Curse

Raiin Maker · Jul 21, 2006, 01:41 PM // 13:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBQRibs

Awesome. Thats 250,000 real people and 1,750,000 chinese farmer bots!1!

Juuuust kidding. Seriously, I hope these numbers mean that the gaming world will start taking Guild Wars as seriously as they do WoW.

I doubt it will be as seruous as WoW considering that WoW has +6Million players, and has amazing custmer support due to hits huge budget.

felinette · Jul 21, 2006, 02:25 PM // 14:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by WingspanTT

Yes the population will spread out over time. This is why there are henchmen.

But the trend seems to be to design quests and missions that require a group unless you want to be completely frustrated or be shut out of trying for bonuses. This trend has to be reversed in chapter 3.

I'll say congrats Anet on the 2 mil milestone, but I also agree with those that say it's not a very meaningful number in terms of how "healthy" the game and community are. I own 2 accounts--I had to buy a second one to get more character slots since the number they give you is so cheap (you get 50 with a WoW account). And at least half of the members in both my guilds haven't logged in for over a month. So 2 mil doesn't mean 2 million active players.

Xenrath · Jul 21, 2006, 04:47 PM // 16:47

That's all well and good but where are those players? Yes I know, different time zones and people play at different times of the day etc. Prophecies had the same thing, but there seemed to be a lot more people around in the PvE campaign.

Factions by comparison in quite a lot of places it's relatively empty (euro servers, dunno about elsewhere). Ended up doing quite a lot of it with henchies or guildies helping out. Hoping the next one isn't like this.

Sanji · Jul 21, 2006, 06:38 PM // 18:38

RISE FROM YO GRAVE

Incredible display of thread necromancy.

SirShadowrunner · Jul 21, 2006, 09:33 PM // 21:33

I have been pushing a couple of my factions toons thru Tyria lately to get all the
skills I want, and I have to say it is kind of sad when you can go to places like
Ice caves, THK, Abbaddons mouth, and find quite a few ppl there to pug with and
then you go to Unwaking waters or eternal grove and the places are ghost towns.
Very clear sign that factions pve came up short, good thing the new Splintercell
game had a big delay or Mr. Fisher and I would be saving the planet from certain
destruction.

-Sirshadowrunner

Fraltieny · Jul 21, 2006, 11:52 PM // 23:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by NJudson

Maybe I'm wrong, but the last I heard was that WoW had around 7-8 million members now. Anyway those that I know that have playing WoW really loved it and I do think it looks like a great game, but as stated before I couldn't possibly convince myself to pay $180 in subscription fees for 1 year and the $50 cost of the game itself......just stupid IMO. Regardless whether I'd enjoy WoW or GW more, the matter of cost is my driving factor. GW is awesome and I'm sticking with it.

You guys fail at realizing why we pay $15/month to play WoW. WoW has 6.5 million Subscribers(Estimate) they need that $15 to hire and pay GMs to take care of 6 million players, and they need to constantly create new servers, due to WoW's raising popularity. And That $15 also helps to pay to fix the bugs,add new content,pay other blizzard employes, and pay for the expansion.

Fraltieny · Jul 21, 2006, 11:52 PM // 23:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by NJudson

Maybe I'm wrong, but the last I heard was that WoW had around 7-8 million members now. Anyway those that I know that have playing WoW really loved it and I do think it looks like a great game, but as stated before I couldn't possibly convince myself to pay $180 in subscription fees for 1 year and the $50 cost of the game itself......just stupid IMO. Regardless whether I'd enjoy WoW or GW more, the matter of cost is my driving factor. GW is awesome and I'm sticking with it.

You guys fail at realizing why we pay $15/month to play WoW. WoW has 6.5 million Subscribers(Estimate) they need that $15 to hire and pay GMs to take care of 6 million players, and they need to constantly create new servers, due to WoW's raising popularity. And That $15 also helps to pay to fix the bugs,add new content,pay other blizzard employes, and pay for the expansion.

