i played L2 at release and it was point click and grind for days and days. Just because the west doesnt mindnumbly want to stare at a computer screen killing the same mob camp over and over doesnt make it hardcore. No NCsoft game does great over here thats a port, about the only games that did well are GW & GW2. People here want to relax after work or school and enjoy their nights not sit at a internet cafe all night bragging to your friends about who you pwned and grinding until you drop out from lack of sleep.
i played L2 at release and it was point click and grind for days and days. Just because the west doesnt mindnumbly want to stare at a computer screen killing the same mob camp over and over doesnt make it hardcore. No NCsoft game does great over here thats a port, about the only games that did well are GW & GW2. People here want to relax after work or school and enjoy their nights not sit at a internet cafe all night bragging to your friends about who you pwned and grinding until you drop out from lack of sleep.
If you read the "old school mmo veteran" posts in this forums you would know there are many players who are "old school" who prefer that kind of stupid dumb mob grind games like L1 or L2 original. Even though these players are vocally large in online community, they are very low in number, hence ncsoft ported games are always super niche in west. And gw and gw2 are made by areananet; an american company, so whether it is published ncsoft or not the core game is very player friendly.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
i played L2 at release and it was point click and grind for days and days. Just because the west doesnt mindnumbly want to stare at a computer screen killing the same mob camp over and over doesnt make it hardcore. No NCsoft game does great over here thats a port, about the only games that did well are GW & GW2. People here want to relax after work or school and enjoy their nights not sit at a internet cafe all night bragging to your friends about who you pwned and grinding until you drop out from lack of sleep.
I agree that grinding mobs for hours upon hours is not hardocre, therefore EQ reference. EQ was just about grinding mobs, so yeah, that game was pretty much most mindnumbing game ever released. And it was western game.
FFA PvP OTOH, something that you clearly "forgot" IS hardcore.
But western players jumped ship to play WoW from both games in a hartbeat.
This isn't looking good to me. ANet is showing themselves incapable of good decision making, and now there is nobody to fire the morons in charge. Losing ncsoft is a huge loss of financial backing of course, but I am more concerned that someone needs to replace the people in charge at ANet. They built a lovely boat, started dumping water into it, got confused when it started to sink, and now they are cutting holes in the hull to let the water out.
Right now all of ANets eggs are in one basket. They are betting their future on throwing away old customers to cater to new customers. This is the same company that showed how easily you can cater to both with their gw1 standalone expansions. They have fallen far.
Oh look it is Baitness and his GW2 is a sinking ship theory when financially GW2 is a major success.
Oh look it is some guy named Gaia hunter who didn't understand my simple post. It says right in there that I am more concerned about the people making design decisions keeping their job than I am about ncsofts money. The game has been a tale of terrible post release decisions, especially compared to how well gw1 was managed. Amusingly enough, you put a potential reason in your next post - two thirds of the designing behind gw1 have moved on.
Any game company willing to take it's current customers for granted and attempt to appeal only to new customers is making a mistake. In gw2's case this is just the latest in a long line of mistakes. It had so much potential, squandered on things like "living world" updates and wvw "tournaments.". The gw2 team needs someone in charge that spends development time making real additions to the game, rather than developing temporary things tha manage to make the game worse.
Without having ncsoft over them, I doubt we will ever see the removal of the people making these bad decisions, though. That is what is most concerning.
If "your" game is doing badly it will be shut. Its responsible business decision. Or you want them to end like SoE (except NCSoft doesnt have sugar daddy corporation to cover their crap. Yeah, Nexon badly wants NCSoft, but i prefer NCSoft on its own as they HAVE PROVEN to be RESPONSIBLE company.) /FC/SQuix....,
So yeah, if i was playing WS i would be concerned (a lot).
OTOH GW2 is as safe as it gets, GW1 is STILL running.
Last thing MMO genre need is stoopid devs tha will see game company go down before they shut game down due to their ego or w/e.
These companies are BUSINESSes. They HAVE TO cover their expenses AND make profit along the way. Thats how it works. On global level.
