forums and try to use a very small set of data points to prove anything because I know it’s not possible to prove anything from the data points we have.

I did never say the data proofed anything. That is something you made up. And no you come to the forum and make claims based on no data, that go against the data or can even be proven wrong. Anyway, are you now saying I should not have used any data to look at what is happening?

All I wanted to show with the data is how the game preformed over-time. Yes I also mentioned that it did as I predicted and tried to make a comparison with GW1. But thats about it.

Vayne.8563:

You keep insisting with no evidence. I can play devil’s advocate without proof, showing where your logic doesn’t make sense in the big picture because I didn’t make a statement in the first place.

You have made multiple statements on these forums. Like how the expansions did sell bad, how that was because of the price, how content drought was to blame for the drop in people and so on.

Vayne.8563:

But yes, if you do a bit of research you’d say that Guild Wars 1 had a LOT less competition than Guild Wars 2 does. Do you really need me to find evidence to suppor that, or are you finally going to accept it.

In raw numbers you mean? Yes, while at the same time the potential player-base also got bigger. Looking at the B2P model then no. But really, you make the statement that GW2 has more com,petition with a B2P model these days. So should not not proof it? Why should I have to proof / disprove your statement?

Vayne.8563:

You don’t have the evidence to back up your point. I don’t need to prove it, because it’s obvious.

This just made me laugh and really says everything about all your comments that we need to know. This proof the dream-world you live in. You are right because you are right. I need factual proof that is unavailable, but you can make your statements just because.. well it;s obvious that you are right. Oke, if that is what you want. I will not try to wake you up anymore. Sweat dreams.

1/2

@Devata
Now if only your simple modelling took into effect things like the lack of competition Guild Wars 1 had in the non-subscription multiplayer market. It was alone. By itself. It had no competition, so there really can’t be a comparison or at least any comparison is likely to be deeply flawed.

How so? It would have no competition in the B2P market right now as well. So that is a perfect comparison. I also mentioned this multiple times and it is also one of those things you keep repeating without once saying what is wrong about my statement. Simply because you can’t. It correct. GW1 had no competition with it’s B2P model back then, and it would not have any competition with it B2P model now. Then again, with the cash-shop model it uses now it has a lot of competition.

I am not sure why I even keep answering these comments of you. I have been doing that for years and you keep repeating the same for years. Without once explaining why my comment is false. You simply ignore it and repeat it again a few days later and that year after year.

It’s useless. In your dream you are right and you refuse to wake up.

Vayne.8563:

What you have is a theory and at best extremely incomplete evidence. That’s all you have. It’s all you’ve ever had. Nothing has changed except that there have been two slow quarters.

With Q2 you said the same about 1 bad quarter and then we should look at Q3, as that would likely be better. Now suddenly Q3 is also not interesting. As long as numbers don’t fit you, it is not interesting is it? What if Q1 is bad as well. Or do you want to base your ideas on Q4?

And you are right. I have a theory. I have minor data to proof it. I can’t help that I have no better data. Then again, the theory by itself is correct in that lower but more steady income means more income over a longer term. And a game that does not have to be compromised can be better what might help to retain more players overtime.

That is the theory is it’s most basic logical form.

Vayne.8563:

And since the expansion wasn’t well received by Anet’s own admission,. that doesn’t mean anything at all.

Again you repeat something that has been proven wrong. Most active players did buy the expansion. (And likely many old) So the expansion itself did fine. The F2P approach did not work out. You try to squeeze that problem into the expansion-sales.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

Nonetheless, if I had to pick between a game that sells content (With the option for a season pass) or a game that earns money with a cash-shop focus I would go for the season-pass just so I know the content is not being compromised for cash-shop sales.

Content is not compromised by cash shop sales. You are saying that all the items offered in a game’s cash shop, like the gem store of GW2, would be in the game if the gem store didn’t exist. That’s a lie, without the cash shop most of those items wouldn’t even exist in the game. You are mistaken if you think otherwise and that’s the major flaw in your reasoning. We get so many black lion weapon sets and outfits because we have them inside black lion chests, if there were no chests/gem store, we wouldn’t get so many black lion weapon sets/outfits.

You are also saying that there are no things to hunt in game in GW2 which shows that you aren’t even playing the game. There are a lot of minis and skins to collect in the game, especially in LS3 there is some good variety added, and those who are available in the gem store I honestly wouldn’t want them to be in-game items. It’s one thing to break immersion from the gem store and another one completely if you make those skins available through actual in-game content. A lot of the gem store items are not suitable as in-game rewards and I’m really glad they are on the gem store and not in-game.

In addition, with an expansion you add absolutely no content for those who don’t actually buy it. With a cash shop you get the items you want, when you want them and IF you want them. With an expansion you can’t pick and choose what you want. It’s either you get the whole thing (and pay a premium) or you get nothing. And with the gem store you don’t even have to pay because you can use gold.

An Expansion don’t has to be P2W.

No they don’t have to be, but they always are.

“You are saying that all the items offered in a game’s cash shop, like the gem store of GW2” No I do not say that. I say that most (well all) and best items would be in the game. It would make sense to have good looking skins in the game. That there might be more of those items now (just not in the game, but in the cash-shop) can be very true.

“We get so many black lion weapon sets and outfits because we have them inside black lion chests, if there were no chests/gem store, we wouldn’t get so many black lion weapon sets/outfits.” It’s indeed very likely there are more items now. But how does that change anything of what I am saying?

“with an expansion you add absolutely no content for those who don’t actually buy it.” While that is usually not true (it usually also adds stuff to existing content) it’s true that most of the content is indeed not accessible to those who do not buy the new expansion. Maybe you have a problem with buying things you want. I do not and I think enough people do not meaning you have enough people to keep going.

As we have already seen, most active players of GW2 did buy HoT, so also they do not have a problem with buying that content. Many non-mmo’s are using the model very successfully for years.

“It’s either you get the whole thing (and pay a premium) or you get nothing.” Yeah, and I want to get the whole thing and am willing to pay for it (I don’t even mind to pay a premium over the premium, own multiple CE of games). However, I do not want to get a compromised item / game.

“And with the gem store you don’t even have to pay because you can use gold.” And grinding that gold is not fun. I want to buy that game so I can have fun playing it. I don’t want to get the game for free so I am able to do something I do not like (grinding).

Vayne.8563:

It doesn’t surprise me that Guild Wars 1 wasn’t particularly profitable. First game from a new start up that was always considered a niche game is unlikely to drive any real profits. I didn’t have the numbers and I wasn’t going to look for them.

But as someone who spent many years researching, it was easy to spot the flaws in the argument that if Guild Wars 2 did what Guild Wars 1 did it would be more successful. It was always possibly something that could happen but there was no real case for it.

It’s just a pet theory that one person feels so strongly about that it seemed self-evident. Unfortunately my history with research left me more doubtful. A good percentage of things most of us believe to be true really aren’t.

The thing is. The comparison I made still go’s up. If GW2 was able to keep people / income less dropping, while total income would be lower. Over a period of 3 years they would have earned more money then they did not.

It’s not really hard to understand. I can put it in very easy language here:
Let’s say we have 6 periods. And we earn the following in different models: (each number a period) 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1 or we earn 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2.

In the first example we earn a total of: 16. In the second we earn a total of 17. The highest numbers where in the first model, and for the first 4 periods the first model was in the lead. In the 5th model both where even and only in the 6th period the second model was better.

That is in short the comparison of GW1 vs GW2. The cost is a second variable I do not have but if a game is earns money or cost money has to do with the earning vs the cost.

My theory is that the expansion-based model could achieve exactly that. But if they failed to set up a good game it would results in lower numbers. I always said it was a more risky model, but better for the long-term.

In the numbers Behellagh has he talks about how Anet finally get a a profit with GW1, but you then forget that that is based on the initial sales. By then the effects of the cash-shop focus did not even exist.

That some people think these numbers proof that that model does not work mainly shows they do not understand the numbers.

It’s a trend (That I am talking about) versus raw numbers.

Nonetheless I would love to have those numbers. I would also like to know how much of the earnings come from game-sales, how much from gem-store and from what items (remember, I am fine with selling things like character slots).

So in that perspective nothing changes. I would still see those numbers to see how it would effect the netto-income.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

They should hire you to work for them ….
you know a lot better than the rest of them or their readers…
Why you limit yourself here 17 months now and you dont spread your wings to create a game ?

I am comfused….
How much round conversation you will do ?
You where saying in Vayne that the company was OK with the x-packs sold and that why they will aim to releases them in shorter period …
Should they sold more x-packs or not ….why you make a comment on Flesh that the data shows that it doesnt work , while you claim in Vayne thateverything is ok?

The ’’plans’’ of yours …a game that sells only x-packs and not a gemstore …..STILL HAVENT CONCUDE ABOUT HOW WE CAN PURSADE THE 3 MILLION F2P ACCOUNTS TO BUY THE X-PACKS …

Dont worry i will make these thread , so the rest of the community see your ‘’true self’’ :P
I will be your short verion ‘’into the depth of Devata mind’’
(wanna work as a security guard at a lesser madhouse with me … its fun :P
If you behave them with gently way , they will boot you from the child hospital to join them 24/7 )

Nah, don’t think it would work out. The stuff I would like to create (like quest-lines) would not be allowed or would not be able.

Also, next to my job I am working on stuff, just not a game.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

~

The people you talk about (F2P players) simply did not buy the game. If you look back in the thread you would see that those playing the game already did buy the expansion.

Behellagh.1468:

Devata.6589:

Behellagh.1468:

Vayne.8563:

You say having a less intrusive cash shop is the answer, so if expansions cant’ be made as quickly, how are you planning on paying rent, insurance, electricity and 300 plus employees?

That’s because @Devata believes at the core of his being that ANet “could” do it.

I might be wrong. We do however know that their current approach was good for the first 1,5 year or so and then started to drop off more thenthey had hoped.

Didn’t want to resort to this. Air the dark dirty secrets of ArenaNet but if this doesn’t change your mind I don’t know what will. All you have to do is examine the audited annual reports from NCSOFT which breaks out the income and profit of their subsidiaries including ArenaNet.

Looking at the audited annual reports reveals an ugly truth. ArenaNet as an entity never made a profit from Guild Wars.

In 2005 GW sold 41,308 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 10,608 million KrW of that and almost made a profit, their loss was only 168 million KrW.

In 2006 GW sold 52,560 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 13,400 million KrW of that and their loss was 2,022 million KrW.

In 2007 GW sold 42,058 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 12,020 million KrW of that and their loss was 2,975 million KrW.

In 2008 GW sold 26,228 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 8,131 million KrW of that and their loss was 10,148 million KrW.

In 2009 GW sold 17,127 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 5,254 million KrW of that and their loss was 21,658 million KrW.

ArenaNet had to pay off the development cost of GW just like an author or a band paying off their advance. And in 2009 they announced work on GW2. [sarcasm]It sure looks like that box expansion plan for GW really worked out for them.[/sarcasm] By the end of 2012, the last time ANet was broken out as it was “absorbed” into NC West Holdings along with NC Interactive and Carbine, ANet had liabilities, aka debt, of 128,000 million KrW. That’s the year GW2 sold 164,854 million KrW and ANet saw 68,000 million of that and actually had a profit of 28,000 million KrW.

This is part of the reason they decided that to maintain their B2P/no subscription approach, went with the cash shop.

Edit: This also makes the taking over of distribution by ANet for HoT a lot of sense so they could book more of that income without letting NC Interactive suck up a sizable cut.

You have a source for that? While it’s mainly interesting to see the development-cost vs the profit. You want to know the nett profit, not what part did go to NCsoft or what part did go to ArenaNet. Was the model profitable or not is the question. As far as I know development-cost have never been disclosed. So I wonder what you base your numbers on.

Like where in those reports. I would like to have a look at it.

It would also be interesting to see those numbers with all the results. Just to see how well the game is really doing.. or not doing. How do these dropping results really effect the game / ArenaNet. Maybe they are losing money right now as well?

voltaicbore.8012:

Devata, this is what you should have said at the beginning if you wanted to be taken seriously on an empirical level (which you so deeply appear to want). You noted somewhere, “why should I have to summarize other opinions?” – to me that indicates that you’re simply ignoring potentially confounding variables. Vayne pretty much did it here without taking too long or overselling a single point.

