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Fail condition.
Nitth
Member UncommonPosts: 3,904
in Guild Wars 2
What would be the fail condition for GW2?
If all their doing is selling boxes to make a profit then its going to be very hard to make a fail condition for the game because you cant see a "sub reduction" or a revenue loss easily.
If after a year, the game only has 10,000 active players its not going matter at all because the boxes have already been sold right?.
Exception to this is the cash shop, But that relies on people actually buying to from there to make a profit anyway.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Comments
A decent point, but you're just gonna get flak with that TSW profile pic of yours.
I think most people already know the condition the game is in from the HUGE amount of vids on the internet, that is, if they didn't already do a BWE or two. It's kinda hard to be completely aloof of a game's state-of-being in this day and age.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Could we please for a change stop discussing if/when/how/why a certain game has/might/will fail? Those threads are silly, pointless and usually end in nothing but rubbish anyway.
If we take SWTOR as an example, going from 100 servers to 10 isn't an indication of a game "doing well"
Block the trolls, don't answer them, so we can remove the garbage from these forums
GW2 would only fail when it switched to F2P like Aion, AoC and soon TSW.
O wait! GW2 does not charge sub fee.
Fail condition would be the same as it was in GW1--box sales.
If GW1's timeline is any indication, I would say that the an expansion will hit around one year after GW2 goes live. If a large chunk of accounts purchase the expansion, than the game is successful, if not, well hopefully the cash shop will be profitable enough as a fallback.
The only reason i bring it up is because 2 things interest me:
1. What constitutes a failure money or population?
2. Its a very interesting model that seems very well engineered to succeed.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
I actually think the OP brings up something that's quite relevant. The fact that there are no subscritpions makes all of the "Fail" threads about GW2 completely irrelevant. It's nice to see someone else with the intelligence to realise it.
Personally the only way I can see of measuring GW2's success is in the number of sales. We know GW sold somewhere around 7 million units in total. That includes expansions. I suppose only time will tell if GW2 can sell a similar number of units, in which case I'd call it a success.
I think it's different for everybody when/how/why a game "fails". Good luck even coming up with a definition of that word.
An example, LOTRO was called failed many times over the years, yet it's still there with a healthy amount of servers, so in my book it didn't fail, I enjoyed playing it for 5 years and always had people to group up / raid with.
Well, the whole thing is that subbed games simply don't have people "pop back in for a little bit, every now and then". If millions of people buy it, and all of them get bored after the first month - like any other MMO out there - they can still pop in occasionally and repopulate the game in a trickle.
Something Tera could really use right now.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Both.
Population will lend profit through the cash shop, and the purchasing of expantions. They are direclty tied.
Furthermore if population dwindles man thats going to stink. Because the entire game is based around a lot of people playing together. Even if they dont talk to each other. So if very little plays its going to have severe burn on the population. GW2 might be the last game you want to play all by yourself. So you might quit if you are having too especially with this one.
Further impacting the population. Further impacting profits.
Just like any mmo, the more people you have playing the better off you are. There's no sub fee to be sure, but profit is made by players playing non the less.
Personally, as of right now, Im hardly worried about it.
It's not going to do any worse than Guild Wars 1 did, I think for it to "fail" it would have to fall short of GW1.
I know over the years I played Guild Wars VERY casually but every 6-9 months I would pop back on it for a month because it was there and I didn't need to subscribe to enjoy playing the game again.
Guild Wars 1 was a stepping stone towards GW2, it wasn't a full MMO but it made us start thinking "do we really need to pay a subscription for an MMO?"
Guild Wars 2 will be judged on it's box sales and then future expansion sales, the best thing about the model is that someone that hasn't played for 9 months doesn't need to set up some recurring monthly bill in order to play the new expansion when it comes out.
GW2 will retain more players than a regular MMO, it will have its hardcore crowd that play it as a main game and then it will have others that dip in and out whenever they feel like it, even if they only play once every 6 months they are still retained players, these are players than another MMO with a subscription would lose after month 1.
Not enough people to play with....so if they have their server system set up well this shouldn't be a problem.
But wouldn't taht lead to population dips, and therefore a loss in cash shop revenue?
Idk, i never played gw1, dont know how they handled that aspect.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
I'm not going to go by a financial fail condition, except for if they sell under 1 million accounts within the first 6 months. Keep in mind that they probably aren't going to sell as many boxes as other games because of the whole digital pre-purchase thing, which aren't really boxes. I say 1 million accounts because that is how many beta sign-ups were placed within the few days they were open. If they don't pass that number I think it shows that not as many people were interested as they had thought.
The main fail condition I'm going to go by is the condition that never fails to show failure. There has to be enough people to play with. This one will be very hard for GW2 to fail at with its PvE side, because everybody can guest over to a higher populated server if they need to. However, for WvW it might be a bit harder to maintain a high number of players because of how WvW teams work. If GW2 were to fail by population I'd say that WvW would show it.
GW1 has been active for like 5 years since the last expansion was released and is still alive, only with the Cash Shop. Population dips aren't hurting GW1/GW2 as much as subscription based games.
Block the trolls, don't answer them, so we can remove the garbage from these forums
Everything in GW2 smells like epic win...