This isn't looking good to me. ANet is showing themselves incapable of good decision making, and now there is nobody to fire the morons in charge. Losing ncsoft is a huge loss of financial backing of course, but I am more concerned that someone needs to replace the people in charge at ANet. They built a lovely boat, started dumping water into it, got confused when it started to sink, and now they are cutting holes in the hull to let the water out.
Right now all of ANets eggs are in one basket. They are betting their future on throwing away old customers to cater to new customers. This is the same company that showed how easily you can cater to both with their gw1 standalone expansions. They have fallen far.
Oh look it is Baitness and his GW2 is a sinking ship theory when financially GW2 is a major success.
Oh look it is some guy named Gaia hunter who didn't understand my simple post. It says right in there that I am more concerned about the people making design decisions keeping their job than I am about ncsofts money. The game has been a tale of terrible post release decisions, especially compared to how well gw1 was managed. Amusingly enough, you put a potential reason in your next post - two thirds of the designing behind gw1 have moved on.
Any game company willing to take it's current customers for granted and attempt to appeal only to new customers is making a mistake. In gw2's case this is just the latest in a long line of mistakes. It had so much potential, squandered on things like "living world" updates and wvw "tournaments.". The gw2 team needs someone in charge that spends development time making real additions to the game, rather than developing temporary things tha manage to make the game worse.
Without having ncsoft over them, I doubt we will ever see the removal of the people making these bad decisions, though. That is what is most concerning.
Its seems you are a bit lost.
GW2 - most succesful MMO since WoW. Made and is still making boatloads of money (fact)
And NCSoft is still in charge
So, uhm, yeah, you might want to go back to drawing board, this line of "insight" is a dead end.
This all sounds suspiciously like "window dressing" to remove the GW games from occupying a very visible spot on NCSoft's annual financial reports. Compared to NCSoft's major titles, GW2 has not been showing spectacular results lately.
They probably want to report the revenue from GW2 in the "Other" category on the financial reports, both to make their headline games shine more and to bolster the "Other" section, which strengthens their image as an all-round publisher and IP manager.
This all sounds suspiciously like "window dressing" to remove the GW games from occupying a very visible spot on NCSoft's annual financial reports. Compared to NCSoft's major titles, GW2 has not been showing spectacular results lately.
They probably want to report the revenue from GW2 in the "Other" category on the financial reports, both to make their headline games shine more and to bolster the "Other" section, which strengthens their image as an all-round publisher and IP manager.
Not really, GW2 is pretty much only game thats making money in the west, so its not really "all-around" publisher that has no successful games in the west. And it has performed awesome and stable, its pretty much their no2 game in last 3 years as far as overall revenue is concerned.
Its just cutting expenses on their western operations, because its pretty much only GW2 that really needs anything.
This isn't looking good to me. ANet is showing themselves incapable of good decision making, and now there is nobody to fire the morons in charge. Losing ncsoft is a huge loss of financial backing of course, but I am more concerned that someone needs to replace the people in charge at ANet. They built a lovely boat, started dumping water into it, got confused when it started to sink, and now they are cutting holes in the hull to let the water out.
Right now all of ANets eggs are in one basket. They are betting their future on throwing away old customers to cater to new customers. This is the same company that showed how easily you can cater to both with their gw1 standalone expansions. They have fallen far.
First of all, just because you don't like something does not mean that the people in charge of that something are not good at decision making. Don't try to play off an opinion as fact. Anyways, your obviously biased opinion aside; you are completely wrong about one thing. They have not lost NC Soft. NC Soft still owns ArenaNet and is going to continue to back the company financially as they have been. It is not like ArenaNet is going independent, they are simply taking over the publishing responsibilities. This is likely due to NC Soft West Struggling / Restructuring rather then anything at ArenaNet. It is unlikely this will impact anything at all. The most likely scenario is that a few people who worked with ArenaNet from NC Soft West are now at ArenaNet instead.
