"To be clear, the current subscriber count hasn't been announced, nor has Square Enix ever shared this figure"
FFXIV is most popular in Asia. In the west - not so much. They didnt even bother with euro servers and blackmailed players with cash shop for that.
Also FFXIV was complete disaster and needed to be reworked which required significant additional funds. If you wonder how that affected SQix - just read their financial reports from that time.
GW2 sold 3,5m in first year, 3m in 6 months. And at some point in time SWTOR had 1 million players for 1 month. That would be at launch. But since then it had 2 rounds of layoffs, 2 rounds of server merges form initial 216 to current 17, and those 17 are way too many since only 6 have some population on them. But 17 is minimum to have each type. It basically gets 1 paid patch/year currently. They do say a lot of stuff, but with SWTOR theres no better approach than "i believe it when i see it"
You could have also included WS, now that was a "contender" right up your alley.. But fortunately we have numbers for that (although the others you mentioned werent/arent much different)
Theres only 1 way to look at success. If you want to talk about your FEELINGS, thank you but no.
And GW2 left a significant mark on MMOs and we see more and more stuff from GW2 implemented in MMOs that followed.
It also shamed every P2P game that existed. Because, players in all their naivety, believed those 15/month go to actual game. In reality it was just extra profit for publisher.
You did not provide any relevant links. Please do. Maybe you just relisted my links by accident? My swtor link was the most recent numbers, from their anniversary 9 months ago. FFXIV has been a huge success on relaunch as my link shows, from what numbers we have it looks like they have moved more boxes than GW2, even with their sub. SWTOR certainly moved less boxes before going F2P, but they were selling at the same pace GW2 was when they made the decision - it was the player retention that forced their hand, which my second link shows has improved drastically. Please get definitive, say what you are using to define success, and then use that to defend the gw2 dev decisions. I bet we are perfectly capable of having an informed argument about this.
You say this is about my feelings, and certainly what I consider to be a "bad" developer decision is very subjective, but if you want to talk about GW2 as being incredibly successful we have enough data to compare it to other (disappointing) releases, and it looks to me like it comes up short.
Edit: Also I may be getting too hung up on the "success" thing. I want to reiterate that really gets me are the damn dev decisions, I think this game would be pretty amazing if they could get some more competent people in charge.
Just want to point out that you linked to one of the very few sites that posted numbers incorrectly, FFXIV does not, nor has it ever had 1 million subscribers, let alone 5 million. The only basis people have for saying XIV is so popular is misleading wording from a publisher, lazy or biased reporting and a fanbase happy to misuse numbers. XIV is not a massive success in any ay that you can actually quantify other than that.
That website is incorrectly declaring registered accounts as subscribers, registered accounts is a meaningless term used when a game isn't doing very well. For an idea of how meaningless that number is, if I linked you to a news site that said World of Warcraft has well over 100 million subscribers everyone would laugh. This is exactly what that site you linked did though, they used registered accounts as subscribers (WoW has 100 million registered accounts).
It's laughably easy to pad registered accounts, which is why it's a meaningless figure. Anyone that has any experience in the mmo field knows that if you want to pad registered accounts all you have to do is deal with gold sellers slowly. If you do this, they will make new accounts on a weekly bases forever. This is because you are leaving them alone long enough to make a profit, you ban them and then they repeat the process as a job.
"To be clear, the current subscriber count hasn't been announced, nor has Square Enix ever shared this figure"
FFXIV is most popular in Asia. In the west - not so much. They didnt even bother with euro servers and blackmailed players with cash shop for that.
Also FFXIV was complete disaster and needed to be reworked which required significant additional funds. If you wonder how that affected SQix - just read their financial reports from that time.