Like the original GW1,i´ll have it installed in all my PCs over the years & play it whenever i feel like...
enough win for me.
dodge a bite underwater is priceless
GW1 survived mainly because people could jump between American and European servers. A few years ago, the population dipped in the Euro servers so everyone just made the American servers the new main base and voila, the population was back again. If something similar happens again to GW2, then everyone will just move to the most populated servers without Anet even asking them to.
This is not a game.
As it is exsactly the same model that was used for GW1, its actual simple just looking at that game and how you measured its success.
The defining point is its overall sales numbers, but they first gets really interesting when real new expansions hits.
Here is a qoute from my favorite article by Jeff Strain from 2007
http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php
"With Guild Wars we ask players to make a choice only one time, and that choice is whether to buy the game, or not to buy the game. While we don't enjoy a recurring revenue stream each month, we do benefit from the fact that most Guild Wars players come back to the game when we release new content, so we are less concerned about players putting the game down for a few months. Players don't have to decide whether to stay married or get divorced, they just have to decide whether they want to play today or not. Beyond the benefit of a lower pain threshold to get into the game, this is the core strength of the Guild Wars business model, and one of the reasons it continues to thrive when many other subscription-based MMOs are struggling.The success is simple measured looking at how many comes back when a new expansion hits."
That also means that the fail condition is when expansions does not get people back, leading to expansion just not coming out at all.
But its also a really good things for players , because expansions just has to come often to keep both ArenaNet and players happy.
Could you do it for free or did you have to pay to do this in GW1 too? The question is more regarding the WvW aspect, since for PvE you wouldn't have a problem playing on another server.
No payment in GW1, but because of WvW there has to be a payment in GW2.
I define failure as the company not making money from the game and not updating. GW2 will rely on the Casgh Shop, which isn't mandatory, so it could go wrong, but since i can't see the future, i have no idea.
As far as population goes, GW2 is in the same position as all other mmos. The game needs good pop, especially because of wvwvw. Will pop see huge drops after the first months? Almost certain, but what remains to be seen is how many will stay, pay for the cs, etc, etc.
GW1 could hide it's pop and place everyone together since it was a lobby based co-op game. GW2 will have servers, which might need to merge, pops, and an open world where players must be out there doing things, mostly DE.
The internal metric is revenue. For GW2, that will mean box sales and cash shop revenue. It will be difficult when looking at NCSoft's financials to suss out what revenue came from where, but I assume there will be industry sales charts that will give us an idea on ongoing box sales.
For players, server populations will provide the most obvious metric. It may not be precise, but if there were some major drop in active players and average monthly hours played, it should be pretty obvious.
The game itself is well designed to weather population fluctuations. The Trading Post, (Auction House variant), connects all players in each region, (US or EU), so there is no server economy, it's a shared economy. Players can freely travel to other servers for PvE content, via a "Guest" feature. Structured PvP is also regional. Only World vs. World ties players to their home server, so that's the one area that could be affected by changes in population trends.
For sales figures, I think I would be disappointed if sales a month after launch total less than 1 million box sales, or less than 3 million boxes sold by the end of the first full year. Numbers would have to be even lower to be considered a "fail".
Success or fail for NCSoft/Arenanet I think have more to do with revenue. I think it remains to be seen what the average monthly cash shop expenditure per active player will be. My gut tells me it will average out to $10-$15 per active player, with many paying nothing, a fair portion paying close to $15/month and a small percentage paying well above the average. Obviously, the more box sales, the more potential active players and the more cash shop revenue, but an active player base of people who buy gems every month can provide a steady revenue stream, even if box sales drop off.
As to my expectations, I honestly see GW2 as being one of the very few games in the genre with the very real potential to see ongoing box sales and active player growth over time. I think they will likely exceed 1.5 million box sales with in a month of launch and the box sales for year one will easily exceed 3 million. 5 million+ box sales by the end of year one is not out of the question.
The game design is phenominal, the game itself has extremely high levels of quality and production value, fully realizing the potential of the game's design during actual game play. It's very fun to play and remains fun after extended amounts of play time. To bring it all together the game world is massive and there is far more content than is needed to reach the level cap, further amplified by the dynamic nature of the game's content. Those ingredients and many more signal a game that many players will be able to enjoy for months or years on end, rather than being a flash in the pan title that only offers a couple months of game play and content.
The lack of a subscription fee can only help the game as it seeks to continually generate new box sales, while producing ongoing revenue from existing players via the cash shop.
I really believe that the influx of new players over the course of the first year will more than offset any reduction in average hours played per month per account and discussion of what might constitute a "fail" will have been purely academic.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
I don't think they game has any chance of failing as a whole. You think the hype is loud now wait till official review's as liberal as they are with there scores. I see gw2 bringing in a slew of new casual players as well as catering to the whole community in one way or another.
Now will wvwvw suceed is another story. Will people get into it or will they just pve. Will the competitive types vie for server dominance or go the spvp route is yet to be seen. I for one have faith after the bwe's.
I believe there is a minimum box sales value that makes this game profitable. If box sales won't achieve that value I supose the game would be a failure.
What would be that number? 1 million... 5 million?
From whose point of view ?
NcSoft's ? Fail = there's no profit
Anet ? Fail = there's no profit (sorry , they are still running a business.)
Me ? Fail = it's no fun after the first month
general MMO community ? Fail = It's not a wow killer (so it will definately fail here)
You ? Fail = <insert your fail condition here>
Btw I only care for my own fail condition.