Anyways, I am not really sure where you get the idea that ArenaNet is doing poorly as they are currently on a pretty huge success train with the recent announcement of 5 million copies sold, an expansion about to launch, and the recent free core game change. There is no way an expansion would be coming if the game was doing so poorly as you claim. The game is really booming with activity in all areas of the game and it has been seeing more attention from general news media then it has since pre-launch. Hate to burst your bubble, but the game -- and the company, are doing just fine.
I can't understand the NCSoft hate. Their F2P is fair, the games are fun, AAA titles. What MMO companies do you people respect?
Aside from GW, have you ever been able to play an NCSoft title long term? Neither has anyone else.
actually, i played city of heroes / villains and aion for quite some time. next question?
You know......hyperbole still has appropriate uses, such as in cases where sarcasm is meant to be implied. In case you missed it, I'll explain it. Your game was shut down even though it supposedly remained somewhat profitable.
I can't understand the NCSoft hate. Their F2P is fair, the games are fun, AAA titles. What MMO companies do you people respect?
Aside from GW, have you ever been able to play an NCSoft title long term? Neither has anyone else.
actually, i played city of heroes / villains and aion for quite some time. next question?
You know......hyperbole still has appropriate uses, such as in cases where sarcasm is meant to be implied. In case you missed it, I'll explain it. Your game was shut down even though it supposedly remained somewhat profitable.
Do you even read what you link?
"It is disappointing that such inaccurate information was
provided to MMORPG by an anonymous source and is being reported on as
news. The operating cost, annual revenue figures and other financial
information shared by this anonymous source are simply wrong. The studio
was unprofitable before the shutdown. Both NCSOFT and Paragon Studios
were incredibly proud of the transition of City of Heroes to a Free to
Play business model, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to support the
studio’s needs. We made the difficult decision to close Paragon Studios
and sunset City of Heroes because the franchise no longer aligned with
the long term profitability goals for the company.
"While
we looked to sell the franchise multiple times, we were unsuccessful in
finding a suitable partner that we thought would support City of
Heroes’ fans in a manner they were accustomed to for years to come.
Closing a studio and sun setting a beloved franchise is never an easy
thing to do for the publisher, the developer or the fans. This was not
an easy decision to make. The Heroes and Villains have taken to the
skies of City of Heroes for the last time, but the game and community
will remain in our memories. We truly thank our fans for their years of
support and we hope they understand the difficult position we were in
when making the final decision."
OFFICIAL NCSoft. You can harp on it as much as you like, CoH has had a good run and came to end of the line. Its THAT simple.
This all sounds suspiciously like "window dressing" to remove the GW games from occupying a very visible spot on NCSoft's annual financial reports. Compared to NCSoft's major titles, GW2 has not been showing spectacular results lately.
They probably want to report the revenue from GW2 in the "Other" category on the financial reports, both to make their headline games shine more and to bolster the "Other" section, which strengthens their image as an all-round publisher and IP manager.
Not really, GW2 is pretty much only game thats making money in the west, so its not really "all-around" publisher that has no successful games in the west. And it has performed awesome and stable, its pretty much their no2 game in last 3 years as far as overall revenue is concerned.
Its just cutting expenses on their western operations, because its pretty much only GW2 that really needs anything.
Yep I agree. I think its actually GW2 is doing so good its making the rest of NCSoft's stable of games look like punks.
Jealous? Mad? Feeling like you need to break something?
Deal with it. If you cannot handle the facts, step away from the keyboard.
I can't understand the NCSoft hate. Their F2P is fair, the games are fun, AAA titles. What MMO companies do you people respect?
Aside from GW, have you ever been able to play an NCSoft title long term? Neither has anyone else.
actually, i played city of heroes / villains and aion for quite some time. next question?
You know......hyperbole still has appropriate uses, such as in cases where sarcasm is meant to be implied. In case you missed it, I'll explain it. Your game was shut down even though it supposedly remained somewhat profitable.
Do you even read what you link?
"It is disappointing that such inaccurate information was
provided to MMORPG by an anonymous source and is being reported on as
news. The operating cost, annual revenue figures and other financial
information shared by this anonymous source are simply wrong. The studio
was unprofitable before the shutdown. Both NCSOFT and Paragon Studios
were incredibly proud of the transition of City of Heroes to a Free to
Play business model, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to support the
studio’s needs. We made the difficult decision to close Paragon Studios
and sunset City of Heroes because the franchise no longer aligned with
the long term profitability goals for the company.