A few people have touched on this, but I think it merits greater discussion: NCSoft/ANet seem uninterested in marketing this game. Granted, I got into GW2 after HoT launched, so I have completely missed out on whatever advertising blitz that may have occurred. I also acknowledge that the game is old, and conventional wisdom might say that we’re past the point of a sincere marketing strategy now. That being said, this game is still moving forward, and I believe what I love about it still distinguishes it from every other game out there. There’s still something to market if you still want to sell more of this game.

I heard nothing – absolutely nothing – in the US about GW2 outside of Dulfy when I decided to try the free core game a few months ago, and then bought into HoT shortly thereafter. I wouldn’t have even considered GW2 if I wasn’t so sorely disappointed in SWtoR at the time.

I did start seeing some banner ads for GW2 after I actually bought HoT and ran a ton of GW2 google searches and wiki browsing. What I saw was utterly dumbfounding: you all remember this ad for GW2? There’s a thread on this ad already, with its detractors and defenders.

I think this ad is terribly, terribly misguided. Sadly, I also think it’s emblematic of how those at the helm of this game see their own product. The non-game footage part is just…. dramatic-type music with a voiceover trying to make these disparate scenes seem epic. GW2’s particular artistic look and dynamic game world, which I believe set it apart from other products, are not meaningfully revealed in the brief moment of game-like scenery we see at the end. And instead of the Pact, the Legions, or even the Orders, all we get in that scene is this huge melee of all this hodgepodge happening. It looks like any other shiny/nonsensical/Asia-Pacific moneygrabber out there, and the ad itself displays that region of the world’s unfortunate mass-media habit of preferring spectacle at the expense of telling a compelling and coherent narrative.

If this is pretty much the perspective from which they plan on selling GW2, I fear for the future of the game. I’d have to find advertising records and try to match them with the ups and downs in the data provided, but as any marketer will tell you, ROI on advertising is notoriously slippery to observe with certainty. That being said, I just wonder if the marketing for GW2 contributed meaningfully to the declines in numbers.

I feel that those people should speak up and give there opinion from there viewpoint. Vayne simply says that they all might have a problem. But that still does not say much. If you really want to understand them, they have to speak up. Also what I have been suggesting was simply a way to have a game without any compromises. No matter what type of player you are. I said something about that in my last comment.

Marketing has indeed been bad from the beginning. And you have not even seen the worse.. watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk717LQnpVE (It’s really hard to watch.. While it’s nice that they acknowledge the grind on 1:35) But the bad marketing was not the main problem knowing that the initial game sold great. Fastest selling MMO at the time.

Adry.7512:

Well….this game is by no means a money milking game….seriously these guys make no attempts at draining our money. That being said, yes sometimes they annual can go to the lower millions, but thats fine. As for the future of the game….its very very bright. This game will go on for many years to come. The potential is very big.

Sometimes? Looks like you have been missing the bigger picture. GW2 has pretty much been getting lower and lower results form the beginning (especially after the first +-1,5 year). HoT did increase the income again, but now we are back where we would be if we followed the down-trend before HoT was announced. What will Q1 do? How will the next expansion do?

We do not know. Yes this game had a lot of potential. However if you don’t make use of the potential by your first expansion that potential is basically lost. Simply because many people won’t return anymore. It;s an old game for them. There is no reason for them to return.

I think the game might be running for many years to come, but I am afraid things will not get much better. A shrink of the development-team is more likely looking at the numbers.

And that is really a shame because like you say, this game did have that potential. Just look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQcgSg5DJhg It shows much of the potential, it shows some of the old stuff that makes you wanna get back to that time. But is also shows you some of the negatives.

He does not complain about the cash-shop, but does complain about PvE being boring. I connect the two but whatever. It does show the goods and the bads and it’s top bad that Anet did not manage to turn this game into what it could have become.

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Someone should tell Devata that long-term goals are a staple of the MMO genre. It’s against MMO developers’ interests to give players the shiny as fast as they want. At least with cosmetics, the grind is a choice. I’ll settle for that over RNG-based grind, even in sub games. I remember trying for a tanking sword in a WotLK dungeon in order to be an off-tank as a secondary build. Despite ~40 runs, the thing dropped once and the drop was ninja’d. I’d much rather farm gold by doing whatever the kitten I want in GW2 to that.

Then there’s the thing where developers determine how much effort is cost-effective. The OP seems to believe that all of the cosmetics that are in the store would be in the game under his model. I’m considerably more realistic. I doubt (very much) an XPac-only business model would offer any more items via play than we currently see, and that’s even if XPac-only would generate comparable revenue, which I doubt.

It’s not just Devata, really. People who feel really strongly about something, often inflate in their mind how many people feel the same. It’s why hard core players believe the game can’t survive without them. It’s why casual players believe HOT had lackluster sales because of them, it’s why dungeon runners think that things went south because they weren’t catered to, and it’s why Devata, who has very strong feelings about grind and cash shops, believes this game isn’t doing well. The stronger you believe something the more likely you are to believe that others must feel the same way. That’s just human nature.

I’ve made that mistake myself many times in the past, but I’ve learned from it. I now realize for every person who feels like I do, there are at least half a dozen who feel differently.

Devata feels strongly so the people who dislike the grind and gem store are obviously going to cause the game to take in his/her mind. But this isn’t about one person. It’s about human nature.

The odds are the lackluster numbers of the last two quarters has less to do with any one reason, and more to do with a myriad of reasons. Those who think like Devata, whatever percentage that is, will have some affect. Dungeon Runners who left when HoT launched, will have some affect. Small guilds who can’t afford to upgrade guild halls will have some affect. People who think HoT is too hard or too grindy will have some affect.

All together, those groups have a tremendous affect. It’s not any one thing. It’s that Anet managed to alienate large swathes of people, combined with a content drought, combined with pricing the expansion too high, combined with not giving an extra character slot.

No one thing is the reason HoT didn’t do as well as expected. They are contribute.

Yes Vayne you are right. You want what is important for you. And you might focus more on what fits in your personal ideas. We see the same in your comment.

However, I do try to look beyond that.

You see, from a cosmetics perspective I care less about stats. However, you do not see me asking for a P2W cash-shop instead of a cosmetic cash-shop.

While some people here are basically saying ‘Well the cosmetic grind is ’optional’, and there is no stats in the cash-shop, so all is fine’ (What would be the same as from my perspective asking for a P2W cash-shop instead of a cosmetic one) I am looking for a way that gives a company the means to build a game without any compromises and so is able to at least have the ability to make all the groups happy. (Have quality content for all of them)

If you want a healthy MMO where many people can feel at home you need to try to cater to most of them. The HC players, the dungeon-runners, the casual players, the cosmetic players, the solo-players, the adventurers and so on. Because together they make up the MMO-community.

And we already concluded that most of the active players did buy the expansion, and content drought does not seem the main issue. Based on data. But I guess you will keep repeating this anyway. Because it is something you feel strongly about?

IndigoSundown.5419:

Someone should tell Devata that long-term goals are a staple of the MMO genre. It’s against MMO developers’ interests to give players the shiny as fast as they want. At least with cosmetics, the grind is a choice. I’ll settle for that over RNG-based grind, even in sub games. I remember trying for a tanking sword in a WotLK dungeon in order to be an off-tank as a secondary build. Despite ~40 runs, the thing dropped once and the drop was ninja’d. I’d much rather farm gold by doing whatever the kitten I want in GW2 to that.

Then there’s the thing where developers determine how much effort is cost-effective. The OP seems to believe that all of the cosmetics that are in the store would be in the game under his model. I’m considerably more realistic. I doubt (very much) an XPac-only business model would offer any more items via play than we currently see, and that’s even if XPac-only would generate comparable revenue, which I doubt.

“It’s against MMO developers’ interests to give players the shiny as fast as they want.”
I did not ask for that.

“At least with cosmetics, the grind is a choice.” The game is a choice, not wanting a disadvantage in an P2W game is a choice.

No interesting rewards to go for is not a choice.

“I’ll settle for that over RNG-based grind,” Depends on how hard the RNG is.

“I’d much rather farm gold by doing whatever the kitten I want in GW2 to that.”"If you enjoy grind that is fine. I guess I would rather do the dungeon 40 times for item x and another dungeon 40 times for item y and another dungeon 40 times for item z then grinding even more hours in total, doing whatever earns the best gold to buy the 3 items. And of-course it’s not so that it would all have to require you to do a dungeon 40 times. Maybe the more rare stuff does. Other items could require you to complete it once or do a quest-line and so on.
Looking at the results of GW2 and the population during WotLK. The first has mainly been losing people (or income?), the second had mainly been gaining people. That might say something about approach is best.

“The OP seems to believe that all of the cosmetics that are in the store would be in the game under his model.” That does not have to be the case. But more cosmetics would be in the world and the most interesting would be in the game.

" I doubt (very much) an XPac-only business model would offer any more items via play than we currently see, and that’s even if XPac-only would generate comparable revenue, which I doubt." Why do you doubt that? Good game-play also means good rewards. If you want to keep people happy and playing you will put them in there. Of course GW2 CAN NOT put most and best cosmetics in the game because then people had no reason to buy them and they would not earn any money.

Basically what you are saying is this.. An expansion-based model does not grantee a good game. And you are right in that. But a cash-shop based game does grantee some mechanic that interferes with the game trying to get you to buy items from the cash-shop. If there is no good reason for you to buy anything from the cash-shop, you don’t buy anything and so the cash-shop model does not work. So it has an impact on the game.

Is it so strange to want to buy and play a game that does not have any strings attach? Where you don’t have something you like replaced by ‘optional grind’. Where you can do your build-based stuff (what you like) without any strings attached and somebody else can do his cosmetic based stuff without any strings attached? Just, a game without any compromises.

In the end, all you have been saying here is that (in your perspective) this compromise is not that bad. Well, I just do not want a compromise. I am willing to buy the game and expansion, but I do not want any compromise.

Vayne.8563:

Behellagh.1468:

Vayne.8563:

You say having a less intrusive cash shop is the answer, so if expansions cant’ be made as quickly, how are you planning on paying rent, insurance, electricity and 300 plus employees?

That’s because @Devata believes at the core of his being that ANet “could” do it.

Yeah, i know he/she does, but Anet has said they can’t. Devata’s reasoning is they did it before, but for all sorts of reasons, a modern day expansion is going to take a lot longer and cost much more money. That’s the long and short of it.

Vayne, you are the one trying to dismiss any comment with the argument that they can not factually proof it. They might have data suggesting it but they can not proof it.

In this thread you have made multiple claims, some what could be proven wrong, some that the data suggest are wrong and some that can not be proven wrong or correct.

Now again you make some claim. Where did Anet say that this was not possible.

You ask people to proof there claims. I have ask you to proof multiple of your claims but are still waiting for you to do so.

Honestly, you live in your own dream world. That is fine. But then or proof your dream world is reality or don’t complain that other peoples ideas, even supported with data, can not be factually proven correct and so should be dismissed.

You really got exposed in this thread.

When are you going to wake up from this dream and try to see what could and could not work? Your mostly defensive approach did not work out that great, did it?

2/2
Now about what you are saying:
“And being forced to buy an expansion to get access to higher level caps, better/different gear stats, more powerful skills and abilities is not frustrating?”

I would like to add:
And new quest, and cosmetics

Because honestly, “higher level caps, better/different gear stats, more powerful skills” I could not care about that. New skills yes, but that there are more powerful, it are just numbers. A new race is nice as well, but a more powerful race. That is just fake. You get a new area with mobs that have higher numbers, and then you can increase your own numbers and so you get ‘better’. They could do away with levels all together I guess. OR do it completely different. In fact HoT did give that a good try, it’s just that how they implemented it was really bad. If you where able to unlock those abilities with special quests that would have been awesome.