GW2 sold 3,5m in first year, 3m in 6 months. And at some point in time SWTOR had 1 million players for 1 month. That would be at launch. But since then it had 2 rounds of layoffs, 2 rounds of server merges form initial 216 to current 17, and those 17 are way too many since only 6 have some population on them. But 17 is minimum to have each type. It basically gets 1 paid patch/year currently. They do say a lot of stuff, but with SWTOR theres no better approach than "i believe it when i see it"
You could have also included WS, now that was a "contender" right up your alley.. But fortunately we have numbers for that (although the others you mentioned werent/arent much different)
Theres only 1 way to look at success. If you want to talk about your FEELINGS, thank you but no.
And GW2 left a significant mark on MMOs and we see more and more stuff from GW2 implemented in MMOs that followed.
It also shamed every P2P game that existed. Because, players in all their naivety, believed those 15/month go to actual game. In reality it was just extra profit for publisher.
You did not provide any relevant links. Please do. Maybe you just relisted my links by accident? My swtor link was the most recent numbers, from their anniversary 9 months ago. FFXIV has been a huge success on relaunch as my link shows, from what numbers we have it looks like they have moved more boxes than GW2, even with their sub. SWTOR certainly moved less boxes before going F2P, but they were selling at the same pace GW2 was when they made the decision - it was the player retention that forced their hand, which my second link shows has improved drastically. Please get definitive, say what you are using to define success, and then use that to defend the gw2 dev decisions. I bet we are perfectly capable of having an informed argument about this.
You say this is about my feelings, and certainly what I consider to be a "bad" developer decision is very subjective, but if you want to talk about GW2 as being incredibly successful we have enough data to compare it to other (disappointing) releases, and it looks to me like it comes up short.
Edit: Also I may be getting too hung up on the "success" thing. I want to reiterate that really gets me are the damn dev decisions, I think this game would be pretty amazing if they could get some more competent people in charge.
Just want to point out that you linked to one of the very few sites that posted numbers incorrectly, FFXIV does not, nor has it ever had 1 million subscribers, let alone 5 million. The only basis people have for saying XIV is so popular is misleading wording from a publisher, lazy or biased reporting and a fanbase happy to misuse numbers. XIV is not a massive success in any ay that you can actually quantify other than that.
That website is incorrectly declaring registered accounts as subscribers, registered accounts is a meaningless term used when a game isn't doing very well. For an idea of how meaningless that number is, if I linked you to a news site that said World of Warcraft has well over 100 million subscribers everyone would laugh. This is exactly what that site you linked did though, they used registered accounts as subscribers (WoW has 100 million registered accounts).
It's laughably easy to pad registered accounts, which is why it's a meaningless figure. Anyone that has any experience in the mmo field knows that if you want to pad registered accounts all you have to do is deal with gold sellers slowly. If you do this, they will make new accounts on a weekly bases forever. This is because you are leaving them alone long enough to make a profit, you ban them and then they repeat the process as a job.
That was listing paid accounts, basically box sales, as we are comparing to GW2 box sales. It is very easy to pad box sales, but we do not have a lot to compare here. It is much harder to compare to active players as we have no hard data for GW2 active players, and the FFXIV active players were listed with players from other games to keep us from getting a clear picture.
Gaia Hunter thanks for bringing some info into this. I also heard the 5 million players thing, which means they were averaging out to around 70 dollars a player which is pretty good and seems about right to me.
Malabooga it seems like you are only interested in crap flinging and I am not going to get into a fight with you like that. Me saying that the people in charge are doing a poor job isn't a personal attack on you, please don't take it that way.
That was listing paid accounts, basically box sales, as we are comparing to GW2 box sales. It is very easy to pad box sales, but we do not have a lot to compare here. It is much harder to compare to active players as we have no hard data for GW2 active players, and the FFXIV active players were listed with players from other games to keep us from getting a clear picture.
Gaia Hunter thanks for bringing some info into this. I also heard the 5 million players thing, which means they were averaging out to around 70 dollars a player which is pretty good and seems about right to me.
Malabooga it seems like you are only interested in crap flinging and I am not going to get into a fight with you like that. Me saying that the people in charge are doing a poor job isn't a personal attack on you, please don't take it that way.