"While
we looked to sell the franchise multiple times, we were unsuccessful in
finding a suitable partner that we thought would support City of
Heroes’ fans in a manner they were accustomed to for years to come.
Closing a studio and sun setting a beloved franchise is never an easy
thing to do for the publisher, the developer or the fans. This was not
an easy decision to make. The Heroes and Villains have taken to the
skies of City of Heroes for the last time, but the game and community
will remain in our memories. We truly thank our fans for their years of
support and we hope they understand the difficult position we were in
when making the final decision."
OFFICIAL NCSoft. You can harp on it as much as you like, CoH has had a good run and came to end of the line. Its THAT simple.
OK, so what? It still doesn't change the point for the discussion. NCSoft is known for closing games.
Did you ever play Lineage or Lineage 2?Nothing worse than seeing bots all over the place and when you try to help clean up the game they simply couldn't give a shit.
So it was easy for me,if the developer doesn't care about their own game then i don't care about their games or them. Then we have the promised employment of Lord British and his brother to which they cancelled both and lost a lawsuit but unfortunately for his brother than was only word of mouth so did not hold up in courts.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Some people understand that this is a none story; others not so sure.
Lets try an analogy: let's pretend that Blizzard was going to be replaced as the publisher of WoW by Activision; well that would show Blizzard heh; make them get their act together etc. Or another: Activision sacked as CoD publisher, game to be handled by Blizzard. Or Mass Effect to be published by EA or ....
This is a none story. It is a change for organisational or financial or marketing reasons.
Everyone knows nc soft screwed up if they actually listened they could of made city of heroes stick around however arenanet has always been able to develop without nc soft and even more now so why does that even matter?
There is a huge thread on Reddit as well (but no-one had facts there either). The only interesting post is where someone pitched the idea that Activision Blizzard had bought them out and that is the reason Blizzard canned Titan. Yeah, a bit of a longshot but an interesting thought.
I'm half way waiting for DMKano to come in and crow that they've moved over to Trion.
Haha. That was awesome. I laughed so hard.:)
On topic. Lets see what this move holds for the future. I don't think much will change.
GW2 - most succesful MMO since WoW. Made and is still making boatloads of money (fact)
And NCSoft is still in charge
So, uhm, yeah, you might want to go back to drawing board, this line of "insight" is a dead end.
Being as kind as possible, can you back up your facts with any links? You are eager to disagree but I am not privy to the knowledge of GW2 massive success as you are. Where you see "the most successful MMO since WoW" I see an MMO riddled with terrible post launch management, the latest being the decision to dump the base game for free, not compensate current customers (unless you count a one character slot preorder bonus), and then charge everyone full game price for the new expansion.
Keep in mind for it to be the most successful MMO since WoW it has to beat the likes of:
Those are just on player numbers, which of course are hard to tell between B2P, F2P, and Sub games. More players will play free games I would imagine, but I also do not know what your definition of success is. If it is current players, then we have the tiniest bit of data on what people are playing courtesy of Raptr:
GW2 used to be a strong contender there, and was the second played MMORPG for awhile. As of the last few months it is no longer even in the top 20 games, with the MMOs I listed above beating them (plus warframe and ark if you consider them).
We could look at profits as well, we have all that data it is just a pain to sift through. If I had to take a guess, though, I would guess SWTOR topping GW2 in income, EA seems to have figured out how to monetize the game more effectively, and GW2 did not catch on as well in China as it could have.
All of that is also talking about exclusively western MMORPGs. GW2 failed to crack the eastern market, but there are hugely successful games that started in Korea that have a large enough player base there alone. If we let pre WoW games in, then we have the grandaddy Lineage. If we don't, we still have Lineage 2 and Aion, though they are a bit less popular now the amount of success they achieved certainly eclipses GW2's numbers in any area.