Yeah I do not mind paying for a game. I can still play the original game, just this new part of the game means I would need to buy the expansion. No problem, I still get a full experience for the part that I already have. Once I buy the next part I also get that full experience. I do not find that frustrating at all. Again, I am fine with paying for a game.

"
Which one is more frustrating?
a) You cannot compete with others because they have the expansion and are objectively better than you at beating the game, and they have access to more content than you do.
b) They have a shinny that you don’t have.
"
If you are putting this question from the perspective of somebody who likes to go earn cosmetics it’s more like.

a) For as long as you do not buy the expansion you cannot compete with others because they have the expansion and are objectively better than you at beating the game, and they have access to more content than you do.
b) The content feels boring, you can do things but there are no real goals. Must fun items you could go after you need to buy or grind gold for.

And then yes B is clearly more frustrating. Buying the skins does not solve the problem. The hunt for them is still gone, the game-value of them is still zero. With a, I can simply buy the expansion and get the full experience.

maddoctor.2738:

Note that expansions bring new skills (elite specs for example in GW2), you should know how FRUSTRATING it is to get killed in PVP by a Druid, a Tempest, and so on, while you don’t have access to those. The power creep is real with expansions and it’s not that bad in GW2 because at least here they don’t increase level caps here. But even here, expansions ARE a source of P2W frustration. Expansions are P2W by definition, a cash shop doesn’t need to be P2W.

Depends on the design right? Usually the new abilities are only useful in the new area. In PvP you get the same numbers. Maybe he has another spell, but if it is balanced correctly that should not make him stronger. You could even make it so that PvP area’s from before the expansion don’t allow spells / items from the new map. Really all what you say here really depends on how you design the game. It’s not a fact of life.

An Expansion don’t has to be P2W.

maddoctor.2738:

And with an expansion model you don’t even have access to the content of the expansion to get the items you want. Without HoT I wouldn’t even dream of getting the rewards from the Raid, or the Bladed/Leystone armor skins for example.

So if you want to play that expansion, you buy it. And then get the full experience. While if you use the cash-shop focus method you can play the game but never get the full experience you might be after. Again, it’s not only about having the cosmetics, but also about the value of them (he did x to get y) and the hunt for those items.

That is something that you clearly do not want to see or are not able to see because of you perspective of the game. However, it is how many people play MMO’s. It is why home-instances are so loved, it is why mounts, and mini’s and skins are also so loved. Not just for the skin. But also for the hunt. Obviously the two need to compliment each other. Doing a lot of work to get a kittenty skin is still frustrating.

Again, sorry for the late reaction. Have been busy.

1/2

maddoctor.2738:

Please don’t tell me that you like Season Passes. Just don’t. The worst thing that has ever happened in gaming is the Season Pass where you pre-buy a bunch of random DLCs together, a bunch of DLCs that you don’t even know what they will contain or if they will interest you. Paid Season Passes and DLC need to die. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone say that they like Season Passes.

I did say before that for multiple reasons I would prefer a normal expansion. However from pure technical standpoint a season pass and an expansion are similar. You pay one price for a bulk of content.

Yes a big negative about a season pass is that you usually see what you buy after you did buy it, however as far as I know you can also buy the season pass once all DLC is released or just buy the DLC.

The problem that you talk about is not just related to season-passes. Preordering (being promoted) simply exist in the game-genre as total.

Nonetheless, if I had to pick between a game that sells content (With the option for a season pass) or a game that earns money with a cash-shop focus I would go for the season-pass just so I know the content is not being compromised for cash-shop sales. Being it by being P2W or by being grindy or boring or in any other way that they can come up with.

But obviously I would still prefer the normal expansion. I would also still prefer the availability of demo’s to know what you are buying.

maddoctor.2738:

Remove cosmetics, not content, that’s the best for the quality of a game. With an expansion you remove content, with a cosmetic cash shop you remove some cosmetics. It’s an easy choice for me.

Cosmetics can be content.. Or at least collecting them. By taking out those cosmetics you do remove that content. With an expansion you add content, you don’t remove it.

It’s an easy choice if the hunt for those cosmetics is not something you are interested in.

A good example in GW2 are the Molten Facility dungeon back in Flame and Frost. That was a great fun mini-dungeon. Remember that once it was gone people did keep asking for it to return. And then when it returned nobody really seem to care about it anymore.

That is imho because MF did something many content in GW2 was missing. It added a great fun reward (just cosmetic). The backpack and the mini. Those cosmetic items did give you an extra reason and goal to do the dungeon. Once it was placed back it the game it was without those drops.

It;s that sort of rewards that is so lacking in GW2 and that has everything to do with the cash-shop focus. So yes, the removal of cosmetics do effect the game / game-play.

It’s not just a cosmetic, not in an MMORPG, it’s an element of the game. An element if you building up your character. the RPG in RPGMMMO.

And like I said before it obviously depends on your preferred game-play. PvE very soon became boring for me (because of the lack of this hunt for items). What was the reason for doing anything. However I was lucky enough to also enjoy WvW, an element where you are not busy with cosmetics. So for anybody who is mainly interested in those things this is fine. Then again, he would likely be much more stile towards items with stats then somebody who prefers cosmetics.

In an MMORPG cosmetics and stats are really the same. They both build your character. Of that is bad for you depends on your preferred game-play. G

maddoctor.2738:

And being forced to buy an expansion to get access to higher level caps, better/different gear stats, more powerful skills and abilities is not frustrating?

Which one is more frustrating?
a) You cannot compete with others because they have the expansion and are objectively better than you at beating the game, and they have access to more content than you do.
b) They have a shinny that you don’t have.

I’d take b) any time. Not to mention how expensive expansions are and you can only get the complete package. For example, let’s say I want the elite specs to compete in PVP but don’t give a kitten about Raids or the Hot zones. I can’t buy just the elite specs. Expansions are expensive and limit your choice, they are all or nothing packages.

I my comment above this one I mentioned that it depends on the player perspective. This comment of you shows clearly what your perspective is. You prefer the stats, that is fine but please try to understand that some people don’t care so much about stats and builds but more about the fun items, mini’s, mounts, skins, pets, toys and so on. This is also the reason why so many people ask for home instances. That is also all about cosmetics most of the time.

@Killthehealersffs.8940

You always refer to my Crysis prediction example. Were I made that prediction against what the people in the business where doing (so who knew what they where doing according to some).

I just got this news hot off the press. http://crytek.com/news/crytek-outlines-future-plans-and-focuses-on-return-to-core-competencies

I figured it was worth to share it here, and specifically with you. Just to remind people that business can be wrong and some people on a forum can be right.

Remember Crysis at one point had an almost legendary status, we still got the meme But Can It Run Crysis? But even they can make mistakes as we can see.

Behellagh.1468:

Vayne.8563:

You say having a less intrusive cash shop is the answer, so if expansions cant’ be made as quickly, how are you planning on paying rent, insurance, electricity and 300 plus employees?

That’s because @Devata believes at the core of his being that ANet “could” do it.

I might be wrong. We do however know that their current approach was good for the first 1,5 year or so and then started to drop off more thenthey had hoped.

Vayne.8563:

@Devata
If Guild Wars 2 had a cash shop like they do in WoW, there would be no Guild Wars 2. It would be gone. It would be dead.

The numbers suggest different. Anyway, you are always asking for facts when somebody makes claims. You have made multiple claims in this thread where I asked for facts, so far you failed to give one. This is another claim where I am going to ask you to proof that. At least I have numbers who suggest something else.

Vayne.8563:

Because not every player spends money in the cash shop, we know that from specific posts, but everyone who plays WoW pays a sub.

So, not everybody pays money in the cash-shop in GW2. More people likely do, however if they had an expansion every year to 1,5 year (yes, of a good quality) most people would likely buy that and so pay money for the game anyway. You know, like they did with GW1.

Vayne.8563:

So you either charge everyone every single month, or you have a cash shop to make up the difference. Those are your options and those are your only options.

Or you sell an expansion every year to 1,5 year. Like GW1 did. You forgot that option.

Vayne.8563:

So let’s say that Guild Wars 2 had a sub and a less intrusive cash shop.

You are switching from subject again. Not talking about a P2P model. So let’s not.

Vayne.8563:

Just the idea that Guild Wars 1 was largely instanced and content was developed for exactly x amount of players with no scaling and no random people wandering by makes it a much easier game to develop. That it was pathed made it much easier to develop. Guild Wars Prophecies has 209 quests at launch, and one starting area. Guild Wars 2 had five starting areas, five races and over 1500 dynamic events, plus far more of it was voiced, which is very expensive.

Yeah, we did go by this already. GW2 is bigger, and so needs more people to develop. At the same time GW2 also has a bigger (possible) player base and so can earn much more. And if GW2 was able to keep those people over the longer run (what they now do not seem to be able to) they could keep financing that.

So the question is if the B2P model raises enough money to do so. We cannot proof this factually because it’s talking about another reality, but the numbers at least suggest it’s very well possible.

Vayne.8563:

Anet could not put out an expansion every year, cash shop or no cash shop. They’d have to mostly depend on box sales and for today’s that is simply not going to be enough.

If Anet focused on the expansion I am pretty sure they could be able to put out an expansion in 1 to 1,5 year.

Based on statements from Anet linked earlier in this post we already know HoT was mostly build within a year. So here you can not only not proof your statement, it can be proven wrong. Sure, how things went with HoT was far from ideal, suddenly making that switch. But if they could have planned that a little better things might have goon way better.

Vayne.8563:

You say having a less intrusive cash shop is the answer, so if expansions cant’ be made as quickly, how are you planning on paying rent, insurance, electricity and 300 plus employees?

That is how investments work. People first invest money to pay those things, then a product get released and they earn their payment back. You act as if this is impossible, what is funny as that would mean GW2 was impossible. Development of GW2 took about 5 years, in that time GW1 was being ignored and so did not make them a lot of money. However rent, insurance, electricity and employees where paid.

Because GW2 sold very well you would likely have enough overhead to not even need any new external investments but could use some of the profit of GW2 to pay the development of the first expansion. (If only they did that). Every next expansion, part of the income can then go for the development of the next expansion, the rest is profit. Its mind bubbling that I have to explain these type of things. Everybody understand this but you have been bringing this argument up for year and I keep saying this for year. Not sure why I even keep doing this. You simply do not want to understand.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Just for grins and giggles, and for the ‘what it’s worth department’.

What I find interesting is that there are no B2P MMO’s that sell XPac’s but have no store, either on that list or anywhere else. And yet, according to the OP, such a model would be best not only for him but for ANet. Guess he “knows” better than anyone who is actually in the business.

Also fwiw, I would have voted for ESO over GW2 despite the DLC costing money and ANet offering some for cost/some for free … except that ESO just introduced gamble boxes.

This ‘they know better’. You know, those in the business have been trying to put out MMO’s with the P2P model the last 10 years al almost all failed. After WoW only FINAL FANTASY XIV was able to implement a P2P model and maintain it while many, many, many did try and failed.

Many people did see that would not work, but the people in the business did not see it.

Not so long ago they all did not believe in the F2P / cash-shop model. A few companies used it and had success with it and now they all jump on that bandwagon.

And you think those people in the business have all the knowledge?

Honestly, those investors that make these decisions have no idea. They invest money in a lot of things and simply look at proven methods. They did see WoW making a lot of money with the P2P model and so massively jumped on that model. Only now, more as 10 years later they seem to finally understand that that model is not so great after all. (Not for them, not for their games, not now anyway)

Now they all jump on the cash-shop model, and they might very will switch to another model in the future once that has proven itself.

Honestly, thinking they know better is being foolish. They have proven to not knowing better.

If a game sells well, they invest money for a new release, but don’t even notice that while sales where good, reception was bad and so the next game will sell bad. It will be the bad sales of that next game that makes them stop investing for a new release.

Can I proof I am right or know better than them here? No, but I did proof I knew better than them with the Crysis example Killthehealersffs.8940 is referring to all the time. For those people a game is just an investment, but most of them don’t know anything about it. And because they provide them money, they usually have a lot to say about the payment-model.

Anyway, you keep believing in those people who have factually proven to not know, simply because they are in that business.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Just for grins and giggles, and for the ‘what it’s worth department’.