Markaedw · Jul 22, 2006, 12:38 AM // 00:38

How many are mulitple account? How many are bots?

Those need to removed from the 2 mil units count.

ischuros · Jul 22, 2006, 09:44 AM // 09:44

Fraltieny:

GW manages to do that with the 50 dollars per game that it gets, but I understand where you're coming from. You pay for a service and you get a good one, whereas we pay for a porduct and get a service throwen in there for free, which is as good as it can get for the money it gets. I dont want this thread to descend into another WoW vs GW thread, so I'll just leave it here.

Congratulations on getting the 2,000,000 A-net

devils wraths · Jul 22, 2006, 10:28 AM // 10:28

we shouldnt be comparing gw to wow yet anyway how much longer has wow been than gw hmm its a couple of years.

Numa Pompilius · Jul 22, 2006, 11:03 AM // 11:03

WoW is five months older (it just *looks* retro).

WoW is also probably the most profitable game ever. It will have cost about in the region of $20-40M to develop and market, plus perhaps another $10M in support since, tops, and has sold over 5M units at $40 each (that's $200M, although only half of that will have gone to the developers), and has had an average of 2-4M subscribers for two years paying an average of roughly $12 per month (that's another $300+ million).

WoW Guesstimated Result: +$450-500M.

Meanwhile, Guildwars cost 10-20M to develop, has sold 2 million units at $40 each, and is probably considerably cheaper to maintain (wild guess: $5M since release).

GW Guesstimated Result: +$20-30M.

Conclusion: They're both financial successes, but GW isn't a runaway financial success like WoW is.
WoW is guaranteed to get successorS, GW is pretty certain to get a successoR.
Personally I find it bizarre that people accept a monthly payment which is equal to what they'd pay if they'd had a $1000 credit card debt just to play a $40 game, but nonetheless the take home message is, and remains:
people are perfectly happy to both pay full price for a game, then pay an additional 25% of the cost of the game per month to be able to play it.

For this reason I do not think the successor to GW will be free to play, nor do I expect to see other MMORPGs using that approach.

EDIT: The search is working, which is why we get thread necromancy.

EDIT 2: WoW is still fugly. I don't care what else it is, the graphics are butt-ugly.

silv3rr · Jul 22, 2006, 11:10 AM // 11:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mimi Miyagi

The numbers aren't even close...

GWG's main page news headline is quite misleading, and should be changed. GW:Factions hasn't sold 2 million units, the GW FRANCHISE has sold 2 million units.

GW chapter 1 sold well over 1 million by itself, and GW:Factions sold quite significantly less than that. The developers had alluded to having "blown past the million mark a long time ago" and that Chapter 1 sales reached 1 million about 6 months into it's release.

So, for the sake of argument, let's say chapter 1 sold 1.2 million (just a guess) - that means that Factions sold 800K. That's 1/3rd less than chapter 1.

And another guess, that 80% of the people that bought factions also owned chapter 1. Again, just a guess, I suspect it's probably closer to 90%, but I'm being generous.

I'd guess that there are about 1.5 million unique accounts. Of those, how many of the chapter 1 buyers are still actively playing GW? Probably at least 1/3rd of them either quit GW, or haven't decided on buying Factions yet, if at all. But let's say that of those 1.5 million accounts, they still have active players (at least 1-2 a week).

WoW has at least 5 million unique accounts. Not units sold. I'm sure it's closer to the 7-8 million mentioned earlier in the thread. But even 5 million UNIQUE accounts paying 12 bucks (or whatever) a month, and buying the core game, and all expansions.

The #s are staggeringly disproportionate.

Selling 1 million copies of any game certifies it as a "blockbuster" game - most game sales on average are 100K units, and a good title that would get considered for a sequel would be anything that sells 500K units (best seller).

And then there are games like the Sims franchise, which are in the 20-30 million+ units sold - and still going strong.

But still, GWs did well enough to fund future chapters, 2 more so far. I can't begrudge them for succeeding, because they have.

