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ArenaNet brilliant marketing
lasttime
Member Posts: 51
This post isn't about the quality of the game or whether its good or bad its just about something I found rather ingenious. ArenaNet shows some footage of the the game here and there not giving away too much but enough to make some assumptions about the game. Does a closed beta followed by a press beta. Then sets up an "open" beta which you get into by prepurchasing the game. Now what they've done with this is have only people who like the game enough, just from the info given out so far, to pay for the game entirely before release. Now those people are the ones populating the beta and surprise they like it which is statistically likely as those people were willing to prepurchase it. (Here what im sressing is not the preordering it which I've done a several times and then been unhappy with the game, but the prepurchasing which requires the the paying of the game entirely.) Now because of this the beta receives nothing but amazing reviews from most everyone in the beta. Just a little thought I had.
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Closed beta (press and invited) feedback was as positive as BWE beta, i would have pre-purchased even without beta acess, but i think you are on to something that most of us had already realized long ago but dont really care, since GW2 is just to good, and besides released footage was only gameplay, you get what your told you are going get and love it to the bone.
We had tons of footage since 2010, people played it first hand at Gamescom, PAX and other conventions.
As for marketing, yes it's great marketing, and healthy one too. At least we see real ingame footage, not some classy CGI cinematics. Arenanet allowed it's community to build hype.
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It also shows they have brass balls the size of grapefruits. Imagine if they BWE'd the game to it more loyal fanbase and it failed to live up to it's hype? GW2 would have died on the spot.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Yes there were conventions but I've found from playing mmos that getting to play patches of mmos here and there don't do very good jobs of suming up the actually experience of an mmo. Plus conventions are a small fraction of people who will ultimately buy a game. I had watched almost any gameplay footage I could get my hands on before beta and yes it was tons but it was also a lot of redundant footage of people doing the same things. Also does anyone know the number of active players the last bwe?
You have a point....as it's a self-selected sample, one's not entitled to take it as necessarily representative of the viewpoint of the gaming community as a whole.
I enjoyed the beta.....but I'm one of that self-selected sample group ^^
I was squarely on-board when their Manefesto came out a few years ago and after watching their 2010 GDC Dynamic Events Developer video. I was a blathering, idiotic fanboi after playing it at Pax 2011.
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While yes, it's brilliant marketing, you also need to remember that you don't have to prepurchase to get into beta. The only way to GUARANTEE your access to beta is to prepurchase. However, it's possible that you'll be selected to participate in a BWE if you signed up beta access back in February.
I agree that their marketing strategy has been pretty brilliant. None of that will matter though if the game itself isn't amazing. A bad game isn't going to get people to continue to buy expansions, or make cash shop purchases, or create an influx of new players post-release.
I've seen a "hundreds of thousands" thrown around in a twitter post by one of the community managers. Not sure if a more accurate figure has been released.
This just dawned on me but another interesting thing is the fact the beta before the prepurchasing was under nda. Making it so that people who were trying it out that didn't have to commit by prepurchasing couldn't tell you their opinion of the game. So if someone didn't like it they couldn't say anytihng. I'm not saying that was the goal or anything just another interesting piece. I am aware that the press beta had good reviews. I don't count those as I feel that the only opinion that matters are the gamers themselves.
So you just decided to create an account to say that?
People who pre-ordered SWTOR were pumped for that game as well but there was a ton of disappointment posts during the beta for that.
Everything that Anet promised is in the game right now and it works as advertised. Basically Anet is competent and people are really happy with the game. I've ever read posts here from former haters who tried the game and changed their tune.
Yep. I found it interesting. I wanted to see feedback as I am very interested in marketing and sales tactics.
Ofc lol
True but that game didn't require you to pay for the game in its entirety. Also you didn't need to pay at all to be in the beta as I tried during the one weekend anyone could try it.
Every game in the world that has a closed beta also has a NDA but I guess you're trying to troll and imply that Anet is an evil company trying to lie to the world.
lol It does seem odd but you can ask my friends. I'm constantly running my mouth about how companies pitch stuff and the clever tools they use to get people to buy things.
Yes but the reaction was terrible. The reaction for GW2 hasn't been terrible. Try harder.
If you want to see some amazing marketing, have a look at games that are highly hyped while being a lot less transparent than ArenaNet is with GW2. Especially the games that had a very high hype till launch, and then lost a good portion of gamers (a.k.a. "failed") a while afterwards. If the marketing department could sell a doomed product that well, the marketing has to be top notch.
lol no. I don't think ArenaNet is evil. They are making a game that tons of people will love.
He is doing it not bad thou, he came with an interesting aprouch. But the main purpose isnt study the marketing and sales tatics for sure lol
Because people who were going to dislike SWTOR were able to try it. To try GW2 I would have to prepurchase it. That requires me to be pretty sure I like it before even playing it.
I'll be honest I didn't even look at this game untill last month. I was looking for a game that was feature rich and after about two days of reading posts and looking at videos I prepurchased the game. This was before I found out that prepurchase gave me access to the beta events. As far as I am concerned the beta events are jsut a bonus. Also after seeing the beta events I am convinced the game is within 6 months of release.
GW2 has many of the features I have been writing about in forums for the past 3 years. I hope that Arenanet will keep developing the feature they have and introducing new ones along the way.
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In the age of social media, it doesn't matter how much marketing you do, a failed product remains a failed product. Yes, you have to pre-purchase to get guarenteed access. Yes, those who pre-purchased are those who already liked what they saw of the game enough to buy it. We will be biased, however, we are biased in such a way that if we don't like what we saw during beta, you can almost be assured that everyone who had paid would make sure that everyone who had not yet purchased would know exactly what kind of crap they were about to buy. ArenaNet took one hell of a gamble on the Pre-Purchase + Beta weekend. Had it not been awesome, they could have flopped their game even before it launched. People enjoyed it, dispite the bumps that occured. And no amount of marketing will make you like something that you tried and hated.
I still see commercials for TOR and no matter how cool they look, i won't buy the game.
I'm sorry but the only one saying anything about the second coming is you. Fans of a game accept its flaws and strengths.
24 US and 24 EU servers heavily populated. So lets say 10 000 per server? And you get nearly half million.
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