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NCsoft quarterly report is out... not looking good for gw2...
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If I saw facts I would take them seriously, all I saw was random thoughts. Actually NCSoft owns ANet, they can do whatever they want with the money. ANet really has no say in the issue. It isn't exactly a publisher/developer relationship as NCSoft are also the owners.
Oh trust me, I love these type of discussions. The feelings are mutual.
I just think it was a 4Q '12 jump (Holidays), same thing happened in 2012. And will happen in 2013.
You're right, those WoW clones are certainly all doing so well...oh that's right...
What's the point in hoping that a game fail? So that everyone that enjoys GW2 and games like it will be forced to play a game like WoW and then complain about it not being GW2? Or for those people to just drop out of the MMORPG market completely? I know it's a scary thought that games will try to imitate GW2 and all
That really goes for this thread too. The OP clearly is delighted in what he thinks is bad news, has confirmation bias, and continues to try and twist the numbers to say that GW2 is declining. Anyone that has played the game knows this is not happening. The fact that no servers have been merged/closed and that Anet is pushing out content faster because they were hiring a few months ago (maybe still are?) is the exact opposite of what happens in a failing MMO.
It seems like the only people that care about this are those against the game and hoping for it to fail and go away. Even those that try to seem 'unbiased' stick around, try to twist facts, try to say that even though the servers are full they are still dead just beacuse...because they said so. Hopelessly wishing the game would just die for whatever reason.
There is a similarly huge drop from WoW. WoW is declining too. (100,000+ hours to 15,000 hours)
Also.
Why the hell does Rift have 50% more hours played than WoW? I would think if Rift was the #1 game over WoW they'd be crowing about it more.
I actually had to sign up on raptr.com to look at the figures. :P Was trying to avoid it but couldn't find a way to look at the figures without signing up.
Both XFire and Raptr are incomplete and not necessarily accurate sample groups, I wouldn't bother using them to prove how well ANY game is doing. If you notice what I was saying, I just thought it was weird you'd use XFire as an example when it shows that WoW is declining nearly as much, and that GW2 declined to a comfortable second.
Even if they're third behind RIFT, that's STILL pretty high up there, especially considering RIFT has had an expansion fairly recently AND a change to F2P which turns the entry barrier into 0, while GW2 still has a box price.
Also, Raptr offered a huge deal on Rift (what was it - free Rift and expansion before the f2p conversion?) that has and will continue to skew the numbers for some time.
Rift is THE free to play alternative to World of Warcraft. Of course it's going to be popular, especially with the recency of its conversion. It didn't even need the Raptr deal to help things along.
I don't think its 100% accurate but it is the only sources we have. And yes WoW is declining too, they have announced they lost millions of subs. I use Xfire for trends month over month. But Raptr is a better source as it has a significantly large sample, problem is they don't break out data by month like Xfire.
Trion ran a promotion for Rift on Raptr - a free mount to Rift players signed up to Raptr. Needless to say, Raptr saw a large increase in their number of registered Rift players.
I won't bother to argue 'decline in revenue'. That's in black and white for all to see.
Decline in population since launch? Willing to believe that too, though it's hard to get hard numbers on that.
All I'm saying is that 'decline' <> 'not looking good for gw2'.
They're still at a comfortable stage. The earnings call called it 'stable'. That sort of decrease on the B2P model is pretty much within expectations.
Decline in profit? Yes.
'Not looking good' is projecting.
Being #2 or #3, while simultaneously being the =second most anticipated= MMORPG in China (Another NCSoft game being the #1 anticipated), and making that much money per year? (Hint: It's a lot of money, even now).
Still in a pretty comfortable position.
(Also, all the explanations of how RIFT got higher Raptr numbers with lots of incentives... like a free mount (Free mount just for signing up for raptr! Easy!), shows just how horribly skewed these games can get really easily. That makes the RIFT numbers completely unreliable. 'Raptr isn't 100%' is an understatement, to say the least)
OMG drama mommas cut it out. Every and I repeat EVERY game. Loses profits towards the end of it's vanilla cycle. The games been out a year it's not surprising anyone now. So it won't set any sales records and will decline. That is the nature of the business.
Everyone who wanted to buy it has anyone on the edge will and fuel current and future sales. The expansion will rekindle flames and the game will again peak. Then start to slowly taper off level then fall like it did now. Stop acting like this stuff doesn't happen in every game. For the past 20 years in MMO history.
Oh, but this time it must be different because "we" the MMORPG.com community don't like this particular game, right?
What any intelligent GW2 player should be asking themselves (if they care), is if this will imply a change in living story content, and/or the release of an expansion.
What you dislike or like doesn't matter here. And don't speak for the community, you don't have that right. It's plain economics and it's not rocket science. Or something for the OP to hype up like it unheard of to be happening. Only one game in the history of MMO's actually gained at the end of it's vanilla cycle.