So we have lots of ways to look at success, but even if your idea of success is just "has the most charrs" it does not really change how the people in charge of GW2 are making terrible design decisions, and that is why I want to see the people in charge let go. Alienating your existing player base right before an expansion is a dumb move. Dedicating so many resources to the temporary content in the living story is a dumb move. Putting out so little content for PvP, dungeons, and WvW is a dumb move. Dealing with a cheating problem in WvW by publicly shaming 1 cheater out of the tons of reports is a dumb move. Dealing with win trading during a tournament by banning anybody that talks about the tournament at all is a dumb move. Making one challenging pve instance is a dumb move. Removing the one gold sink (repair bills) outside of gem purchases is a dumb move.
It wasn't all dumb of course, and there are still a lot of things that I like how GW2 does, like the event system, action based combat, class variance. I think they are a talented dev team led by some incompetent decision makers.
Putting somebody else in charge would improve things - a lot. Imagine how much more content the game would have if just 20% of the living world development time was spent on permanent content. Heck, the only WvW update the game ever got was when they put the Living World team on it temporarily. Imagine how many more people would still be playing if they addressed the WvW cheating issues - it always seemed to me WvW was the biggest retainer of players for the game, but the devs always took it for granted. Imagine if there was more PvE content - there was only one instance the small number of PvE players I knew were ever interested in, as the others were easy and dropped nothing of use. The biggest PvE draws were the zone wide events, which were really cool but hardly useful to interest hardcore PvE players.
This was a game that had the potential to rewrite how MMORPGs were done, and had the core game in place to do so. The reason it hasn't shaken the genre up is the poor post release management. Get rid of those buffoons already and put someone in charge that can help the game show its true potential.
GW2 - most succesful MMO since WoW. Made and is still making boatloads of money (fact)
And NCSoft is still in charge
So, uhm, yeah, you might want to go back to drawing board, this line of "insight" is a dead end.
Being as kind as possible, can you back up your facts with any links? You are eager to disagree but I am not privy to the knowledge of GW2 massive success as you are. Where you see "the most successful MMO since WoW" I see an MMO riddled with terrible post launch management, the latest being the decision to dump the base game for free, not compensate current customers (unless you count a one character slot preorder bonus), and then charge everyone full game price for the new expansion.
Keep in mind for it to be the most successful MMO since WoW it has to beat the likes of:
Those are just on player numbers, which of course are hard to tell between B2P, F2P, and Sub games. More players will play free games I would imagine, but I also do not know what your definition of success is. If it is current players, then we have the tiniest bit of data on what people are playing courtesy of Raptr:
GW2 used to be a strong contender there, and was the second played MMORPG for awhile. As of the last few months it is no longer even in the top 20 games, with the MMOs I listed above beating them (plus warframe and ark if you consider them).
We could look at profits as well, we have all that data it is just a pain to sift through. If I had to take a guess, though, I would guess SWTOR topping GW2 in income, EA seems to have figured out how to monetize the game more effectively, and GW2 did not catch on as well in China as it could have.
All of that is also talking about exclusively western MMORPGs. GW2 failed to crack the eastern market, but there are hugely successful games that started in Korea that have a large enough player base there alone. If we let pre WoW games in, then we have the grandaddy Lineage. If we don't, we still have Lineage 2 and Aion, though they are a bit less popular now the amount of success they achieved certainly eclipses GW2's numbers in any area.
So we have lots of ways to look at success, but even if your idea of success is just "has the most charrs" it does not really change how the people in charge of GW2 are making terrible design decisions, and that is why I want to see the people in charge let go. Alienating your existing player base right before an expansion is a dumb move. Dedicating so many resources to the temporary content in the living story is a dumb move. Putting out so little content for PvP, dungeons, and WvW is a dumb move. Dealing with a cheating problem in WvW by publicly shaming 1 cheater out of the tons of reports is a dumb move. Dealing with win trading during a tournament by banning anybody that talks about the tournament at all is a dumb move. Making one challenging pve instance is a dumb move. Removing the one gold sink (repair bills) outside of gem purchases is a dumb move.