Massively OP’s Best of 2016 Awards: BEST MMORPG BUSINESS MODEL OF 2016

“Massively Overpowered’s end-of-the-year 2016 awards continue today with our award for Best MMORPG Business Model of 2016, which is a new award we’re doling out for the first time this year thanks to a proposal from reader strangesands. This award is intended to recognize a live MMORPG of any age that has demonstrated an exemplary business model specifically in 2016, regardless of its past performance. Don’t forget to cast your own vote in the just-for-fun reader poll at the very end!”

“The Massively OP staff pick for Best MMORPG Business Model of 2016 is…”

“GUILD WARS 2”

Nice, but it’s just a price by some of their readers. Not really anything objective. Do you know who all won the Nobel price of piece? A few deserved it but I for sure would not be in that list.

Objectively from a financial viewpoint we have seen dropping results so in that perspective their current model is not successful.

I also checked the site and did notice a few strange things. It’s a price for a business model, but is awarded to a game? That is like an award for best brand car, and then selecting a specific car instead of a brand. GW2 has a cash-shop model maybe in combination with a B2P model (depending how you define it). There are many games with that model.
Then the first reaction they posted on the site starts with. “Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): Guild Wars 2’s buy-to-play model especially stands out” Well, it’s great that Andrew loves the B2P model, I do to as all you know. It is what made GW1 (and so GW2) big. But it’s not what GW2 is implementing. So it’s getting credits for something it does not have. It is getting credits for what I am asking here.

“It feels the most fair still. I dislike the cash shop that often comes with games using this model, but as long as it sticks to cosmetics over lockboxes, I’m fine with it.” That is a personal opinion and really depends on your perspective. When you are not into hunting down cosmetics in game that that is fine, else it sucks just as hard as a P2W cash-shop. In other MMO’s my main way of playing was hunting down such items (mini’s, ranger-pets, skins, toys, mounts). In GW2 that part was completely destroyed (well turned into a grind), luckily there was WvW so I spend a lot of time doing that or just doing things with the guild. WvW was not negative effected by the cash-shop so looking from that perspective I can understand somebody might be fine with it. Just as that people who don’t care for combat might be fine with a P2W cash-shop.

Another person also comment on this “But it’s given away several chapters of content as well as the base game now, and the cash shop is entirely ignorable in a way that simply cannot be said of other F2P and B2P hybrid models. (Classic Guild Wars could defeat it in a duel, but it hardly seems fair to include a maintenance mode game in these lists!)”
That it is ignorable is true, that that can’t be said for other models is false. It are games, games are optional. Everything is ignorable. And in a P2W game you can still play without buying weapons. I sometimes played some shooter with friends. Can’t remember the name but it was P2W (best weapons were sold for cash). That did mean you had a disadvantage but if you were fine with that you could just ignore it. You could still win.
What is also interesting to note here is that he says GW1’s model was better. You know, the B2P model I talk about here.
That is also the thing, the fact that other models (and implementation of them) are worse does not mean your model is great. It might be the best of what there is, but that does not mean it’s great.
The model I promote here is currently not being used by any big MMO. Funny enough that model is mentioned twice in the comments about GW2. That does say something if you ask me.

First of all, Sorry for the late reaction. Have been busy.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

You didnt tell me how to sell the x-pack ..

What you mean, how to sell it? I said they should market it as GW3 if they want another opportunity to get more people where we are now. So I do not understand you question.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Once again theres 3 millions F2P accounts THAT DONT HAVE THE OPTION TO CHANGE GOLD FOR THE GEMS …SO NO1 IS RUSHING THEM TO GET THE COSTUMES AND THEEY DONT HAVE THE DEASESE (ppl ‘’feel forced’’ to grind gold and buy the costume NOWNOWNOW)

No but they are then left with unrewarding content, because many of those nice rewards have moved to the cash-shop. Sure, not everybody is into cosmetics so if you are one of those then it might be less of a problem. But the best GW2 has to offer for you then is WvW, and if I am correct you need to get to level 60 to unlock that. I can imagine many people get bored before that. When most of us started playing servers where filled with people, many people where leveling. That also increase the enjoyment, but that is much lower now.
Anyway, I am not here to address the F2P approach. It is not an approach I would have gone for, so why should I have to tell you how to get those people to buy the game (not the expansion, the game!). So your question, how to get F2P players to buy the game should be addressed to Anet, not to me.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Use your predictions or your maths (like einstein) to give me the solution/future

If you mean, how can you earn enough money with the B2P model. Luckily for you the calculation for that is already in the Excel. While that is obviously just a calculation based on the numbers we have.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Edit: You are simply arguing with vayne and mad about what is ’’right’’ and talk ‘’general stuff’’ so the conversations go on in circles and the thread stays in the first page .

The conversation with Vayne is indeed going into circles, I give you that. I don’t care for it to be on the first page. 3 days after I posted it, it went to the 3th page and I forgot about it but later noticed somebody commented it and so I answer. I am sorry for answering people who comment in a thread I post :s You want me to ignore you? Just let me know.
Not to mention that mad said he would update the numbers every month, so there would not even be need for me, even if I wanted to.
Honestly, I rather see the people simply talking about the long-term numbers in general that only having this discussion with me about the cash-shop focus. But when people comment to me, I react back, later (like now) or sooner.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

if ppl didnt agree with me , the thread would be dead

Lol, in the OP I already said most people who were still on the forums would likely NOT agree with me. The main reasons these types of threads are up a longer time is because many people clearly are interested in those numbers. (Not so much the cash-shop focus discussion). That is also why we see a thread about the quarterly reports almost every time they get released.

Mylerian.9176:

Can we a get a cliff notes version lol.

Feel free to make one

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

So luckily I also see approaches that are not going for a cash-shop focus approach.

Single player games no longer use the expansion model although that worked very well in the past. They now use DLCs, and DLCs are not expansions, they are usually tiny and almost never justify their cost. Even worse, companies make DLCs as requirements for other DLCs, so in order to experience DLC 2, you must first buy/play DLC 1. The average gamer needs to understand that DLC is probably the worst business model in the industry for single player games. And you seem happy that many games continue to follow that model… B2P in our era equals DLC, not expansions, and DLCs are completely anti-consumer. Players everywhere need to STOP BUYING DLC.

Now that single player is out, let’s see the effects of expansions on multiplayer games.
Just see at how much of a disadvantage someone is in PVP or WvW without owning HoT and no access to elite specializations. How much at a disadvantage someone is for not having HoT in fractals, or for their builds because they can’t access HoT stats. Enough said. Expansions fracture player bases, expansions are artificially forced on players.

~

“They now use DLCs, and DLCs are not expansions”
No but in many ways a season pas is. In games where you have maps a DLC is usually one or 3 maps. A season pas gives you multiple DLC’s what combines to something similar to an expansion.

Sure there are still a few negatives about that approach. Look for example at Battlefield 1, it had two expansions that did not only introduce new maps but basically a new subject / theme. That is something you often miss with DLC’s. But other then that season passes are pretty much expansions.

“Now that single player is out, let’s see the effects of expansions on multiplayer games.”
Same is true for cash-shops, normals DLC (if we do not see that as an expansion) or a sub.

Cash-shop always take something from the game, so you are missing that. In GW2 that is mainly the best cosmetics what removes the joy of going for them in-game. DLC’s have the same effect as expansion, they remove a part of the game and sub take away time.

So the effect that you take something away is there in all the cases. The question is, what is best for the quality of the game.

maddoctor.2738:

And finally on the idea of grind due to the cash shop:
You are saying that cash shops lead to grind, I disagree completely. Cash shops that allow you to buy items with gold lead to grind, if you could only buy cash shop items with cash then you couldn’t grind for them, could you? The problem with the so called grind in GW2 isn’t with the cash shop but with the gold->gem conversion. Games that have simple cosmetic cash shops do not feel grind-y (you can’t grind to get those items), offer no advantage of abilities/skills, and do not fracture the player base on multiple types of content. It’s the most consumer friendly approach.

Cash-shop focus! And yes that is in relationship to GW2. Cash-shop focus does not have to lead to grind in a more general sense.

If I would have to find a way to describe the effect of cash-shop focus in a way that it is applyable to almost any game I think the term ‘frustrating’ would be best.

A cash-shop focus leads to frustration.

In a P2W shop the frustration is that you are getting unfairly killed because people simply have better weapons.

In a game where you can convert cash to in-game money and the other way around you will usually see that to get the items you would normally want, you need to grind a lot so that is frustrating.

But even if you take that away, the company needs to make money so is likely to still put best (looking) items into the cash-shop if they want to earn their money with the cash-shop. Then it is frustrating that you might complete all that hard content, but other people have way better stuff because they did just buy it. It’s removes the game-value from in-game items.

BTW, you say “ buy items with gold lead to grind”. Like I said, grind is in perspective to how GW2 implements it yes, and this is a big part of it, but it’s also the other way around. The fact that you can buy gold means the content will be created so you want to buy gold.. aka grindy. If there would be no good reason to buy the gold it would not make them enough money.

Games that focus on a cash-shop, and sell cosmetics but where you can not convert the currency might not be grindy, but still ‘frustrating’ or / and / by missing game-play.

But it is good to see that we both agree that in GW2, the cash-shop focus makes the game grindy.

Vayne.8563:

It doesn’t matter if you personally like cash shops or not, because there are too many people who simply don’t care. Pay to win is a different matter, but cash shops in and of themselves, it’s normalized now, whether or not there was a time when they weren’t.

And this industry changes very very quickly. There was a time when people thought castor oil was a good treatment for being sick but I wouldn’t want to go back to it.

Point 1. Games are more competitive now.
Point 2. Games cost more to make now.
Point 3. Games out now have to compete with other games.
Point 4. Games have serious investors now who need to be fed.

It would be interesting to see the entire game budget for Guild Wars 1 and compare it to the entire game budget for Guild Wars 2.

It doesn’t matter what happened 10 years ago, because there’s simply no guarantee the same formula would work today. And as it stands, you’d have to not only be willing to take the risk it will work, but you’d have to convince investors it would work.

And even subscription games now generally have cash shops. You’re fighting a losing battle here and your main points are they used to be able to do it and that you don’t like it.

It’s not a strong platform.

I will say this again, not sure why I have to repeat this for over 3 years. I talk about a FOCUS on the cash-shop. Not every cash-shop is the same. If GW2 had a cash-shop as we see in WoW everything would be fine. But it does not because GW2 is focusing on the cash-shop to generate income. Blizzard is not.

When you say “Pay to win is a different matter” you are missing a thing. Those cash-shop worked as well and where used a lot. Until people start to get more and more irritated by them.

A cash-shop is bad when it has a negative effect on the game itself. Something you do see when companies focus on the cash-shop to generate it’s money. In a game like GW2 a cosmetic cash-shop like we have here is just as bad as a P2W one. In fact for GW2 it might be even worse because GW2 has such a huge focus on cosmetics. Any MMORPG does, but GW2 shines in this perspective. People don’t use the nickname fashion wars for nothing.

It will be a matter of time before people get frustrated of these shops as well, just as they did with the P2W shops.

Yes things changed. But in multiple ways what means that one positive might level out one negative.
For example:

Point 1. Games are more competitive now. (Well I don’t even think this is true. as long as we have Internet there have been competitive games)
Point 2. Games cost more to make now. (Yes, while the money you can make with them has also increased)
Point 3. Games out now have to compete with other games. (True, so quality should also be good or people might go for another game.)
Point 4. Games have serious investors now who need to be fed. (Same as point 3)

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Devata.6589:

There are also other ways. Honestly I would not be surprised as Blizzard is planning to move to a system as I am asking for with WoW. They already made it so you can pay the sub with in-game gold (not sure how much gold and how hard to get that) and are moving their expansion-releases closer to each other.

Ppl are FORCED play online for 6-8 hours a day for 13-16 days to gather those 100.000 -110.000 gold and get the sub free (and the price goes up in most servers)
And they have cash shop too (without the ability to buy them with gold)

Your idea … HAH !
My idea …. say that you idea …. is lame :P

That is not my idea, In fact I would not do this because it could also mean people feel the pressure to grind gold with all the negative effects I mentioned here.