And that was wow's Transition into Burning Crusade. Same thing happens to cars, clothes , used console games. When the next big thing is announced it's current place holder or product becomes old news.
Chill. You misinterpreted my post entirely - and that would have been an overreaction even if I had legitimately intended the comment that way. I LIKE the game and want to see it succeed. I was simply making reference to the closed-minded, antagonistic state of this forum's majority, which seems to involve seeing something they dislike, failing to use the two brain cells it takes to see what the actual problems of said thing are, and then twisting data (as done by the OP) to show how said product they dislike must be crashing and burning because its sales have been dwindling (just like every other MMO has at the end of its vanilla year, with the exception of WoW).
Or double of what blade and soul does.
Of course AION is very big in Asia where GW2 has no presence yet.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
And you can't discount the free game allure - even I let my PC run during overnight to get the RIFT game.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
And you guys really think that the possibly players leaving will be the ones that spend money in the cash shop?
Do you guys really think that every player drops money in the cash shop?
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
[quote]Originally posted by SoMuchMass
But Raptr is a better source as it has a significantly large sample, problem is they don't break out data by month like Xfire.[/b][/quote]
Raptr is all about lies... You know why Rift played that much? Because Raptr got a deal with Trion. If you play Rift like 14 hours you'll get a free copy of Rift and expansion pack. That was the deal. And including me most of these players just opened the dame and stay afk for that 14 hours.
Because we, gamers, measure success of game on the number of players.
A sub game with 500K players that invested resources in hopes of getting 2 million subs is a financial failure and only has 500K players.
A game that brings the equivalent of 600K subs but has much more players than that (figures for other games say that only 10-20% of the population ever buys something in the cash shop with real money) and was designed to generate enough money to pay the wages while more content is developed, is a different beast.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
A loss like that isn't really surprising. Sales are always the strongest the first 3 months, then the other 3 months it starts to slowly decrease. I'd guess not as many have bought the game in this period. People are still buying gems though, loads of them.
GW2 didn't have 92 000 player in Sept 12 - it had 92 000 hours and 15K players.
And look at WoW in Jan'12 - 100K hours and now has 15K hours.
Did WoW lost 85% of its population?
XFire that awesome bit of software that adds a FPS counter and a clock to your game and that you can't disable it in GW2 because it crashes the game.
Oh Raptr, that awesome software that says Rift is more played than WoW.
Could it be because they had a 2 month long offer that if you played Rift for 14 hours you would get Rift+Storm legion with 1 month sub for free?
And then a few more hours and items in game and a mount?
The user base of these tools is so small that a offer like that can make Rift a bigger MMO than WoW.
And where is Neverwinter? I read in these same forums that GW2 was such a failure that even Neverwinter and Defience were more played.
Of course those 2 games are way below GW2 now after their release month.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Sure, and no one is saying that it didn't make as much money.
But numbers need context or otherwise are meaningless.
That is why we say 2 million players. Or 5 hours.
What we are refuting is the conclusions of some people.
Anet doesn't need this quarterly money to make Xpacs - they are financed by NCSoft that pay their salaries, just like they were during the years of GW2 development. Sure, Anet guys aren't buying a yacht, but buying yacht isn't the only measure for a successful business.
The gem shop sales finance their live world team and make some profit on the side.
Actually, it seems to be making so much money Anet and NCSoft aren't in a hurry to sell an expansion.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
And the difference is that in that other game revenue is directly related with players playing.
Not so linear in GW2.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
And here's where SoMuchMass's "active player numbers are the measure of success in all business models" argument weakens. The players that quit are those who are the least likely to spend real money on a game's cash shop. Most cash shop purchases come from the dedicated fanbase (both casual and hardcore) that intend to stay with said game. While a minority of the players who bail out of a game may have been potential spenders, the largest concentration of spenders will remain in the game's dedicated crowd in almost any given game.
So no, active players do not measure success (with the sole exception of sub games). Revenue does. In this case, gem shop earnings are the largest indicator of the game's health (and we still don't have these numbers by themselves).
It already has. Why do you think they have had a "change of direction?" There is a reason they have moved to a biweekly update cycle. It obviously has been shown to get more people to log in and most likely spend some money in the cash shop. They didn't make a decision like that just because......
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
People always bring this up as a sign that everything is okay at a company which isn't necessarily true. Companies will often throw money at an issue and try to fix or improve a product. This is especially true when that product is the sole source of revenue for a company. I know this quite well because this is what happened in my last company. Unfortunately it didn't work out for us until it was too late. ArenaNet also has a high turnover rate and hires lots of contractors as evidenced by employee postings on glassdoor.com.
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?