It wasn't all dumb of course, and there are still a lot of things that I like how GW2 does, like the event system, action based combat, class variance. I think they are a talented dev team led by some incompetent decision makers.
Putting somebody else in charge would improve things - a lot. Imagine how much more content the game would have if just 20% of the living world development time was spent on permanent content. Heck, the only WvW update the game ever got was when they put the Living World team on it temporarily. Imagine how many more people would still be playing if they addressed the WvW cheating issues - it always seemed to me WvW was the biggest retainer of players for the game, but the devs always took it for granted. Imagine if there was more PvE content - there was only one instance the small number of PvE players I knew were ever interested in, as the others were easy and dropped nothing of use. The biggest PvE draws were the zone wide events, which were really cool but hardly useful to interest hardcore PvE players.
This was a game that had the potential to rewrite how MMORPGs were done, and had the core game in place to do so. The reason it hasn't shaken the genre up is the poor post release management. Get rid of those buffoons already and put someone in charge that can help the game show its true potential.
Also i forgot to mention mentioned in the west, since L1 is obvious ruler in the east.
"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.
"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.
"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.
What? Comes up short? ROFL
You compare game that need to be reworked completely from failed launch, that threw SQix in financial problems, with box cost 5-10$ since relaunch and needed financial model change (cash shop) and game that needed 2 rounds of layoffs and 2 rounds of server merges (216 -> 17) and finacial model change just to stay afloat.
Failed lauch doesnt magically dissapear, losses that FFXIV amased in that time doesnt magically dissapear. And this isnt first FFXIVs "accounts created" juggle. SQix does deserve respect for reworking FFXIV, but that came with great cost. And latest increase comes from - ASIA.
SWTOR infographic doesnt say WHEN it had 1 million active players, as i said, at launch it probably did as ALL their info on that infographic is HISTORIC data. "how long did first player take to reach lvl 50", that was in 2011 rofl. And SWTOR is facing lowest numbers since launch. It isnt surprising as theres pretty much no content updates since last year.
They could easily merge all their servers to 2-4. Most of servers are empty.
SWTOR sold 2,2 -2,3 million in first week, and only 400k in next year, most from bargain bin. GW2 sold 3 mil in 6 months and 3,5m in first year. Most of it at full price.
Yeah, data is dissapointing....for you. Success is what those who make stuff set to achieve. Neither FFXIV or SWTOR achieved what they were supposed to. Some indie MMO can be great success with 1000 subs.
If you want to go that route sure, you can say that it would be more successful if in your opinion they did this and that. And that is your opinion and thats fine. But GW2 is awesome success for ANet and NCSoft, your feelings about it dont change that fact.
Comments
OTOH they dont seem to understand that even devs need to be paid, not because theyre greedy, but because theyre human too and have families and so on.
I always rofl when they call EQ hardcore khm...*lineage 1/2* ....khm
seems that a LOT of people disagree with you (goes and looks at NCSofts financial results)
seems that "nobody else" is spending pretty money on NCSofts games.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
FFA PvP OTOH, something that you clearly "forgot" IS hardcore.
But western players jumped ship to play WoW from both games in a hartbeat.
Any game company willing to take it's current customers for granted and attempt to appeal only to new customers is making a mistake. In gw2's case this is just the latest in a long line of mistakes. It had so much potential, squandered on things like "living world" updates and wvw "tournaments.". The gw2 team needs someone in charge that spends development time making real additions to the game, rather than developing temporary things tha manage to make the game worse.
Without having ncsoft over them, I doubt we will ever see the removal of the people making these bad decisions, though. That is what is most concerning.
/FC/SQuix....,
So yeah, if i was playing WS i would be concerned (a lot).
OTOH GW2 is as safe as it gets, GW1 is STILL running.
Last thing MMO genre need is stoopid devs tha will see game company go down before they shut game down due to their ego or w/e.
These companies are BUSINESSes. They HAVE TO cover their expenses AND make profit along the way. Thats how it works. On global level.
GW2 - most succesful MMO since WoW. Made and is still making boatloads of money (fact)
And NCSoft is still in charge
So, uhm, yeah, you might want to go back to drawing board, this line of "insight" is a dead end.