"To be clear, the current subscriber count hasn't been announced, nor has Square Enix ever shared this figure"
FFXIV is most popular in Asia. In the west - not so much. They didnt even bother with euro servers and blackmailed players with cash shop for that.
Also FFXIV was complete disaster and needed to be reworked which required significant additional funds. If you wonder how that affected SQix - just read their financial reports from that time.
GW2 sold 3,5m in first year, 3m in 6 months. And at some point in time SWTOR had 1 million players for 1 month. That would be at launch. But since then it had 2 rounds of layoffs, 2 rounds of server merges form initial 216 to current 17, and those 17 are way too many since only 6 have some population on them. But 17 is minimum to have each type. It basically gets 1 paid patch/year currently. They do say a lot of stuff, but with SWTOR theres no better approach than "i believe it when i see it"
You could have also included WS, now that was a "contender" right up your alley.. But fortunately we have numbers for that (although the others you mentioned werent/arent much different)
Theres only 1 way to look at success. If you want to talk about your FEELINGS, thank you but no.
And GW2 left a significant mark on MMOs and we see more and more stuff from GW2 implemented in MMOs that followed.
It also shamed every P2P game that existed. Because, players in all their naivety, believed those 15/month go to actual game. In reality it was just extra profit for publisher.
You did not provide any relevant links. Please do. Maybe you just relisted my links by accident? My swtor link was the most recent numbers, from their anniversary 9 months ago. FFXIV has been a huge success on relaunch as my link shows, from what numbers we have it looks like they have moved more boxes than GW2, even with their sub. SWTOR certainly moved less boxes before going F2P, but they were selling at the same pace GW2 was when they made the decision - it was the player retention that forced their hand, which my second link shows has improved drastically. Please get definitive, say what you are using to define success, and then use that to defend the gw2 dev decisions. I bet we are perfectly capable of having an informed argument about this.
You say this is about my feelings, and certainly what I consider to be a "bad" developer decision is very subjective, but if you want to talk about GW2 as being incredibly successful we have enough data to compare it to other (disappointing) releases, and it looks to me like it comes up short.
Edit: Also I may be getting too hung up on the "success" thing. I want to reiterate that really gets me are the damn dev decisions, I think this game would be pretty amazing if they could get some more competent people in charge.
Just want to point out that you linked to one of the very few sites that posted numbers incorrectly, FFXIV does not, nor has it ever had 1 million subscribers, let alone 5 million. The only basis people have for saying XIV is so popular is misleading wording from a publisher, lazy or biased reporting and a fanbase happy to misuse numbers. XIV is not a massive success in any ay that you can actually quantify other than that.
That website is incorrectly declaring registered accounts as subscribers, registered accounts is a meaningless term used when a game isn't doing very well. For an idea of how meaningless that number is, if I linked you to a news site that said World of Warcraft has well over 100 million subscribers everyone would laugh. This is exactly what that site you linked did though, they used registered accounts as subscribers (WoW has 100 million registered accounts).
It's laughably easy to pad registered accounts, which is why it's a meaningless figure. Anyone that has any experience in the mmo field knows that if you want to pad registered accounts all you have to do is deal with gold sellers slowly. If you do this, they will make new accounts on a weekly bases forever. This is because you are leaving them alone long enough to make a profit, you ban them and then they repeat the process as a job.
That was listing paid accounts, basically box sales, as we are comparing to GW2 box sales. It is very easy to pad box sales, but we do not have a lot to compare here. It is much harder to compare to active players as we have no hard data for GW2 active players, and the FFXIV active players were listed with players from other games to keep us from getting a clear picture.
Gaia Hunter thanks for bringing some info into this. I also heard the 5 million players thing, which means they were averaging out to around 70 dollars a player which is pretty good and seems about right to me.