But chapter 1 sold well enough to fund chapter 2, and get developement started on chapter 3. Chapter 2 sold enough to guarantee chapter 3...but took a significant enough hit in sales to be somewhat troubling I'm sure.

So chapter 3 will really need to turn things around - if it's sales drop below 800K, especially if it drops as significantly as chapter 2's sales did compared to chapter 1, then things might be a bit bleaker.

Keep in mind, they need to project funding for server support long after they have stopped selling units.

Now, I'm sure that ANet (and NC Soft) haven't had to start considering selling off their ferraris quite yet. Gross profits of over 100 million dollars is staggering for a computer game franchise that probably cost (between the two chapters) less than 1/10th of that.

But I'm sure they weren't overwhelmed by Faction's sales, and I do truly think that Chapter three will need to really revitalize the franchise with something unique or it could be the last one published.

WoW is a cash cow with no signs of things slacking off, in fact, the steady increase in subscriber accounts is a much better indicator of growth than sales figures. I'd be very interested in knowing just how GWs are doing in that department. Even then it would be deceptive, since # of accounts in GW doesn't show how many are still actively playing the game. Those kinds of numbers are quite closely guarded, I'm sure.

And this, of course, is all just my opinion. Shrug.

I agree with you on the most part, but you have to consider that fact that those 5+ millions accounts exists whether all of them are actively subscribed or not... let's say someone bought the game, paid for 1 month, and never paid for any thereafter, that account STILL (this goes for GW/GWF also) exists. But even with that said, WoW is undoubtedly dominating this market. I'm happy for ANet/NCSoft regardless though =p Like some others pointed out, WoW had an INSANE foudnation to build upon, GuildWars had nothing.

Like you said, if chapter 3 doesn't blow us away (and their target niche is obviously the fanbase that has been around since Prophecies) they'll surely not make sells > active acounts registered (meaning "us", the active loyal fans :P). It's unlikely that they'll attract new people to buy the new chapters. Okay, I don't know where I'm going with this anymore :P haha I'll just end it here.

Markaedw · Jul 22, 2006, 11:25 AM // 11:25

I don't think Prophecies will ever go bargin bin I believe that sometime in the future (4 or 5 probably) Prophecies as it stands now will simply be overwritten. The cities will be fixed up the map will change slighty, what we see as Old Ascalon will be the newbie area. At that time you will be forced to buy that chapter, because there is no place else to go.

As far as keeping us happy, we are both their market base and their advertising base. How many of us came to GW because of an add in a gaming magazine, or an in store display, or browsing on the self; or because your friends play?

I have a friend at work, and as soon as he get his internet up he will join or not based solely on my feeling towards GW at that time.

Mr_T_bot · Jul 22, 2006, 11:38 AM // 11:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fraltieny

You guys fail at realizing why we pay $15/month to play WoW. WoW has 6.5 million Subscribers(Estimate) they need that $15 to hire and pay GMs to take care of 6 million players, and they need to constantly create new servers, due to WoW's raising popularity. And That $15 also helps to pay to fix the bugs,add new content,pay other blizzard employes, and pay for the expansion.

And they are still probably making truckloads of pure profit.

Quote:

I don't think Prophecies will ever go bargin bin I believe that sometime in the future

No it won't, because it has no staying power. With a limited, entirely online game that has been already forgotten by its developers, there is no reason to buy it now, much less in the future. Arena Net's business model prevents them from selling more games than they would be able to sell if they supported old chapters. Any attempt to reprint it by Arena Net without supporting it is throwing money away.

Numa Pompilius · Jul 22, 2006, 12:28 PM // 12:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr_T_bot

And they are still probably making truckloads of pure profit.

