Curse

Shanaeri Rynale · Nov 24, 2009, 03:22 PM // 15:22

NCsoft has had to lay off staff, re-structure their business and that alas has included some Anet employees. I don't believe the spin that it's all so they can be better poised to grow etc etc I've read it hundreds of times in all sorts of announcements.

e.g http://www.reuters.com/article/press...009+BW20090213

40% drop in profits from 2007-2008, 31% drop in pre tax profits, 15% drop in income.
How can it not be about the money?

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6204551.html

This quarter Aion has made a huge improvement in NCsoft's figures, but that is not in the time period we are talking about.

No one can really know the state of things, but no other explanation makes sense.

I'm glad people are still enjoying the game. I am too. But there is a large part of me that sees the potential that still exists.

Blobbob · Nov 24, 2009, 03:25 PM // 15:25

Guild Wars is a great game, but if they had asked for a monthly fee then I definitely would have spent it on something else. For what you currently pay it's great, but if I were going to pay a monthly fee then I would have sooner spent it on City of Heroes or something.

Guild Wars was going to lose support sooner or later. Not even a monthly fee guarantees support, just look what happened to EverQuest after EverQuest 2 came out. Or Asheron's Call after Asheron's Call 2 came out. A sequel to an online game like this is obviously going to divide your player base, so you might as well put the majority of your eggs in one basket.

edit: As for the layoffs, even EA has had to lose a ridiculous amount of people recently. It's happening to everyone and it's not a symptom of Anet's revenue model, it's a symptom of the current economic situation everyone's in.

Shadowspawn X · Nov 24, 2009, 03:37 PM // 15:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shanaeri Rynale

40% drop in profits from 2007-2008, 31% drop in pre tax profits, 15% drop in income.
How can it not be about the money?

Ahh, I understand now. This completely explains why pve is a degenerate farmfest. Thanks for clearing that up.

Riot Narita · Nov 24, 2009, 04:15 PM // 16:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shanaeri Rynale

no other explanation makes sense to me

Fixed that for you.

Test Me · Nov 24, 2009, 04:23 PM // 16:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shanaeri Rynale

How can it not be about the money?

GW would have failed as a pay-to-play model as no one would have picked it up to begin with *and* no one would have stayed around to get GWAMM for $x per month. The only reason we're still here on this forum having this conversation after 4+ years is precisely because there are no subscription costs.

Trub · Nov 24, 2009, 04:24 PM // 16:24

No, GuildWars shouldn't have been created as a P2P.
Myself, and all the gamers I know...would not have even read the box if it were P2P.
We have very busy lives, and find comfort in the fact we are currently enjoying a very satisfying game, and can still continue with our RL obligations without feeling cheated out of the $15, or whatever the going monthly fee is now for a P2P, just because 'something came up'.
ANet took the smart route when it came to this business model....charge for the game, and add a few expansions here and there.
I am more than happy to pay for more expansions as needed, but I refuse to shackle myself to a game with monthly fees.
Just my opinion.

garethporlest18 · Nov 24, 2009, 04:43 PM // 16:43

I don't think things would have gone much different' had it been pay to play. What went wrong were the administrative decisions like someone else said. The people, were what went wrong, not the game's model. Although that might have had a part in it, though I think it would have balanced out between customers lost because of P2P and the people actually P2Ping.

JR · Nov 24, 2009, 04:44 PM // 16:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shanaeri Rynale

NCsoft has had to lay off staff, re-structure their business and that alas has included some Anet employees.

Do you have a source on that? I don't believe ArenaNet has ever had to lay off staff for 'restructuring'.

Shanaeri Rynale · Nov 24, 2009, 04:52 PM // 16:52

Was'nt people let go from Europe(e.g Brighton and Germany)? Fact is NCsoft laid off people, moved some others elsewhere for money reasons.

Since we dont have transparency as to how much NCsoft and Anet intereract both practically and financially it is totally logical to deduce that Arenanet faced financial pressure to cut cost also.

Martin Alvito · Nov 24, 2009, 05:15 PM // 17:15

Go look at NCSoft's financials. They could live on cash and legacy revenues for YEARS. They carry virtually no debt and have a low expenditure profile. It's debt that breaks you in this business. The resources to support GW are there. They simply aren't being utilized.

It's not about the money (directly). It's about internal politics, which revolves around pleasing investors with the power to influence decisions to hire and fire upper management. Those investors want the company to hit certain year-over-year targets so that the stock will perform in the short term. Since NCSoft didn't have any large new revenue sources until Aion hit, that implies cutting costs until it does.

Again, this behavior is in the best interests of the publisher's investors. It is not in the long term best interests of NCSoft or ANet, but upper management has a finite time horizon and doesn't really care. They make more money by acquiring as many stock options as possible during their tenure, and if that involves killing the cow for the milk...

Too bad. Upper management can divest its holdings before the company crumbles and the stock tanks. In truth, the company will probably perform fine. It could perform better in the limit. But the existing compensation structure just doesn't reward long-term thinking.