Having said that, by having that option to get play-time without a sub and moving expansions closer together they do shift some of the focus (from an income perspective) of the sub towards the expansions. That is a step into the direction that I am talking about here yes. I do not know how much further they will go with that, but it is a step into that direction.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Devata.6589:

Then there is Overwatch from the same developer. That game has an initial sale, it does have a cash-shop but only sells loot-boxes you also get in-game. Now I do think cosmetics are bad in a MMO because it’s an element of the game, it’s part of the RPG experience, but considering Overwatch is a shooter that is not really a thing. However the way I see it, their long-term plans to earn money is not the cash-shop or the game (as there will be no expansions) but E-sports and merchandise. An approach I love because it has zero negative impact on the game itself.

The cash shop and and a portion of those money will go/funnel the E-sport .
The company looses money when they have to rent/organise the place for the next tournament and give away the rpize money to the winners .
They will get some money when the attract new players (buy once the account) and theres a humogous chance they will keep playing and spending MORE real money compared to the price of the box in the longterm via the gemstore

I don’t claim to know the details on how to generate money with e-sports. But I do think companies can make money with it by sponsorships and so on. I do not think it just cost them money. At least when they are able to get it popular. Similar to how normal sporting-events raise a lot of money.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

b) And when new games will be realeased , you will link theses silly threads with those silly predictions that ppl love to buy the x-packs and try to boss around their forums to become a Diva (dont steal my job)

Just like you linked me the thread of the Crysis 2 forums ….with the comment :
There wont be a 3rd crysis if the game dont focus on the hardcores …otherwise if will fail like Castlevania…(and 2 other games) , rather than succed such as this…this.this…

If you dont have ideas to allure those 3 million F2P account , about how to buy the x-pack ….dont talk so highly about you or your predictions , while you pretent to ‘’know something’’ , in this 4th Devata megathread , otherwise i will w8 you next year to start all over again :P

You still find it hard to swallow that I also had that Crysis 4 prediction correct? There where a few more, like how I predicted that the sub-based model for all those MMO’s would fail.

But if it does give you a good feeling to know I can also be right, here is a prediction I had wrong. Also for Final Fantasy XV I said the sub-model would not work. However it looks like that one is doing just fine.

I am not sure what mega threads, but I don’t see a reason to make another thread about this. In a way this was my closing thread for this subject because I talked about it so much. I might comment in some other threads but should not be a lot.

About how to get expansions to sale again. I think it will be really hard, but I did make a suggestion for that. The only way I can see that happen is if they make it and market it as basically being GW3. But they then also better get that right, else there is really no way to recover from it if they don’t manage to make something that people indeed see as GW3 (or again have something that means people leave in the first half year. And you know, a grindy game will do that).

maddoctor.2738:

You mean in the 3 quarters before HoT. Well you should then see if those sales aligned up. I don’t think the sales where active during the full 3 quarters but don’t know for sure.

I attached an image with clearer quarters. Let’s find out what happened at each quarter so this mystery is solved once and for all!

The lowest point of the game’s revenue (pre HoT) was at Q4 2014 which was around the end of LS2. Then it started going up with a bigger bump on Q2 2015, then declined again until Q3 2015, then HoT was released. So we have to see what happened at Q1, Q2 and Q3 of 2015. There was no content released during those 3 quarters at all, so let’s see the Sales!

Q1: January 2015-March 2015
HoT was first announced on January 2015
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-first-guild-wars-2-expansion/
there was also a massive 75% sale:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/this-weekend-guild-wars-2-at-pax-south-an-unprecedented-sale-and-double-xp-for-all/
and gem store sales:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pact-fleet-survival-pack-black-lion-chest-update-and-end-of-season-sale-continues-in-the-gem-store/
character slot sales:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/weekend-sale-character-slot-expansions/
and March sales, one new item discounted every day:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/march-daily-sales-in-the-gem-store/
and another 75% off sale!
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pax-east-is-coming/
There are more but I’ll stop here as we can clearly see Q1 2015 had the expansion reveal AND loads of sales (including 75% off 2 times). It didn’t really need new content to keep it up.

Still, between the 3 quarters, Q1 was the weakest in revenue.

Let’s go to Q2 2015 where the little bump is.
First we got the LS2 complete pack:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/new-hairstyles-rainbow-unicorn-finisher-living-world-season-2-complete-pack-and-stronghold-beta-sale-in-the-gem-store/
so players who missed LS2 could buy it (with gems) and experience it.
and…
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-is-available-for-pre-purchase/
Pre-purchase of HoT started towards the end of Q2 2015 which is probably why we got that bump. It’s not surprising that there was that bump there during pre-purchase, is it? I wonder though, was that bump smaller than expected because they refunded everyone who paid during their 2 massive sales?

For all players who purchased the Guild Wars 2 core game from our website and registered it between January 23, 2015 and June 16, 2015 in anticipation of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, we will automatically refund what you paid for the core game should you decide to pre-purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns from our website or in-game store any time through July 31, 2015.

So those who bought the game during those two massive 75% sales got refunded… Are refunds showing on the revenue?

And finally we got to Q3 2015, the final quarter before HoT release
First as every year an anniversary sale:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/anniversary-sale/
and some other minor gem store promotions.

I agree that the game-sales could be a reason and maybe the cash-shop sales a little. On the other hand, there are sales all the time.

As far as I know the pre-order is being counted at the quarter of the launch (not 100% sure, could not find an official statement, answer should be in one of the NCsoft streams I think) so they can also not make a difference.

Then the S2 pack. Well those that where active did not have to buy it because they already had it. That means it was mostly interesting for new or returning player, now what was a reason for players to return or start playing? The only news there was, was the expansion. So even if S2 pack sales where a reason, it was mainly because of the expansion announcement.

This is an element you seem to forget. Obviously much of the money in those quarters came from the cash-shop, and the game sales as that are the only way they could make money. But don’t forget that the news of the expansion might have been a big driver for those sales.

It’s hard to really proof the one of the other, but only for Q1 you have a big list of sales that could drive the sales even without the expansion-news. Q2 and Q3 where not that different from your average quarter.

Vayne.8563:

@ Devata

Except for HOT which many people complained didn’t offer content for them. There are people who play neither the HOT zones, nor raid. So if they were in small guilds, what did HOT offer them? The revenant and an elite spec?

To that end, WvW players didn’t think HoT delivered that much either.

Expansions, as I’ve said many times, don’t guarantee a lot of content for everyone. They simply guarantee some content.

There’s also the issue of price for the content that’s available which a lot of people seemed to have an issue with.

Just having an expansion is not the answer. In fact, some MMOs have been killed by expansions.

Obviously an expansion does not guarantee good content, nor does LS. Nothing does. However an expansion-based approach should give you the time and ability to just focusing on making quality content. Not content that is compromised because of you having to get people to buy stuff from the cash-shop.

Vayne.8563:

But the point I was making is a lot of us older gamers are uncomfortable with cash shops, because we didn’t grow up with them.

Devata played a game on computer 10 years ago which had a cash shop, but it was far less intrusive. The game wasnt’ centered around the cash shop. My point has always been times and expectations change. The cost of making games has changed. The competition has change. Players expectations have changed.

Saying I don’t like the cash shop because a ten year old game didn’t center as much around the cash shop and was still successful is irrelevant, unless you can prove that game with the same strategy would have made it today.

Yeah, that is of-course also a way to dismiss the discussion. It’s just that I am used to something and that is it.

That is to easy. I have given many reasons why I think it’s bad. It can also be used in a not so bad way.

That cash-shops are being used a lot does not make them good. In fact they already have a bad name for P2W. They where used a lot and where all P2W, it took a while before everybody started to dislike them for that.

I am just saying that cosmetics cash-shops can be just as bad, especially in a game like GW2. The fact that it’s being used a lot does not mean it’s good.

maddoctor.2738:

Sykper.6583:

Currently playing Titanfall 2, I can get random cosmetic rewards on a whim, but they recently introduced new ‘Prime’ Titans that I can pay a bit of cash for that give me an alternative, different cosmetic look to my Titan which carries different voiceovers and executions.

It’s also worth mentioning that Titanfall 2 DLCs are completely free (at least so far) and there is no paid season pass, unlike how it is for other popular shooters. They expect to make money through those cosmetic rewards and offer their new gameplay content for free.

Which to me looks exactly how the LS1 of GW2 was. Free content/gameplay updates with lots of cosmetic-only paid updates. We’ll see how it goes and if in the end it’s better than the paid DLC approach. (paid DLC = paid expansions)

There are also other ways. Honestly I would not be surprised as Blizzard is planning to move to a system as I am asking for with WoW. They already made it so you can pay the sub with in-game gold (not sure how much gold and how hard to get that) and are moving their expansion-releases closer to each other.

Then there is Overwatch from the same developer. That game has an initial sale, it does have a cash-shop but only sells loot-boxes you also get in-game. Now I do think cosmetics are bad in a MMO because it’s an element of the game, it’s part of the RPG experience, but considering Overwatch is a shooter that is not really a thing. However the way I see it, their long-term plans to earn money is not the cash-shop or the game (as there will be no expansions) but E-sports and merchandise. An approach I love because it has zero negative impact on the game itself.

And then there are of-course the many more traditional games that also work with the traditional B2P-game.

So luckily I also see approaches that are not going for a cash-shop focus approach.

Vayne.8563:

Or maybe it’s endemic to the way the world works now and that’s why more and more games, like Archeage, and BDO are putting more and more emphasis on cash shops, in many of the same ways. People don’t copy the formula if it doesn’t work . At the very least you should realize that.

Sounds to me like you’re not paying attention to what’s actually been going on.

There was a time companies / people did not believe in cash-shops. Then there was a time that almost every company wanted to go for a P2P MMO, and they pretty much all failed.

The fact that people and companies copy things don’t mean they are good. Companies don’t know have all knowledge and in fact, in a pursue for money they very often make bad decisions. There are many examples of this.

The thing with the cash-shop approach is that it’s a risk-low approach. Even is sales of the game (or numbers of players) are low, you still get a pretty easy flow of income. If the games fails you can basically keep two people in place to put in some cash-shop junk so the investment will be payed back or losses will be as low as possible.

This is likely also one of the reason the many games where P2P failed, moved to a cash-shop model.

Now with a B2P game, is the game sells bad you will have lost a big part of your investment. There is not other income and an expansion will likely sell bad as well.

On the other hand, you can create a quality better game and if so if you manage to get a good player-base you have the potential to earn much more in the long term. (GW2 had that potential, not all games do)

Sadly many companies and investors prefer to go for the quick money. They don’t care if a game dies of after 3 years. They just invest in the next game and do the same trick again. If you can do that is a risk-low way you are golden from a financial perspective.

However, I prefer to see the company that believes in their product, that go’s for the long-term and so wants to create the best game where no compromises are made for the payment-model. The quality of the game should pay itself.

That is because I also like to look at it from the perspective of the gamer, not only form the perspective of the financial people. Now I know that a company needs to make money, but if you do this right you can make even more money. So there is a gain for both. I am very sorry for also looking at my own interest and so asking for something that can be best for both.

That something is happening a lot does not mean it’s the best you can have, or is the one you should settle for.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

I know this idea that the lack of content is the biggest problem, is an the accepted idea on this forum, but the numbers just don’t support that theory.

Maybe we have a disagreement about the numbers due to when we define that the “lack of content” started. I call the entire LS2 as “lack of content” too. Why? Because it catered to some part of the player base but not to everyone, it didn’t have varied enough content.

But even then the 3 quarters after it had even less content and did have higher results. So how does that fit into the ‘lack of content is the problem’ theory. I mean, if that lack of content is the reason you would still expect it to drop even lower.

Not to mention Q3 2016. So we only have S1 to show that that content does keep people playing, however S1 was in the first 1,5 year when the game was still fresh so it’s hard to say that simply the reason that GW2 was still a fresh game was not the reason for higher results?

Besides, you should also not forget that expansions are great at delivering content for everybody.