It's *ALL* profit, every cent, $50M worth of it per month. To put that into perspective, that's equal to the devlopment cost of Doom3 PLUS all the combined sales of Doom3. Or put another way, WoW generate as much profit per month in subscriptions alone as GW has during its whole history.
The WoW game sales alone made the devs about $150M, more than sufficient to pay for the development of WoW and support for the next 20 years or so.

felinette · Jul 22, 2006, 02:21 PM // 14:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Numa Pompilius

Personally I find it bizarre that people accept a monthly payment which is equal to what they'd pay if they'd had a $1000 credit card debt just to play a $40 game, but nonetheless the take home message is, and remains:
people are perfectly happy to both pay full price for a game, then pay an additional 25% of the cost of the game per month to be able to play it.

Gamers seem to be an odd bunch in that they'll accept things that others wouldn't (like show-stopping bugs at release). If paying monthly guaranteed frequent content updates, quality, etc., maybe it could be justified, but I recently took a peek at the WoW forums, plus tried it out using a 10-day guest pass someone gave me, and all I can say is I don't get it, either. It doesn't seem, to me, that the monthly fee is getting them all that much more than what we get with GW (except a hell of a lot more character slots).

Quote:

EDIT 2: WoW is still fugly. I don't care what else it is, the graphics are butt-ugly.

My partner, who doesn't game but occasionally watches over my shoulder and thinks the GW graphics are great (and loves the dances), took one look at the WoW graphics and said, "a bunch of amateurs must have programmed that game." LOL.

Mimi Miyagi · Jul 22, 2006, 05:38 PM // 17:38

Some folks don't realize that while we're not signing up a credit card for a monthly $15 dollar withdrawal to play GW, ANet has effectively hidden their own version of a subscription fee and revenue stream into their game. It's just voluntary.

They release a new chapter every six months, that's roughly 8-10 dollars a month spread out over the life of the chapter. The only difference is that the consumers can pick and choose which chapter they buy or not. At least in theory. Hardcore GW players will buy every chapter until the game dies.

Oh, and the retail price of each chapter at release is $49.95, not $39.95. Collectors Editions are $69.95. It's not a "40 dollar game", it's an A-List title selling at 50 dollars. Hell, Chapter 1 is still selling at $39.95, over a year after release, when almost all retail software gets heavily discounted to bargain bin prices six months after release, or bundled into "battle packs".

And of course, ANet always finds some way of milking even more money out of their franchise, such as the purchase of additional "slots" instead of providing them in the game itself. Just how many folks will be shelling out another $10 bucks for yet another slot to create a PVE character in, or more? You're going to soon have 8 professions and only six slots, and in a year, potentially 10 professions and still six slots. Whoever came up with the idea of selling slots to their fan base probably deserves a big fat raise. Talk about a cost effective revenue stream.

I'm sure ANet is scratching their heads, trying to find a way of sucking this franchise dry of even more money out of their player base.

felinette · Jul 22, 2006, 06:51 PM // 18:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mimi Miyagi

Some folks don't realize that while we're not signing up a credit card for a monthly $15 dollar withdrawal to play GW, ANet has effectively hidden their own version of a subscription fee and revenue stream into their game.

No they haven't. When you play a game like WoW, you have to pay the $40-50 for the game *AND* a subscription fee every month. I mean, what do you want, to play GW for free? GW doesn't cost you any more to play than a single-player game, and nobody will say you're paying a subscription when you buy KotOR or NWN or a game like that.

Quote:

And of course, ANet always finds some way of milking even more money out of their franchise,

Anet is a business, not a charity. If gamers are willing to pay for content and upgrades to their account, why not?

Helll is for Heroes · Jul 22, 2006, 06:56 PM // 18:56

you get what you pay for.

Cjlr · Jul 22, 2006, 07:24 PM // 19:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helll is for Heroes

You get what you pay for.

As a rule, I'd agree. But last weekend I went down to Cleveland and I compared some prices while I was there. Many fast food chains have the exact same prices, dollar for dollar - except 1 $USD is worth ~1.2 $CDN. This week I've looked at prices for computer components at a couple stores.

ATI X1600 Pro PCI-E card, retails for A: $209.99 or B: $229.99

Therefore you do not always get what you pay for. B is more expensive. But it is the same thing.

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