@ Shadowspawn: PvE is a degenerate farmfest because ANet is unwilling to dedicate the resources to clean it up, and figures that they've already driven off everyone but the hardcore farmers anyway.

snaek · Nov 24, 2009, 05:19 PM // 17:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by jr

I don't believe ArenaNet has ever had to lay off staff for 'restructuring'.

*cough*gailegray*cough* (j/k)

Quote:

Originally Posted by martin alvito

PvE is a degenerate farmfest because ANet is unwilling to dedicate the resources to clean it up, and figures that they've already driven off everyone but the hardcore farmers anyway.

what a smart business model; have everyone become packed with hoards of items/gold that they'll need to spend irl money on storage tabs/character slots/new accounts.

Shanaeri Rynale · Nov 24, 2009, 05:19 PM // 17:19

I agree Martin.

We've seen that sort of short sightness in companies time and time again.

Quote:

Since NCSoft didn't have any large new revenue sources until Aion hit, that implies cutting costs until it does.

I read that as why reduction in support for GW1 was cut.

DreamWind · Nov 24, 2009, 06:09 PM // 18:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by trialist

I don't deny that the game has gotten worse, but is that really a financial consequence or a managerial consequence? My thoughts are that its more of the latter. Anet simply didn't know what they wanted to do with their game. They tried to cater to everyone and everything and ended up falling short in all departments. If its a failure to manage their game and make the right decisions, how will throwing more money at them suddenly make their decisions right?

Well I guess that is the point...we don't really know what would happen. I'm not the type who says monthly fee would solve everything. I'm simply saying all we know is that the decisions in the situation we have now haven't been the greatest. They have been a decent success in sales, but they have proven to us that their game management decisions are at times insane.

The only thing I do know is that with the current model, there is really no way to hold Anet accountable for these decisions other than not buy their next game or expansion. The problem with this is that ANet is brilliant. There was another thread in which people were asked if they were buying GW2. The majority of the posts stated that they had problems with how GW1 was run, but they are still buying GW2 in hopes for the best. This is how ANet is genius..they know they can get away with as many bad management decisions as necessary with the current marketing model as long as they make people happy with the content.

Quote:

Originally Posted by QueenofDeath

The majority of people (outside of Dreamwind) know that when the statement "pay to play" is stated it means a "monthly fee" always has always will mean that. So don't let him derail the thread with his semantics and apples and oranges comparisons. Just ignore him as I do.

At any rate it really needs a monthly pay to play feature oh say $20-$25 and that'll get rid of em nickely split. Dreamwind probably couldn't even afford that. hahaha.

How are you not banned with your constant flame inducing posts? I never said I would pay a monthly fee, I am simply proposing a point. I would respond to you further but you aren't worth it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sword Hammer Axe

I'm not gonna make this a build thread, but if people hammer you around in PvP you have 3 options: 1) Learn to make a good build with what you have. It's possible and don't say otherwise because there's been builds since the very first GW came out. 2) Buy another game. Notice that this is "optional" meaning that no matter what you say you still can play GW even without paying more. 3) Don't play PvP. Which speaks for itself.

Those options are good to you in a PvP game? I don't personally know any competitive player of any game who would follow what you propose. Unless of course you mean leave the game or don't play PvP, which is what the majority of PvP players have already chosen to do.

trialist · Nov 24, 2009, 07:38 PM // 19:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

The only thing I do know is that with the current model, there is really no way to hold Anet accountable for these decisions other than not buy their next game or expansion. The problem with this is that ANet is brilliant. There was another thread in which people were asked if they were buying GW2. The majority of the posts stated that they had problems with how GW1 was run, but they are still buying GW2 in hopes for the best. This is how ANet is genius..they know they can get away with as many bad management decisions as necessary with the current marketing model as long as they make people happy with the content.

Erm... with this post of yours, you have pretty much admitted that the financial and managerial decisions are separate with their current model. So what then do you want? You want a means to pressure anet into designing the game into a vision of what you want? And that means is a pay to play model?

Well sure, take a look at Warhammer Online then. They punished Mythic with their wallets and look at the game now. Dead. There are many other MMOs similar to WAR that suffered the same fate; players voting with their wallets. And did those games thrive? No. They all died. That is what you want for GW?

I'm not sure what kind of accountability you expect from using financial pressure, except to cause the death of the game.

Operative 14 · Nov 24, 2009, 08:08 PM // 20:08

Umm... Arenanet never laid off anyone, and please correct me if you have a source that proves me wrong. NCSoft might have laid off people but NCSoft is not Arenanet.

And, regardless, NCSoft is mostly supported by other games like Champions or Aion that do have monthly fees. So how does that support your supposition that a monthly fee with GW would have helped Arenanet or NCSoft? If anything the last 8 pages have shown that GW would have been a major failiure when it came out becuase it didn't have anything in particular that made it stand out from the other games, and in the long run it would have ended up like so many other MMOs whose names I can't even remember.

People got GW originally because it didn't have a monthly fee. They stayed because it didn't have a monthly fee and they could play as much or as little as they want, and the anti-cynic in me says the game itself also set their hooks in them.