[quote=6428783;maddoctor.2738:][quote=6428783;maddoctor.2738:]

IndigoSundown.5419:

Devata.6589:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Devata.6589:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Yep, fully agree. “If I had to pick one thing…” does not mean I would prefer to.

It’s never one thing, but there can be one main thing. Anyway, not sure what the one thing you pick here is? The F2P approach is what resulted in revenue drop?

The “one thing” from my prior post was disenfranchisement of players who chose not to buy HoT for whatever reason being locked out of both new content and the (deemed necessary due to power creep) Elite Specs.

Idk, we don’t have any numbers about how many of the people who where actively playing GW2 before HoT did buy HoT and how many did not and stopped playing around that time.

I do however think it would be strange. Maybe many people did grew into the idea of LS but don’t forget that LS is something they introduced after launch so if people should have any expectations before launch going into the game, it would be that they did get expansions just like GW1 did.

Anyway, we do not have those numbers so hard to say how many people did leave because they did not want to buy HoT and so missed part of the new content. Personally I don’t think it are that many.

No numbers? Yeah, it’s a WAG based on the many posts about refusing to buy HoT. Of course you don’t believe it because it doesn’t fit into your WAG about the cause of the recent drop in revenue after several quarters of relative stability. Psychologically speaking, my WAG is based on people feeling indignant and left due to having to pass a pay wall to continue to be vested in the product while believing that the XPac was not worth the money. Your WAG is based on people connecting perceived grind to the store, which I rarely see referenced by anyone but you. What I do see is some people blaming grind on gem conversion to gold.

I find it hard to believe that this player-base would be willing to wait a year for a new XPac with nothing in between XPacs. The complaints about nothing to do started within a couple of weeks after HoT dropped. I also find it hard to believe that any MMO company is going to be willing to forego store revenue. None of them do. Even in the 500# gorilla game, the items sold in the store could have been put in the game as rewards, and that game charges for XPAc’s and taps your credit card every month.

You missed a part of the thread I think. Maddoctor came up with data that strongly suggest most of the active players did buy HoT.

So far for that.

If an expansion is not able to keep people busy for more then a few weeks, that is a problem of the expansion. A good expansion should be able to keep people at least busy for a year. Also I did say I was in favor of a patch in-between. Honestly a complete LS would be fine but I don’t think that is reasonable when going for the B2P approach. Most attention should then go to the expansion. You know, so you can create a good expansion that keeps people busy for at least a year.

I do not know if companies are willing to drop it. There was a time that companies did not believe in F2P games.. Times can change.
Anyway, I don’t say they have to remove it completely. Best would if they only sold ‘out of the game’ things. Like race changer, server-transfer, total make-over, additional char-slots, race changer. That sort of stuff would be fine.
There is a big difference between having a cash-shop and focusing on it. Many of those sub games might have a cash-shop, but it plays a very small role compared to the number of items you get in-game by playing content.

Don’t get me wrong, in a game that has a sub and sells expansions like WoW, I would rather see no cash-shop at all. But still. It has 10 mounts, 12 mini’s and 3 helms. You can not compare that to a cash-shop like that of GW2. One cash-shop is not the other cash-shop. It’s the cash-shop focus I talk about not the cash-shop itself. If GW2 would have the cash-hop like that ‘500# gorilla game’ and have most other items available behind content in the game you would not hear me complain.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

Back to statistics. It is good to see that indeed the biggest part of the active player-base did buy the expansion. So the fact that people had to buy an expansion does not seem to be a factor.

No, but the lack of content before Heart of Thorns reduced significantly that active player-base. Expansions are good and all, but if you don’t release constant updates to keep the players interested there won’t be anyone to buy the expansion. I’d rather they slow down the expansion and allocate more people to the living world and less to the expansion, so the living world gets quality updates at a good pace.

I don’t really care how long it will take them to release the next expansion, if it’s 1 year or 2 years, the important part is to keep players interested in the time between them.

“No, but the lack of content before Heart of Thorns reduced significantly that active player-base.” Where do you base this on? Again, looking at the results, they did get up before HoT after the announcement of HoT. They where higher in that period then there where during LS2.

I know this idea that the lack of content is the biggest problem, is an the accepted idea on this forum, but the numbers just don’t support that theory.

For me the reason the expansion should take 1 to 1,5 years has two reasons. One, to give people something to play. In a way that is similar to why you want the LS. You can’t let them wait to long.

The secondr reason is a financial reason. For ‘my’ model (B2P) to work you can’t wait much longer then 1,5 years. A company needs to make money. So when you take longer you will need a sub-model or more focus on the cash-shop. I don’t have to explain again why I think that is bad I guess

I would want them to have one bigger patch right in-between the expansions and you could have a small story leading from one expansion to the other expansion (with the bigger patch in-between). Really small. A new house, a new road that is being build, some new dialog and so on.

In my opinion that should work fine. You have the expansion itself that should be able to keep people busy for at least a year. They have a next expansion to look out to and a small story and a bigger patch right in the middle. I think that should be enough to keep people busy.

Ever wondered if to many LS patches can also not be a problem? People might feel like they have to do all those things, making the game feel like a job? That was for sure true with LS1 when it was all temporary content.

Vayne.8563:

Yeah and all those million times I answered the same.

Yes back when GW1 launched most other similar games where P2P and so GW1 was unique with it’s true B2P model. However today most modern MMO’s are using the cash-shop model (some with, some without having to buy the game) so GW2 would still be pretty unique if it used a true B2P model.

The fact that it uses the cash-shop model makes it less unique on that frond, what means it has a lot of competition on that frond.

“Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?”

Probably similar to the number of multi-player fantasy games that do not have a cash-shop or B2P model today. Very little to none.

So that model would still make is pretty unique. It was a selling point back then and would be a selling point now.

You’re still missing my point. Let me put it differently.

Guild Wars 1 existed at a time when there were about half a dozen multiplayer fantasy games. Maybe there were 6 and it was the only one that didn’t have a sub.

Today there aren’t six. There aren’t 12. There are probably 50 mmos, maybe more, most of which are free to play.

You do research and so understand the difference between buy to play and free to play and cash shop and what not. Not everyone does. In fact, I’d wager most people don’t.

So for you, the buy to play cash shop thing is a thing, because you’re thinking about it.

However, if a person born into this world today has experienced Facebook games and MMOs with cash shops, if they started with say Runes of Magic or Maple Story, when they come here, this is heaven to them.

They expect a cash shop. Even sub games have cash shops. But here the cash shop isn’t pay to win, and in many other games it is.

The cash shop is pervasive now. There are people who want to spend money to get stuff rather than play the game. My sons are both like that, because that’s the environment they grew up in.

They see a new game, they buy the game and then spend money on downloadable content or in the cash shop or whatever. That’s how they’re trained to think.

Not having the ability to do that could hurt the game, because people will have less options. As nuts as it sounds, not everyone wants to play a game they’re playing.

They’d rather take short cuts with cash.[/quote]

There might be more games now (while MMO’s where also very popular back then) however there is also a bigger group of potential players. It’s hard to know how many games there are vs how many potential players. But it’s also not that if the numbers of games is 10 times bigger, you have a 10 times smaller potential player-base.

You also say that many people don’t want to play the games these day, just buy items. I find that hard to believe but even if it’s true then it still might not be a player-base you want to go for IF you want a game to be successful over a longer period. Something I expect an MMO-developer wants. Because if people don’t play your game there is also less binding them to your game.

Then the idea that this cash-shop approach is what they are used to and so not going for that approach would mean they would not get into the game. While it’s true that many of people now play those F2P games, they also play games like Overwatch, Battlefield 1 and many other B2P games (Some with a minor cash-shop or even without). So they are used to the B2P model. The idea that they are not able to understand or are not interested in a B2P MMO is imho false.

But let’s say you are right on all these points. The potential player-base is much smaller, there are many people who don’t want to play a game, just buy items in a game and some people are just not interested in a B2P MMO.

Even then, there might in total still be a lot of people who are interested in an B2P MMO (with no or almost no cash-shop) and would go for that. And because GW2 would have been pretty unique with that approach it would still have a pretty big potential player-base for itself.

While it now has to share that pool of potential players with the many F2P (with or without having to buy the game and expansions) MMO’s out there.

maddoctor.2738:

Some interesting statistics on player retention, it’s important to note that it’s hard to 0 those due to how they are earned and how they are spent:

Thanks, that is some interesting data.

While it might be not be the same for everybody, I can say something about my personal experience in the new HoT maps.

The first map (VB) I completed, however when I did go into the next map (AB) I had not yet unlocked all the masteries to complete the next map. With only about half of the map available, you also have a harder time unlocking the masteries you need, so by the time I had completed the map as far as I was able to (about 50% i think?) I did go for the next map (TD). Again I missed abilities to unlock the full map. After having unlocked that as far as I could I still did not have the masteries to go back and complete the maps. So I could not unlock AB or TD.

I did know the last map (Dragon’s Stand) was more like a big event and so I did not even go in there.

If I was to get those masteries it would mean I had to go do repeating events in the maps just to level the masteries, what would feel like a grind to me so I did go back to the old maps and to the Guild Hall. However that did also result in my not getting the masteries.

If I translate that back to the original way of leveling in an MMO including GW2. It is important that if you are in a level 60 map, by the time you complete most of that map you are of the level needed to go into the next map that has a higher level. If you complete the map but are still way to low to go into the next map that is bad. The HoT maps do have this problem.

So I had the expansion but still was locked out of content. Maybe I made bad decisions with selecting what masteries I was leveling, but imho that should not make a difference.

Back to statistics. It is good to see that indeed the biggest part of the active player-base did buy the expansion. So the fact that people had to buy an expansion does not seem to be a factor.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Wow guys, where do you find the time and motivation to write such long comments and discussions? It’s even hard to follow the thread it’s so long…

Motivation, well back in the day it I tried to help the game in my way. That was the motivation back then I guess.

I did make many claims back then and most would not have it’s effects until now. So while I pretty much left the forum a year ago I did feel it was just decent behavior to come back now and let people have there go at the numbers and me for that matter, looking back at what was said back then and the numbers we have now.

The reason why they are so long is because I always try to explain what I am saying. Just saying ‘x is stupid’ is not very useful. So I am like ‘I do not like x, I think x is the result of y. Look at source z, so x can best be solved by doing a’. Then you get long comments.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Devata.6589:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Yep, fully agree. “If I had to pick one thing…” does not mean I would prefer to.

It’s never one thing, but there can be one main thing. Anyway, not sure what the one thing you pick here is? The F2P approach is what resulted in revenue drop?

The “one thing” from my prior post was disenfranchisement of players who chose not to buy HoT for whatever reason being locked out of both new content and the (deemed necessary due to power creep) Elite Specs.

Idk, we don’t have any numbers about how many of the people who where actively playing GW2 before HoT did buy HoT and how many did not and stopped playing around that time.

I do however think it would be strange. Maybe many people did grew into the idea of LS but don’t forget that LS is something they introduced after launch so if people should have any expectations before launch going into the game, it would be that they did get expansions just like GW1 did.

Anyway, we do not have those numbers so hard to say how many people did leave because they did not want to buy HoT and so missed part of the new content. Personally I don’t think it are that many.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

In the one hand you are saying that the next x-pack will sold less x-pack because ppl are fed up with the grind to gold>gems and wont buy it …
And if they follow the formula of GW1 (shorter 8-12 months x-packs , the game will survive……..) .

And when some1 else say to you that , ppl dont want to pay real money to buy x-packs and that will create backlash just like in HOT (price too high) … you give the exact oposite answer that is sold good and the population liked it (exept the content draught) …
that why NCsoft said that they will make shorter scheduled x-packs

I could not translate the rest so will just comment to this. Obviously they will have to make a good expansion else you still have a problem. It’s how Vayne talks about how there are multiple problems and that is correct. However if you have a good expansion but the content is grindy you still scare people away. This expansion-based model is not the holy grail that makes any game by definition good.

Then about why I expect the next expansion to sell bad while I did say they should have gone for a expansion-based model.

In my opinion Anet did already alienate many people with their approach before HoT (because of the grind), something they might not have done if they did go with the expansion-based model from the beginning.