Malabooga it seems like you are only interested in crap flinging and I am not going to get into a fight with you like that. Me saying that the people in charge are doing a poor job isn't a personal attack on you, please don't take it that way.
As I mentioned you picked a website from a sea of others that listed it the way you seem to of wanted it shown (wrongly), you chose to link to a source that was laughably wrong. You could of even listed official sources which didn't mention it as subs but you chose some tinpot website that either doesn't understand what it's reporting or did it on purpose.
They aren't even ARR box sales (or at least not comparable box sales to gw2), as I said it's easy to pad that number in lots of different ways FFXIV v1 accounts (which were sold for throwaway prices) + v2 accounts (whch again sold for almost nothing, certainly loss prices compared to Gw2) + free trials + alt accounts from mass numbers of recruit a friend deals (that offer things being abused by people buying alt accounts) + mass numbers of RMT account bloating where 1 rmt can easily make 200 accounts a year (they don't IP ban gold sellers for a reason). HAve you even played XIV to see how out of control Gold sellers are, you think that's due to incompetence? Really?
If you want to argue against GW2 then you are on far better ground not using XIV as your argument piece, it's nowhere near as successful as you are trying to say it is.
The shilling is strong in this thread, again I ask why is it so hard for companies to compete honestly instead trashing other companies because there game sucks? Your being stupid and ruining the rep of mainstream companies by doing this and more people will catch on to these people who posts in these threads.
The shilling is strong in this thread, again I ask why is it so hard for companies to compete honestly instead trashing other companies because there game sucks? Your being stupid and ruining the rep of mainstream companies by doing this and more people will catch on to these people who posts in these threads.
Yeah, shills shouldnt use GW2 to make their games look better. Completely agree with that. Becuase, unfortunately for them, facts are facts.
They should pick on WS or something like that, they could actually have a point there.
The shilling is strong in this thread, again I ask why is it so hard for companies to compete honestly instead trashing other companies because there game sucks? Your being stupid and ruining the rep of mainstream companies by doing this and more people will catch on to these people who posts in these threads.
Yeah, shills shouldnt use GW2 to make their games look better. Completely agree with that. Becuase, unfortunately for them, facts are facts.
They should pick on WS or something like that, they could actually have a point there.
Shilling comes from both sides, I doubt there is any shilling from the devs of guild wars2 if anything this game is constantly being attacked bye lies and bs in general.
Remember when we as players didn't care about how many accounts or characters or subscriptions an MMO had? Remember when we didn't go over financial statements every quarter to make us feel better about our choice of MMO? Can we go back to then?
Remember when we as players didn't care about how many accounts or characters or subscriptions an MMO had? Remember when we didn't go over financial statements every quarter to make us feel better about our choice of MMO? Can we go back to then?
When "your" MMO fires 2/3 of staff working on the game, along with 90% of servers, reduce updates to galcial pace or ultimately shuts the door because of bad performance i would say you would care.
Remember when we as players didn't care about how many accounts or characters or subscriptions an MMO had? Remember when we didn't go over financial statements every quarter to make us feel better about our choice of MMO? Can we go back to then?
x-fire stats?
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
The shilling is strong in this thread, again I ask why is it so hard for companies to compete honestly instead trashing other companies because there game sucks? Your being stupid and ruining the rep of mainstream companies by doing this and more people will catch on to these people who posts in these threads.
Yeah, shills shouldnt use GW2 to make their games look better. Completely agree with that. Becuase, unfortunately for them, facts are facts.
They should pick on WS or something like that, they could actually have a point there.
Shilling comes from both sides, I doubt there is any shilling from the devs of guild wars2 if anything this game is constantly being attacked bye lies and bs in general.
No it doesnt. They cant pick on WoW so they move to next thing, which is GW2.
Remember when we as players didn't care about how many accounts or characters or subscriptions an MMO had? Remember when we didn't go over financial statements every quarter to make us feel better about our choice of MMO? Can we go back to then?