Why are you even arguing this anymore? It was a moot point even before you brought it up.

athariel · Nov 24, 2009, 08:25 PM // 20:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trub

We have very busy lives, and find comfort in the fact we are currently enjoying a very satisfying game, and can still continue with our RL obligations without feeling cheated out of the $15, or whatever the going monthly fee is now for a P2P, just because 'something came up'.

15$ price isn't set in stone, you know?

The Drunkard · Nov 24, 2009, 09:03 PM // 21:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shanaeri Rynale

I also still don't adhere to the 'management don't care' theory. They can have the appearance not to care because of other factors, but when it comes down to it all those other factors are down to money.

A buisness should not be out to create customers, but fans. Look at Apple for example, that's a prime case where it has created a fan base from it's customers and so enjoys tremendous brand loyalty.

Apple in no way represents what other companies do. Look at Sony and the crap that they've pulled with their products. For one, sony limited the use a DVD could be acessed to in order to prevent duping. They gave a [email protected] about customers in order to make an extra dime off of their products. If you want another example, EA is another "bad" company. If you do a little bit of searching, you'll find out they took the design of Battlefield from a team of devs and fired them after the realease of the game. Look at how poorly handled the game is. In many cases management wants money, not fans. As long as they give people broken builds and skills, people will want to play the game to get everything and the company gets money. Not all companies do this, (like Apple which you mentioned) but the world doesn't revolve around smiles and hugs and not everyone is a humanitarian.

Now before you try and twist my comment to agree with the p2p method, just becauce a company is getting a lot of money doesn't mean that they're going to listen to their playerbase. WAR didn't until people started quitting en masse because of their updates and by the time they started to listen it was too late in trying to regain the playerbase. Monthly payments give a lot of influence to the players, but that DOESN'T mean the company is going to listen.

Martin Alvito · Nov 25, 2009, 12:35 AM // 00:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Drunkard

Now before you try and twist my comment to agree with the p2p method, just becauce a company is getting a lot of money doesn't mean that they're going to listen to their playerbase.

No, but that stream of revenues does confer some leverage to the player base. It's hard to organize cutting off that stream of revenues, but the threat of that eventuality does compel companies to behave differently.

Dreamwind's argument is that GW's revenue model has delinked people's purchase decisions from ANet's investment in maintaining the game. I'm not totally convinced by his data; it's logical to expect that most people that are still posting on a GW fansite intend to buy GW2. I'm willing to bet that they've lost some business over the current state of the game, and that we never observe those people. The mods suppress that sort of negative publicity.

He's definitely on target when he argues that there's significant pressure on continuing players to purchase expansions. It really is impossible to function in PvP without them, and if your group of PvE players is purchasing the expansion you are compelled to choose between purchasing it yourself or being lonely/quitting. Functionally, charging a monthly fee and releasing the content is hardly distinguishable from releasing the expansion content and charging for it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Drunkard

WAR didn't until people started quitting en masse because of their updates and by the time they started to listen it was too late in trying to regain the playerbase. Monthly payments give a lot of influence to the players, but that DOESN'T mean the company is going to listen.

So? This doesn't disprove the argument that monthly payments confer leverage. You've shown that sometimes companies make mistakes despite that leverage. This doesn't imply that outcomes in GW would turn out this way under a pay-for-play model. We're in the land of "maybe" and "might have been"; anything that would increase the probability of leading to a more desirable outcome can be defined as "good" in that context.

The ideal solution now that expansions are not being developed would be to switch to a nominal monthly fee. The trouble is that you can't switch from F2P to P4P, because people feel that's a bait-and-switch. Any F2P game will be vital until the flow of new content stops, and then it's going to start to die for lack of funding.

Worse, GW proved that there's a finite amount of non-optional new content that you can release before you kill the game. Eventually balance becomes an issue; given a sufficient number of areas and skills to keep track of, the game gets away from the devs' ability to keep ahead of those issues.

This makes me skeptical of getting involved in another long-term F2P game. Those structural issues won't go away.

*Darcy* · Nov 25, 2009, 02:34 AM // 02:34

1. Gaile Gray was not laid off. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gaile_Gray She moved to a new position in Support, which was a promotion, and is still around today.

2. ArenaNet has actually hired more people since NCSoft's restructuring, including a few of the people laid off by NCSoft.

3. Due to ArenaNet's server/game system, there is no way to "create" anything on the live servers. This was a purposeful decision on their part. Therefore, no amount of monthly fee would enable you to recover lost items or characters. It is not "lack of funds" that controls this, but the fact that they would need to rollback the server to restore one person's belongings.

4. This website (and a few others) became a huge success because ArenaNet did not have the funds to dedicate employees to their own forum. While you can believe that things would have been easier with an ArenaNet forum, I believe that the lack of one forced ArenaNet to become involved in the community to a greater degree than most game companies.

5. Most of us bought the game originally because it was F2P. The other benefits, art, storyline, skill over time, etc., were not discovered until you installed the game and began to play.

Dallcingi · Nov 25, 2009, 05:13 AM // 05:13

No but if we played to play and got hacked we would have lost all our moneys too including the time... not a good idea imo.