Now HoT was their first expansion and their opportunity to make it right. Because as I see it many of the old players are likely to come back and have a look at the first expansion (So HoT) hoping to find they enjoy the game more or longer this time. However, if they get bored by the game again in the first half year after the expansion they are not likely to come back again. That is why I said I expect the next expansion to not sell well.

I also don’t say that switching to the expansion-based model at this time will still do any good (That had to be done before, and is why I stopped being active on this forum a year ago) because people have left and are not very likely to come back. The only way I can see them getting people back is if they can market it as basically GW3.

maddoctor.2738:

Behellagh.1468:

Wait, sanity check says that’s wrong so lets say $3.88 per month per player.

Yeah that’s far more reasonable, 3.88 per year is way too low.

I found this link which is far more recent (July 2016): http://massivelyop.com/2016/08/25/superdatas-july-2016-data-show-guild-wars-2-surging-pokemon-go-on-top/

Weird huh?

Very strange indeed. Especially because we now have the numbers of Q3 and they are lower then those of Q2. So how could GW2 be ‘new to the list’ if we now know results where lower then before.

Also if you go to the source site now https://www.superdataresearch.com/us-digital-games-market/ you see the information from October and GW2 is off the list. You would expect the numbers to be higher. October had more S2 and Halloween.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Yep, fully agree. “If I had to pick one thing…” does not mean I would prefer to.

It’s never one thing, but there can be one main thing. Anyway, not sure what the one thing you pick here is? The F2P approach is what resulted in revenue drop?

Vayne.8563:

Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.

Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.

Ah yeah, but now we are kinda mixing up two things. Not really your fault because GW2 has the somewhat different approach of the expansion also being the game.

Anyway, yes they said that the numbers of F2P players that did also buy the game was way lower then they expected. So from that extend you can say sales are also lower.

But I was looking at it from the perspective of a real expansion, a way to retain players. That is one of the elements of the Excel remember.

With the launch of HoT Anet did go for 2 new things.. The expansion and the F2P. I still have to see any source that those expansion sales itself where bad.. as in players who did play the game already. The F2P approach however did not work out as they hoped, not many of those people did buy the expansion. Thing is, they did mainly see the original GW2, not the HoT part. So it’s hard to blame HoT for that.

But yes, if you do consider those sales as well then it might have sold less then they hoped for. However from the perspective of retaining players or the expansion itself you should not look at that.

We are not talking about their F2P approach here are we?

IndigoSundown.5419:

There is little evidence that an overwhelming desire for an XPac-only business model is a driving force in the revenue numbers dropping.

I said the grind is to blame, and the grind is created by the cash-shop focus. Basically I said the grind is what burns people out and why I predicted they would leave. Something I said indeed until about 12 months ago when I said that making any more suggestions would be useless from that moment on as Anet would need to be working on them already because else they would not be in-time before people would leave in the half year after HoT.

Now you might not like this theory, but the prediction I made based on it is spot on. The thing is that many people complain about the problem they face (or they leave) and I try to look what is behind the problem.

Like it or not. But the people who fight of most complains and defend most decisions Anet made have supported the reason the numbers are down.. whatever reason that might be. So maybe it would be decent if those people would at least be a little more considerable of other ideas. (Not going to happen, ever. I know)

IndigoSundown.5419:

The shop has been there since launch.

Now watch this:

“Perceived Grind” has been in the game since launch, also.

This does not proof a correlation, but it might just be there.

Given the time it took to produce the XPac and its relative lack of success, I see little to support the OP’s contention that an XPac-only business model would be better for ANet.

If you compare 2 quarters together you are completely right and the cash-shop model would be much better. However, as always I looked at a longer period. The idea is that with the cash-shop focus you are losing more players overtime (because of the grind). Taking that into consideration that the cash-shop model is more profitable overtime. Of course only if you indeed manage to keep those players.

If you look where GW1 came from and where GW2 came from then you can see that GW2 lost way more of it’s initial player-base then GW1 did. That is also the comparison I did show in the Excel.

IndigoSundown.5419:

There were a myriad of complaints about HoT. Grind was one. There were also a lot of complaints about value-for-money, perceived slights to veteran players, bundling core with HoT and the nature of HoT’s content.

Obviously you need a good expansion. When you are suddenly forced to make one you because numbers are going down that is not good for the quality. (If only somebody suggested them to start building on an expansion soon enough). Anyway, the numbers where going down before HoT, so the complains about HoT are less relevant. But indeed there are more problems and they should all be solved.

IndigoSundown.5419:

If I had to pick a single factor for why revenues dropped, this would be it.

What makes perfect sense… Well, when you forget that revenues where dropping before HoT. If you continued that dropping line, revenues would be just as low or even lower then they are now.

IndigoSundown.5419:

We’ve had two content droughts, a 9+ month one pre_HoT release and another ~9 month one post release. This is also a strong contender for revenue drop-off. Bored players are unhappy players.

And the 9+ month one pre_HoT right afther the announcement of HoT, the revenue finally did go up again.

But I agree bored players are unhappy players. People take only so much of grind before it bores them out.

IndigoSundown.5419:

The game has aged. Many games drop revenue over time.

That is true. While a good expansion can do wonders. But your right aging is a factor as well.

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

@Just a flesh wound.3589 (and forum-bug-fix in one)
After my last comment to you I did a little google-search and found something I expected no to be available. But it was.

A chart that shows what the average user spends on a free to play game in a year. It even includes Guild Wars 2.

https://mmos.com/editorials/whats-a-free-to-play-user-worth
https://cdn.mmos.com/wp-content/gallery/editorials/MMO-ARPU-table-mmos.jpg

That is $3,88. (And that was a lot, GW2 was third with that number)
Now lets say that you sell an expansion once every 1,5 year and price it at €50,- (What is reasonable for a true B2P game). That means you could do with 1/8th of the player-base to earn about the same amount of money. (3,88 * 8 = 31,04 * 1,5 = 46,56).

However you can make a better game because you don’t have to mess with the games because you try to get people to sell stuff in-game. That means that overtime you are likely to lose less people (as we did see with GW1). So you can maintain that healthy income over a longer period of time.

Better game, and over-time better income. If the game is any good obviously.

For the millionth time, Guild Wars 1 had virtually no competition. You keep going back to it. Guild Wars 1 did it so we should be able to do it today.

There are a lot of things that happened ten years ago that couldn’t be repeated today.

Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?

Yeah and all those million times I answered the same.

Yes back when GW1 launched most other similar games where P2P and so GW1 was unique with it’s true B2P model. However today most modern MMO’s are using the cash-shop model (some with, some without having to buy the game) so GW2 would still be pretty unique if it used a true B2P model.

The fact that it uses the cash-shop model makes it less unique on that frond, what means it has a lot of competition on that frond.

“Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?”

Probably similar to the number of multi-player fantasy games that do not have a cash-shop or P2P model today. Very little to none.

So that model would still make is pretty unique. It was a selling point back then and would be a selling point now.

Edit: Said B2P where I did mean P2P. Fixed it.

Behellagh.1468:

So ~ about $46.50 per active player per year.

Yeah, I had to wrack my brains over that one as well, and make me second thought it.

I remember once calculating something that was also more in line with the $46,50 from your calculation (did that a few years ago so can’t remember the details). However that was the average between spending money on the cash-shop and buying a game. The idea was that a expansion-based game would be better at holding people so overtime it would result in more money while in the short term the cash-shop approach would be better. It was in a similar discussion as this one but without the data we have now. Anyway, for that reason I also first figured the $3,88 was to low.

However the $3,88 is the average for people playing, not for people spending. The article itself says that most money comes from less then 1% “a small subset of players (1% or less) that typically outspend the rest of the player-base combined.”.

With a little more searching I fount this source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-04-09-only-2-2-percent-of-free-to-play-users-ever-pay-report that says that only 2.2% of Free-to-Play players spend money.
Now while this might be different for GW2, it’s likely somewhere around that percentage (also taking the 1% statement into consideration).

Knowing that and going by your number of $46,50 average spending for any active GW2 player, it would mean that the average spending per year for those who in fact spend money would be $2113,63. Now it would still be a little lower because not all the money in the 112077 million skw are from the cash-shop, and that is what we are talking about. Also you could argue that because you had to buy GW2 people where also more likely to spend money in the cash-shop (In fact I did see multiple articles suggesting that) But even if we divide it by 2 you are still getting an average of > €1000,- per paying player.

So yeah, sanity check says that’s also wrong.

Now lets say the 3,88 is correct and we keep the 2,2% as percentage of people who do spend money. That means that the average money paying people are spending is about $176,36. That is still a lot, but if we then take into consideration that the 112077 million skw is not all from the cash-shop and that GW2 likely has more then the 2,2 percent then we get in more reasonable numbers. It’s impossible to get a good accurate number here, but if we divide it by two (like we did before) you get to a number of around $88,0

If we then also look to this source: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/269618/The_average_US_paying_mobile_game_player_spent_87_on_F2P_IAP_last_year.php is says that “In the U.S., people who spent money in their mobile games last year shelled out an average of $87 on in-app purchases in free-to-play mobile games: a figure that’s just $5 shy of the $92 average spend of PC and console game players.” So according to that article the average of people who in fact spend money if about $92.

Finally we get some consistency in the number.

However I must note that the article also says “The company notes that such a unique spending pattern doesn’t occur in the realms of traditional gaming, where around 28 percent of the audience makes up 90 percent of game sales.” what makes everything even more confusing. However there is no source so it’s hard to say where that 28% is based upon. It’s possible that includes the game-sales itself?

If we also look at the chart “Spend per player, top 25 mobile games (2015)” that shows average per player you see there are a few huge ones, but also that number 25 is already down to $6,50. So maybe those low numbers are not that strange after all?

Of course that still does not solve the question of why you come to 26.25 million players.

Reading the text below the chart again it starts with saying “Average dollar amount spend by a player in the last twelve months on top free-to-play on-line games, ending in March 2014”. That seems clear to me that they indeed mean per year, not per month. But then “Numbers calculated based on monthly transactions ~ and dividing the estimated total dollar earnings by the monthly active user base.”.

So the number $3,88 is based on a year, but they calculated it per month based on the active players in that month. You can then take the average of those 12 months, add them up and you get the average for the full year (the $3,88). The statement that that is the average for what people have spend over the year is then correct, however when you use that data to calculate the number of players you get a completely wrong number. Because active player x could be active on all 12 months and so counts 12 times.

Because there are some conflicting statement on the Internet maybe it would best to just mail them and ask them. But I think the way I explain it here is the most likely as it fits with most of the data you can find.

@Just a flesh wound.3589 (and forum-bug-fix in one)
After my last comment to you I did a little google-search and found something I expected no to be available. But it was.

A chart that shows what the average user spends on a free to play game in a year. It even includes Guild Wars 2.

https://mmos.com/editorials/whats-a-free-to-play-user-worth
https://cdn.mmos.com/wp-content/gallery/editorials/MMO-ARPU-table-mmos.jpg

That is $3,88. (And that was a lot, GW2 was third with that number)
Now lets say that you sell an expansion once every 1,5 year and price it at €50,- (What is reasonable for a true B2P game). That means you could do with 1/8th of the player-base to earn about the same amount of money. (3,88 * 8 = 31,04 * 1,5 = 46,56).

However you can make a better game because you don’t have to mess with the games because you try to get people to sell stuff in-game. That means that overtime you are likely to lose less people (as we did see with GW1). So you can maintain that healthy income over a longer period of time.

Better game, and over-time better income. If the game is any good obviously.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m not sure what game L2 is, but WoW is a financial giant with millions of subs paying each month ($15/month), paid expansions (~$60, about the same as what ANet charged), a cash shop and the ability to buy subs with gold (worth $20/month so even better for Blizzard than regular subs). It’s not to surprising with its billions (literally) flowing in to Blizzard that they can afford to “give away” mounts, minis, toys, etc, outside of their cash shop (they sell mounts in their cash shop too).

why I prefer the expansion-based model of GW1
Yes, a nice model if you can make it work. However Guild Wars 1 was a smaller game with a smaller staff. It was cheaper to make with its instanced content and only one race to design armor and animations for. It also had a cash shop towards the end of its supported years and even then it didn’t have mounts or quests that gave you mini pets, except for 1 or 2 farmed ones like the mini jingle bear (not counting birthday minis since you said quests). If Guild Wars 1 was the size and cost to produce that gw2 is, I have to wonder if it could have remained a mainly expansion model game or converted over to a cash shop priority to pay the bills.