They probably want to report the revenue from GW2 in the "Other" category on the financial reports, both to make their headline games shine more and to bolster the "Other" section, which strengthens their image as an all-round publisher and IP manager.
Its just cutting expenses on their western operations, because its pretty much only GW2 that really needs anything.
next question?
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Anyways, I am not really sure where you get the idea that ArenaNet is doing poorly as they are currently on a pretty huge success train with the recent announcement of 5 million copies sold, an expansion about to launch, and the recent free core game change. There is no way an expansion would be coming if the game was doing so poorly as you claim. The game is really booming with activity in all areas of the game and it has been seeing more attention from general news media then it has since pre-launch. Hate to burst your bubble, but the game -- and the company, are doing just fine.
"It is disappointing that such inaccurate information was provided to MMORPG by an anonymous source and is being reported on as news. The operating cost, annual revenue figures and other financial information shared by this anonymous source are simply wrong. The studio was unprofitable before the shutdown. Both NCSOFT and Paragon Studios were incredibly proud of the transition of City of Heroes to a Free to Play business model, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to support the studio’s needs. We made the difficult decision to close Paragon Studios and sunset City of Heroes because the franchise no longer aligned with the long term profitability goals for the company.
"While we looked to sell the franchise multiple times, we were unsuccessful in finding a suitable partner that we thought would support City of Heroes’ fans in a manner they were accustomed to for years to come. Closing a studio and sun setting a beloved franchise is never an easy thing to do for the publisher, the developer or the fans. This was not an easy decision to make. The Heroes and Villains have taken to the skies of City of Heroes for the last time, but the game and community will remain in our memories. We truly thank our fans for their years of support and we hope they understand the difficult position we were in when making the final decision."
OFFICIAL NCSoft. You can harp on it as much as you like, CoH has had a good run and came to end of the line. Its THAT simple.Deal with it. If you cannot handle the facts, step away from the keyboard.
It still doesn't change the point for the discussion. NCSoft is known for closing games.
(The question was why don't people like NCSoft?)
Did you ever play Lineage or Lineage 2?Nothing worse than seeing bots all over the place and when you try to help clean up the game they simply couldn't give a shit.
So it was easy for me,if the developer doesn't care about their own game then i don't care about their games or them.
Then we have the promised employment of Lord British and his brother to which they cancelled both and lost a lawsuit but unfortunately for his brother than was only word of mouth so did not hold up in courts.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Lets try an analogy: let's pretend that Blizzard was going to be replaced as the publisher of WoW by Activision; well that would show Blizzard heh; make them get their act together etc. Or another: Activision sacked as CoD publisher, game to be handled by Blizzard. Or Mass Effect to be published by EA or ....
This is a none story. It is a change for organisational or financial or marketing reasons.
On topic. Lets see what this move holds for the future.
I don't think much will change.
http://www.entropiapartners.com/?r=22415
Keep in mind for it to be the most successful MMO since WoW it has to beat the likes of:
FFXIV
http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/final-fantasy-xiv-has-had-5-million-subscribers-is-second-most-popular-subscriptionbased-mmo-33713
SWTOR
http://lorehound.com/news/ea-q3-earnings-call-swtor-sells-2-million-units/
They sold around 2.7 million copies before going F2P and the most recent numbers I can find they claim to have 1 million active players a month
http://dulfy.net/2014/11/26/swtor-inforgraphic-released57-million-characters-created-in-gw2/
Those are just on player numbers, which of course are hard to tell between B2P, F2P, and Sub games. More players will play free games I would imagine, but I also do not know what your definition of success is. If it is current players, then we have the tiniest bit of data on what people are playing courtesy of Raptr:
http://caas.raptr.com/category/most-played/
GW2 used to be a strong contender there, and was the second played MMORPG for awhile. As of the last few months it is no longer even in the top 20 games, with the MMOs I listed above beating them (plus warframe and ark if you consider them).
We could look at profits as well, we have all that data it is just a pain to sift through. If I had to take a guess, though, I would guess SWTOR topping GW2 in income, EA seems to have figured out how to monetize the game more effectively, and GW2 did not catch on as well in China as it could have.