That's what happens when the games themselves are no longer worthy of discussion.
Remember when we as players didn't care about how many accounts or characters or subscriptions an MMO had? Remember when we didn't go over financial statements every quarter to make us feel better about our choice of MMO? Can we go back to then?
You are talking about a time when we were still so young so naive and believe online games would last forever... or at least a substantial amount of time that it won't just suddenly fire their staffs merge servers and then boom the game shuts down because it isn't generating enough revenue. Then again, the market was different; competition was scarce and customers were easier to satisfy.
There is a crapstorm of worthless MMORPGs in the market, especially the free ones, that we have learned to be more cautious and avoid the fk away from craps that only want to milk customers like cash cows until the game loses its hype and relevance. We have learned the importance to care about if a game will succeed in the long run so we know where to invest our time and money into to maximize our satisfaction from that investment.
But yeah, I am also lost in all the discussion about GW 2 vs everyone else. I don't get it. GW 2 was successful, made a lot of money, and is still doing fine. They never needed to rework anything, unless you consider adding Free Trial into the game as a rework (imho it doesn't, because it is still, despite there is no time limit, a free trial). The developers also care about the game, which is a rare sight in itself already. So I really don't get why all the arguments and apocalyptic talks against GW 2.
Funny how everyone said how amazing GW2 was in beta, then it launched and people all thought it was crap. Was that beta fanboi culture back then though, when you couldn't say anything bad about a beta game or all the fanbois would come out and say "it's only a beta"....
I don't think it can be argued that GW2 hasn't been successful at this point, sure, WoW is and remains the number 1 game in terms of player numbers and popularity, but as for second place, there are easily arguments for FFXIV;ARR, SW;TOR and GW2 to hold that position, that they are all in the top 5, is probably as close as we can get with available information.
Funny how everyone said how amazing GW2 was in beta, then it launched and people all thought it was crap. Was that beta fanboi culture back then though, when you couldn't say anything bad about a beta game or all the fanbois would come out and say "it's only a beta"....
That is mostly because it was new and does things other mmorpgs do not really do, but it could of been done better.
I find it funny that people still use crap like Raptr to determine statistics for game playtime. Sorry, but that proves absolutely nothing one way or another. First of all, not many people use Raptr or Xfire. Then you have to get into the number of people who play MMORPGs on Raptr. So the stats don't mean much. You need a MUCH larger sample size in order to get a good grasp on things, across multiple sources. Right all those stats mean is that "x game is played more then x game" of the players who play MMORPGSon Raptr. It does not mean that "x game is played more then x game" anywhere else.
I find it funny that people still use crap like Raptr to determine statistics for game playtime. Sorry, but that proves absolutely nothing one way or another. First of all, not many people use Raptr or Xfire. Then you have to get into the number of people who play MMORPGs on Raptr. So the stats don't mean much. You need a MUCH larger sample size in order to get a good grasp on things, across multiple sources. Right all those stats mean is that "x game is played more then x game" of the players who play MMORPGSon Raptr. It does not mean that "x game is played more then x game" anywhere else.
Only idiots use xfire/raptr for comparisons between games at this point.
Raptr has its uses in hinting at trends of single game, and even for that it needs a lot of adjustment to get some remotely accurate picture, but thats pretty much it.
I'm actually shocked how many people are still carrying on a discussion not knowing the difference between ownership of an ip/company and publisher.
So they got rid of the middle man regarding publishing their own game. Great. I wouldn't look into this in a positive or negative way.
I'm not sure GW2 has been all that successful, having one game for 3 years with no expansion and no subscription and a very...uninteresting cash shop...cant be raking in the money.
Maybe they need to drop the middle men to stay profitable while selling their new expansion? Maybe they've done well enough to just leave them alone.
Have to look at this with carbine included though, they've done aweful, they are not marketing, they need to just get on steam, take the 30% haircut on sales and pray pray pray. Not a bad game just no ones into what they are selling anymore.