So, excluding f2p and a game I don’t recognize, WoW has multiple sources of non expansion funds and Guild Wars 1 was a much smaller staffed, cheaper to make game that still didn’t have the side quests to get extra stuff you mention.

You do understand that WoW did BECOME a financial giant right? They had build the game way before it became that giant.

You are turning things around, like if they could build the game that way because it was a giant.

GW1 maybe was a smaller game with a smaller team, But GW2 had a much bigger audience. Being a bigger game does not only mean having more work to do, but if you are lucky it also means getting more money because of more players. GW2 started as the fastest selling MMO. So it had a huge scope of people / audience. If it had manage to hold more of them (by maybe giving out mounts as you put it, or as I put it, make getting those items a journey instead of a grind) and it would sell an expansion every 1 to 1,5 year it had made more money by now then it did with the current approach.

One part of the excel tries to calculate exactly that. I looks at how good GW1 was at maintaining people (well income results) paying overtime (with expansions) vs GW2 and calculates how much they would have earned if GW2 would be able to keep people bound (spending) to the game just as well as GW1 did. In that case GW2 would have made much more money.

Now that might be a calculation that is based on an alternate reality and so you don’t know how the games would have sold if it used the other model, but it does show that if GW2 was better at keeping people it would have earned more money. Not that you need a calculation to understand that.

So the idea that making those items available in-game would mean they could not make enough money is false, if it did mean it would help them to hold more players who would then buy an expansion every 1 / 1,5 year.

It’s about retaining your player-base and then it does not matter if they pay you with the cash-shop or by buying the expansions. However if one model results in less people overtime, you can expect lower results overtime.

Really, it’s false to think that the expansion-based model would not be able to support a game of this size.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Devata.6589:

Behellagh.1468:

Devata.6589:

Mostly the same. As you know I always talked about the cash-shop focus, how that would turn things into grind because items would be mainly available by grinding gold instead of having a nice journey to hunt for those items. How that would burn out people overtime and so in the longer term they would walk away.

That’s only for players too cheap to buy gems. The magnanimous nature of ANet providing the exchange made some believe that gold to gems is the proper way to buy from the gem shop. Of course this belief has caused the exchange rate to shoot up which then makes the gold “grind” more of an issue. So it’s a self-inflicted wound that keeps on wounding.

At least lately the exchange rate, outside of Gem Shop sales or new cool items, has been around 25-27g per 100 gems.

Because buying items with cash (directly from the cash-shop or by trading it for gold and then buying it) is playing the game?
Is in any way fun?

The way I did play other MMO’s was (outside doing quest) chasing those rewards. Special skins, toys, ranger / hunter pets, mini’s / companions and mounts.

Getting those involved completing quest-chains, completing dungeon, doing specific crafts (similar to how we now have scribing).

Sometimes there was some farming involved but overall it was a journey, it was fun collecting them. Buying them with cash.. or grinding gold to buy them is not fun.

So when you say ’That’s only for players too cheap to buy gems.’ you are missing the implications of this method of doing things. And that is exactly why I said the cash-shop focus results in grind and eventually bores people out.

Having those items in-game with fun mechanics makes the game fun, interesting and having plenty to do. When you focus on a cash-shop to generate items, you sell the bulk of those items for money (directly or indirectly) and so destroy that fun part of the game and turn it into a boring grind.

Again, that is why I always believed the cash-shop focus is bad for the game. It’s not so mutch the cash-shop that is the problem, but how the cash-shop focus effects the game.

Just out of curiosity, what MMOs were those and how did they fund their games?

Mainly L2 and WoW, both sub-games. But I don’t really like subs, F2P games have the problem I talk about here so thats also why I prefer the expansion-based model of GW1 so much.

The Chronicles of Spellborn was also great, that was F2P but started as sub, did not work out for them and so they went F2P but never really got support.

Behellagh.1468:

Devata.6589:

Mostly the same. As you know I always talked about the cash-shop focus, how that would turn things into grind because items would be mainly available by grinding gold instead of having a nice journey to hunt for those items. How that would burn out people overtime and so in the longer term they would walk away.

That’s only for players too cheap to buy gems. The magnanimous nature of ANet providing the exchange made some believe that gold to gems is the proper way to buy from the gem shop. Of course this belief has caused the exchange rate to shoot up which then makes the gold “grind” more of an issue. So it’s a self-inflicted wound that keeps on wounding.

At least lately the exchange rate, outside of Gem Shop sales or new cool items, has been around 25-27g per 100 gems.

Because buying items with cash (directly from the cash-shop or by trading it for gold and then buying it) is playing the game?
Is in any way fun?

The way I did play other MMO’s was (outside doing quest) chasing those rewards. Special skins, toys, ranger / hunter pets, mini’s / companions and mounts.

Getting those involved completing quest-chains, completing dungeon, doing specific crafts (similar to how we now have scribing).

Sometimes there was some farming involved but overall it was a journey, it was fun collecting them. Buying them with cash.. or grinding gold to buy them is not fun.

So when you say ’That’s only for players too cheap to buy gems.’ you are missing the implications of this method of doing things. And that is exactly why I said the cash-shop focus results in grind and eventually bores people out.

Having those items in-game with fun mechanics makes the game fun, interesting and having plenty to do. When you focus on a cash-shop to generate items, you sell the bulk of those items for money (directly or indirectly) and so destroy that fun part of the game and turn it into a boring grind.

Again, that is why I always believed the cash-shop focus is bad for the game. It’s not so mutch the cash-shop that is the problem, but how the cash-shop focus effects the game.

@Vayne
You said a lot, many things not really relevant I think, so I will go into what is relevant.

Vayne.8563:

Because all you were really talking about was the cash shop did this and there’s no evidence at all that that’s the case.

No, I did not say that. How many times do I have to repeat that? Yes I think it’s the cash-shop focus that results in grind what bores people / burns them out and make them run away eventually. Then they come back with the first expansion, but if they get bored again they leave usually forever.

Based on that idea I made the predictions. Now we are looking at the results. I still stand by my theory but am not saying the results proof the theory.

Vayne.8563:

Anet’s biggest mistake was pricing the expansion at $50 which people felt was too much for what they were getting.

Its fun how you complain about me making claims (that I did not make, I had a theory) while I cannot proof it, and you make one claim after another.

Results would likely be better in Q3 2016 according to you a few months ago. That claimed turned out to be false.

‘HoT did not do as well as predicted’. Still waiting for you to proof that claim.

‘Anet lost money on HoT.’ Still waiting for you to proof that claim.

‘Lack of content is the reason for low numbers’. Results suggest you are wrong.

‘Anet’s biggest mistake was pricing the expansion at $50’. Proof?

You are complaining that I cannot proof my theory. It’s an argument you use against most people in any debate. But at the same time you make many claims including ones that can be proven wrong.
Like I said before, you are really revealing yourself here as mainly basing your ideas on blind love what devalues all comments you ever made.

Anyway, about your latest claim. Yes many people complained about the price. I think the price would be good for a true expansion-based game. But for a mainly cash-shop game it’s way too much. I had hoped the price was an indication that they would change the model (what would validate the price), but they did not.

Vayne.8563:

Of course most games of this quality have either subs or “optional” subs, and so it’s not as greedy as it looks, but Anet forgot image is important.

Most big modern MMO’s don’t have subs anymore. It’s all F2P, and expansions on F2P games are usually lower. Ante did try to bed on two horses. They talked about the B2P model a lot (what would validate the higher price) but at the same time had a cash-shop model in place.

Vayne.8563:

What your fan base thinks about you is important.
So Anet then went on to nerf dungeon rewards, add a WvW with too much PvE in it that a lot of people didn’t enjoy, made the new zones grindy, much of which they fixed in April, but the horse was already out of the stable by then. Add the content drought to that and only raiders and SPvP people felt catered too. It was a perfect storm for casuals and veteran players to feel neglected. And when you add to that the problems with small guilds, that’s a whole different group of people.
Anet made a lot of mistakes, and if they hadn’t, they’d probably be about where they were, and your “prediction” would have come to nothing.

Maybe, but don’t forget that numbers where already going down before HoT. It’s not like everything was fine and then HoT came and messed things up.

Something was already wrong back then. If many of the problems you mention here would not have been in HoT but that underlying problem would not be solved, it’s very likely people would still be leaving imho,

Vayne.8563:

You’re taking credit in making a prediction you say you made, which you can’t back up, leaving out all the stuff you said which didn’t happen.

What? I linked it multiple times. Go read back.

Vayne.8563:

You made hundreds of statements

Mostly the same. As you know I always talked about the cash-shop focus, how that would turn things into grind because items would be mainly available by grinding gold instead of having a nice journey to hunt for those items. How that would burn out people overtime and so in the longer term they would walk away.

That has always been my main story. People even complained about me always saying the same.

Of course I did also talk about other things, like the temporary nature of S1, lack of traditional quest and a few other things. But this claim / statement has always be my main.

maddoctor.2738:

Indeed. I believe if they keep up the release schedule of LS3 then Q1 2017 will be very similar to Q4 2016 or at least I hope so.

One can hope, just don’t celebrate too early. Q1 2017 will give a better picture of the state of the game then Q4.

maddoctor.2738:

Shouldn’t the sales of the China version be included for the overall health of the game? Anet should be making money from the China version which I don’t think is included in those charts. Unless the China version is dead

I don’t know, I did find this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4oocj4/guild_wars_2_in_china_june_2016/
That suggest GW2 is pretty dead in China but I have no idea how reliable that post is.

It is just the first hit I had on Google.

I do notice that his complains are similar to mine (Grind instead of a fun way to obtain items). I did always hear that in China people are used to grindy games.

Obtena.7952:

Like I said, if any reasonable person would work with the information we have, they would realize they don’t have enough to make plausible theories.

The theory that I propose is not based on these results. I had that theory long before the results. The theory was simply based on experiences from the game, games in general and logic.

Obtena.7952:

You can almost make any outrageous theory you want and we have so little information that no one could refute it.

Well it’s based on something but sure, you cannot factually proof them or factually proof them wrong. But is that a reason to not talk about them? Many of the topics in this forum are suggestions. In a way that are all theories, they theorize that it would be good for the game to do / implement x.
You are using the same argument as Vayne, but imo it’s strange to look at things this way. You can say it’s impossible to refute anything without enough information but you can also dismiss any theory if you only accept something that you can factually proof.

Obtena.7952:

Frankly, I think if you want to wax academic with any theory you have, you can, but that’s not the impression I get from the purpose of this thread. My impression “See, I’m right. I predicted the downfall and it’s because of these bad things that I just happen to not like.”

The part ‘and it’s because of these bad things that I just happen to not like.’ is false. I do not say these numbers proof that.
Yes I predicted the dropping results based on my theory but that is not the same as saying the results proof the theory, nor do I say that.

Then I came back to say ‘See I’m right’ as you put it, is because I have been active in these forums for a long time and talk about how some things would be bad in the longer run according to me. More specific I talked about how the first half year after HoT was important and if they had not fix the problems by then people would leave again. Imo it is then just decent to come back and talk about the results when they are available. I would also have come back if they would be better and so it would be a ‘I was wrong’ thread. I am pretty sure you would not be complaining if that was the case.

Also people asked me directly or indirectly to stand by those numbers. Vayne always talked about how you cannot factually proof what the numbers will be. Last quarter he even told somebody else (similar how he told me in the past) to have a look at Q3 2016. Well now we have those numbers so I am here to talk about them. Just decent behavior. I am not the shoot and run type of person.

I understand that some people dislike that because it is now like I come to claim my victory, but that is not how it works. I was so active in these forums with the hope Anet would change so the numbers would be better. There is no victory in these numbers. Yes I was right but I preferred it to be wrong.