All of that is also talking about exclusively western MMORPGs. GW2 failed to crack the eastern market, but there are hugely successful games that started in Korea that have a large enough player base there alone. If we let pre WoW games in, then we have the grandaddy Lineage. If we don't, we still have Lineage 2 and Aion, though they are a bit less popular now the amount of success they achieved certainly eclipses GW2's numbers in any area.
So we have lots of ways to look at success, but even if your idea of success is just "has the most charrs" it does not really change how the people in charge of GW2 are making terrible design decisions, and that is why I want to see the people in charge let go. Alienating your existing player base right before an expansion is a dumb move. Dedicating so many resources to the temporary content in the living story is a dumb move. Putting out so little content for PvP, dungeons, and WvW is a dumb move. Dealing with a cheating problem in WvW by publicly shaming 1 cheater out of the tons of reports is a dumb move. Dealing with win trading during a tournament by banning anybody that talks about the tournament at all is a dumb move. Making one challenging pve instance is a dumb move. Removing the one gold sink (repair bills) outside of gem purchases is a dumb move.
It wasn't all dumb of course, and there are still a lot of things that I like how GW2 does, like the event system, action based combat, class variance. I think they are a talented dev team led by some incompetent decision makers.
Putting somebody else in charge would improve things - a lot. Imagine how much more content the game would have if just 20% of the living world development time was spent on permanent content. Heck, the only WvW update the game ever got was when they put the Living World team on it temporarily. Imagine how many more people would still be playing if they addressed the WvW cheating issues - it always seemed to me WvW was the biggest retainer of players for the game, but the devs always took it for granted. Imagine if there was more PvE content - there was only one instance the small number of PvE players I knew were ever interested in, as the others were easy and dropped nothing of use. The biggest PvE draws were the zone wide events, which were really cool but hardly useful to interest hardcore PvE players.
This was a game that had the potential to rewrite how MMORPGs were done, and had the core game in place to do so. The reason it hasn't shaken the genre up is the poor post release management. Get rid of those buffoons already and put someone in charge that can help the game show its true potential.
Also i forgot to mention mentioned in the west, since L1 is obvious ruler in the east.
http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/final-fantasy-xiv-has-had-5-million-subscribers-is-second-most-popular-subscriptionbased-mmo-33713
"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.
http://dulfy.net/2014/11/26/swtor-inforgraphic-released57-million-characters-created-in-gw2/
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.
You compare game that need to be reworked completely from failed launch, that threw SQix in financial problems, with box cost 5-10$ since relaunch and needed financial model change (cash shop) and game that needed 2 rounds of layoffs and 2 rounds of server merges (216 -> 17) and finacial model change just to stay afloat.
Failed lauch doesnt magically dissapear, losses that FFXIV amased in that time doesnt magically dissapear. And this isnt first FFXIVs "accounts created" juggle. SQix does deserve respect for reworking FFXIV, but that came with great cost. And latest increase comes from - ASIA.
SWTOR infographic doesnt say WHEN it had 1 million active players, as i said, at launch it probably did as ALL their info on that infographic is HISTORIC data. "how long did first player take to reach lvl 50", that was in 2011 rofl. And SWTOR is facing lowest numbers since launch. It isnt surprising as theres pretty much no content updates since last year.
http://www.torstatus.net/shards/eu/trends
They could easily merge all their servers to 2-4. Most of servers are empty.
SWTOR sold 2,2 -2,3 million in first week, and only 400k in next year, most from bargain bin. GW2 sold 3 mil in 6 months and 3,5m in first year. Most of it at full price.
Yeah, data is dissapointing....for you. Success is what those who make stuff set to achieve. Neither FFXIV or SWTOR achieved what they were supposed to. Some indie MMO can be great success with 1000 subs.
If you want to go that route sure, you can say that it would be more successful if in your opinion they did this and that. And that is your opinion and thats fine. But GW2 is awesome success for ANet and NCSoft, your feelings about it dont change that fact.