GW2 needs to take a long hard look at what they expect to make money on between their three year expansion cycle (which is ridiculous they need to do it yearly or every 1.5 years)
I know gw2 has always been the golden child of popular viral marketing, and I'm not saying its absolute trash by any stretch...just I cant see how they can be making enough money to support proper development with a one time $50 payment, then maybe another $50 on deco/bag space...and that's a big maybe on the latter part.
I'm actually shocked how many people are still carrying on a discussion not knowing the difference between ownership of an ip/company and publisher.
So they got rid of the middle man regarding publishing their own game. Great. I wouldn't look into this in a positive or negative way.
I'm not sure GW2 has been all that successful, having one game for 3 years with no expansion and no subscription and a very...uninteresting cash shop...cant be raking in the money.
Maybe they need to drop the middle men to stay profitable while selling their new expansion? Maybe they've done well enough to just leave them alone.
Have to look at this with carbine included though, they've done aweful, they are not marketing, they need to just get on steam, take the 30% haircut on sales and pray pray pray. Not a bad game just no ones into what they are selling anymore.
GW2 needs to take a long hard look at what they expect to make money on between their three year expansion cycle (which is ridiculous they need to do it yearly or every 1.5 years)
I know gw2 has always been the golden child of popular viral marketing, and I'm not saying its absolute trash by any stretch...just I cant see how they can be making enough money to support proper development with a one time $50 payment, then maybe another $50 on deco/bag space...and that's a big maybe on the latter part.
if i were you id stop lecturing others on stuff i know nothing about.
then id go and actually inform myself which would stop me from writing silly posts.
if i were you id stop lecturing others on stuff i know nothing about.
then id go and actually inform myself which would stop me from writing silly posts.
No more silly than your posts.
ArenaNet is still a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft. Why is this even a discussion?
And if you want to argue more about what a massive success GW2 is then why dont you tell everyone how great GW2 is doing in China? ....oh, wait ....uh, sorry
if i were you id stop lecturing others on stuff i know nothing about.
then id go and actually inform myself which would stop me from writing silly posts.
No more silly than your posts.
ArenaNet is still a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft. Why is this even a discussion?
And if you want to argue more about what a massive success GW2 is then why dont you tell everyone how great GW2 is doing in China? ....oh, wait ....uh, sorry
Seems you need to familiarize yourself with definition of silly.
Its not a discussion, but since there are still people like i responded to out there that apparently doesnt know about it even if its thoroughly discussed and easily available info.
Please enlighten us all: how is GW2 doing in China?
Care to posts any real numbers?
And, FYI, as it seems yu are uninformed, anything that GW2 makes in China is just bonus on the numbers we DO know about. NCSoft has pretty muchvery little - 0 expense and gets samll cut of what it ACTUALLY earns.
Comments
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx
$350M since release and a stable revenue for the last year and a half.
Who has more players currently playing of those 3 is unknown.
GW2 sold 2 million copies in the first 2 weeks. 3 millions in 2012 and it seems it was recently mentioned 5 millions.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
That website is incorrectly declaring registered accounts as subscribers, registered accounts is a meaningless term used when a game isn't doing very well. For an idea of how meaningless that number is, if I linked you to a news site that said World of Warcraft has well over 100 million subscribers everyone would laugh. This is exactly what that site you linked did though, they used registered accounts as subscribers (WoW has 100 million registered accounts).
It's laughably easy to pad registered accounts, which is why it's a meaningless figure. Anyone that has any experience in the mmo field knows that if you want to pad registered accounts all you have to do is deal with gold sellers slowly. If you do this, they will make new accounts on a weekly bases forever. This is because you are leaving them alone long enough to make a profit, you ban them and then they repeat the process as a job.
Gaia Hunter thanks for bringing some info into this. I also heard the 5 million players thing, which means they were averaging out to around 70 dollars a player which is pretty good and seems about right to me.
Malabooga it seems like you are only interested in crap flinging and I am not going to get into a fight with you like that. Me saying that the people in charge are doing a poor job isn't a personal attack on you, please don't take it that way.
As I mentioned you picked a website from a sea of others that listed it the way you seem to of wanted it shown (wrongly), you chose to link to a source that was laughably wrong. You could of even listed official sources which didn't mention it as subs but you chose some tinpot website that either doesn't understand what it's reporting or did it on purpose.
They aren't even ARR box sales (or at least not comparable box sales to gw2), as I said it's easy to pad that number in lots of different ways FFXIV v1 accounts (which were sold for throwaway prices) + v2 accounts (whch again sold for almost nothing, certainly loss prices compared to Gw2) + free trials + alt accounts from mass numbers of recruit a friend deals (that offer things being abused by people buying alt accounts) + mass numbers of RMT account bloating where 1 rmt can easily make 200 accounts a year (they don't IP ban gold sellers for a reason). HAve you even played XIV to see how out of control Gold sellers are, you think that's due to incompetence? Really?
If you want to argue against GW2 then you are on far better ground not using XIV as your argument piece, it's nowhere near as successful as you are trying to say it is.
They should pick on WS or something like that, they could actually have a point there.
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty" - Vroomfondel
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
There is a crapstorm of worthless MMORPGs in the market, especially the free ones, that we have learned to be more cautious and avoid the fk away from craps that only want to milk customers like cash cows until the game loses its hype and relevance. We have learned the importance to care about if a game will succeed in the long run so we know where to invest our time and money into to maximize our satisfaction from that investment.
But yeah, I am also lost in all the discussion about GW 2 vs everyone else. I don't get it. GW 2 was successful, made a lot of money, and is still doing fine. They never needed to rework anything, unless you consider adding Free Trial into the game as a rework (imho it doesn't, because it is still, despite there is no time limit, a free trial). The developers also care about the game, which is a rare sight in itself already. So I really don't get why all the arguments and apocalyptic talks against GW 2.
Raptr has its uses in hinting at trends of single game, and even for that it needs a lot of adjustment to get some remotely accurate picture, but thats pretty much it.
I'm actually shocked how many people are still carrying on a discussion not knowing the difference between ownership of an ip/company and publisher.
So they got rid of the middle man regarding publishing their own game. Great. I wouldn't look into this in a positive or negative way.
I'm not sure GW2 has been all that successful, having one game for 3 years with no expansion and no subscription and a very...uninteresting cash shop...cant be raking in the money.
Maybe they need to drop the middle men to stay profitable while selling their new expansion? Maybe they've done well enough to just leave them alone.
Have to look at this with carbine included though, they've done aweful, they are not marketing, they need to just get on steam, take the 30% haircut on sales and pray pray pray. Not a bad game just no ones into what they are selling anymore.
GW2 needs to take a long hard look at what they expect to make money on between their three year expansion cycle (which is ridiculous they need to do it yearly or every 1.5 years)
I know gw2 has always been the golden child of popular viral marketing, and I'm not saying its absolute trash by any stretch...just I cant see how they can be making enough money to support proper development with a one time $50 payment, then maybe another $50 on deco/bag space...and that's a big maybe on the latter part.
then id go and actually inform myself which would stop me from writing silly posts.
ArenaNet is still a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft. Why is this even a discussion?
And if you want to argue more about what a massive success GW2 is then why dont you tell everyone how great GW2 is doing in China? ....oh, wait ....uh, sorry
Its not a discussion, but since there are still people like i responded to out there that apparently doesnt know about it even if its thoroughly discussed and easily available info.
Please enlighten us all: how is GW2 doing in China?
Care to posts any real numbers?
And, FYI, as it seems yu are uninformed, anything that GW2 makes in China is just bonus on the numbers we DO know about. NCSoft has pretty muchvery little - 0 expense and gets samll cut of what it ACTUALLY earns.